Maledicte

by Lane Robins

  He reached into the cradle and touched warmth and wet, and pulled his hand back. The blood on his hands was not the child’s murder played out of time, not Maledicte’s imagination, or Ani’s vengeful illusion. The blood on his hands was real. And the infant lay in a sleep from which it would never awaken.

  Maledicte made a noise in his throat of utter protest, a double-throated thing, his choked cry of pity and revulsion, and Ani’s harsh gasp of thwarted rage. A shadow detached itself from the wall, took his wrist. “Shh, Mal, not yet….”

  “Janus,” Maledicte breathed, the room shivering around him like something in a dream, like it might fly apart and show itself to be mere delusion.

  Janus touched his mouth; the odor of blood washed over Maledicte with the touch. It soaked Janus’s cuff. Maledicte backed away, leaned against the closed doors. “You killed—”

  “Saved you the grief,” Janus said, his voice low. “I saw how it distressed you. The idea of killing Auron. But it had to be done. When I heard you’d fled the hotel, I knew you’d be coming here. I thought you’d be quicker, though.”

  “I had to retrieve Gilly,” Maledicte said, numbly. He waited to feel something, but Ani’s rage, though white-hot, only dimly touched him. He wished it would wash over him, comfort him, take this cold horror from his belly, that this man with bloody hands and cold eyes was his lover, his companion for years, his beloved.

  “Gilly, again,” Janus said, scowling. “Timing is important, Mal. My plan—”

  “To be earl, I know. You hated this child,” Maledicte said.

  “It was only a child, unworthy of hate. I never hated Auron. And I don’t care about being earl any longer.”

  “What?” Maledicte whispered, startled out of his dream world, back to the solidity of this room, this moment, his breath fast in his chest, the ruined, wet texture of the baby’s skin still warm against his hand. He shuddered all over, wanting out, wanting to run, but the guards were outside the doors and he couldn’t imagine climbing down the way he knew he’d come.

  “Janus,” he breathed, seeking understanding and freedom from this room that had become a trap.

  “I intend to be king,” Janus said, the words cool and measured in the quiet of the room. “My blood’s good enough, and why not, there’ve been bastards on the throne before. I can rally some support already. DeGuerre, some of Westfall’s friends. But I had to make a choice. Kill Aris, that vacillating, sentimental fool, or the babe? Assassination of a king’s always a chancy thing. But kill Auron, and who’s left for Aris to turn to but me, when the only blood left is mine or Adiran’s?”

  Maledicte leaned against the wall, chilled at the pale fire in Janus’s eyes. Ani surged in him, screaming so harshly that nothing of Her words was distinguishable, only the shrieking desire to kill. At this moment, Maledicte didn’t know who she hungered for. The earl of Last was his promise—and the babe was dead.

  “Ani still rides you,” Janus said, stepping back and away, calculation in his face. “Does She know, does She understand—I am the earl of Last, now?”

  Maledicte moaned, the sword leaping in his hands, darting toward Janus. Maledicte fought it, but Janus stepped closer, let the blade bite into his arm. Janus savaged his lip, but did not cry out.

  Janus danced back, hand clutching his wound. Blood rose and welled between his fingers, flowing down his sleeve and mingling with Auron’s spilled blood. “I knew you would understand. Perfect.” His eyes widened suddenly and he rolled beneath the cradle to avoid the next swing, rose on the other side. “Once is enough, Mal. You must control Ani. Use Her abilities for our ends.”

  Maledicte gasped for breath, shuddering with exhaustion and dread that Janus thought to play puppets with the god. The sword burned in his grasp, the feathered hilt sinking into his skin. Janus’s eyes narrowed, gas-flame blue, as the sword moved toward him like a needle on a compass. Maledicte lunged again and found Janus using the same gambit Maledicte had used in all his duels, stepping too close for the sword to be brought to bear. Janus grabbed Maledicte’s wrist, holding it out like a pinned wing.

  “Shh,” he whispered into Maledicte’s ear. “You cannot kill me. I am both your Love and your Vengeance now. The thing you wanted and the thing you hated. Ani cannot kill me without breaking your compact. We’ve caged Her perfectly within you. After all, Her skills are far too valuable to lose.”

  Maledicte dropped the sword, trembling all over, wordless. Kaleidoscope images burst behind his lids, of Last dying, of Auron’s blood, of Mirabile’s feather-studded skin. He whimpered, sobbing for air and reason. Janus’s blood perfumed the air, the wound near his face. “Miranda, trust me. I know what I’m doing,” Janus said. “Now pick up your sword. You’ll need it.”

  Janus stepped back, and Maledicte, blank-minded, did as his lover bid. As his fingers touched the hilt, there was a sudden shatter of glass from the other room as the crack made in the window by the sword raced side to side. Rooks blew through it, and the mastiff broke into frantic barking.

  Janus fell back against the cradle, bloody wound clutched in a hand, smiling. “Go.”

  Maledicte fled the pale, ecstatic light in Janus’s eyes, the sword shivering at his side, ran through the swirling cloud of rooks, leaping over the crumpled guard. He made a leap for the barred window, but his hand, still slick with the infant’s blood, slipped down its length without catching.

  The guards burst into the room at Hela’s barking, and Maledicte reacted, slicing into them, severing the first guard’s arm from his body and driving the sword through the chest of the next one. Panting, he put his foot on the corpse, levered his sword free; it stuck on a rib, and he yanked harder. Dimly, he saw Adiran, awakened, standing beside him, blue eyes wide and worried.

  Before the next guard could reach him, Maledicte freed the sword, and grabbed up Adiran. The guard faltered. Adiran clung to his neck and began to cry. Behind him, he heard Janus stumbling into the room and checking also, as if only waking from an assault.

  Maledicte swallowed hard, the child’s wailing in his ear. He moved toward the door, and first one guard, then the next, stepped out of his path.

  Adiran pushed feebly in his grip, his wailing breaking into uncertain hic-coughs. Maledicte clutched him closer, his mind twisting ideas together, trying to think of escape and only imagining a noose. The guards would follow him to the ends of the earth as long as he held Adiran. He could set him down and flee—he had nearly the length of the room on them—could kick the door closed, delay them that second longer. But, to set Adiran down now—the guards would surge after him like hounds, leaving Aris’s beloved son, Aris’s heart, behind in the nursery. Alone with Janus.

  Maledicte turned and raced the long hallway, found guards pelting up the main stairs nearly on him. Jasper headed them, his eyes fever-bright with anger. Seeing Adiran clutched so close, he waved the rest to a halt. They paused, piling into each other, but despite Maledicte’s fervent wishes, stayed upright. The second mastiff, pushing through them, had no hesitation at all. Despite Jasper’s snatch, Bane came roaring through, savaging his restraining hands.

  Maledicte dropped Adiran and bolted. The child, startled again and terrified at the rage in the air, began wailing. Bane gained his side, and, frantic, began slicing the air with his teeth, keeping everyone away from his charge, and obstructing the hall. Adiran clung to Bane and howled. The guards were stymied. For the moment.

  But the floor shivered beneath Maledicte’s feet with the arrival of more guards. He shuddered. The palace was worse than a beehive struck unthinkingly.

  Within him, Ani whispered, let Me make it better, let Me make them all suffer. Give yourself to Me.

  No, Maledicte thought, pushing away from a wall, taking the corner too fast, his boots skidding on the polished wood. He saw another stairwell and raced for it. Janus had a plan; Maledicte had to trust him. There was no alternative. It was only their old game, made more risky. Miranda had done the running before, dashed away with stolen
goods, or the weapons to be hidden. She had always been able to outrun the blame, and Janus—had always been able to deny it.

  This was more of the same, all part of the plan. Janus’s plan, Maledicte thought, savagely. Not mine. His breath tore in his chest, his heart hammered; he grabbed the railing of the stairs, saw more guards coming up them, just two, roughly woken and still addled with sleep. He shrieked and dove forward. The first man took the blade in the face and collapsed instantly, blood bubbling through the wreck of his nose. Maledicte tumbled down the stairs on top of the other, using the man’s body to cushion his own bones against the risers’ edges.

  Panting, Maledicte slit the man’s throat when he started, clumsily, to fight back at the base of the stairs.

  If he could only get outside the palace, the night itself would hide him; the clouds of rooks would shelter him, as safe as any babe—In the disused dining room, Maledicte leaned against the wall and retched, wiped his bloody blade clean on the shrouded table.

  Trust in Me, Ani whispered, coaxing, gentle, as compelling as Her first words to Miranda had been. Huddled beneath the altar, the salt burning her eyes, her skin, her scraped flesh, and Ani asking, What wrong has been done to you, little one? Tell Me what you want….

  Now Her words were gentle again, the strident, bloody harridan only a nightmare image in his heart. Why trust Janus? Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve been, you’ve done for him. And is he the man you thought him to be? Hasn’t he lied to you? Can you trust him? There’s only Me to protect you, now.

  Maledicte sucked in his breath, quieting its wheeze, ignoring Ani as best he could. They had lost him, albeit briefly. Best to make the most of it. Curtains draped the far wall, and Maledicte, hoping for windows, yanked them back. Painted gardens, sunlit, even in the dark of night. Maledicte laughed wildly; he hated this court, the overwhelming falsity of it all, where not even the architecture could be relied upon to be honest.

  Footsteps sounded outside the doors. He ran for the servants’ entrance, yanked the door open at the expense of its hinges, and dashed into the dark corridor beyond, the door listing in the jamb, a clear pointer to his direction.

  Darkness and shadows and enclosed walls struck both Maledicte and Ani nerveless—the specter of Stones again. If he were caught—to spend the last moments of his life in a cell—Maledicte ran blindly down the hall, toward a faint spark of light growing in the distance. A maid with a lantern crept out of a room to see what was happening. She opened her mouth to shriek, but Maledicte pounced, snatched the lantern, and pushed her into the center of the hall. Gasping for breath, shocked, she sprawled across the smoothed floorboards, watching as he retreated. Maledicte grinned. Let her lie there in a stupor; let the damn guards trip over her, and buy him a few precious moments.

  He wanted more stairs, more windows, some hint of where he was. Why had Janus never given him a map of the palace when he had known it must come to this?

  Maledicte shivered, though his skin was hot with sweat, and the lantern’s heat burned his left hand. He had no answer for himself. He was bent on escape, and thinking was for later.

  His feet pounded along the hall; the servants’ passageway, though narrow enough to prevent the guards from surrounding him, was stripped of carpeting, and his steps echoed like pistol shots. They could track him by that alone, and he had no idea which of the doors held more stairs, winding their ways, mazelike, through the palace. There had been stairs in the dining room, but he had fled mindlessly past them, and the pursuing guards, their cries audible now, made doubling back impossible. The dining room would have needed to be connected to the kitchens, and the kitchens always opened out to the world. Maledicte pushed open the next door, slid through it, and shut the door again.

  A woman repairing sheets looked up at him, the needle held in her mouth, the thread dangling. It dropped and Maledicte lunged at her. “Not a word.” He blew out the lantern, slid himself under the sheltering drape of the sheet she was sewing, pressed the sword tip up against her belly. “Not a word,” he said again, his voice rough with fear. Had he been in court, he would have done his best to disguise that weakness, but here his desperation could only insure her obedience.

  The door swung open and guards spilled in like a piled mass of hunting dogs.

  “What do you want?” she said, her voice shrill, going shriller as Maledicte leaned his weight on the blade. A thin line slid down the blade, as thin as her linen thread, but dark, and forming a slow droplet at the end. Maledicte caught the drop on his fingertips, lest somehow the guards hear that small act of violence over their searching. They yanked open all the connecting doors, threw the loose piles of sheets around the room, until the seamstress cowered, bending her face near to her waist. Maledicte could see her features, distorted by fear, through her pale linens.

  The guards left, slamming the door again, and Maledicte slid away from her. “Please,” she said. “Please.”

  Maledicte knew killing her would buy him time, prevent her from shrieking that he’d turned rabbit and bolted back the way he’d come, but her blood was already streaking his blade; the sight of it made his stomach churn. A fine time to lose the taste for it, he thought bitterly, but Ani only laughed.

  If you won’t come to Me, why should I help you? She asked.

  Maledicte put his hand over the seamstress’s mouth, put the blade to her throat; the woman paled, her tongue licked out nervously to touch dry lips.

  Maledicte pulled away, the blade no more bloodied than before, and ran. He had reached the dining room again when he heard the muffled violence of her screaming.

  Fool, Ani said within him. Betrayed fool. Lose yourself in Me and I will aid you. He clattered down the stairs, burst into the kitchen, and found it overfull of guards, watching the exits.

  Maledicte turned and fled back upward, aware of the upstairs contingent approaching. “Help me,” he whispered.

  Yes, Ani said, Go always upward, and the rooks will aid you. He kicked the stair doors shut in the guard’s face as the first man reached it, and he kept going up, past the landing to the servants’ quarters, past the point where the stairs were kept in good condition, and became friable, bowed with time. He stumbled, but kept going, secure in the knowledge that these stairs were blind. There were no doorways to open up at his side, disgorging guards or Particulars. No maidservants to trip over, just a straight shot to the sky.

  An explosion snapped through the air in the hall; the plaster near his face puffed into dust, and Maledicte spat. Pistols.

  He turned and cursed them for cowards. The Particular drew another pistol and fired again, then screamed as the pistol exploded in his hand. Ani’s doing, or pure luck. It didn’t seem to matter. The stairs came to an abrupt end, spilling him out into a jumbled attic.

  Upward. In the shadowed ceiling, the door to the rooftop was hinted at by a darker patch, a square with a telltale latch. He climbed the pile of aristocratic refuse and forced the latch back, even as the guards swarmed in and spread out, creating a net of flesh and swords.

  Maledicte levered himself up and through, and found himself on the flat roof of the palace, the night air cool and crisp in his face, and the sky alive with wings. Within him, Ani spread Her wings, stroking his fears back.

  He laughed, stood over the trapdoor, and took the head of the first guardsman to climb through, pushing the body back down onto his colleagues. Maledicte kicked the head through as an afterthought and dropped the trapdoor closed.

  There was nothing there to hold it closed; the latch was on the other side, but the very fact that only one man could come through at a time acted like a weight on the guards below. Maledicte left the trapdoor, ran to the edge of the roof, and looked down. Dizzyingly far, the ground seemed as unattainable as the sky as a means of escape. He leaned over the edge, testing the wall for scalability. In this part of the castle, it was old stone, not soft mortar and jutting brick. More, Ani showed no inclination to grant him preternatural skills again, and
only a fool tried to descend a sheer stone wall.

  Beneath his feet, the muttering panic of the guards went quiet and orderly; one voice cracked out above them all. Echo, taking charge. At least there was that at the end.

  He watched the trapdoor lift, disgorging Echo, who rose like a stage demon, flung aloft by his guards, pistol in one hand, sword in the other, and a length of chain mesh guarding his throat.

  Maledicte danced toward him as Echo leveled the pistol, eyes narrowing. The puff of smoke, the ricochet of sound struck Maledicte a moment after the lead did. He stumbled, but the ball had only penetrated his leg; Ani chased it out, healing its intrusive heat, absorbing the hurt. Maledicte reached out with his sword and took the pistol from Echo’s hand, flung it off the roof.

  “I’m glad you came,” Maledicte said. “This wouldn’t have been the same without you.”

  “I’ll see you dead,” Echo said. Behind him, the guards started to join them, and Maledicte pivoted, kicked the first one in the throat, and sent him backward. Echo’s blade whistled in the sky, coming for his chest, and the air was suddenly full of rooks. Echo flailed his sword, trying to clear them from his face, the stabbing beaks, the snatching claws, and Maledicte screamed, “He’s mine.”

  The space between them cleared, the rooks pulling away into the sky like a windspout, flowing upward and then falling back toward them, circling them. “All your tricks won’t help you, now. Aris will see you hanged,” Echo said, closing.

  Maledicte took the blow on his blade, skidded under the man’s weight, and stepped aside at the last, forcing Echo off his blade. Maledicte thrust, aiming for Echo’s exposed side, but the man pivoted and parried.

  Maledicte stepped back, trying to keep an eye on both Echo and the door to the attic. Echo was not any of the fools that Maledicte had dueled previously, buoyed by tradition and stupidity; should Maledicte be struck from behind by a guard, Echo would finish him from the front without hesitation.