Maledicte

by Lane Robins

  “I trusted Maledicte too long, played the fool. You lived in his pocket and yet claim I should trust you—I wish I could believe you,” Aris said. “Wish I could trust my own flesh and blood, but death seems overinterested in smoothing your path.” Aris leaned against the table, his face older than Janus had ever seen it.

  “I could have you imprisoned or executed, but there is no other left of our blood. If the line of Last is to continue, it must be through you.” Aris’s hands knotted and unknotted uselessly against his coat. “As for banishment, Itarus would be only too glad to take you in, to use you against Antyre. How would Adiran fare then? I have not the stomach to fight another war over my throne.”

  Aris held out a hand, face grim. Janus cautiously took it. Aris clenched his hand tight, drew Janus close. “This is my sin—and my guilt. That I would prefer a conspirator on my throne to the bloodshed that would follow a war or my death without a viable heir. So you have won, Janus. To a degree.

  “You will continue as a member of my court. My third counselor. But the moment you approach Adiran, I will have the dogs at your throat. Without hesitation. Your life is now linked to his. If he contracts fever, should he suffer hurt of any kind, you will pay for it. Do you understand me, nephew?” Aris’s eyes were the cold blue of winter skies, and Janus found himself looking away first for once.

  “I would never hurt Adiran,” he said, finding his voice. There was no need. Adiran’s presence could only aid him. If he were regent for the simple young man Adi would be, it would be no different from being king in name. But all those thoughts passed in a driving need to return to Maledicte, to make sure the stitches were holding as the poison wore off, to ease his pain.

  “Janus, I am sick of your meaningless words. Go upstairs; you are confined to your quarters until we have recovered his body.”

  Janus fought a surge of angry temper, reminding himself again that it was the boy, the bait, that they hunted. Doors slammed upstairs, and he focused his eyes on the floor, dropping into a bow, though alarm shot through him. He had expected the guards to confine their seeking to the grounds of Lastrest, ignoring the house itself. Casting a final glance at Aris’s ravaged face, at the guards in the drive passing out spades, he left the room as if reluctant, even while his blood whispered, hurry hurry.

  Upstairs, he found the door to his rooms open, his armoire opened, guards looking through it. He parted his lips to object and his blood froze in his veins. The opened armoire door had blocked the wall from his sight, and the hidden room’s door gaped wide.

  “There’s blood on the bed and the floor,” the guard said.

  “I was injured earlier. Defending Auron.” His voice was without conscious control; the entirety of his being vibrated with the need to shut the door to the hidden room, though he knew it was too late.

  The guards shrugged and left, locking him in as they did, and Janus stumbled into the hidden room, finding only shadows and darkness within its narrow confines, the candles gone out and cold.

  Janus fumbled his numb, blind way toward the dusty chaise where he had laid Maledicte. Surely he had not recovered, was not playing a second, lethal game of cat and mouse even now…. Janus’s breath caught; he bit back a sob, imagining the guards finding so much more than they expected, not a corpse but a revenant, weak but alive. Easy prey. He dropped to his knees, reaching out in entreaty, and then his hands touched clammy, sweating flesh; a whisper of a moan reached him, and when he drew his hands back, blood marked his fingers.

  Ani’s doing, Janus realized; this empty room not empty at all. The same weaving of shadow that had snared Last now spared Her vessel. He burst into laughter, tinged with hysteria, and startled himself silent. But such power She held, and Miranda held. What he couldn’t do with it at his side…. He and Maledicte would rule this country as surely as they had ruled the Relicts. If Maledicte lived.

  Janus pressed his body against the chaise, clutching those cool, twitching fingers in his own.

  THE FLAVOR OF DUST and blood filled her mouth, and a faint tang of oiled steel, as if it had risen through her veins from the wound. Pain radiated out, central, devastating, lethal. Miranda opened her eyes with bleary effort. Dim shadows draped her, and steep walls surrounded her. Too steep to be those of a coffin, and too far away. But Maledicte was dead, she knew that; Janus had done that, chasing even Ani back down into the depths of her body, cowering.

  Raising her hand took all her will, and she let it drop on her chest, tangling in the stiff linen stitching at the heart of that pain. The shadows pressed in, and her eyes closed; the room promenaded around her, spinning her in elaborations as fanciful as the dance steps Aris had taught her in the gardens. When she could open her eyes again, the walls had returned to the static stone that they were.

  A pallid gleam swam toward her, a square of darkness pivoting to birth a white-shirted figure with gilded hair.

  “Don’t touch that. It’s so close to your heart. I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Janus—” Miranda breathed his name out on a delicate exhalation. More than the faintest motion of her chest woke wet heat and lung-locking agony.

  “Shh.” He knelt beside her, took her bandaged hand in his own. It brought a new smell to her senses, the dark scent of turned, wet earth and leaves; it overwhelmed even the blood scent of her skin and the stale exertion of his. Black earth and loam, cold soil from deep beneath the surface where the sun could never reach. Miranda knew the scent, had sniffed it at Vornatti’s interment. Janus had been digging graves.

  “I had it all planned, Mal. Why did you move? I almost killed you.”

  Maledicte breathed. Tried to. Forced his mouth into a rictus movement, put his tongue to his teeth, shaped words without breath. “Ani never stops fighting. I couldn’t stop fighting. Even you. Thought you meant to kill me.” He let the darkness roll over him, muffling his senses, his fingers numb on his chest, his legs as inert as lead.

  “I’d never hurt you.” Janus’s hand, so hot against his cold flesh, seared him to wakefulness once more.

  “Hurts now….”

  “I thought She’d heal you faster than this. That it would be a matter of minutes. Not this.” Janus dropped his head; his hair trickled muddy water onto the pillow, splashing Maledicte’s face, startling him with little bursts of sensation. When Janus raised his head again, Maledicte could see wet tracks coursing through the begrimed skin. Janus fumbled a bottle out of his shirt. “I brought you Laudable. Do you think you can swallow?”

  Maledicte said, “Elysia—”

  “I haven’t any, and with Aris here, I can’t send for it. I’m sorry.”

  Pain swept over him again, stabbing outward, throbbing, setting sweat to slicking his side. “Send Gilly,” he said. The threat of continuing torment scared him as nothing else had, save being buried in Stones.

  “Shh.” Janus helped Maledicte raise his head, lifting gently at his nape. A bare inch from the pillow, the movement contracted tiny muscles along his neck, his rib cage, and Maledicte lost the room to an inner blackness.

  “Mal?”

  Parting his lips, Maledicte tried to focus. Janus trickled the Laudable in; Maledicte choked, and rolled his head, spilling most of it back out onto the pillow. Rather that than a paroxysm of coughing as it burned down his lungs. Maledicte would rather drown on the syrup than deal with that anticipated agony. A bare taste sank down his throat, scorching it, and spreading a blaze in his chest.

  Maledicte breathed. The room throbbed dark and darker. Janus’s hands stayed steady at Maledicte’s nape. When he could see Janus’s face again, Janus spoke. “Another mouthful?”

  Maledicte tilted his chin a little higher, waited. “Slower,” he breathed, felt the glass lip rest against his tongue, the liquid spreading thinly over his tongue, coating it. Maledicte swallowed, a deeper mouthful this time, managed another, before letting the rest trickle over his cheeks and chin.

  The pinpoint heat of candlelight in Miranda’s eyes brought her b
ack to awareness. Numbness spread over her body like a shroud, and Janus, bent over her, seemed only a dream. He touched the bandaging on her chest and pain flared anew. He peeled back the bandaging, washed it with spirits and salve. Miranda shuddered, and wondered if time had passed or not. If this were her death, and it would repeat forever, Janus, the wounds, the pain, the words. But the dirt was gone from Janus’s face, the hair dried in awkward waves.

  “You had to move. I had it all planned, a simple stroke, a clean miss of everything vital, but you had to move. I thought you loved me more than that, Mal. Knew me better than that. You thought I meant you dead….

  “I don’t know if you’ll heal. I don’t know if I can save you….” Janus’s voice cracked and faded away.

  “Love you?” Maledicte said, his breath coming a little easier now. “I do love you, loved you for so long, my Janus. My king. But I don’t know that I trust you.”

  Janus’s hands paused in his ministrations. “You can always trust me.” The quick heat in his eyes seemed brighter than the candle flames. He smoothed the bandages back down, sealing the wound closed.

  The counter to that was on Maledicte’s tongue, a single name, Gilly, but he swallowed it instead, let the word nourish him.

  “Here,” Janus said, bringing the glass back up to his mouth. “Rest.”

  A faint sound reached Maledicte’s ears, and Janus pressed the glass to his chest. “Not a sound.” He disappeared back through the door, sealing Maledicte into the shadows again. Gingerly, Maledicte tipped the bottle to his mouth, swallowed several deep drafts, before letting the bottle roll away over the sheets, soaking them.

  SHE WOKE AGAIN TO HEAT and fever, stretching walls and stone. Trying to piece together even the simplest things—who was she now? Miranda was dead, had died in the Relicts, and Maledicte had met death on the palace tower. Janus had dug his grave. The wet earth smell lingered in his nose; the sheets were muddied with it where they swept the floor. Blood spattered the floor, his blood, and tear tracks on Janus’s face. Maledicte must be dead; his body lay numb and mute, cold as clay. But he could think…. A ghost, then. Some pale half-life, not one thing or another, as dusty, as empty as this room. But the fever that burned in him made him feel alive. Death wouldn’t hurt so much, surely?

  “And yet, no proof either way.” Rambling, muttering aloud, the room sent his raspy voice back at him like the skitterings of rats. And yet there were other voices in the air, whispers traveling through the walls, secrets overheard by stone. He got out of the bed, forcing numb legs to react, falling, swooning, stumbling until he leaned against that whispering spot in the wall. Words filtered through, meaningless to the ghost-creature, yet he stored them in his memory just the same.

  “Janus, you must tell us where you’ve buried him. I will not have Auron’s murderer lie here. We will find him. Why delay the inevitable?”

  Other voices shouted outside, their voices spiraling away in clear air, creeping in through the shielded, narrow slit near the eaves. Maledicte raised his arms, gingerly…. Were he a ghost he would fly to that spot, peer down at the scramble of living soldiers, watch them unearth his bones from the raw earth, the spades slicing the soil as his sword had sliced him from the court.

  “We’ve found it, sir.” A new voice, closer by, respectful.

  Aris sighed. “At last. Bundle it up. Take it to the palace for display.”

  My body, Maledicte thought, the Laudable’s effects fading with the weary pain in Aris’s voice, the quiet defeat in Janus’s. “You will not allow him to lie here.”

  “He will not lie anywhere in Antyre,” Aris said. “When the birds are done with him, his bones will go to the sea.”

  Maledicte slid down the door, unable to stand upright, but the shock that ran through him on hitting the floor stabilized reality for him, even as it washed him with waves of breath-stealing discomfort. If he were alive—

  The door opened, spilling him at Janus’s feet. Janus swore, lifted him into his arms. “Are you mad? That door could have opened at any time with you leaning on it. What a sight for Aris that would have been.” He carried him over to the chaise, and with a grimace at the stained sheets, set him down beside it.

  “Who was it?” Maledicte asked.

  Janus stripped the sheet from the furniture, laid out another with the awkwardness of a man who rarely had to do such things. “Just some boy. He looked enough alike, and four days in the dirt will have helped it along.”

  “Some innocent who died because he looked like me,” Maledicte said.

  “Don’t—” Janus said. “Gilly was the worst influence on you. Giving you a veneer of morality and conscience. The boy was nothing compared to you. The moment I saw him, I knew his fate would be to spare you yours.” Janus lifted him onto the cushioned seat; Maledicte bit his lip with the pain, and then relaxed into the softness.

  Janus smiled at him, “You’re doing so much better. For a while there, I thought I’d lost you. That Ani had left you and you were vulnerable.”

  “Ani,” Maledicte said. “No, She’s still within.” But so small, so hidden; Maledicte had to search for the spark of her presence, that black well of anger buried under the weariness and ache of his bones. “Have you won, then?” he asked, drowsing. “Has Aris forgiven you for loving me? Does he believe you blameless?”

  Janus sank down beside him, stroking Maledicte’s matted hair. “I am not punished, but neither am I trusted.”

  Lacking the energy to move his head away from the stroking fingers, Maledicte tried to push him off with words. “You cannot seem to hold trust for long, can you?” The heat in his voice woke answering pain in his chest.

  Janus paused in his caresses, then continued. “I’m sorry you doubted me. I’ll teach you, and Aris, to trust me again.”

  “Doesn’t matter if I do,” Maledicte said. “I am a dead man after all.”

  “Shh,” Janus said, bent close and pressed his mouth to Maledicte’s. “All will be well. We’ll be where we’ve always wanted to be. You’ll see.”

  · 44 ·

  M ALEDICTE WATCHED the blank walls moodily, pacing with his eyes since his body could not. His chest burned, but with the heat of healing wounds instead of outraged flesh. He stared at the window slit, back at the door. It had been silent for hours, or days; he was still not sure how much time had passed, lost in Laudable dreams and delirium.

  The blood-heavy scent and the dark tang of deep grave dirt had gone from the room. The linens that draped him carried only the aromas of starch and the iron. A confectioner’s assortment lay untouched beside him, one of Janus’s attempts to nourish him. Maledicte opened it, but the chocolates only raised memories of drugging Gilly and Lizette’s untidy death.

  A tray beside the bed was cold, despite the covering cloths, the teapot stained with tannin from the oversteeped leaves. The wine bottle was half full, the Laudable bottle near empty. A hunk of bread, still fresh enough to be tempting, lay beside the pot. He took a bite, though the effort to chew made his body ache. He dropped it back to the plate, and it rolled off, tumbling down a cliff of piled novels.

  The whole room maddened him. It was like something out of one of Vornatti’s mindless tales, the invalid girl beset by suitors’ gifts and doomed to a tragic end.

  He shifted gingerly to his side and when the pain, his most faithful attendant, stayed with him but pressed no closer, he foundered to his feet, breath whistling in his throat.

  He stumbled the length of the room and rested against the door, seeking the catch. He forced it open with a whimper of exertion, letting himself out into Janus’s empty chambers. The room was dark, the curtains drawn over the windows, and the door out of the room, when he tested it, resisted opening. Bending, Maledicte saw the key in the hole and sighed. A caged bird still. But where would he go—when Maledicte had been so well-known?

  He made his creeping way to the window, and pulled back the curtains a small inch. Sunlight sloping over the grounds gave him his first solid t
ime—it was early evening, with twilight closing in. A fitting time for a ghost to walk, he thought. Below, he heard carriage wheels on the oyster-shell drive, approaching without haste.

  In the gardens, limned by the setting sun, servants’ children, dressed neatly in patched hand-me-downs, whispered to each other and then scattered as the carriage swept by. Maledicte watched them race to their respective places, envying them their small freedoms; one boy paused and looked up at him, eyes going wide.

  Maledicte dropped the drape and stepped back, heart pounding. But what could the child have seen? Only a shadowy figure in a darkened room.

  The key turned behind him, and Maledicte darted for the bed curtains, vision swirling with the sudden effort. He sucked his breath in, fought to stay silent when his body ached. When Janus stepped in, Maledicte released it in a rush.

  “Mal—” Janus said, in a startled whisper. “Someone might see you.”

  “In a locked room?” Maledicte asked, sinking down onto the bed, holding the ache in his chest.

  Janus came to him, leaned over, and the chain of roses around his neck slipped free. Maledicte reached out and broke the string, sending petals and leaves over the sheets. “A betrothal charm?”

  “I wed Psyke Bellane in three days, by special license and the king’s decree,” Janus said, biting back a grin. “I presume Aris means to use her as a spy. Poor child, and how like Aris to mistake intelligence for competence.”

  “You’re so clever,” Maledicte said, lying back against the mounded pillows, slanting his forearm over his eyes. “I always thought I was the clever one. And yet, you’ve gotten everything you’ve wanted. And I—I am a ghost.”

  “Too much Laudable for you, love,” Janus said. “You’re quite alive.”

  Anger, as always, restored his strength and breath. “But mewed up like a corpse. I am not your mistress, your lover, your courtier; I am your secret, kept behind stone walls, hidden from the servants and living on your stealthy leavings.