Maledicte (10 page)

“I hinted, Gilly.”

“Every whisper you spread loosens our grip on DeGuerre. We need DeGuerre.”

“No, we don’t.” Maledicte stood, pushed the goblet into Gilly’s startled hands, the wine sloshing. “Sit.”

Gilly did, his anger draining away, fear leaving him weak. DeGuerre was a powerful man with a bad temper. A counselor’s nephew. A man not to be taunted. Maledicte smiled, slow and smug, and Gilly’s concern grew. “If this is not some vicious whimsy, what is it?”

“DeGuerre gained us admittance to the court. Lady Westfall will keep us here to please her friend Mirabile.”

“That frees you to mock a dangerous man, to spill his secrets to his peers? Mirabile is undoubtedly at DeGuerre’s side even now, whispering your oh-so-audacious words into his ears, saying of course there’s no truth in the matter, is there, but she thought he should know what is being said.”

“If she’s not, I’ve been most misled as to her character.”

Gilly drank the excellent wine in one long draft. Maledicte moved behind him, unfastened the drooping laces in Gilly’s hair. He smoothed the wheaten strands, refastened the ties. “There. All better. But really, Gilly, you should have more care for your appearance.”

“DeGuerre will try to disprove your words with steel.”

Maledicte touched the frown lines etching themselves between Gilly’s brows as if he could remove Gilly’s fears by the smoothing of his flesh. “I welcome it,” Maledicte said. “I have been trained to fight, Gilly, but have not yet dueled. How can I face Last without knowing how my skills, belatedly learned, stack up against one trained from birth?”

“It’s a foolish risk,” Gilly said.

“But mine to take,” Maledicte said, touching the hilt of his sword with contemplative fingers. “Come, Gilly, I haven’t much time if I’m to goad DeGuerre to a duel. Aris is coming, and I’ve heard he frowns on such activities.”

“I told you that, if you’ll remember,” Gilly said.

“Ah, that might explain why I believe it.” Maledicte slid past the heavy drapes. “Wait a moment or two before returning to the ballroom. To be circumspect.”

Gilly sighed. “I am your servant, Maledicte. I am beneath notice.” He set the goblet on the floor of the cloakroom, followed Maledicte.

In the ballroom’s wide doorway, DeGuerre stood, an arm outstretched as if he would bar Maledicte’s reentry; his other hand hovered near the sword hilt on his hip.

Maledicte stood before him, smaller, slighter, and smiling. “Leaving the field of battle early?” He slipped past the man’s locked arm like a shadow, and looked back over his shoulder. “My regards to Lilia. You have no idea how fondly I think of her.”

DeGuerre spun, snatched Maledicte’s sleeve; the seam gave in a slow syncopation of popping thread. “You’re nothing. You’re nothing at all. A common little catamite.”

Maledicte stepped closer to the angry, bull-like figure. “Do you suppose that’s what Lilia says—writhing, moaning, under her husband’s thrusting? He was nothing to me, my darling, nothing at all….” Maledicte forced his ruined voice into a parody of a woman’s high tones. The rasp lent an air of gasping breathiness to the words, the sound of a woman in the throes of ecstasy or torment.

DeGuerre’s face blanched. His eyes shone.

Maledicte said, “How it must gnaw at you. Loving her as you do, knowing she’s lying with another, unable to protest. Knowing that there is one person for you, loving them through all hardships, and then, the sudden shock when it’s all ripped away, like an unexpected gut wound that stinks and festers. Love rules you, Leonides DeGuerre, and torments you. We are not so different after all.”

Gilly let out his breath, relaxing, but the sympathetic tone did what no taunt had. DeGuerre clenched his fist.

It was no openhanded slap that he landed, a gentleman’s response to an affront, but a boxer’s blow. Maledicte stumbled, head snapping to the side. The stiff cicatrix along his jaw cracked; a thin, red-beaded line welled up, touching the high edges of his lace collar. The violence rippled outward, quieting the court. Only the musicians continued, sawing out tunes for people no longer dancing.

“Not mannerly,” Maledicte said. “And worse, it leaves your intentions in doubt. Are you inviting me to duel? I warn you, I have a bad temper in the mornings.”

“Duel over filthy lies that no one believes,” DeGuerre said, raising his voice for the court’s listening ears. “I think not.”

“You’ve killed to stifle those whispers before. Are you afraid of me?” Maledicte smiled.

Gilly bit his lip; if Maledicte’s words stung too harshly, DeGuerre wouldn’t wait until dawn, but would strike now, heedless of the court’s traditions.

“One doesn’t duel with vermin,” DeGuerre said. “Or acknowledge their lies.”

“You could sue me for slander,” Maledicte said. “If you could prove my words false.”

DeGuerre struck him again, backhanding him from the other direction.

Maledicte raised his head. Blood rouged his mouth. “If you intend to beat me to death, don’t expect me to abstain from steel. Otherwise, declare the duel.”

“Never with you. Relict rat.” DeGuerre’s breath came as fast and as hard as if he had been running; his hands shook. He took a stilling breath, then said. “Everyone knows commoners lack the moral sense to understand honor.”

Before him, Maledicte seemed composed and faintly amused. He lowered his voice, luring DeGuerre closer. “But at least we don’t fuck our siblings. It takes a nobleman to think of that.” DeGuerre’s face reddened in patches over his cheekbones, as if Maledicte’s vulgarity had been an actual blow.

DeGuerre drew his sword in one flash of economic motion. The metallic rasp of the drawn blade spread, and the whispers rose. Blade drawn in the court. Lady Westfall, the highest-ranking hostess present, stepped forward, but said nothing; Mirabile’s nails dug into her friend’s hand, her eyes avid.

The two men circled each other like angry cats, DeGuerre’s grip steady under the long weight of his blade, Maledicte’s arms held out to his side, flaunting his still-empty hands. “Are you wronged or am I, DeGuerre? Do you claim affront? Or do I?”

“Draw your blade,” DeGuerre said, “and stop your mouth.”

“I will not draw until you admit I am your equal,” Maledicte said.

Damn fool,
Gilly thought. Anxiety rose in him like pain.
Draw your sword and have done with it. How will you take your vengeance from the grave?

“You cower behind words. Draw your blade,” DeGuerre repeated. He thrust his sword forward.

Maledicte leaped back, as quick and precise as an insect. The second thrust he ducked under, his curls ruffled by the blade’s passage. Gilly could hear his panting, and the sound of whickering horses from outside.

DeGuerre’s third thrust met steel. Maledicte rose from his half crouch, the black blade held before him.

This was the first time anyone within the court had seen the blade, the reality of it below the elaborate hilt. The sword might as well have flamed for all the horrified attention it claimed. It woke hungry shadows in the room, and changed Maledicte from merely another asp-tongued courtier to something much more, something dangerous.

· 8 ·

N
OW THAT
I
HAVE YOUR REGARD
,” Maledicte said, “shall we agree to continue this at a more civilized time?” “I would rather see if you’ve earned that fancy blade,” DeGuerre said. He stepped forward, silver flashing from his blade, from the argent lace on Maledicte’s quick-moving sleeves. The bell-ring of steel against steel tolled once, twice, growing louder, more resonant. Maledicte evaded another slash with boneless grace, dancing six steps back, out of range.

“Tradition demands we fight in the dawn.”

“I’ll trade tradition to see you die,” DeGuerre said, rushing forward. Maledicte pivoted, regained his distance.

“You aren’t good enough,” Maledicte said, smiling.

They closed again, the shuff of their boots over the polished tiles a whisper beneath the chiming rasp of metal.

Small flickers of triumph darted over Maledicte’s pale features, small moments where a touch could have been made. Instead, Maledicte bypassed openings; he prolonged the duel, playing with DeGuerre, testing himself.

“A natural gift,” Master Thorn had said grudgingly as he left Vornatti’s employ, bandages wound the length of his arm, a white swath around his neck. “His timing, his footwork, his extension, and his balance—” He touched his throat and said, “deadly.” Watching now, Gilly shivered. Didn’t a gift imply a giver?

A new sound entered the room—hoarse panting, the clicking of nails on the marble tiles. Gilly blanched; the duel had gone on too long, and whether DeGuerre improved or not, Maledicte had lost. Only one man brought his hound to the ballroom.

He raised his head. The king stood in the wide doorway, his hand resting on the brindle mastiff ’s withers, face layered with weariness and surprise. Beside him, the Kingsguard, clad in lapis and gold, hastily spread out, encircling him, pistols drawn. A sandy-bearded man pushed past them, cheeks flushing. “Who dares this?”

“Isn’t that my question, brother?” Aris asked, releasing the hound. The mastiff pushed through the two front guards, and Aris followed him through the space.

Gilly caught a wheeling glimpse of the room, the interest in jaded eyes, the ashen dismay on Lady Westfall’s face, the two men wagering at the most distant point of the room, the musicians’ silence.

Maledicte, his back to the door, sucked in a breath as if Gilly’s alarm had been transmitted, wordlessly, to him. He cast down his sword, though it seemed to writhe in his hand, and fell to his knees, lowering his head before the king’s approach. Scarlet with rage, DeGuerre finished his extension, and his blade sliced the edge of Maledicte’s shoulder. Maledicte hissed; his jaw clenched. Gilly’s hands tore at his own sleeve, watching the wound’s red tide rise.

“Sire,” Maledicte said.

DeGuerre dropped his sword. Blood spattered the pale marble. “Sire.” He knelt, as stiffly as an old man.

“To bare blades in the king’s presence is treason,” Last spoke, his eyes lingering on Maledicte, the stranger in the court’s midst.

“Who drew first blade?” Aris asked, through lips compressed and pale.

“I did, sire,” DeGuerre confessed, at the same moment Lady Westfall, pinched by Mirabile, said, “DeGuerre.”

“Dueling in the ballroom is forbidden. As well you know, DeGuerre.” Once more, the earl of Last spoke before Aris could. The earl’s disapproval was marked in the downward sweeps of his brows, adding more rigid lines to his austere features.

“What matters where they duel, in the park or the courts? Blood shed is blood lost, be it on marble or dirt,” Aris said, raking the assembled nobles with scorn in his face and voice. “But to stab a man as he kneels in fealty, DeGuerre…”

“How came you to do such a thing,” Last said, “you with the best of our blood in your lines? Your uncle a king’s counselor? Were you mad?” Last cast a wary glance at Maledicte’s slender form. “Or witched?”

“Michel, search for your demons elsewhere. The court is mine, the offense mine. And the sentence
mine,
” Aris said. His brows drew down, so like his brother’s, and Gilly felt a spurt of hope. If Last pushed, Aris would pull.

“Leonides DeGuerre, of late I have heard distressing things about you. I think perhaps you would be better off for several years abroad, away from the…temptations and miseries you find so readily here. Seek the Explorations or Kyrda and make your fortune elsewhere. You may rise and go.”

“As for the lad—” The king swept his eyes over the dark, bent head, the slim form. “Get the lad a physician and send him back to the schoolroom,” he said, turning on his heel and tapping his thigh for the hound to follow.

Gilly, freed from his obeisance, darted to Maledicte’s side, touched him with gentle hands, the red stain darkening the pale sleeve.

“Aris, the lad is guilty of more than—” Last trailed off as, beneath Aris’s tensing hand, the mastiff growled.

“
My
court, brother,” Aris said, and then, with a spurt of open irritation, “Oh, do get up, lad.” He reached for Maledicte’s shoulder, and paused as Maledicte raised his eyes to meet Aris’s.

The king startled at Maledicte’s blackly lashed eyes, at his curling hair, at his mouth, at the pale skin. He came closer, pushing the hound out of his way.

“You—you are Vornatti’s ward?” Aris said, voice low.

“I am,” Maledicte said.

The king’s face grew shuttered. The silence in the room strained in Gilly’s ears. Maledicte swayed, jerked himself to rigidity again. A few new drops of blood spattered on the marble.

“You seem guilty of nothing but impetuosity,” Aris said, the words a bare breath, his eyes locked on Maledicte’s dark ones. He cleared his throat, spoke again. “You may return to this court as you will.”

Maledicte bent his head, hiding his strained face. “You are kind.”

The king’s eyes never left the bowed, dark head. “Get to a physician. Lad.”

“Some lessons in manners would be more to the point, Aris,” Last said. “Or are we to have yet another foreign decadent making hash of our tradition? Is the court not tired of such?”

“The court, Michel,” Aris said wearily, “is entranced at the wonderful entertainment we’ve had this night.”

Last stiffened, a marionette instead of a man. He bent at the waist, and left.

The king watched him go, and then said, “And yet he is correct. Will you swear, lad, that you will never draw a blade again in my presence?”

“I so swear, my liege.” When the king proffered his hand, Maledicte kissed the crested ring.

The king turned and left, his guards following and half the court. The remaining nobles clustered in little knots of bright fabric, to discuss and whisper. Gilly heard a scrap of conversation as he drew Maledicte to his feet, moved toward the door.

“Last was right. DeGuerre must have been witched to so lose his senses.”

Gilly turned, seeking the dangerous speaker. Witchcraft was not a word to be spread lightly, not when he’d seen Aris’s face go so still and empty for that one moment, as if the page of his thoughts had been erased and rewritten. Not when witchcraft was the only force left that the nobles feared.

“Hardly a sign of bewitchment,” Mirabile’s elegant voice said. “To be so goaded by an agile tongue and mind.”

“But that sword, Mirabile, and if not witchcraft then what else can it be?” Lady Secret asked, her voice pitched to carry while at the same time still pretending to a whisper. “Your Chancel was a theologian, surely you must—”

“Oh la, Secret, what makes you think I ever had any interest in his prosing on about dead things?” Mirabile laughed, but her eyes on Maledicte held speculation and a faint hint of surprise. Gilly dragged Maledicte toward the door, away from that too-intent gaze.

Maledicte clutched Gilly’s arm, halting their steps. “The sword, Gilly. Let me go. I cannot leave it.”

Its blade had sunk into the marble floor nearly a finger’s length; Maledicte yanked it free with an impatient grace that made the court widen the clearing around him.

Outside, in the cool, damp air, their boots crunched unevenly over the oyster-shell drive as Gilly supported Maledicte. Gilly called out as they reached the entrance to the stables; their hired coachman rose from the grouping of his fellows and their game of dice. He lit the lanterns inside the coach and held the door for them.

Gilly ripped off his servant’s cravat, only loosely starched, and pressed it over Maledicte’s bloody sleeve. “Hold this,” he said.

Maledicte’s white fingers pressed the cloth tight. “I know what to do. It’s not much of a wound.”

“Enough to make you stagger and faint,” Gilly said. He fumbled for his handkerchief to pad the wound.

“Last came in with Aris. Within reach of my sword,” Maledicte whispered through white lips. “And I did nothing.”

Gilly, securing the rough bandage of cravat and handkerchief with his hair ribbon, paused. “Yes,” Gilly said, taken aback, realizing that Maledicte’s sudden weakness came from that rather than blood loss—that pain was less to him than vengeance. Gilly’s hands trembled; he stilled them.

“What if I’ve missed my moment?” Maledicte said, his color fading further.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gilly said roughly, frowning as he saw a bloody line forming over Maledicte’s ribs also. “The summer-solstice ball comes in a month. And the moment will repeat itself: you can still run Last through in a crowd full of witnesses and get shot by the Kingsguard for your pains. That is what would have happened tonight, had you not held your—” Gilly jerked his hand from Maledicte’s shirt buttons when Maledicte slapped at him.

“Leave it,” Maledicte snapped. “I’ve told you it’s not much; it only stings and burns.”

As the coach lurched to motion, Maledicte leaned back into the seat cushions with a wince, and no thought for his blood painting the embroidered fabric.

“You are fortunate,” Gilly said.

“DeGuerre could never have touched me had I not thrown down my blade. I should have finished him first,” Maledicte muttered.

“Not the duel,” Gilly said. “Fortunate that Aris forgave you. He could have banished you as easily as he did DeGuerre.”

“He forgave me for Vornatti’s sake,” Maledicte said. “Their paths are linked after all, kin by marriage, bound by money.” He shifted in the seat. A small sound that might have been a groan stifled itself behind clenched teeth.

“We’ll be home in moments.” Gilly put his head out the carriage window and demanded the coachman’s flask, passed it to Maledicte.

Maledicte tilted the flask; his anticipatory wince gave way to startlement and a smile. “He has raided Vornatti’s good spirits, Gilly.”

Gilly paid little attention beyond noting color seeping back into Maledicte’s lips, thinking instead about the expression frozen on the king’s face—the interest heating the cool eyes. “For Vornatti’s sake only? I think there is more to it.”

“What does it matter? He forgave me and that’s enough. Aris is of no interest to me, save that he seems to hold Last in dislike. Still, not so much as I do….” His lips compressed, his hand clenched on the hilt of the naked blade resting beside him. “I should have struck instead of knelt.”

Shivering a little at the hunger in Maledicte’s voice, wondering if that hunger would be so intense if Maledicte were not touching the blade, his vengeful instrument, Gilly said, “I thought you intended to wait on Janus?”

“Janus,” Maledicte said, his hand unknotting. “I must see what they’ve made of him before I know how best to act. If he loves me not—” Maledicte’s voice caught. “If he loves me not, I will kill him, and Last for taking him from me.

“If he loves me, I will still murder Last for taking him from me. Either way it means blood.” Maledicte sat forward, hunched himself over his knees, a restless savor in his eyes, clasping the sword hilt again.

Gilly’s skin crawled, the hair raising along his arms. Surreptitiously, he made a little
X
of his forefingers, invoking the old country charm against the god-touched. He had not had time to peruse
The Book of Vengeances
as he would have liked, but the little he had translated, slowly changing the Itarusine words for Antyrrian, had chilled him.

History claimed that a compact, irreversible, could be entered into, binding Ani and Her devotee to a single task, but that the compact became active only after the first kill. Were Gilly’s fears real, his dreams more than dreams, were Ani not so dead as She once was, those implications would distress him beyond measure—that Maledicte, who hunted Last, would build strength in shed blood.

Gilly’s mouth dried; he snagged the flask back and sipped. He was a fool, dreading the impossible. The gods were gone, and Maledicte—Maledicte was merely a man. The dreams were not evidence, the sword’s presence inconclusive, his dueling skills purchased—if Maledicte survived poison, it owed only to caution; if he never sickened, it owed only to luck. All of it was sea-fire proof, prone to disappearing when Gilly sought answers, leaving him only with a knot in his belly and the taste of copper in his mouth where he had bitten his tongue.

The pleasure in Maledicte’s eyes while dueling came back to him, that gloating joy as he danced around DeGuerre’s strikes. Even while Gilly dwelled on nightmare possibilities, Maledicte smiled, stroking the feathered hilt, eyes black and clouded.