Maledicte (18 page)

Janus continued, “You always were good at misdirection, though. Remember when you bullied all the rats into pretending to be street players at the market? While we muddled along, shouting our lines, jeered at by everyone within earshot, you and Roach stole a feast for us all.”

Maledicte turned his face in the pillow; his lips quirked. “Small potatoes only. I have a larger scheme now.”

“How can that be? Am I not your end-all and be-all? Are you not completed now that I am here?” Janus said, looking at Maledicte with apparent sincerity. “Are we not bound together from childhood to death?”

Maledicte broke into a rasping laugh. “False sentimentality from you? I’d say you were disguised, and yet I know you are sober.”

“Drunk on you,” Janus said. The archness that underlaid his last set of pretty words was missing, though his expression never changed.

Maledicte touched Janus’s pale lips, slid from the bed in a sleek line of white flesh. He pulled the drapes back from one wall.

The curtain pull revealed not the outside world, glazed through silvery glass, but a small alcove with a tall, narrow table. After Mirabile’s visit, Maledicte had stored the poisons chest out of easy sight. Maledicte dug through the bottles, and retrieved a small bit of bright gold.

Maledicte approached, hands held out, fisted before him, to play their long-gone guessing game. At the last second, as Janus reached forward, he opened his right hand to reveal the ring. He could not bear to have Janus misguess.

“I saved it; Kritos let it fall. It’s not much now, but it’s still for you.” Maledicte looked at it once more, remembering it through Relict eyes, the treasure that had fallen into his hands. Gilly said such rings were common during the war—bits of jewelry melted down, reshaped, and engraved with some false trumpery, extolling the glories of battle and the hearts left at home. Knowing now the gold was of questionable quality, and the sentiment looted from a dead man’s hand, Maledicte still found it apt.

Janus took the ring, rolled it in his hands, chasing the chill of the metal away, measuring its width against his forefinger. Once, it had been too big. Now it was almost too small; it required some effort to slide it down to sit above his signet ring. He took it off again, tilted it so he could see the inscription. “I remember this.
Only each other at the last.
” He turned the ring around in his hands. “It was warm where you had kept it in your mouth and when I put it on, it felt like a kiss. My signet reads:
Only a Last at the Last.
” His mouth twisted, and he tugged his crested signet off, trading it to his left hand. “I like this motto better,” he said, sliding the plainer ring on in its place.

He reached for Maledicte, drew him back into the nest of linens, stroked the dark head resting on his chest. “It’s been so long, I don’t want to loose my grip for fear you’ll slip away. All this because I wanted to rob Kritos before he was properly out, steal his gold for you. And still, I haven’t any gold to give you, nor jewelry.” He grinned lazily. “Probably for the best. I would never have thought of stickpins, watches, and cuff links.”

“Can you get jewelry?” Maledicte asked.

Janus laughed again. “Some, I suppose. Greedy?”

Maledicte leaned close, listening to Janus’s heartbeat, a steady sound, a companion from long ago, listening to the quiet sound of Ani’s wings answering. “It’s only that I mean to kill him, you understand. And if Vornatti’s promises are lies, we’ll be penniless.”

“Last,” Janus said, his voice flattening.

“The jewels I own will be needed for our flight. If we’re careful, we could stay in Antyre,” Maledicte said, voicing plans he had barely allowed himself to think through, too afraid to plan beyond this reunion. “We could live in the country, away from this rat-hunted city. But if the murder goes badly, we’ll have to flee Antyre completely and that takes funds.”

Janus’s supple mouth frowned, his pale eyes narrowing.

“What is it?” Maledicte said, frightened. For one moment everything had been as planned, but in the wolf-pale eyes of his lover, something forced changes. “Never tell me you love him,” Maledicte said. “I’ve sworn to kill him. I must kill him.”

“You need not scruple otherwise on my account,” Janus said, pushing himself up against the pillows, propping his chin on his knee. “I bear him no fondness, but his title, his land—” Janus’s tone dropped to an intimate whisper. “It’s a tricky business being a nobleman’s bastard, especially if one has ambition. To allow me access to the courts, Last pretended the past had happened otherwise, that Celia and he had wed, that I am legitimate. No one believes him, of course. Whoever heard of an earl not searching for an infant heir stolen away? But Aris supports me, and if I can gain the support of the counselors, then—”

“Then what?” Maledicte interrupted. “How will this see Last dead?”

“It won’t, you’ll have to do that,” Janus said, “but it will give me his title if done at the right moment. You crave Vornatti’s money. I want the title.”

Maledicte said, “It’s only a word—”

Janus shook his head. “A title is power. Listen, Mir—Mal, listen. This position of ours, of
yours,
is precarious.”

“I’ll kill Last; we can rob his coffers and flee.”

“And then what?” Janus said. “Money runs out. You used to teach that to those rats of yours. What happens then? Stealing? Starving? Whoring? Hasn’t Vornatti been enough for you? I suppose we could take up a profession, but what are we suited for?”

Maledicte trembled; Janus stroked her belly, soothing.

“You used to cry,” Janus said, sliding back down to lie beside Maledicte. “In the cold, when the hunger was so bad. I’d bleed myself just so you could have something warm in your mouth. I swore every year it would be better and it never was. I never want to feel so desperate again.”

Turning, Maledicte kissed Janus’s throat and whispered, “I must kill him.” As if in counterpoint, the sword, resting against the bed, fell with a hiss of scraped velvet.

“With your pretty little blade?” Janus asked. “Last is a brute but a damn good swordsman. And I mistrust the steel in painted blades.” Janus reached out a long arm, picked up the sheathed sword, and drew it. “Too often the paint dulls the edge.”

Janus fell silent, studying the blade, his fingers caged in the feather hilt. He raised a hand, curled it around the thin edges of the blade, and flinched. Blood beaded up along his fingertips and thumb and dripped to the sheets. “Where did you get this?”

When Maledicte hesitated, afraid to wake Ani from Her cautious slumber by invoking Her name, Janus shrugged. “Vornatti? Generous of him.” He attempted to sheathe the sword; the feather hilt clung and bloodied his knuckles. He dropped the blade.

“Ani gave it to me,” Maledicte said, the first time he had acknowledged Her gift aloud, a small act of worship. But far better to wake Her attention than to let Janus think Vornatti’s touch reached so far into his life. Another frisson licked his nerves—would Janus share this, the specter of a vengeful god?

“Black-Winged Ani is a myth meant to frighten superstitious bastards like my father. The dead gods returned? They never existed at all.”

Maledicte clambered over Janus, recovering sheath and sword and mating them with a practiced motion, albeit with a tinge of temper. “Ani exists. I swore I would kill Last. I swore it to Her.”

“All I ask for is delay,” Janus said. “Time to insure myself the earldom. After that it doesn’t matter what happens—we’d be as safe as we never were before.”

Maledicte trembled again, not in half-remembered dread of the Relicts, but at Ani listening to Janus’s casual blasphemy, at the thought of staying his hand when She yearned for the kill.

“So you’ll wait?” Janus said, lying back, licking the tiny cuts on his fingers closed.

“Ani willing,” Maledicte whispered, too low for Janus to hear.

“I think I’d make a splendid earl,” Janus said, smiling. He snuffed out the last low-burning lamp and dropped them into darkness.

· 16 ·

I
T WAS EARLY AFTERNOON BEFORE
Janus and Maledicte bestirred themselves. Maledicte, hunting Gilly, found him reading in the parlor. He leaned over Gilly’s shoulder, eliciting a start, a flush, and a guilty twitch. Tweaking the book from Gilly’s unresisting hand, Maledicte sighed. “
The Book of Vengeances
again? You spend more time thinking on Ani than I do.” He flipped the book into the ashy fireplace, avoiding the snatch Gilly made, and shifted to stand before the hearth.

“Come, we’re going to Whitspur Street. Janus wants to explore the city. We’ll stop at Rosany’s Booksellers and you can buy something less inclined to bring nightmares.”

“Mal—” Gilly started, but Maledicte, hearing footsteps in the hall, turned, his skin warming as Janus approached. Janus met his eyes and smiled, leaning in and kissing his temple. Maledicte wove his fingers in Janus’s hands, content, Gilly’s dark dreams and Ani’s rage insignificant.

“Ready, Mal?”

“We both are,” Maledicte said, releasing Janus to pull Gilly to his feet.

“Without luncheon? What kind of host would I be if I allowed my unexpected guest to leave hungry?” Vornatti rasped, drawing three heads to where he rested against the doorjamb. Maledicte stepped away from Janus, unnerved by the intensity of Vornatti’s gaze, by the simple fact that, though Vornatti’s morning dose of Elysia would have worn off, the man confronted them on his feet. He should have been a pitiable sight, all grayed age and aches; instead, he radiated the wary strength of a veteran soldier.

Maledicte’s thoughts raced. He had assured Janus that Vornatti would be still abed, had played up the baron’s poor flesh and feebleness to soothe Janus’s jealousy, and more, to keep Janus from slipping out at dawn. He had believed it himself; this moment found him flat-footed. Janus was more sanguine than he. A bare flicker of distaste crossed his lips before he smiled at Vornatti. “Too gracious of you, sir. I hope my presence hasn’t troubled you overmuch.”

“Visitors are always a pleasure. Trouble only comes from allowing them to stay past their welcome,” Vornatti said. He limped heavily into the room, and said, “I do warn you it is only bachelor fare. I have no hostess, though this is a lack I mean to remedy.”

Maledicte said, “If it’s Mirabile you mean, she leaves today with the Westfalls to the countryside. You’ll have to be quick, old man, or chase after her like a hound on a scent.” He tried for insouciance though his lips were cold with dread and his body crackling with nervous energy. Vornatti had the power to throw him to the streets, to throw Gilly out; did he have the power to finish the blow and see Janus sent away also, when it was Aris who wanted him in Murne? But Aris preferred lives to land once; he might put the kingdom’s fortunes above his own this time, if Vornatti made it too costly to do otherwise….

“A message will suffice to bring her to my side,” Vornatti said.

“Messengers are often unreliable,” Maledicte said.

Vornatti grimaced at him, then glared at Gilly, who lowered his gaze in wordless agreement. Janus studied the bookshelves with polite courtesy.

“Perhaps you could spare me the trouble,” Vornatti said, “of hunting a reliable messenger, and play hostess yourself. I could find you a dress—” He crooked an arm; Maledicte saw no alternative other than an immediate unmasking, so with a quick look at Gilly, he took Vornatti’s arm in his own.

Vornatti leaned on him, wrapping a possessive arm about his waist, and pressed his lips to Maledicte’s cheek.

In silence, Maledicte led Vornatti into the dining room, all too aware of Janus’s watchful eyes on his back, on Vornatti’s stroking fingers. Maledicte settled Vornatti into his seat and attempted to slip free of his grasp. Vornatti only shifted his grip, tugging. Face scalding, Maledicte sat before him, pressed tightly against Vornatti’s chest and wandering hands. Janus sank into the seat opposite and Maledicte shivered at the placidity in Janus’s face, wondering what the mask hid. Rage at Vornatti’s manhandling? Or, worse, kindling disgust at Maledicte’s obedience?

Vornatti bent him back, hand in his hair, and tasted the hollow beneath Maledicte’s ear, overlaying the bruise Janus’s kiss had made. Maledicte jerked free, rocking the chair, and winding Vornatti. “Our bargain,” Vornatti warned.

“Still holds,” Maledicte said, biting back rage, trading it for calculation. “But surely your generosity will allow me one day with my old friend…. Like a bride-to-be bidding her old life farewell.”

Vornatti chuffed with disgust, but let Maledicte claim an empty seat, out of his reach. Janus drank tea as if their conversation were only the usual pleasantries. Once served, the three dined in silence, Vornatti pushing his food around the plate, his eyes never leaving Maledicte; Janus eating steadily and with appetite. Maledicte removed bones from the fish without eating anything, finding solace in the steady ruination of flesh before him.

“’Tis a pity I had no way of knowing I would be at your table,” Janus said. “Your cousin Dantalion asked if I could relay a message, but having heard that you were rarely in Murne, I denied him. I do apologize.”

“Dantalion has nothing to say of interest to me,” Vornatti snapped. “His only interest lies in knowing how near I am to dying, and how close he is to his presumed inheritance.” Vornatti grinned malevolently at Maledicte. “But that is my business, and none of his.”

Maledicte smiled vaguely in response, all the while feeling the sharp bite of anxiety in his belly as he twisted his long-held scheme into new configurations. To kill Last, to do so in a way that enabled Janus to inherit, to do so from a position of power—it all rested on Vornatti’s whim. One wrong word, and Vornatti might change his mind on the importance of kin, might recognize the truth Maledicte felt naked in his eyes: He would never relinquish Janus. Time was short. With Janus’s kiss so recent on his skin, his warmth still lingering between his thighs, Maledicte could not imagine accepting a caress from Vornatti, never mind feigning welcome.

Janus mopped his roll over his plate in the Itarusine fashion, chasing savory juices from the smoked fish. “I suppose I should have expected that. After all, my father and Dantalion are rather cronies. And I’ve heard of the enmity between my father and yourself. He swears you a craven, running from a duel.”

Vornatti slapped the table beside his plate, making his glass jerk and teeter. “He dares—”

“But then,” Janus added hastily, “the nobles of two courts can attest to Last’s easily offended nature. I am quite prepared to find you unobjectionable.”

“How very kind of you,” Vornatti said. “Mal, isn’t it wonderful—such condescension from Last’s bastard?” Maledicte felt the blood rush to his face, his tongue leap to defend Janus; instead he fisted his hands beneath the sheltering cloth. Vornatti had to believe that Maledicte was his. The scheme aborning in Maledicte’s mind demanded such.

“Don’t,” Vornatti said abruptly, turning his gaze from Maledicte to Janus, “labor under the impression that you’re fooling me with your agreeable manners, Ixion. I, too, was taught in the Itarusine court. I, too, know how to smile and spit poison. But having lived so long, I’ve found I much prefer bluntness. So I tell you—you are not as clever as you think, and this is the last time an Ixion will run tame beneath my roof.”

Janus dabbed at his mouth and rose. “So manners yield to candor and temper; I’m vanquished, sir. I will quit your house and never bother you more. Mal? I’ll see you on the promenade.” Without waiting for a response, he kissed Maledicte leisurely and left.

Maledicte licked his lips, savoring the taste left behind like a promise, like absolution. He opened his eyes to find Vornatti glaring. “That smacked of later, not farewell. Did you dismiss him or no?”

“A day only,” Maledicte said, facing Vornatti and turning to his meal with more appetite. “You were correct, after all. Janus is not as I remember him.” That was even true, Maledicte thought complacently, at least in the details. The Janus he had known was an impulsive, temperamental boy; this Janus—Maledicte’s lips curved against his will—this Janus was subtle, and infinitely more dangerous. “I will see him out,” Maledicte said. “Given your obvious disdain, you’ll want me to make sure he hasn’t lifted any of the silver….” He escaped before Vornatti could laugh or protest.

Janus caught him up as Maledicte reached the hall, leaned him against the wall and kissed him. Maledicte twined his arms around Janus’s neck, keeping a wary eye on the closed door of the dining room.

“You must kill him,” Janus whispered. “It’s intolerable.” He took Maledicte’s wrists in his hand and caged them against the wall above Maledicte’s head. Closing his eyes, Maledicte shivered, gave himself over to Janus’s confident touch. Let Vornatti come out; if he complained, Maledicte would spit him on the sword without another thought. Janus nipped at his throat, and murmured against his pulse, “Do it soon.”

L
INGERING IN THE KITCHEN,
Gilly heard the front door open and close, and wondered who had left, and who had won. Whether Janus had gone with Maledicte by his side, or whether Maledicte was closeted with Vornatti, spitting useless anger. Gilly bit his lip; Vornatti was willfully blind if he thought Maledicte would tolerate his ownership much longer. No matter Vornatti’s influence and strength of will, Maledicte was every inch the savage creature Vornatti liked to call him. And Vornatti was old now.

Gilly remembered the first time he’d met Vornatti—the tall, elegant man complimenting Gilly’s parents on their fine crop. Even then Gilly had been aware of undercurrents. While his father preened at Vornatti’s praise for his fields, Gilly had seen the dark eyes assessing them all, and knew the crop Vornatti meant was himself and his brothers.

The bell rang fiercely in the kitchen, jangling on the board, barely stilling before it rang again.

Maledicte the victor, Gilly thought, and Vornatti left alone and angry. He shuddered. While Janus and Maledicte had been here, Vornatti’s attention and outrage had centered on them. Now the man’s violent whims would turn to him.

“Best go to him before he has the bell from the board,” Cook said, turning from her assessment of the pantry, looking at him with pity. “He’ll only get worse.”

“I know,” Gilly said, knowing he’d be kneeling before him, choking in the close scent of age and Elysia, all in the name of soothing the man’s outraged pride. For a moment, he envied Maledicte and his bloody approach to life, the certainty that Vornatti was only a temporary affliction.

“Why do you put up with his ways? My boys wouldn’t stand for it. You should find a new place, though I’d miss you sorely, Gilly lad.”

“No one will have me, knowing the uses I’ve been put to. At least, no one who won’t expect the same,” Gilly said.

Cook turned back to her inventory, her silence only confirmation of his fear. She made a note or two, and finally said, “Kettle’s on. Take some tea afore you go.”

The bell rang again, and Gilly shook a handful of tea leaves into a mug of steaming water before leaving.

But knowing Vornatti, knowing his moods, Gilly detoured first to the library, searching for something to distract him. He gulped the tea while skimming the shelves for something Vornatti hadn’t read recently, or for new purchases not read at all. Grimacing at the acrid cling of tea leaves on his tongue, Gilly dribbled them back into the cup.

Like the nobles he dined with, Gilly rarely had his tea unstrained, and the damp leaves woke lingering superstitions. He swirled the dregs around once, twice, then once again. Mindful of the varnish on the shelves, he found a sheet of blotting paper, and with an almost forgotten motion, upended the mug. Raising it, he stared at the blurred heaps of leaves, trying to read the pattern. But there was no symbol he recognized in the L-shaped spread, no chair, no hourglass, no raised hand.

Superstitious foolery, he chastised himself. What had he expected? He picked up the book he had laid aside; when he looked back, his breath caught—not a symbol, but the thing itself. The leaves made a perfect gallows tree.

W
HITSPUR
S
TREET WAS A FRANTIC
cluster of millinery shops and tailors, divertissements, and gossip. Janus studied the broadsheets pinned above the boy hawking them, the images of courtiers at play, and incendiary articles urging Aris to shun the most recent trade delegates from Dainand. “Don’t buy that,” Maledicte said. “It’s only gossip, and days-old gossip at that.”

Janus tossed the boy a copper anyway, and folded the sheet under his arm. “I’m more interested in the news. Westfall mentioned a potential treaty with Kyrda, one that might offset some of the damage done by Aris’s Xipos surrender. The broadsheets run several pages—surely there must be some substance to it.”

Maledicte laughed. “You’ll be disappointed.” He took Janus’s elbow in his hand, and they strolled the raised walkway along the shop entries, while carriages clattered by on the cobbles below. From the distant green paths of Jackal Park, faint shouting came across the still air, the chanting of angry citizens protesting Aris’s new ban on Itarusine imports. Janus listened to them for a minute and sighed. “Shortsighted.” Whether he meant Aris or the protesting men, Maledicte didn’t know or care, simply pleased to have Janus at his side.

Janus’s clothes, still the fine wear of the evening before, spoke quiet scandal and drew several glances from passing nobles. Maledicte teased, “A good thing you didn’t go in costume.”

Janus leaned close as if to leave a kiss, but whispered instead, “I did. I went as Last’s dutiful, obedient son.” His words warmed more than Maledicte’s nape, set Black-Winged Ani to heated delight.

Lord Edgebrooke and his wife stepped from the walkway and threaded the crowded street rather than be forced to acknowledge them. For the open scandal of it, or for something less tangible? Maledicte shrugged. Let Gilly worry about that; he would filter the rumors and feed back all Maledicte needed to know.

Maledicte paused in Rosany’s doorway, at the display in the windows, looking at books. “I should select something for poor Gilly, left to Vornatti’s mercies.”