Maledicte (20 page)

Then, recalling Maledicte’s strange cheer, he hastened to Vornatti’s chamber. Vornatti was still echoing variants of Gilly’s own unvoiced question. “But where have you been?”

Maledicte shrugged. “I’ve told you and told you.” He dropped a nosegay of lilies and evening primroses on the bedside table. “I even brought you flowers, since you spent all day closeted inside, and missed the gardens in bloom. Though, I admit, they’re nothing like as lovely as the bracelet you gave Mirabile.”

Vornatti said, “So she showed you my gift.”

“Yes, and a foolish thing it was,” Maledicte said. “Like any beggar, she’ll come back for more.”

“What makes you think I’ll disappoint her?” Vornatti asked, leaning back against his pillows, smirking. “Perhaps there will be a wedding upon her return to the city. Didn’t I say as much earlier, or were your senses too taken up with Last’s whelp?”

Maledicte’s eyes darkened, then he shrugged. “You’re far too wily to be caught by the kind who’d see you cuckolded on your wedding night. Besides, we have our bargain, and as I abstain from Janus, so you must abstain from Mirabile.” He seized Vornatti’s grayed head in his hands, kissed his forehead and lips. “Don’t be irascible, you’ll spoil my good temper.”

“You are done with Janus?” Vornatti asked, skeptically. “Your grand passion burnt out in a day?”

“I solemnly swear,” Maledicte said, “to any god you care to claim, that you will never see me dealing with an Ixion again. Not Janus, not Last. Do you know, Janus has no interest in gossip at all? It’s all news and trade agreements, and the plight of ex-soldiers. He has as many dreary opinions as Westfall. He asked my opinion of Aris’s ban on Itarusine imports. I ask you—”

Vornatti smiled and Maledicte brought up the remaining packages. The first one, lumpen under lashings of gauze, revealed a statuette in the best brothel art tradition, which Maledicte danced along Vornatti’s bedsheets. “I thought of you at once when I saw it.”

Gilly choked on a gasp. The little monkey leered up at Vornatti, its hands locked in a lewd self-caress.

“Impudence,” Vornatti said, but there was laughter lurking beneath. “And paid for with my name, no doubt.”

“I had to resort to it; you’ve kept me short of coin of late. If you’d given me jewelry, I could pawn it, as Mirabile undoubtedly has done with your bracelet,” Maledicte said. “But here—” He brought up two silver-wrapped boxes, one small, one large, both ribbon-bedecked. “Chocolates from the Explorations.”

He laid the big box on Vornatti’s lap, untied the ribbon, and parted the tissue. Maledicte chose a chocolate for himself, popped it into his mouth with delight. “They’re wonderful—try them, Vornatti. You too, Gilly.” Maledicte tossed the small box to Gilly, who fielded it with quick hands. “Go on. Have it before dinner, be indulgent with us.”

He held another to the old man’s mouth. “A peace offering, my lord?” Vornatti’s eyes met Maledicte’s over the confection before accepting it; it collapsed under his tongue, and Maledicte let Vornatti lick the chocolate from his fingers without protest.

Maledicte sprawled across the velvet coverlet, his lacy sleeves foaming over the candy box. He crossed his booted feet, and fished for another chocolate. Vornatti smacked his hand. “Mine. But I’ll share.” Maledicte accepted a sweet from Vornatti’s shaking hand, trapped it neatly with tongue and teeth, and sucked the sweet filling out from the darker coating. Vornatti watched him eat, and took another chocolate himself.

Gilly turned the package over in his hands; the label was
DELIGHT’S
, the confectionery shop where Aris bought the prince’s candy. He held a piece in his hand and the smell rose temptingly and yet—

“Don’t you want it?” Maledicte asked, lolling his head onto Vornatti’s shoulder, letting Vornatti kiss the lingering traces of confection from his mouth.

Gilly took a bite. Sweetness spilled over his tongue, rich, smooth, cloying. He swallowed hard, as suddenly sickened as if he had found a worm in an apple. The gallows image lingered in his mind.

“Not to your taste, Gilly?” Maledicte said.

“Never mind about him,” Vornatti said. “He’s just ungrateful.” At the warning note in the baron’s voice, Maledicte curled closer to Vornatti.

“I’m grateful,” he said, passing him another chocolate.

“Pretty little liar,” Vornatti said, but the old man’s thin-skinned cheeks flushed with pleasure. Gilly finished his chocolate in one bite, seeking distraction from Vornatti stroking the juncture of Maledicte’s thigh and hip.

“Don’t force yourself, Gilly,” Maledicte said. “I sent oysters for our suppers. Will you join us, Vornatti?”

“I think not. I’ll stay abed, eat chocolate and be an indulged old fool,” Vornatti said, brought to a rare good humor by Maledicte’s obedience. “But stay and let me feed you chocolates until the dinner bell sounds.”

“Like a Kyrdic harem, only much less sandy,” Maledicte said. “Should we invite Gilly to join us?”

“No,” the two men said as one, and Maledicte laughed, even while Vornatti curled greedy hands around his shoulders.

Gilly’s stomach churned at Maledicte sprawled so in Vornatti’s bed, and yet he was afraid to go. Maledicte’s giddy, uncharacteristic behavior struck him as dangerous.

The gong rang; Gilly jumped, the small foil box tumbling from his lap to the carpet. Maledicte disentangled himself from Vornatti’s hands, lips rouged with chocolate liqueur, face flushed with something that might have been pleasure. Or well-masked rage.

“Come on, Gilly. Let’s leave Vornatti to his desserts.” Maledicte tugged Gilly from the room.

I
N THE DINING ROOM,
Gilly picked at his meal, eyeing the stuffed oysters with repugnance.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Maledicte asked.

His face seemed luminescent in the candlelight, and dark wings spread out from his shoulders. Gilly rubbed his eyes, his aching head, and the vision was gone. But the room felt wavering and fluid, as if the walls were only curtains about to be drawn. He shook his head, the taste of chocolate strong in his mouth.

“What did you give me, Maledicte? What was in the chocolate?” Gilly asked, his voice rising.

“Shadowplay,” Maledicte said, setting his fork down. “It’s not harmful. It’s only a sedative, though some claim it has visionary qualities.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d recognize the taste of Laudable.” Maledicte’s voice was faintly surprised. The answer was not to the question Gilly meant—why drug him at all—but the room shivered; the overhead beams grew sputtering halos as if they were the masts of a ship beset by seafires. Gilly cupped his hands over his eyes.

“Are you seeing things? Tell me what you see.”

Gilly peered through the swirling brightness that leaked from the candles, watching feathers sprout from Maledicte’s skin like spring blossoms.

Maledicte crossed the space between them and sat on the table. Gilly looked up into his face. “Death in your eyes,” he whispered.

“But not for you, never for you.” The touch on his cheek was light and Maledicte was gone. Gilly rose; the floor fell away from him and he tumbled down, sliding across the room, rolling against the closed door. Scratching traveled through the wood, the scrabbling of a large bird. Gilly knelt, clawing at the knob. The door opened, and darkness rushed in on great black wings.

She crouched on the table, mouth agape, Her breathing like the gasps of a dying man. With each exhalation, the room darkened until the only light was one guttering candle, the flame streaming high and thin. The table became an altar, the disrupted meal Her offerings. Gilly crawled backward, trying to escape Her notice. She leaned over the edge of the table, Her pale feet dangling like gibbet corpses, Her wings upraised. “He is Mine. He will worship Me. He will love Me. Nothing you do will keep him from My kiss at the end.” Her voice, a god’s voice, seared his mind.

Gilly cried out and woke, head on the table, neck stiff, numb hands dangling off the sides of his chair. He touched the plate nearest him and found it cool. The candles had burned to half their length, spreading wax into the spillways below. The clock hands had jumped; hours had passed. He shoved back the chair with a shudder of protesting effort, ears still ringing. Staggering, he made his way from the dining room and down the hall.

Vornatti’s door was closed. Gilly touched the blank, dark wood, and hesitated. He opened the door to darkness and cringed, but this darkness was only that of a room dimly lit. In the center of the room, Vornatti’s bed was shrouded by the drawn bed curtains and the deafening silence within them. Gilly stumbled forward in the low light, reaching for the cloth. His fingers clenched velvet, but he could not bring himself to fling the panels back and accept their revelation. A clinking of glass on glass made him twitch galvanically.

Maledicte rose from the shadows of the wheeled chair, a goblet in his hand. The wine had darkened his lips to the color of old blood.

“Did you kill him?” Gilly said, his voice a rasp to match Maledicte’s. “Tell me the truth, Mal….” Gilly slumped against the wall, shivering. “Is he dead?”

Maledicte poured a small snifter of brandy and handed the glass to Gilly. “Your hands are shaking.”

Gilly thought of murder done, and murderers caught red-handed, of cornered rats and poisons, but raised the glass to his lips and gulped the liquid without hesitation. The brandy warmed his tongue, his throat, his belly.

“Yes,” Maledicte said, taking his seat again, setting his feet up on the bed, boots parting the hangings.

“How?” Gilly asked. “Poison? Or like
Kritos
?” His voice cracked, imagining the sheets sodden with blood.

“Peacefully.” Maledicte drained his glass, poured another.

Gilly set his snifter down and yanked the drapes back, still expecting Vornatti to wake into furious complaint. He lifted the feather-heavy pillow from Vornatti’s face, the fabric as malleable as liquid and as drowningly lethal. Vornatti’s mouth was open, his eyes shut, his gnarled hands limp with a relaxation life and drugs had not granted. Gilly rubbed his wet face. “I should have warned you.”

“When did he ever listen, Gilly?” Maledicte said.

“Why?”

“You know why.” Maledicte leaned his head on the back of Gilly’s shoulder, took his hands in his. Panic spiked him beyond brandy’s ability to soothe. This murder might have freed Maledicte, but it cast Gilly into unemployment.

“You couldn’t wait?” Gilly asked.

“To have Janus at hand and beyond my touch? Impossible. And time is fickle, Gilly, as was Vornatti. He would have grown bored with the victory handed him, might even have thrown me over for Mirabile, despite his promises. I thought him near death, but every month he seemed to improve. I could not chance it.”

“You’ve gambled on other things,” Gilly said.

“Not this,” Maledicte said. “Gilly, I am in your hands. A murderer. What will you do?”

Gilly turned, freeing his hands from Maledicte’s cool touch. He tilted Maledicte’s face to meet his, to see what the dark eyes held: fear, hope, pain, the lashes spiked with dampness.

“Do you regret this?”

Maledicte met Gilly’s eyes. “No.”

“What would you have me do?” Gilly whispered.

“Nothing.” Maledicte’s voice was tight. “His death should pass without scrutiny; his habits were known to be precarious—drinking mixed with Elysia. But do find me his will. I need to be sure he didn’t append some recent codicil. I wouldn’t put it past Mirabile to finagle one out of him.”

Gilly nodded, feeling oddly numb, as if the Shadowplay lingered yet and this was only another dream. He knelt and prised up the floorboard near the hearth, revealing the strongbox beneath.

Gilly lifted the parchment out, smoothing the creamy vellum from its rolled shape. He weighted one end with the strongbox, the other with his hand.

Maledicte knelt beside him, so close they were nearly bumping heads. Above them, the pillow Gilly had taken from Vornatti’s face shifted and Gilly jumped to his feet, heart pounding.

Maledicte flattened the curling edge that Gilly’s abrupt movement had allowed, and skimmed the elaborate language, sorting and reading. Gilly, turning back, thought again that Maledicte had the instinct of a solicitor.

Maledicte smiled for the first time since Gilly had entered the room. “Seems he was not so much a fool as that,” Maledicte said. “Mirabile is nowhere mentioned. Nor are his Itarusine relatives. I suppose he held that grudge right and true enough.”

Gilly slid the document away from Maledicte, sought out his own name, fearing, hoping. It was with the other servants’. Though his bequest was by far the largest, it still knotted his belly with resentment and fear. Tired of him, Gilly thought, his dismissal imminent. The sum allotted was a year’s salary, no more. Enough to buy himself a berth to the Explorations, but not on the swift
Virga.
Enough to take him slowly away, and set him down in the Explorations, penniless, with no funds to return. Alone and friendless, he thought, as chilled as if a dash of blown snow had touched him; it would leave him without Maledicte.

“Don’t worry, Gilly. You’ll stay with me,” Maledicte said, reading over Gilly’s shoulder. “I told you. I’ll take care of you.”

“As a servant,” Gilly said.

“As a friend.” The quiet word resonated in this room, this city of purchase and patronage, manipulation and deception. The silence gave weight to the word, and Gilly realized with sudden disbelief that this was the measure of the city’s moral decay—that his closest ally and dearest friend was a murderer, with more bodies yet to reap.