Maledicte (36 page)

“Death to us all,” Maledicte whispered. “My blood, then Janus’s, then my poor Gilly’s. That’s what Dantalion promised.” The gaze sharpened, lifted, held Aris’s eyes with their intensity. “He boasted of killing her, of granting you an heir. How long do you think you would have survived? Or the babe? After all, Adiran is the son of Aurora Vornatti, and if Janus died, if you died, then Dantalion was Adiran’s nearest kin, an Itarusine nobleman, hungry for power and blood.”

“You speak treason,” Echo spat.

“Do I?” Maledicte said, voice fading to a bare thread of sound. “I thought I only repeated it.”

Aris frowned, and nodded to his guards. “My guards will see you home.”

· 34 ·

G
ILLY MET THEM
at the door to the town house, blanching at the blood spray on Maledicte’s clothing. “What happened?” Janus slapped him hard, twice, and would have done so a third time but for the sudden hiss of the black blade unsheathing. He lowered his hand. Maledicte lowered the sword.

“Don’t take your temper out on him,” Maledicte said, slipping past them and disappearing into the library. Their footsteps followed him in like distant drums, their words like the ocean, quiet, senseless, repetitive. He slung himself into a chair, and watched them argue, wondering if he would need to intervene again. He supposed he should be angry, but all he felt was the wet seep of blood through the linen shirt, and the numbed weariness in his soul.

He interrupted their quarreling to say, “Gilly, run me a bath, please. I’m all over blood. And when you’re done with that—I have another errand for you. I want you to take our funds from the banks and hide them where Aris and his guards can’t reach. I’ve heard enough of Itarusine ways to know they’ll attempt to take recompense for Dantalion’s death in a monetary way.”

Janus opened his mouth to object and Maledicte rounded on him savagely. “You allowed Aris to send guards to follow me home. You cannot object to the steps I choose to take now.”

M
ALEDICTE LEANED FORWARD
in the warmth of the bathwater, setting off small, tidal sloshes. Tinged red and perceptibly cooling, still the water was soothing, as soothing as Janus’s slow detangling of Maledicte’s blood-matted hair. Mindlessly, he trailed his fingers through the water, and grimaced at the bloody foam sheeting out of his hair.

“You were a fool to kill Dantalion,” Janus said quietly, as if he kept close rein on his temper. He paused in his ministrations, trading fingers for a wide-toothed comb, ivory overlaid with silver. “Twice a fool to kill him in such a manner—to show Aris the blood on your blade. Aris could see you hanged.”

“No fear of that,” Maledicte said. “Ani is more potent than kings. I’ll slip the gallows knot yet.”

Maledicte reached for the sponge and rinsed his arm, removing a streak of blood that had so far evaded the water. Tension curled in his belly at the sight.

“You are mad,” Janus said. “I accept Black-Winged Ani as your patron—I have seen the evidence myself—but that’s no reason to overthrow sense. I need you to be clever, and all you think of is blood.”

“Your doing,” Maledicte said. “I would have been content with Last’s death, had you not robbed me of it. Instead, I must kill again and again to keep the ground we’ve gained. Is it any wonder it’s become habit?” Ani’s offense mingled with his own and his words grew edged; beneath the water, his hands fisted. “But I’d give it all up in a heartbeat. For you. But you—you made a bargain with Aris,” Maledicte said, letting the sponge drift. “You promised him—What exactly did you promise him?”

“Discretion, as he said,” Janus said, but the shift of his eyes told Maledicte more than he wanted to know.

“How much discretion?” he asked. “To not live here at my side? To not walk beside me in the public streets? To not acknowledge me at all? Did you promise to set me aside?”

Janus stood and claimed a towel. “The water’s grown cold. You’re all over gooseflesh.”

“It’s not the water’s chill,” Maledicte said, but rose and allowed Janus to wrap him in warmth. “Tell me how things have changed with Amarantha’s death. With Dantalion’s. The longer you balk, the more I fear what you’ve done.”

Janus sat down on the edge of the tub, looked up with clear blue eyes. “In exchange for staying third counselor and guardian to Auron, I am to live in the palace. I am not to see you more often than a man sees a mistress. I am not to take you about in public. I am to wed and—”

Maledicte dropped the towel, wrapped himself in a dressing gown, tying the sash with angry jerks. “You are to play Aris’s lapdog. You ruled the Relicts, and yet you’ll take such orders from the king, just to play second fiddle to a true-born infant?”

Janus said, lowering his face, his eyes blazing, “To be kept at arm’s distance when I am this close to power, to fortune, to everything we’ve ever wanted, galls me. But I must act the part. And act it well and for some time. Were little Auron to die so soon in my guardianship, it would ruin us far more than his survival. Aris—” He frowned. “Aris doesn’t trust me. So I will live in the palace, act the dutiful guardian, fond older brother. But I will visit you—”

“Like a whore set up in a bijou,” Maledicte said. “How Ella would laugh—you, who she blamed for my recalcitrance to sell my body; you making me a whore when she could not. Except you don’t have to pay for me or my rent. She wouldn’t like that at all…. Please, tell me you’ll set me up in a fashionable part of town, my dear. I would so hate to cross paths with my mother.”

“Ella’s long cold,” Janus said quietly, hands dabbling in the bloodied water.

Maledicte’s breath caught, startled out of his rage for the moment. He had always known that Ella would not have survived to the fullness of old age, but had never thought of her as dead. Just gone. But Janus’s voice held more than that simple understanding.

“You went back,” Maledicte said, remembering. “You told me you found R-Roach—” He couldn’t help the tiny stagger in his voice, but he went on. “Did—did you find them too?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “It wasn’t hard. Once I realized they could tell me nothing of you—”

“You killed them,” Maledicte said, eyes on his blood-tinged bath. His heart gave a sudden, unexpected lurch; his ears rang.

“The moment Last reclaimed me, Celia’s life was forfeit. I could not have her dogging my heels, begging for coin, for her precious rank, her Laudable-addled mind making hash of my plans. And Ella, who had the poor taste to scream when I killed Celia—do not tell me you will cry for her; not that selfish woman who gave you nothing beyond your bare existence.” Janus’s blue eyes simmered with heat, the expression recalling kicks and curses, and days spent scrounging for scraps while the two of them plotted and seethed.

Untrue, Maledicte thought numbly. Ella had given Miranda one precious gift, even unknowingly, when she had opened her door to an aristocratic castoff and her infant son. A gift so valued that some of its virtue rubbed off on the giver: Maledicte’s heart, tangled in loathing and contempt, still held room for that spark of gratitude. He could not have killed Ella. But Janus—

Maledicte shuddered all over, temper surging back. “How is it that you raise your blade to whomever you choose, and I—I only garner censure and suspicion? You walk the courts and I might be banished, impoverished, or hanged.”

“I will never let that happen,” Janus said.

Maledicte threw the robe off, began dressing with shaking hands. “And how will you prevent it? Time may be on your side, allowing you to worm your way into acceptance, but it’s my enemy. Banished, impoverished, or hanged; none of them appeals to me overmuch. Janus, let’s give this up. We did in the Relicts, remember, when our plans went wrong or grew too dangerous.” At the sight of Janus shaking his head, Maledicte tried entreaty though it stuck in his throat like dusty feathers. “Janus, you’re all I have. All I value.”

“Be rid of Gilly, and I’ll believe you. You trust him with everything. Sometimes I think you trust him more than me. Giving him control over your accounts, really Mal…”

“This isn’t about him,” Maledicte said. “It’s about Auron, about claiming your birthright, about making our future. We’ve failed at claiming your title. I see no way to succeed.”

“When you gained Ani’s favor, you lost your mind,” Janus said. “There’s always a way.”

“So you say, and yet the babe lives, his future safeguarded by one who should be the wolf. You’ve been playing dog too long. Aris holds your leash, and you fawn at his feet, saving your teeth for those weaker than yourself, helpless women…” Maledicte heard his voice, hoarse and ranting, taunting Janus as if he were one of his enemies, willing his words to bruise and sting, and wondered what was becoming of him. In the rippling water, he thought he saw the reflection of dark wings.

Janus slapped him, knocking him back against the edge of the tub. Maledicte growled low in his throat and launched himself at Janus, knocking over the vanity, sending them sprawling. The shaving mirror broke, scattering their reflections across the floor, their tangled bodies distorted in its shards. Fighting for control, Janus twisted Maledicte’s arm behind his back.

Pain erupted in his shoulder and Maledicte grabbed a handful of mirror glass, heedless of the stinging slice against his palm, and swung. For the second time that day, blood stained his hand. His own and Janus’s. The pressure on his arm eased and Maledicte turned, remorse sickening him.

Janus mopped his shoulder with his sleeve, blood dripping onto his forearm. “That’s two battles in one day,” Janus said. “A record even for your temper.”

Maledicte curled his fingers into his palms, aware of the blood sliding between them. He fumbled for words, tried to control his angry breathing. “Let me see,” Maledicte said, his temper vanishing under concern and shame. “I’ll get bandages.”

“Don’t bother,” Janus said, blue eyes smoldering. He twisted Maledicte’s hand over and studied the gash in the palm, watched the welling blood slow and stop with a calculating eye. “You don’t need it, and I’ll get mine cleaned elsewhere. With the mood you’re in, I’d get
arsenixa
on the bandage.”

“No,” Maledicte said. “Janus, I’d never hurt—”

Janus smiled, a thin, tight thing. “Maybe not, but I can do it myself.”

Maledicte slumped back against the floor, watching as Janus raided his room for bandages, alum powder, and aloe.

“You’re going back to the palace,” Maledicte said.

“I have to go play lapdog to Aris,” Janus said, his tone savage as he bandaged the wound. “You need to trust me, Miranda. Once you trusted me implicitly. Do so again, and all will be well. You forget that there is no separation between us. No plans for me, and plans for you. There’s only us, though you seem to fear otherwise. Your job done, you must let me work, now. You must be patient. You used to know how.”

Maledicte trailed into the bedroom, sat down by the fire. “I used to be someone else.”

Janus poured him a tumbler of whiskey and folded his fingers around it. “You’re becoming maudlin.” He sat beside Maledicte, the temper still in his eyes, though less bright, less hot. “We must lull Aris. You need to give me time to undo the damage you did by killing Dantalion.”

Maledicte nodded, drinking deeply. “But you won’t stay.” He forced his voice level, when he wanted to beg. It felt like years ago, lying in the street rubble, watching Ella’s gift, her Janus, taken from her; now Janus took himself away, and she was more powerless than before.

Janus shook his head. “I must prove myself to Aris.”

After Janus left, Maledicte tilted the rest of the whiskey past his lips, and then poured himself another. He stared into the empty fireplace until the darkness settled into the room, filling it with the sound of wings. The house creaked, Livia going on tiptoe out the door. In the kitchen, Cook sluiced down the tables. Eventually silence fell, and still, Gilly had not returned. Maledicte swallowed the last of a third whiskey and fled the house.

· 35 ·

G
ILLY AND
L
IZETTE TUMBLED AND
teased each other over the sheets, but Gilly’s pleasure was leavened by guilt. He was all too aware that he should have returned to the town house, that Janus was not to be relied upon, and that Maledicte’s temper was uncertain at best. But he dreaded the fraught rooms and the lingering presence of Black-Winged Ani. So when Lizette hailed him on the street, he gave in to temptation, and followed her home as shamelessly as an alley cat. Tonight, Lizette’s simple charms were panacea for what ailed him. He was bent between her breasts, making her laugh, making her gasp, when she stiffened in his arms.

“Get out, you. Wrong room.” She held Gilly’s head to her chest, but the shiver up his spine had already warned him. There was no surprise in him when he heard the raspy voice responding.

“No,” Maledicte said. “This is the right room. But there are too many people in it.” His words still held their bite, but their customary precision had been traded for a drinker’s slur. Gilly turned, drawing the sheets to his chest like a maiden under a lecher’s stare, though Maledicte’s gaze lingered on Lizette and not him.

“Well, she’s clean enough, I suppose, if a little overripe. I expected the worst, it took me so long to get directions to this brothel. And she’s redheaded. Predictable, Gilly.”

“Mal—what are you doing here?”

Maledicte ignored him. “Go away,” he told Lizette.

“He’s paid for me. You leave.” Her eyes were slightly protuberant; from the study of her throat, Maledicte considered squeezing her neck, making them pop.

Gilly intervened. “It’s all right, Lizette. The money’s yours. Just leave us.” His heart pounded in his chest, but for what cause? Fear for Lizette’s safety, or anticipation at being alone with Maledicte?

“You still want the room? Cause Ma’s going to want to know.” Lizette drew her dressing gown on, and Gilly, seeing it through Maledicte’s critical eyes, was aware of the clash of violet silk against her ruddy skin and hair.

“Go away,” Maledicte repeated. He stumbled forward, ripped the sword from his belt, dropped it on the floor, sat down, and pulled off his boots. With a last moue, Lizette left, banging the door behind her. Maledicte shot the bolt, locking them in, and leaned against the door.

The silence grew, and Gilly, tiring of waiting, said, “I thought you house-bound.”

“The guards only watched me go,” Maledicte said. “Perhaps they followed and are downstairs, sampling the house delights on Aris’s coin.”

“Janus?” Gilly asked.

“The palace. But I came here to be away from all that.” He crawled onto the bed, swaying, his balance shot, and lay down beside Gilly. He studied the draped shape of Gilly’s body. “I came to let you distract me.”

Drunk, Gilly thought, and wondered how much whiskey it took to override Ani’s effect on poison. But even as he wondered, Maledicte’s eyes lost the glassy quality they had held a moment ago, growing sharper, darker.

Gilly forced a laugh. Distract him. Maledicte had driven him to distraction and now all he could think about was the nearness of Maledicte’s body to his. He could not think of a story now to save his life. “How am I to do that?”

Maledicte rolled over in a swift move that belied his drunkenness, pinned Gilly, and kissed him, like the fierce first kiss of a child. Gasping, Gilly clutched Maledicte’s neck, brought his mouth back down, and deepened the kiss. He tasted whiskey on Maledicte’s tongue, like the sting within a liqueur-laced chocolate.

Maledicte slid the sheet down, followed the retreating fabric with his mouth and tongue and teeth, no child’s kiss this. Gilly groaned at the blaze of hot breath on bare skin, his hands clutching the thick layers of brocaded jacket and vest, embroidered shirt. He tangled his hands in Maledicte’s hair, drew him up for another kiss, tasting the sweet, hungry mouth, as pliant as any woman’s, but coupled with the sinew and strength of the body pressed to his.

Maledicte shuddered against him, and Gilly bit at his neck, tasting starched silk. He lipped Maledicte’s delicate fingers, ran his hands over the sleek shoulders knotted with muscle, and groaned again, nearly undone by the combination of female and male, of softness and steel. Maledicte laughed, a soft cat-rasp of pleasure, and rolled over, caging Gilly’s hands beneath his flesh. Gilly knelt up, crawled over him, pressing his face into the black curls at his nape, licking, biting. Some blood scent still lingered in the dark hair, and Gilly moaned. Maledicte rocked back beneath him, rough embroidery scratching teasingly against Gilly’s flushed skin. He gripped Maledicte’s hips, pressed closer, and was rewarded with a breathy gasp that might have been his name.

Drowning in the scent of his black hair, fumbling blindly, Gilly unwound Maledicte’s cravat, kissed his bared nape, craned around, and tried for the divot at the heart of his collarbone. Maledicte turned, sought Gilly’s mouth again, agile hands slipping down Gilly’s flanks, pulling him closer. Gilly reached for the vest buttons between them, that maddening barrier of silk and wool, and Maledicte pulled away in a convulsive movement. “Ugh. I can taste her on you.” He rolled away from Gilly’s questing hands, put his back to Gilly.

Gilly had no way of knowing that this was untrue, that the only thing Maledicte tasted was the warm salt of Gilly’s flesh, the flavor of a beating heart. But belated caution skulked into Maledicte’s mind—if Gilly uncovered Miranda’s secret, what would Janus do?

All Gilly knew, felt, was his pounding heart, his aching body. Breathing faster, he tried to tug Maledicte back into his arms, but Maledicte snarled, “Get off me.”

“Mal—” Gilly said, his word a plea, a breath, a groan.

Maledicte huddled himself up, a slim line condensing itself. “Leave me alone. Let me sleep.” Maledicte’s voice was rougher than usual, thicker. Gilly wondered if he would see tears or desire as the cause if he forced Maledicte to face him. Belated recognition of the words filtered into his mind.

“Are you staying?”

“Why not? It’s late, I’m drunk, and the bed seems free of vermin. My apologies if I ruined your sport. But more fool you if you paid her before you took your pleasures.”

Gilly stared at the ceiling, counting the crystal stars pasted on it. Lizette’s client list. Each star a patron. In the center of the ceiling was his own favored patronage, marked out in spirals and dots, a constellation made of desire. Lizette swore the constellation was one seen in the Explorations, taught to her by a sailor, but Gilly had no proof of that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

Beside him, Maledicte’s breath steadied and quieted.

“Mal?” Gilly said.

When he was met with silence, he pulled the quilt off the floor where he and Lizette had dropped it, and draped it over Maledicte. He bent to tuck it around Maledicte’s shoulders and hesitated, finding Maledicte watching him with steady black eyes. “Here,” Gilly said, awkwardly finishing the motion, aware of the rough silk of Maledicte’s hair pinned between his fingers and the coverlet.

“I’m not cold.”

“Colder than marble,” Gilly said. He stroked the smooth cheek, feeling the dip and sway of the flesh between cheekbone and scarred jaw. “You should go back to Dove Street.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Petulant as a child,” Gilly said. “But if you won’t, you won’t. It would serve you right if I brought Lizette back in.”

“Don’t,” Maledicte said. “Please.”

“I won’t. Best move over some, you’re going to fall off the edge.”

Gilly slid beneath the sheets, unwound them as best he could, allowing for Maledicte’s weight atop them. Gingerly, he stroked the softness of Maledicte’s hair fanning out over the pillows. When Maledicte didn’t object, he tucked himself around that slim form, and felt the tension rise and fall in Maledicte’s bones.

Snuggled together in such surroundings, Gilly found himself wondering if this was how it had been for Maledicte and Janus. Away from the town house, this moment felt fragile, endangered by any opening door, by the rumble of voices down the hall, by the shouts of laughter and anger that rose from the streets. No wonder they clung to each other, he thought, they grew up with no haven but each other. Still, he thought, the situation was no longer the same.

“I’ve been thinking about the Explorations again,” Gilly said, testing the waters.

In his arms, Maledicte made a sound of protest more felt than heard. It gave Gilly courage.

“I want you to come with me. The
Virga
sails in five months, just before the fall. We could ride out beneath its tall sails, out through the harbor, into the deep waters where it’s so blue you can’t tell sea from sky. We could watch sea beasts at play; the great whales spouting and diving, and stranger creatures still, so strange that no sailor ever mentions them unless you’ve seen them already for fear of being mocked. We’d land in a new world. No Relicts, no court, just the land and the sky and the stars. The sailors say it’s a different sky entirely down there, that it never goes black, just to darker and darker shades of blue—”

“And do what?” Maledicte whispered. “Live like paupers? Or fish for a living, at the mercy of storm and sea?”

“I’d be a chocolate farmer,” Gilly said, inventing on the spot. “Feed you sweets for breakfast, until you grew fat or sick from them.”

Maledicte laughed, his warm breath brushing Gilly’s forearm, raising the hairs on it and on his neck. “Dreamer.”

“But not a fool,” Gilly said. “Before I go, I’d buy up small luxuries here, to take with me. Sell them to the Antyrrian émigrés over there, desperate for a taste of home, and use the money for things exotic to Antyre and send them back for sale. Feathers for gowns and hats, pelts for pelisses, illustrations. Maybe I’d even write a book for the libraries.” His words came stiff and slow, awkward as his stories never were, fearful of being mocked. It was the first time he’d spoken aloud of his dreams. And even then he balked at spilling it all, that he would include Maledicte as more than a whim. That he couldn’t imagine life without him.

“A trader overseas,” Maledicte said.

“I know, a dreamer,” Gilly said.

Maledicte rose up, turned, and kissed Gilly’s forehead, stroked his cheek. He slid back into Gilly’s loose embrace, and only once his face was hidden again did Gilly hear him speak. “What about Janus?”

If Gilly’s words of salt and sea and sky carried sunlight and tropical flavors, the mention of Janus brought the first taste of winter into the room.

Heart pounding, realizing that Maledicte was tempted, Gilly said, “Can’t you forget him?” His words were a whisper. Vornatti died for voicing a similar thought, but Gilly gambled that Maledicte was far fonder of him.

“I could easier forget my own name,” Maledicte said. “He needs me.”

“I need you,” Gilly said, sudden hunger darkening his voice to a growl, rolling Maledicte to face him.

Maledicte scowled. “You want me. Which is not the same thing at all.”

Gilly started to protest and Maledicte put a hand over his mouth. “Listen to me, Gilly. When you’d had me, what then? You’d be as weary of me as you were of the old bastard…you’d be longing for your sweet-fleshed, sweet-tempered maids and not a dark-natured creature like myself.”

Gilly kissed the fingers overlying his mouth in soundless retort. Maledicte withdrew his hand. “No, Gilly. Leave me be. I’m tired beyond belief….” Hetried to unravel himself from the blanket but Gilly stopped him.

“Shh, just sleep. I’ll guard your sleep. Even from myself.” Gilly forced a lightness into his voice he didn’t feel, was rewarded with Maledicte relaxing into his embrace. He lay with Maledicte a swaddled bundle in his arms, and tried to sort out the truth of it. Was Maledicte right, would he repent of this unseasonal desire? Gilly couldn’t imagine doing so, but when he slept his dreams were full of Black-Winged Ani cradled in his arms, covered in blood.

M
ALEDICTE WOKE,
rubbed grit from his dry eyes, and took a startled breath at finding himself in the brothel. The corset pinched his ribs and he gasped. Untangling himself from the blankets, he staggered to the wash-stand, stared at his reflection in the still water. Gilly. Maledicte turned, breathing shallowly, breathing with small hitches of pain. In the emptiness of the room, he shucked out of the crumpled coat, the vest, and reached into his shirt to loosen the first laces on his corset. The relief was as sweet as the memory of his restraint. Janus would have killed him. Like Roach. Like Ella. Salt stung his eyes.

He splashed water on his face. The water was tepid but clear. Gilly must have asked them to bring another basin when he was done washing and shaving. Without Gilly’s presence, the room seemed too full of the whore’s trade, draggled lace, fine fabrics worn thin with use, the narrow bed and sagging mattress, the cloying odor of rose-scented powder and sweat in the air. If Maledicte had been less fortunate, less determined, without Janus to aid him, Ella might have sold Miranda to a place like this.

Nausea churned in his belly. Never to this, he thought. He would spill blood on the roads first, turn highwayman and waylay rich men’s coaches. The thought calmed him; the sword on the bed soothed him with its bird’s eye glitter.

The door opened behind him. In the mirror, water blurring his vision, he saw Lizette enter. “What do you want?”

Lizette grinned. “Gilly said to make you comfortable. I came to offer you a razor.”

Aware of the dampness at his throat and the loosened laces around his chest, Maledicte took up his vest, buttoning it with his back to her. “I hardly think to be here long enough to require one.”

“I would be amazed if you did,” she said. She closed the door, leaned against it much as he had last night. He remembered that. The stability of the rough wood when his heart was pounding with possibilities.

“Have you something to say?” Maledicte settled his coat as best he could, adjusting the shoulders. His head throbbed, imagining her laughing over how he had routed her from her bed to lie with his servant.

“Poor Gilly,” she said. “His head’s in a swivet about you, desiring you, loving you.” The scorn in her eyes took away any sweetness left in her face. “And he don’t know the first thing about you, does he,
my lady
?”