Maledicte (9 page)

“Roach is a fool,” Maledicte said. “Best forget him and his words, Gilly.” Maledicte rose, and lit another candle from the first. But instead of warming the room, the second flame only added more shadows to lurk in the corners.

Gilly tore his apprehensive gaze from them, focused on Maledicte’s acid voice. “Didn’t you have better things to do than listen to a Relicts rat?”

“I had what I needed by then,” Gilly said. He took the candle back from Maledicte and settled it firmly beside him once more, wondering what kept the dream still so close. His own fear? Or Maledicte’s presence?

“Which was—?” Maledicte drawled. “So far I’ve not learned what secret was so powerful.”

“An indiscreet letter from the Marquis DeGuerre to his sister,” Gilly said. “Not a counselor himself, but a counselor’s nephew. It sufficed.”

“You played housebreaker?” Maledicte asked. “I cannot imagine you doing so. You’re rather too big.”

“I hired Livia away from DeGuerre,” Gilly admitted. “She pilfered the letter as she left his employ.”

“Very clever,” Maledicte said, his tone mocking. “But Gilly, don’t you think Vornatti’s household is rather full of riffraff by now? The old profligate himself, his pet blackmailer, a thieving maidservant—”

“And a stripling killer,” Gilly said. He had meant the words to be a gentle tease, but with Ani’s presence lingering in his mind, the words came out like a taunt.

Maledicte frowned, temper risen. “We’ll see whether Last finds me as amusing as you do. Go back to your dreams, Gilly.” He snuffed the candle with quick, angry fingers, and Gilly caught his arm.

“Mal, don’t,” he said.

“Frighted of the dark?” Maledicte said, freeing himself, stumbling over a book beside the bed. “No wonder, if this is the nonsense you read.” He tossed
The Book of Vengeances
onto Gilly’s lap and started for the door.

“Don’t be so touchy,” Gilly said. “I meant no offense.” But after three years of feeding and training, the boy hadn’t grown much in truth.

Maledicte slumped into a chair, put his feet up on Gilly’s bed. “Last cannot come too soon to suit me. This waiting palls.” His eyes grew as dark as the shadows, and Gilly’s mouth dried, imagining Ani reaching out to claim Maledicte from the gloom encircling him. Even once Maledicte left, Gilly watched the flame and found tenuous solace in its light until it burned down with sunrise.

· 7 ·

M
ALEDICTE STOOD,
limned in the sulfurous candlelight that was de rigueur for formal occasions, flattering to the aged roués and dames, adding glamour to insipid youths. The nobles’ ballroom was a half-moon bordered with elaborate gardens on the curving side, shuttered with gilded doors along the straight edge. For special nights, the king threw open the doors, folding them in on themselves, making a full moon of the ballroom. But the nobles’ ballroom was there for their delectation; it was full from spring to fall and, if boredom weighed too heavily, through the winter as well.

In the antechamber behind Maledicte, Vornatti penned his signature in the guest book. Maledicte had already signed, and Gilly added his under the line of servant-attendant.

Vornatti snapped the book shut, to the irritation of those trying to read the name of the new attendee over his shoulder. “Haven’t the discretion to wait ’til we’re in?”

Maledicte heard all this faintly, watching the ballroom. One or two dancers paused in their steps, their eyes slewing to the doorway. A cluster of young gentlemen began an endless night of betting and gambling. Jewels flashed like captured sunlight fed back to the sky. The inlaid marble flooring was patterned like broken seashells, and the drift of dresses and seafoam lace made the room sway like ocean waves. Blue-gray drapes fluttered and whispered at alcoves, at exits, at every furtive movement.

Maledicte stood in the door, neither in nor out. If he stepped forward, the game became inevitable, even if the result remained uncertain. If he stepped back, he forfeited the prize he so dearly craved. He was wrong, he thought; the floor didn’t resemble the sea, but shadowy wings rising in a twilight sky. At his side, the sword hilt brushed his shaking fingers; a shudder rippled across his nape, traveled down his rigid spine in a convulsive bout of nerve storms, and was done. He stepped forward.

Maledicte wore dove gray tonight, a demure color, and yet all eyes moved toward him. He bowed to those who followed their gazes and came to meet him. One nobleman, fox-haired, broad-shouldered, and lean, glanced up, his eyes registering hatred. But he moved across the floor, made a clipped bow to their party, and said, “Baron Vornatti.”

“Ah, Marquis, I don’t think you know my ward, Maledicte.”

The marquis nodded. “Maledicte. I bid you—welcome.”

“So formal,” Maledicte said. He heard Gilly suck breath in beside him, and stifled a smile. “When it seems we know you so well. Tell me, sir, how is your sweet sister?”

DeGuerre’s face stiffened; he turned on his heel, walking away. Vornatti laughed.

Gilly rushed into speech. “Be careful, Mal, he is a very angry man. And angry men are hard to hold by secrets. I do not know how long it will be before he strikes at you. If I’d known you would speak so, I would never have told you the contents of that letter.”

“Don’t fret, Gilly,” Maledicte said. “I only said it to amuse.”

“Amuse?” Gilly said. “Amuse who?”

“Myself,” Maledicte said. “Don’t lecture. Tell me instead who these people are.”

Vornatti smiled again, and said, “Yes, Gilly. Show me how well you remember your faces.”

“The gentleman in the corner is Dominick Isley, Lord Echo, Mal, and perhaps even you’ve heard of him. He heads Echo’s Particulars, his private band of thief takers, bill collectors, and gallowsmen.”

“I know them,” Maledicte said, thinking of frantic scrambles in the Relicts, dodging the sound of Echo’s bells.

“Our scrutiny has drawn his attention,” Gilly warned.

Echo strolled over, nodded curtly to Vornatti. “Still alive, old reprobate?”

“Solely to spite you, I’ve found myself an heir,” Vornatti said.

Echo surveyed Maledicte, nostrils flaring as if he scented the Relicts lingering on Maledicte’s skin. “Your kin?”

Maledicte said, “In temperament, perhaps.”

“Your parentage?” Echo demanded. “If not kin to Vornatti, then who? Who was your sire?”

Maledicte raised his brows at Echo’s interrogation but drawled, “A bit of a scandal there.” Vornatti set his hand on Maledicte’s arm, hand closing tightly, gloved fingers pinching the long nerve. “And one my kind guardian would prefer I not discuss.”

Maledicte sighed; Vornatti wanted to cloak him in rumor and speculation, and had set Gilly to plant lies, slandering various dead noblemen. Maledicte wanted to spit the truth in their face, show them that a Relict rat was human, regardless of blood. He knew, though, that even had he done so, brought Ella cringing and fawning forward, the nobles would deny it, and turn their belief back to more-palatable rumor.

Echo blinked, unused to being denied. “Your mother, then?”

Maledicte tugged his arm free from Vornatti’s painful grip, and leaned closer to Echo. “I’ll give you a hint. They called her Lady Night, and she collected men’s tithes with a smile, a moan, and a curse,” Maledicte said.

Nearby, a woman in a bronze-green gown laughed, her eyes meeting Maledicte’s with wicked amusement. “Such a scandal.” She mimicked his earlier words.

Maledicte smiled at her before turning to Echo once more. “You seem perplexed. I will let you ponder her identity on your own.”

Echo flushed at the dismissal in Maledicte’s voice, cast him a fulminating glance, and left.

“Be careful, Mal,” Gilly said. “He’s more clever than he appears.”

“He’d have to be,” Maledicte said, frowning. “That’s twice tonight you’ve told me to be careful, Gilly. I think you don’t want me to enjoy myself at all.”

“Aris likes him,” Vornatti said. “That’s reason enough to be cautious. Aris would have him head of the Kingsguard would Echo only agree. But Echo enjoys his thief-taking ways too well to change his prey from rats to aristocrats.”

“Unless they’re
poor
aristocrats,” Gilly said. “He has jailed several of those, and so pretends to evenhandedness.”

“Is that so,” Maledicte said, watching Echo make his way across the room, inclining his head to some, and fetching up near a young man sipping moodily from his goblet. “Who stands beside him?”

“Can’t you guess?” Gilly said.

“Limp cravat, mud on his boots, hair disordered and yet—people smile at him, bow to him. Lord Westfall.”

“The same,” Gilly said. “The third of Aris’s advisers and the only one here tonight. A financier of Echo’s Particulars, and Aris’s gesture toward the future. Westfall is machine-mad, his mind occupied with gears and levers that will miraculously insure Antyre’s prosperity—if he can keep the antimachinists from destroying his factories as he builds them. So far, they’re winning.”

“Why isn’t Last one of Aris’s counselors?” Maledicte asked.

Vornatti answered, leaning back in his chair to take the wine Gilly offered him. “He’s a traditionalist past the point of sense. Had he ascended the throne, Itarus and Antyre would war openly yet. It’s the gods, though, that did him in. His refusal to admit Their absence. Aris is a modern king, uninterested in the ways of dead gods.”

“And of course, there
are
whispers that Last attempted to wrest the throne from Aris in the first moments of his ascension. A hard thing to forgive, even for a kindly king.” The new voice belonged to the noble lady in the bronze-green gown that burnished her auburn hair to a flame. “You are new come to the court,” she accused.

“I am,” Maledicte said.

“Tell me then, is it gaucherie or insouciance that allows you to stare so scornfully?”

“Insouciance, of course,” Maledicte said, with the first pure enjoyment he’d had. “What cavalier ever admits to gaucherie? But, Lady, a question in return. I thought it not the thing for a lady to approach a strange courtier. Is it lack of manners or audacity that drives you?”

The lady laughed, a delicate trill of sound. “Neither in my case, though what lady would ever declare herself mannerless? I am quite well acquainted with your guardian.” She curtsied toward Vornatti, her skirts pooling outward in elegant sweeps. “Will you introduce us then, sir? Or have you been so long from the court that you forget our friendship?”

Vornatti kissed her pale hand a breath too long, and said, “Only a madman or fool would allow himself to forget the charming Lady Mirabile. May I make my ward known to you?”

“I think not,” she said, her lips curling with amusement. “His tongue is perhaps too rough, unless—” She paused to flash a dimpled cheek at Maledicte. “Unless you’ve had him schooled in dancing.”

“Expensively schooled,” Vornatti said, glaring briefly at Maledicte.

“Then,” Mirabile said, “you may present me. And you may take my hand for the after-dinner dance set.” She curtsied again, and departed.

“Gilly, I’ve been upstaged,” Maledicte whispered, half smiling, half offended. “Who is she?”

“A woman, wicked and wild-natured enough to seduce a onetime intercessor. Darian Chancel’s widow and murderess. As well as Vornatti’s onetime paramour.”

“Watch your tongue, Gilly,” Vornatti cautioned. “What courtiers prattle about could see a servant whipped.”

“Echo jailed her,” Gilly lowered his voice. “But evidence was hard to come by. There was a matter of another man who she accused of the crime. It cost her everything to buy her freedom—her estate, her fortune, her reputation. Now she leeches off friends and hunts a husband again.”

Vornatti said, “You see what wonders civility affords, Maledicte? Mirabile’s dearest friend is Brierly Westfall, and so she lives on Westfall’s estate, where Echo visits daily. I hear they often sit to tea together.” He laughed. “And I wager Echo is more uncomfortable than she. Mirabile is a most dangerous woman.”

G
ILLY RETURNED TO THE BALLROOM
after ferrying a weary Vornatti to the Dove Street house, wondering if Maledicte’s training had held without Vornatti to insure discipline, without Gilly to gesture disapproval. Peering around the room, he ignored the thump and rattle of a dowager tapping her cane on the tile. “Servant,” she said. “Servant!”

“Lady,” Gilly turned, bowing hastily, recognizing the temperamental and inquisitive baroness they called Lady Secret for her inability to keep one.

“You’re Vornatti’s, are you not?” The diamonds piled in her falsely dark hair winked in emphasis as she nodded in answer to her own question. “His ward is Itarusine, is he not? Has the look of one, all dark eyes and bones. Like Vornatti in his youth. Like the queen.”

Like a lowly Itarusine sailor, Gilly thought, marveling again at the strange magic of flesh that created Maledicte. A creature fey and beautiful from blood as common as seawater. “He is Antyrrian,” Gilly said. “He makes his bows to Aris, not Grigor.”

She snorted, irritated at being corrected. Gilly bowed and escaped. Mulling what it meant for Maledicte’s success that the baroness had taken an interest, it took him more time than it should have to notice the change in the air. A silent current ran the room, carried on whisper and scandal, as dangerous as a snake at twilight. Gilly tracked the source through widened eyes and bent heads, a trail of murmuring. At its center, of course, was Maledicte. Hastily, Gilly headed toward his charge, overcome with irritation. Not even a solitary hour; Maledicte was dangerously hard work.

Even now, Maledicte leaned close enough to the Lady Mirabile to warm her marble flesh with his breath as he spoke. Her eyes widened and gleamed; her teeth flashed in a small, practiced smile.

Gilly, close enough to overhear Maledicte’s words, took Maledicte’s sleeve in white-gloved hands and tugged like a demanding child. Maledicte paused, his mouth hovering by the spider-shaped patch on Mirabile’s cheek.

“Is something wrong, Gilly?” Maledicte asked.

Lady Mirabile twined her arm around Maledicte’s, forcing Gilly to move his hands or touch her skin. He let go his grip and met the wicked, jaded eyes of Lady Mirabile and, worse, the astonished gray gaze of Brierly Westfall. A servant interrupting his master? Mirabile laughed musically at his discomfiture.

Across the ballroom, DeGuerre heard Mirabile’s triumphant voice, turned to look, and, espying Maledicte, turned his back.

The blackness of that brief glance restored Gilly’s courage. “Outside, please?”

Either the “please” mollified Maledicte or Mirabile had begun to bore him; Maledicte took Gilly’s gloved hand in his own. “Ladies. Forgive me.” He sketched a bow; his hair, worn loose, fell curling over his shoulders. Mirabile’s fingers twitched as if she would like to tangle those dark locks in her bloodless hands. She tossed her head in mechanical, charming disappointment, but Gilly knew her irritation and chagrin were real.

Gilly ushered Maledicte through the ballroom, toward the gilded antechamber, where heaps of discarded floral tributes perfumed the air and dusted the floor with bright, fallen petals.

“Have I been errant, Gilly? Mirabile seemed to admire my audacious tongue. Of course, I think she expects me to spend some time later with her, where my audacious tongue would be only for her enjoyment.”

Gilly yanked Maledicte into the blue-curtained alcove that served as the cloakroom. Maledicte stumbled against Gilly and snarled, “Surely my sins, whatever they are, do not merit manhandling.”

“Shh,” Gilly said. “Be silent.”

Maledicte’s lips thinned, his eyes blackened, but the rage never surfaced. “You’re angry at me.”

Gilly shoved Maledicte toward a seat near the curtain.

“Temper, temper,” Maledicte teased. His mouth opened; his tongue touched his teeth. He scented trouble and was pleased at the prospect. He folded himself down on a woman’s fur-lined cloak, smoothing the pelt against his face. “Tell me why you’re angry?”

“DeGuerre.” Gilly tore the cloak from Mal’s hands, hurled it over another hook.

“Everything is going quite well,” Maledicte said.

“Well?” Gilly said. “Blackmail requires one person to hold a secret over another, and to keep that secret in exchange for goods, money, or services.”

“I am passing familiar with the concept.” Maledicte reached past the curtains to capture a goblet from a startled waiter, heading out toward the balconies and a rendezvous. He sipped, curled his lips in appreciation.

“Maledicte,” Gilly said. A single word containing three years of exasperation. He raked his hands through his hair, catching his fingers in the queue and leaving it in tufty disarray. “You told Lady Mirabile and Brierly Westfall, the biggest gossips in the court, about Lilia DeGuerre.”