Kings and Assassins (12 page)

He left the room, Simpson and Walker dropping into step behind him, and found Gost poised to enter. “If you've any real appetite, best seek other environs. The company in there will turn your stomach.”

Gost grinned, a boyish thing in his lean and otherwise austere face. He lingered in the hall, as perfect as any portrait, his dark frock coat a sharp line against morning sunlight and the ivy-patterned wallpaper. Reluctantly, Janus acquitted the man of posing. It was only that Gost walked the palace halls in total ease, regardless of the
twenty years spent elsewhere, while Janus still startled at servants appearing of a sudden and begrudged his shadowing guards.

“Bull and DeGuerre, I presume. Give them more of a chance. Hidebound men may take time to come to the point, but they often have one worth hearing.” Gost turned toward the door; a gray-clad servant reached to open it.

Janus forestalled him, saying, “I've had months of listening to them and watching Aris daydream his way through their speeches. You may recall DeGuerre as he was. Currently, he's more concerned with his rank, such as it is, than with the kingdom.”

Gost nodded slowly. “You may be correct. I left Antyre shortly after the war was concluded. Aris felt we needed a strong presence in the other courts to keep Antyre from becoming a country diminished to insignificance by the Xipos treaty. I spent five years in Dainand, returned to Antyre to broker the marriage between Aris and his Itarusine bride, and sailed to Kyrda. The DeGuerre I recall was a man of purpose.”

“He's spent the intervening time on gossip and petty bickering. He and his cronies spend hours sitting in their clubs, drinks at hand, complaining about the slackness of young men.”

Gost's mouth tightened, two white lines bracketing his lips. “These are men who fought valiantly during the Xipos War and saw their efforts go to waste when Aris surrendered. These old, useless men sitting in their clubs may find new life now that Aris is gone and the power is shifting. Wouldn't you prefer allies to enemies?”

“I know where I stand with enemies,” Janus said. He had meant it to be just another cynical remark, leavened perhaps with a dash of humor, hoping to bring Gost back to good spirits. He hadn't expected it to come out as it had: raw and entirely too revealing. He shrugged one shoulder, a vulgar motion covering a more vulgar display of weakness. “I'm afraid I must leave you. I have an appointment.”

“With your engineers? Your machines?”

“The very same,” Janus said. “Would you care to join us now? Take a look at what minds not gone fallow can create?”

Gost smiled. “Would that I could, Last, but I've a meeting with
your old men. But allow me to set a demonstration time for you, and I'll ensure that not only am I there but Bull and DeGuerre. Perhaps a tangible display will go a long way toward allaying their doubts.”

Janus nodded, quite pleased. “That would serve admirably well, sir.”

“In three days' time, then? I'll determine the place.”

“I'll mention it to my colleagues,” Janus said. “They might have situational requirements.”

Gost stopped Janus in his forward movement with a quick hand; Janus evaded the touch without thought.

“Have a care, Last. The streets are unsettled. Can you not attend your business through a proxy?”

“There's the beginning of the end,” Janus said, “when it takes an act of bravery to take to the streets. Show a hound fear, Gost, and it's more like to bite.”

“True enough. I will believe you, since it's your wife put to the test. She left the palace with only two guards in addition to the coachman and tiger, and if a delicate woman like her is unafraid … she shames us all.”

Janus's ill humor returned. Off to see the Duchess of Love. Ever since Aris's funeral, the duchess had laid claim to Psyke's companionship with an assiduousness that wouldn't have been out of place in a courting lover. Psyke, when pressed, had evaded Janus's questions in a manner that made him more wary than ever. Nothing innocent hid itself but lived in the open air.

He nodded once more at Gost, and said, “I'll not keep you any longer, sir.”

Long strides took him out of the pleasant surrounds of Aris's central wing and back to the Cold King's hallways; behind him, the stone floor reminded him of his following guard's presence—their boot heels thumped after him as steadily as an echoed heartbeat.

Two guards still stood at his wife's chamber door, and Janus paused. “Is the countess within?”

Marchand, the older of the two, responded, “She's not stirred, my lord.”

The younger guard, the one Janus had manhandled previously,
stood straighter as if, this time, he meant to be successful in barring Janus's way. Janus throttled the urge to rise to the challenge; there was no need to fight to enter an empty room.

But did Marchand and the boy know it? Was Marchand's assertion an outright lie? Janus headed farther down the dimly lit corridor. Lying to a lord carried a stiff penalty, and for a lie so easily disproved?
No
, Janus thought, despite Rue's efforts at closing them, Psyke must still be using the Cold King's tunnels, keeping ahead of Rue's men, perhaps even undoing their labors, the better to allow herself to stealthily conspire with the duchess.

She probably knew the tunnels better than Rue, never mind that it was his duty. He was new to the position, after all, and Psyke was fond of history in all its guises. It had been work enough to keep Maledicte hidden from her at Lastrest, once her sensible nature had sent her hunting answers to the harassment Mal visited on her. The only successful method of distraction had been the coaches Janus arranged between Rosany's Booksellers and Lastrest. The coaches had increased in frequency, bearing old, dry tomes, until Janus had been able to track his busy wife by the scatter of opened books and the scent of old vellum.

A door shut ahead of him; his attention sharpened.

He narrowed his gaze, picked a black-clad courtier hustling away from his room, dark head bent, trying for stealth. A hopeless task given the glimmering silver embroidery in his coat and the heavy wave of lilac scent the man favored.

Savne again. Janus would have to dump all the opened wines and spirits in his room and inspect his bed for tampering. Arsenixa sprinkled over bed linens had accounted for the death of at least one ambitious princeling in the Winter Court. Janus had no illusions that the Antyrrian court was more civilized.

“Savne,” he said. The slender young baronet stopped in his tracks, his loose queue of messy black hair slipping free.

His expression shifted rapidly from sheer terror to a false civility and innocence. “Oh, my lord. How you startled me.” A certain determination reached his eyes, and Janus gritted his teeth in pained expectation.

“Oh, my lord,” Savne said again. He dropped his voice, an excuse for sidling closer, for resting an insinuating hand on Janus's arm. “I was just looking for you.”

As Janus tensed, the man backed away, the memory of being pushed into a wall obviously still fresh. But he soldiered on, keeping his tone falsely intimate. “Is there anything I can do to help you through this most difficult of times?”

Maledicte would have laughed at the man's antics, so much a parody of a seduction. Maledicte would have laughed, and then when Savne stiffened in offended dignity, would have used the man's own posture to draw a blade in a perfect line from chin to crotch.

“Yes,” Janus said. “I'll be moving to the central part of the palace. I mislike the idea of Adiran surrounded only by guards and no family. Arrange for it.”

“Would you like the king's suite of rooms?”

The man had no subtlety at all. Janus decided he was more offended by that than the clumsy attempts at seduction.

“I hardly think that would be appropriate,” Janus said. “My father's suite will do nicely. It will need to be aired, though, if I'm to sleep there this evening. I'm afraid you'll have to hurry.”

Savne nodded again, hiding his face behind the sweep of his hair, and thus his emotions. Janus waited for him to reach a decent distance, and then hailed him again. “Oh, and, Savne. If I recall correctly, my father's rooms connected to a smaller suite, often used for his paramours. Would you air those also? I have a need for them.”

“My lord?”

Janus strode toward him, enjoying the way Savne's body tensed. He leaned close, as inappropriately close as Savne usually favored, and fed his fingers into those dark curls. “My lady wife, you understand,” Janus whispered as if he feared being overheard.

Simpson and Walker shifted uneasily, a betraying scuff of fabric, a gloved hand brushing a beaded hilt. Janus forced himself to forget them.

Savne's neck was corded tight beneath his gloved hands. Janus let his fingers tighten, felt Savne's throat swell as he swallowed.

Janus stepped away and said more plainly, “Dwelling in the old
wing has worn on her excitable temperament, weighing her mind with melancholy and ghosts. I think her outlook will improve with the change of rooms. See that her belongings are transferred to the suite attached to mine.”

Janus left the man without waiting for his acknowledgment. The work would be done, though Savne would have to chivy the servants ragged to do so. There were benefits to being wooed with such motives as Savne had: The man needed to get close to Janus to please the duchess; he could balk at nothing Janus asked. It gave him a courtier who, if not loyal, at least aped it well enough to make no practicable difference in the smaller tasks. Better still, by setting Savne to such thankless tasks, Janus spared himself the ill will of the palace servants.

Maledicte had never quite understood that—that there could be layers of satisfaction within a simple manipulation. Maledicte had been too fond of using his wit as if it were an extension of his blade, never content unless his victims bled, and never mind that they were useless ever after.

But this… done and well done
, he thought. Psyke would find her access to the old tunnels gone. Savne would have a task to keep his spying hands busy. And Janus would be in the thick of things, not easily excluded.

Let these aristocrats try to shut him out; while they wasted their efforts, he would take steps to ensure they could not ignore him—and damn Ivor for forcing his hand this soon.

In his rooms, Janus pulled on a greatcoat more nondescript than his usual stylish wont, despite Padget's protest. His valet's objections faded when Janus tucked a pistol into a deep pocket and, collecting his two guards, faded back into the city's streets. He bypassed the stables and carriages, strode out onto the rough oyster-shell drive, and then onto the cobblestoned streets.

He retraced the funeral course, noting that much of the black draping was already gone from the poorer windows, but not from any grand denial of grief, or political disloyalty, no matter how Simpson grumbled it was so. Rather, Janus thought, it was simple penury and a season unseasonably chill. The lower classes of Murne
would be blanketed tonight in mourning cloth and clad in cut-down and hastily resewn fabric by daybreak.

The kingsguards might complain about a lack of respect and worry about the national appearance, but Janus saw little difference between pennants flying and black armbands, and a populace clad in stolen blacks. Aris surely never had cared enough about the doings of his people to object to them in death.

Janus turned his steps south toward the scented lanterns of Sybarite Street, just being lit against the earliest taste of twilight; the guards grew uncomfortable, their boot heels shuffling as if they bent their heads close to confer, their pace suffering for it. Janus allowed himself a grin, imagining them foreseeing the scandal sheets full of his impropriety; that in the same week his uncle, his
king
, was laid to rest, Janus worked his leisurely way through the brothels. It would be one way to shift the focus from that unfortunate illustration, though a method Bull wouldn't approve. Nor Gost, either.

It wasn't in him to tease the guards long. He, after all, had no desire to see his name belittled. He turned his steps, heading down toward the older section of the city, the empty manor houses near the quay, and his destination.

“Sir,” Simpson said. Janus ignored him until the man said, “My lord,” instead. Another skirmish won.

“Yes?” Janus asked promptly and as perfectly civil as if the man had only now spoken.

“Where do we head? If it's beyond Sybarite Street, we should summon more guards. Your safety—”

“Scared of the Relicts?” Janus said. “And you both armed with pistol and sword. Be easy. The neighborhood we go to is not dangerous, merely dangerously unfashionable.”

Simpson subsided, and Janus kept his face pleasant with some effort. No wonder the Relicts continued to rot away, if even the guards were feared to go there. That would have to change, Janus thought, and soon. There would be no part of his kingdom he would be unable to rule, no pockets of savages where the only rules obeyed were those that guided beasts: fear, hunger, survival.

He turned his steps westward, toward the district where the
wealthiest of merchants had once lived. Seahook Bay, a sharply curved shoreline of toothy jagged rocks, which sailors swore were the shed teeth of the serpent god, Naga, it was all but inaccessible from the water. After a few calamitous attempts to build a pier over the rocks, the king of the time, Aris's grandfather, had decreed it unsuitable for a port and concentrated on the expansion of the southern harbor. The merchants, the
wealthiest
merchants, had been less persuaded; and numerous small boats had wrecked on the shore, scattering goods the merchants hadn't wanted to pay tariffs on.

The house Janus made for was the southernmost house, and the one closest to the encroaching sea. The stables had crumbled into the water some time back, and spurred the abandonment of the house. Any closer to the Relicts, and the manor would have been filled to bursting with life; poor families, runaway children, thieves, and other assorted riffraff. But in this particular instance, the abandonment was superficial, the gates were locked tight, and the grounds secure against any would-be squatters.