Kings and Assassins (13 page)

Janus, at the front gates, turned to face his guards. “Wait here.”

“Your—”

“Wait here,” he repeated, and reluctantly they stepped back. He might trust them with his life, or at least feel confident he could fight them off successfully; bringing them into his secrets was another thing entirely. Janus unearthed a key from his pocket, an overlarge handful of wooden haft and metal teeth. He inserted it into the lock, and turned it. As the gates rattled into life, pulling back with a mutter of clicking clockwork, Walker jumped and swore, his broad country accent deepening the oath. Janus stepped through, turned a dial, and the gates rolled shut again.

He walked up the drive, boots crunching on shale and shell, and could smell the sea as he approached the house, the sea and more—a subtle taste he had learned to recognize as worked metal and grease, solder and tallow. Behind the house, on the sea, a pale glimmer of a sail caught fire in the setting sun.

Reliable man, Tarrant
, Janus thought, before turning to head into the house proper. He let himself through the front door, noticing that the piles of books and journals on the stairs had grown more
precarious and that the dining room table, seen through a door propped open with an oblong piece of brass, was littered with papers and pens and glasses.

Drawn in by hopes that matters had progressed further than he had been told, Janus flipped through illustrations of clockwork engineering, a giant pincer of a machine, a chain and winch, and several crossed-out sketches of a frame that had, by the acrimonious and heavily underscored comments in the margin, failed to support them.

“Chry?” the low voice came, and after it, a figure in long skirts. “Janus. We didn't expect you this evening.”

“Delight.” He nodded in greeting, then said, “I have an appointment with Tarrant, but even without one, I would have come. I'm sick to death of the court.”

“Unfashionable words,” Delight said. He smiled a little around the cup of tea he had carried out with him; his lips left a red blush on the china.

“Unfashionable household,” Janus said, returning the smile to keep any sting from the words. Seahook was not only an ill-favored house in an unpleasant neighborhood, but Delight himself was not the sort to brighten an aristocrat's gathering, not in his skirts and lacy bodices, his rouged lips and blacked lashes.

Delight—Dionyses DeGuerre—had been run out of court years before Janus had arrived in it. It wasn't much he and his brother Chryses had done; they had chosen to attend a notorious gathering, the seasonal courtesan's promenade—the evening fantasia in the well-tended public gardens of Jackal Park when only the courtesans and their chosen escorts were permitted to attend. Chryses had desired to view the season's new beauties and convinced Dionyses to play his female host, allowing them both access to the harlot's court.

The ruse had worked, but Janus had difficulty imagining Delight a successful woman—though he supposed the man had been youthful, willowy, smooth-skinned. From what Delight had said, he had made a more than passable pretty, so much so that Chryses, dizzy with a surfeit of flirtation and drink, turned his attentions to the lady at his side.

Delight, loath to be unmasked and evicted, pushed Chryses off with a laughing promise of
later, later
… when presumably they would be less sotted with spirits and sensuality, and could laugh over the mistake.

Only being as this was Antyre, where scandal was eagerly sought, the twins had been recognized by someone willing to spread the tale, putting the most shameful interpretation on it. And as was often the case, the greater the scandal, the greater the listener's willingness to believe. The twins woke from their carousing and found society had closed its door to them. They had lost their homes and their futures: Dionyses had lost his bride-to-be.

It had been the first genuine moment of awkwardness between Delight and Janus, when Delight mentioned that he envied Janus his wife. That Psyke had been promised to him since birth, their estates and families long allied.

Delight's choice to continue wearing the guise that had seen him cast from court bewildered Janus, but it was old bewilderment.

A near year of acquaintanceship had inured Janus to Delight's vagaries, and soothed the faint irritation that though Delight chose to mimic a lady, he made no real attempt to pass as one. Maledicte had been more thorough. But then, Mal had reasons beyond simple spite.

“Do you have time before your meeting with the good captain?” Delight set his teacup down on the pile of books, adding another ring to the stains already present.

“Some small time,” Janus said. “The guards will be restless soon.” He grimaced. “They're feared of the streets.”

Delight blinked slowly at him, his mouth pursing, then said, “You brought guards here? You've spent the past months slipping their lead before you came here. I began to feel like your mistress or your moneylender.”

“Before, they reported on my doings to Aris. Aris is gone, and their reports are split among Rue, Bull, and the admiral, who bicker over what they mean. Besides, as I've been accused of regicide, I prefer their company to my own, lest I find myself tried and executed on
the streets. Still, you needn't feed them tea. No sense in them becoming too welcome.”

“I'm sure if I offered them tea, they would feel anything but comfortable,” Delight said. “But look here—” He started rifling through the papers, frowning and muttering as the plans he wanted eluded him. He paused a moment, looking at the sheet in his hand, then fumbled for his charcoals and scrabbled a series of notes in his cramped handwriting.

“Tarrant's waiting,” Janus said. “Show me on my return. And, Delight, we need to make a spectacle soon. Gost has expressed interest in a demonstration. Three days hence.”

He nodded absently, and Janus sighed. Brilliant, the both of them, Westfall had been right about that, but Janus would trade a small piece of that brilliance for a gift for organization. He left Delight shifting papers from one pile to the next, and stirring his cooling tea with the charcoal pencil.

Janus took the back way down, the rickety stairs that Chryses had shored up with leftover copper wiring and random patches of wood and metal sheeting. It still swayed in the sea breezes, gave him a dizzying view of the rocky beach below. Janus wished, not for the first time, that Tarrant was a little more accommodating and that it was Tarrant's weight on the stairs instead of his. But Tarrant was a sailor through and through, held the land in the same distrust that most farmers held the sea. It served the kingdom: Tarrant had no desire to give up his ship, and he had been the first to cut sail and run rather than turn his ship over to Itarus. It served Antyre well enough, allowed Tarrant to become a weapon against Harus that couldn't be traced to Aris.

Disarmament had been the second article in the Xipos treaty. The first, of course, had been a tithe that Antyre owed Itarus, a full 30 percent of the country's profits.

If Aris, that peaceable scholar, had died in the war, how different Antyre would be.

Janus made it to the bottom of the stairway and saw the dim, shuttered light that let him know Tarrant was already ashore, the
narrow dinghy anchored precariously on the one flat spar that reached out toward the distant ship.

“Ixion,” Tarrant said, as he approached. “I thought it would be the admiral for sure, with Aris's death so recent. Have to say I wasn't looking forward to that meeting. Ol' Demon's never forgiven my turning pirate. He thought I should have done the same as he, sunk my girl and become a landsman.”

“DeGuerre does seem the unforgiving sort. Besides, he's the last man I could send through Seahook's doors. Were I unable to meet with you, I'd send Delight.” Janus sat down on the rocks out of the sea spray but close enough for speech. Tarrant was a shadow in the darkness, a man both nimble and bulky. The lantern hanging from a raised hook on the dinghy's prow gave Janus the flash of yellowed teeth in a gray-streaked beard.

“So I'm to keep on, then? I'm not recalled? Good thing, as it happens. You know you've got a dozen or more Itarusine vessels lurking around the sea borders? Not merchant ships either. Took some careful sailing, I tell you, to come this close to shore.”

“Unsurprising news but unwelcome,” Janus said. “Itarus will be quick to act on the chaos of Aris's death. With no heir officially named—”

“Well that's you, ain't it,” Tarrant said. “You're not telling me you'll let that idiot child have the throne.”

Such rough support, Janus thought, and wished he could believe it. Tarrant was a man used to dissembling, a good naval man turned privateer at his king's bidding.

“It's a matter for Parliament and the counselors to decide.” Janus chose the perfect truth and let all the rest of it remain unsaid, that he intended to make himself the only viable choice.

“I need supplies. I'm nearly out of shot, and the men will mutiny if the larder's not refilled. Permission to keep some of the captured goods for ourselves?”

“Just don't get caught selling them,” Janus said. “And if you sell them ashore, make sure none of the goods end up on the Itarusine tithe ships. They'll be hunting supplies also, and I don't like to think
what Ivor would say if he found his ships were buying the same merchandise twice.”

Tarrant gave him a wry salute and took a long sip from his flask, offered it. “Drink?”

Janus took the flask, raised it up, sniffed, and smiled. Itarusine brandy. He took a grateful swallow, letting it warm the chill from the sea air's kiss.

Tarrant shifted on the strand, pebbles grinding beneath his weight, preparing to go, and Janus found other words tumbling from his mouth, low and urgent. “That other commission I asked of you? Any word?”

It was madness to even ask. It had been anger and grief that had driven him to ask Tarrant the first time, careless words that could doom his reach for the crown. Madness to remind Tarrant of it, yet Janus couldn't help but ask.

Tarrant said, “Precious little,” as if he didn't understand how badly Janus needed to know. Discretion or sheer uninterest, Janus didn't know which, and it woke him sweating some nights that he had handed Tarrant such a weapon. But it had always been a failing of his, this inability to let go of something that had been his. To let the past fall gracefully away.

“Your dark-haired youth, scarred at cheek and chest. Sounds distinctive enough, 'til you go and mix in with Itarusine born crews, all crow black and battered. No woman either, tall, dark haired. I assume the scars are the same? And that it's your youth attempting to escape notice?

“Women are rare on ships, at least those that travel more than the distance between Itarus's court and our own. I've heard no gossip about one such.”

“There might be a man acting as companion,” Janus said. He grudged the words.

“So you said before. Blond, a servant.”

“He, at least, should be easy to find,” Janus said. “He fancies himself a sailor, and has no reason that I can see for hiding himself away.”

“By your indulgence,” Tarrant said. “If he knows you at all—well,
he might guess at the murder in your eyes and keep his passage quiet.”

Janus said, “He only need fear me if he still travels with my black-haired boy and you've heard nothing? I was certain that they were headed for the Explorations.”

“There's your problem,” Tarrant said. “The Explorations are full of folk who just wanted to start anew and are willing to pay for the privilege. Gossip only goes so far, even between crews. Your need for discretion hampers me. If you permitted, I could send word ashore to the settlements in the Explorations—”

“No,” Janus said.

Tarrant nodded, but there was a certain knowledge in his eyes that Janus would eventually ask for that, as inevitable as a drunkard returning to the tavern. An amused curl took his mouth; he said, “At your leisure, then. I'll be waiting.”

Janus couldn't allow that smugness to prevail, nor could he afford to antagonize Tarrant. Fear, he thought, was not an easy currency here. Tarrant would strike rather than bow his head. The best Janus could do was remind him that Janus wasn't the only vulnerable one.

“Your son is well,” Janus said. “Settled nicely in the palace and at my side most days.”

Tarrant nodded, his voice gone rough. “Piracy's no life for a child. But you tell him I think on him.”

“I will,” Janus said, and let the matter drop. No need to belabor something they both understood. Instead, he took out the pouch he'd prepared for just this meeting, containing a scatter of currencies and gems such as a pirate captain might be expected to carry.

Tarrant tucked the money pouch Janus handed him into his rope belt and said, “I'd best be going. Tides wait for no one. If you have further instructions, you can leave them for me with the
Gazelle
, as usual. But it may be a fortnight or more before I collect them.”

Janus helped him maneuver the dinghy out into the chill water, watched the man push off from the jagged rocks with confidence and long practice.

He climbed the stairs again, more quickly now that he had the
tide raising the breeze at his back. He shivered, wet with spray, and when he reached the house, he saw that Delight had had a moment's thought to spare from his notes. A collection of towels and warmed water waited him.

He made use of them, chasing the chill from his hands, wiping the salt from his face, smoothing the damp-born curl from his hair before returning to Delight and the parlor turned tutorial hall.

Chryses had arrived from his spying among the antimachinists, clad in an open linen shirt and hemp breeches, his hair darkened to brown with dirt and sweat and dye. Delight curled beside him, sitting closer than the books piled on the settle required, and sipped his tea.

Chryses scribbled notes on paper with a rough-tipped nib whose sound reminded Janus of mice scratching.

More supplies
, Janus thought. Chryses was as rough on his possessions as Maledicte, and Janus grew weary of interpreting blotched and blotted writings.

“Janus,” Chryses said. He made to rise, hampered by the welter of Delight's skirts and his own obvious weariness. “How goes it?”