Kings and Assassins (28 page)

Janus bridled, but Rue's face was only quietly thoughtful; in fact, when he saw Janus's expression, he shook his head in apology. “I'm sorry. You cannot like hearing such rumors.”

“I've heard worse,” Janus said. He felt oddly anticipatory. Since Aris's murder, Rue had been occupied in chasing a killer most likely long gone, in separating rumor from truth and fears. That he spoke with such civility to Janus argued that perhaps he accepted that Janus was innocent of regicide. But then again, Rue had been polite during the worst of it, when the smell of Aris's blood still soured the air.

“I would ask a favor of you, sir,” Rue said.

Janus raised a brow, leaning back against the flocked wallpaper of the hallway. It rustled against his sleeves, whispering like the scratching of rats. The muscles in his back tightened, though he endeavored to be still.

“Adiran is the prince of the realm,” Rue began. “The last of the blood—”

“Hardly that,” Janus said.

“Legitimate bloodline, then,” Rue corrected himself. “As such, his life is not his own. For the good of the public confidence, I ask you to stay away from the child.”

Janus had expected something of the sort from the moment Rue mentioned Adiran's rank. It was enough in itself to make him bridle, the idea that this guard thought to tell him what to do. Coupled
with his sudden and new awareness of Ani's presence, it seemed unwise to leave Adiran alone to listen to Black-Winged Ani.

“I think you'll find that I'm the only one who can understand him,” Janus said.

“He has the nurse to see to his needs; and, as he is, he has no desire for more.”

“Are you so certain?” Janus said. “Adiran's wits improve, thus making him capable of boredom and discontent.”

“Your concern does you credit. I will ensure that the nurses report any of Adiran's progress to you.”

Janus bit back any further argument. This was a battle that could be fought later; it was insulting but hardly injurious. “If it will help reassure the people in these uncertain times, I can do little else but agree.”

He nodded stiffly at Rue, got a nod in return, and stalked away, trying to keep calm. It shouldn't rankle so much; Adiran, after all, was nothing to him. Nothing but his only family.

Janus pulled his temper in tighter, and thought, as his mood had gone so foul, perhaps now would be the ideal time to visit Stones.

S
TONEGATE
P
RISON LOOKED MUCH AS
it had on Janus's last visit, an edifice of leprous stone, flaking under the pall of soot, riddled with dark slits like rents in an old shroud, and as quiet as a tomb. Appearances, though, Janus knew, were deceptive. This peace was as false as a courtesan's smile, and hid the same sort of ugliness: disease, murder, madness.

Inside the walls men, women, and children were packed as closely as animals in market pens, punished for crimes that the noble class committed often and without retribution.

It only took a few owed sols to send a merchant or working-class man to Stones, ensuring the ruin of their health and status. The nobles, though, were extended credit until there was no hope of repayment; ironic that a good portion of the debts that destroyed the merchants were caused by the nobles who couldn't be bothered to pay their bills on time. Or at all.

As his carriage neared the prison, the wheels stuck and churned,
the gravel drive unraked and in humped furrows. After the third such jolt, Janus tapped the roof of the carriage. “I'll walk.”

The horses drew to a halt, and Janus stepped out. The air was foul, and he pressed a sleeve to his face, feeling oddly as if the past had impressed itself upon his present. Hadn't he and Miranda watched Kritos come out of this very same carriage, hand up to ward off the stink of the Relicts? Had he been so long away that he had become unable to bear the stink of unwashed men?

The wind rose, coiled miasma about him, and Janus coughed until his gorge rose. This stench had little to do with life and everything to do with death. He stepped out of the shadow of the carriage while the guards' horses bridled and danced, and looked again at Stones.

The narrow strip of gravel leading up to the barred front door was on firm soil, rutted and hollowed and uncared for, but firm. The rest of the courtyard—the dirt was turned and turned again, rich loam showing through, studded with flies rising in small buzzing spirals like smoke.

Simpson's and Walker's familiar faces were grim, repulsed, and Janus nodded at them. “Inside's like to be worse,” he said. The wind shifted; Simpson gagged audibly, and nearly set Janus to doing likewise.

“My lord,” Walker said, his face pale beneath the disfiguring blotches on his cheek. “There's plague inside. The charnel pits are full, thus the ground turning. The very air is riddled with disease.”

“Your concern is noted,” Janus said. He assumed the man feared for his own well-being and not Janus's. The scars on Walker's face were old echoes from the man's battle with a past plague. Janus had a matching array of scars tucked beneath his arm where blisters had burst as a child, though his scars were far lighter. Ella, Miranda's mother, for all her sins, had had a deft hand with folk medicine.

Janus might fear a relapse of the plague himself had it not been proven to him that for those who survived, the plague's grasp grew weak on them ever after. A later bout of it during his time in Winter Court had left him unmarked, though others died.

Janus continued on his way, though Walker was right: the air was
weighted with disease, so strong a presence that the air seemed smudged by it. Walker conferred briefly with Simpson, and Simpson went back to stand guard over the carriage and coachman. Not an illogical assignment, Janus reflected. Times were uncertain; his carriage might be attacked for any number of reasons from penury to politics, while he would be safer than usual inside a prison. His enemies preferred to strike in the dark and from behind.

Walker hastened to Janus's side. “My lord, may I ask your business here?”

“No,” Janus said. He narrowed his eyes at the first dim stretch of the tunnel entrance, trying to recall his prior visit. Then, he had been focused on retrieving Mal.

The halls were dark, dirty, and narrow; the ground beneath his boots soft with dirt and spilled blood; and the stink seemed embedded in the very stone. Janus took his sleeve from his face, forced himself to breathe it in. Wasn't this the stench of his childhood, the odor of poverty without pride or expectation? Wasn't this what he intended to eradicate from his kingdom?

“Such a sour face. Is my prison not to your liking, my lord?” Damastes growled when Janus entered the head jailer's chambers. Janus wove his way through the man's rooms, crowded to the ceiling with a collection of bribes and favors that encompassed everything from jewelry to furniture, and drew up a seat before the man's desk, a delicate piece of furniture in the latest fashion, all gilt edges and painted wood. A dish of herbs burned sluggishly, the scented smoke pushing back some of the prison stench.

“The prison's fine; it's only the wrong people are in it,” Janus said.

“Come to take someone else out, my lord?” Damastes asked. “Last time, it was the courtier Maledicte. I was surprised to not find you here in his place, after what he did.”

“Perhaps you should be more cautious with your tongue, man,” Janus said. “You address a peer.”

“Ha,” Damastes said. “A jumped-up bastard—” He broke off to cough, a long, liquid sound that told Janus exactly why Damastes felt so free to disparage him. The man was dying.

Best to business, then. Janus took out the parure he had thieved
from Psyke's chambers; he doubted she would miss it, having recoiled from it when he offered it to her, but she might object to the use he had for it. Sudden bright motes danced in the close room as the diamonds and gold threw back the light. “You have jewels aplenty, I am well aware. But I also recall you had an aristocratic sensibility. The stones are worth a fortune, but the provenance …”

“The Lovesy parure,” Damastes said. “Given to Amarantha Lovesy, who wed your father and who died by Maledicte's hand. These are gems with history.” He wiped his mouth on a silk handkerchief, spotting it with a smear of watery blood. He reached out for the necklace, then hesitated, his strange stone-colored eyes glancing at Janus. “What do you want for it?”

“Poole,” Janus said. “To treat as I see fit.” He brushed at the dust clinging to the overtasseled lampshade, setting the fabric wavering, releasing the scent of old flame.

Damastes sat back without touching the necklace, though every sinew in his body yearned toward it. “You overpay. Something that is uncommon both in the general and in the specific. What aristocrat ever looses his grip on coin without need?”

Janus let the necklace lie. “My wife displeases me, taking up with unpleasant company. Why not be rid of her jewelry?”

Damastes laughed, then choked. The handkerchief came into use again, and longer this time, came away wetter and darker. He dropped the sodden cloth, reached out and drew the necklace to him, tucking it beneath his brocade vest with the greedy savor of a child hiding away a sweet lest he be expected to share. The bracelet and earrings followed, finding a new and unlikely home in the jailer's clothes.

Janus rose to go, and Damastes said, “Will you kill him?” Before Janus could confirm or deny, Damastes went on, “If you do … take his body elsewhere for burial. We're awash in corpses here.”

J
ANUS TOOK THE NARROW STAIRS
to Poole's tower cell; a litany of cries and curses trailed up from the common cells spurring him upward. A tight grin touched his face, banished before he tapped on Poole's half-open door.

“What is it?” Poole snapped, without looking up from his desk. His untidy hair and lean fingers were constantly in motion as he sketched figure after figure, and pushed his graying hair, far too long for fashion, from his face. On one of the sweeps, he caught a clear glimpse of Janus and his fingers stilled. He dropped his charcoal; it splintered on the flagstones.

“You,” he said. He leaned back in his chair, plush velvet and leather, and lit a cigarillo with the same nervous gestures that seemed more habit than actual emotion. “Come to threaten me? Bribe me to stop my inks?” Charcoal dust smudged one eye socket and the bridge of his thin, beaky nose.

“Would it work?” Janus said, honestly curious. He had always wondered if Poole were purely a scandal chaser or a man of genuine feeling.

“I stand by my art,” Poole said. He reached past the rat's litter of scrap paper on his desk and dug out a monocle, screwing it into the smudged eye socket, adding another sooty print to his cheekbone.

“I'm glad,” Janus said.

The monocle shifted abruptly, nearly falling loose, though Poole's face otherwise betrayed no surprise. “Really? I hadn't thought you a man appreciative of the art of truth.”

“I'm not appreciative,” Janus said. “Don't mistake me, Poole. And your truths are only half-truths at best. You belabor old wounds and wake new ones.”

“I speak for the common men and their fears,” Poole said, polishing his monocle with feverish intensity.

“You care for them? For their needs, their wants, their pains?”

“More than you do, for all that you were born one of them.”

Janus grinned. “Then you'll be pleased that I've come here to help further your understanding of the common man.” He pushed aside a sheaf of papers, lip curling as he uncovered one of Poole's earlier sketches of the dock debacle, and leaned against the exposed corner of the desk.

“Help … ?”

“You see only the poor, suffering men with hearts of gold and an earnest desire to prosper. I think you need to see the other side—
those poor who would rather drag everyone down to their level than raise a hand to help their neighbors. The mothers who sell their children to feed themselves. The men who take their frustrations out on women's bodies or find solace in drink or drugs until they end up dead and decaying in the streets.”

“That's the Relicts,” Poole said. “Those who bide there are nothing but animals.”

Janus reached across the desk, collected a bottle of whiskey and the glass beside it, pouring himself a splash just to watch Poole bridle at Janus's easy assumption of his belongings. “Tell yourself that. Why not? It's what the aristocrats say so they can despise us without any such inconvenience as conscience. It's what allows the struggling middle class to stay calm, instead of murdering us in our sleep. After all, they can always reassure themselves that the Relict rats have it worse, reassure themselves that they are prospering. They are, in comparison. Of course, starving dogs are prosperous in comparison.”

“Aris sent the Particulars to clean the Relicts of such influences.”

“Oh yes,” Janus said, “and perhaps Echo, for all his sins, had the right of it. He didn't target the current blackguards and whores, let them kill each other off. Echo concentrated on the children. Do you know how many of us his men sent to the sea or saw beaten and jailed for no more a sin than a theft of food?”

Janus found his breath coming fast, his hands tightening on the glass and the bottle, remembering Miranda crying as their friends were lost to Echo's bells. He shook his head. “But we are talking of your future, not my past. Gather your paper, your inkwell, your charcoal and quills.”

“You've paid for my release?” Poole gaped like a fish, long limbs gone slack and spindly in surprise. His monocle dropped to his breast, and he didn't pay it any heed at all.

“Ease your mind. The world is as you understand it, and I am the monster you call me. I've paid for new lodgings for you. You'll enjoy your stay in the central cells, down with your poor, misunderstood common man. When you've seen enough, write me.”

Poole's face, pale already from the long confinement in Stones Tower, grayed; he looked his age for the first time, his fervor faded to
an old man's fear. “You're a cruel man, Last, and foolish. When my patron hears about this—”

“How will he hear?” Janus said. “Will you write him? I warn you, the only letter that will leave this place will be the one with my direction upon it. Best save your paper.”