Kings and Assassins (31 page)

“Haith,” she said. “Haith.”

Delight let out a breath of dismay. This was madness, the unpalatable result of a diet of murder, pain, and family history that claimed allegiance with the god. No wonder Janus had asked for tracts on the gods. He needed to understand Psyke's illness.

“You don't believe me,” she said. She folded into herself, rested her head on the jut of her knee as if she were too weary to keep it raised. “I am the last of the Redoubts, the last of the line that He raised to prominence. Is it so remarkable that the god of death would wish to see something end?” Her voice flattened, lost all warmth, all hope.

Delight heard footsteps in the corridor, a soft shuff of palace shoes on thick carpeting, and prayed for interruption, no matter the damage to his reputation.

“Your observations fail you, Delight. You choose not to see. Others know the truth, either intuited or reasoned out. The duchess, Adiran, Ivor, even Janus. Oh, Janus knows best of all what I carry with me.”

She slipped from the window seat like a spill of silk; her hands wrapped about his forearm, claws cold and taut. “Their voices grow greater in number every day; do you know how it galls to use Mirabile's deathless spite to keep the others away? But their voices swell and I—

“Help me,”
she pled, once she had regained control of her voice. She turned her hands on each other, knotted her fingers. “Our families were friendly once. We played together as children….”

Before he was forced to answer, Janus's page entered, his small frame burdened with a double armful of clothes. Psyke took the opportunity to slip away; Evan looked after her, thrust the clothes into Delight's hastily raised arms. “Milord Last's in the king's study,” he said. “Meet him there.” Without waiting for a response, the boy turned and hastened off in the same direction Psyke had taken.

Janus knows
, she had said. With his page tracking her like a small, determined hound it was no wonder she took it for confirmation of Janus's belief.

Delight turned to the piles of clothes and spread them out alongside the bed. Two separate outfits lay before him. One was akin to his usual wear: thick-woven woolen skirts and blouse, awkward to move in but quite sturdy in the surrounds of chemicals and reluctant to burn; the other was men's clothes fit for a day at Parliament. Sober in color and cut, wool also, but of a fineness he hadn't felt in years. He ran a finger down the breeches, admired the simplicity of the lines, the crispness of the black wool, the brightness of the white, the flare of blue in the waistcoat; these came from Last's closet, without a doubt, would be a quiet shield against naysayers unhappy with his return to court.

Delight licked his lips, unaccountably nervous with having a choice presented to him. He missed Seahook, the certainties of the day there, even as he reached for the pants. Janus would have another laboratory set up soon, its focus shifted now from creation to defense. With the Itarusine ships closing in, the privateers became more than smugglers: They became their first and perhaps only line of defense. They would need more cannon and shot, and made quickly. If Antyre meant to drive back the Itarusines, it would have to be soon.

“D
IONYSES
D
E
G
UERRE
,”
THE GUARD SAID
, ushering him into the study. Janus looked up from his narrow focus on the letters spread across the table, and had to blink Delight into clarity. Perhaps he should ask Delight to make him a pair of spectacles, if the reading could blur his vision. Or perhaps he had simply been awake too long. The past two days had left him with little recourse.

With Delight playing dead in Psyke's bed, Janus's wife had crept
into his. Given what he knew of Psyke's unnatural ally, of her predilection for dying and resurrecting in her sleep, Janus chose to stay awake rather than lie beside her. Dahlia's death had been lingering and painful from all accounts.

“You look tired,” Delight said.

“You look… fashionable,” Janus said. Though Janus had sent the men's clothing along with the women's, he belatedly regretted doing so. Delight, dressed as a man, made sober by sorrow, seemed more a threatening stranger than the eccentric inventor Janus had learned to count a friend.

“I presumed it a veiled request,” Delight said, “to not scandalize the delicate sensibilities of the court.”

“Dress as you please,” Janus said. “Do as you please, only aid me with these encroaching and maddening throne thieves!” He tossed down the latest demands from Itarusine merchants and from the antimachinists who had shown the poor taste to flaunt the destruction of Seahook and sign their names to the parchment. The Particulars were out arresting them now.

Delight stepped back, wariness showing in the line of his body, in the way his hands spread out, carefully held low. “Last—”

“Be easy, Delight. I'm not like to take your head off when I need it to keep Antyre from becoming nothing more than an Itarusine colony.”

Delight dropped into one of the wing chairs by the empty hearth and said, “I'm hungry.” He gestured toward the tray of sandwiches at Janus's side. “May I?”

“I wouldn't,” Janus said. “I didn't recognize the maidservant who brought them, and she seemed oddly unfamiliar with the palace. The wine's quite safe.”

Delight gaped a moment, and then said, “You… poison … how can you live like this?”

“As I've always lived,” Janus said. “Cautiously.”

A man clad in the oiled, gray greatcoat of a city Particular put his head in. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but the captain said to tell you, we got three of the troublemakers, tossed em into Stones. You want us to see them executed?”

“How does the prison fare? When I was there a few days ago, it seemed vile enough to serve as punishment for all but the worst offenders to the crown.”

“There's sickness, so we heard. We didn't go in beyond the gates, much,” the Particular said. “Sickness is affecting even the guards, which makes the food rounds a little less'n regular, if you understand.”

The man reached into his greatcoat pocket, and Janus tensed, hand falling to his sword hilt.

“The jailer gave me something for you.” The Particular passed him a handful of papers bound neatly into a square, bowed, and left.

Janus opened the packet and found three thick sheets tucked within, scribbled, smudgy drawings of prisoners in extremis, crouched over food bowls, locked in a cloudy charcoal brawl.
Incorrigible
, he thought, and set the images aside for the words written on the wrapper itself.

Janus laughed. Did the man think he was being subtle?

“Good news?” Delight asked.

“Poole,” Janus said, “carefully not asking for release though he wants it.”

“You locked him up?” Delight asked.

“No,” Janus said. “Apparently my father and I had one thing in common after all. Even if it was only hatred of a caricaturist. It's strange how you notice these things once it's too—” He stopped his careless words. Delight's face shuttered. He wrapped an arm about himself.

“Where will I work?” Delight asked. “I want to get back to work. Tarrant… Oh! Tarrant won't know about the fire; he's supposed to rendezvous with us—”

“The whole hillside's charred,” Janus said. “He'll find someplace else to drop anchor, and send us a message.”

“So slow,” Delight mourned. “And the roads full of antimachinists.”

“They're people, not locusts,” Janus said. “There's a finite number of them. Don't borrow trouble; we've quite enough of it as it is.” He poured Delight a glass of the wine, handed it to him, though the man eyed it with a mixture of desire and horror.

As if getting the worst out of the way, he took several large swallows, and sighed when he didn't fall dead on the spot. “Who's trying to poison you?” Delight asked.

“Most recently?” Janus asked. “I'd assume Lord Blythe. He was most annoyed that I chose not to respond to his demands.”

Delight groaned. “He was a horrible nit when I was a boy. Sounds as if he's only gotten worse.”

“The duchess encourages him,” Janus said. “Still, his attempts are transparent and virtually harmless. It's Psyke I have to beware.”

Delight, leaning back in the chair, started forward, eyes narrowing. “What have you done to her? She's gone mad. You fault the duchess for encouraging Blythe's fancies, but you do the same to Psyke, humoring her.”

“Not encourage,” Janus said. “Acknowledge the change in her, yes.”

“She thinks she's followed by Haith!” Delight said. “You could see her to the physician.” The wine in his cup sloshed as he gestured.

“You seem very ready to condemn her,” Janus said.

“Madness can be cured, if caught soon enough, if she can be taught what is real and what is false.”

“And you know which is real better than she,” Janus said. “Is it still mad if the facts are on her side?”

“Yes,” Delight said. “The gods are gone, and, if truth be told, I doubt they ever existed at all, beyond men's desire for a greater power to instruct them.”

“Ani exists in tangible form,” Janus said. He understood Delight's position, had held it himself until Miranda's collaboration with Ani created Maledicte.

“I thought you a rational man.”

Janus sighed. He didn't have the time to waste on this. “Rational enough to know that belief is unnecessary in the face of facts. The gods exist, Delight, whether we wish them to or not. I can only work toward a world where they are not needed. To make them disappear as they once pretended to do.”

Ruthlessly, he changed the subject. Remarkable how irrational a rational man could be.

“I'll have your new workshop set up in the palace itself. The first and second story of the old wing are taken up with Ivor and his staff, but the ground floor and dungeon might be ideal. It connects to the stables and the gardens for ease of delivery, and, as added benefit, Ivor's men will be less likely to set it afire if it's beneath their feet.”

“What's to keep them from viewing my progress?” Delight asked.

“A score of kingsguards,” Janus said. “I've so many soldiers following me around, I'm sure we must have a surplus. I'll speak to Rue for you. In the interim, feel free to ring for a meal. If you make clear it's not for me, there should be no trouble at all.”

MITRY MUST APPROVE OF YOU,”
Ivor said. His voice echoed in the stone surrounds and faded against the rolled-up carpets. The amusement on his face lingered.

“Does he approve of anyone?” Janus asked. “He's always so sour.”

“He allowed you entrance, didn't he, pet, when I am most assuredly not prepared for company. Or did you tell him you've come to fence?”

When Janus arrived, he found Ivor's servants had been busy turning the dining room into a makeshift salle, rolling the carpets to bare the smooth stone beneath—better for sure footing—the furniture piled against the wall, a pyramid of dark wood in the dimly lit room. The servants were dismissed, sent off to find Ivor more lamps, the better to light the room. Meals were pleasant in dim surroundings, but blade work was best done in the light.

Ivor raised his saber in a mocking imitation of a dueler saluting his opponent. For a moment, Janus wanted to take the challenge on; the assassination attempt of the week previous had only whetted his appetite, not sated it, and here was an opponent who would not only meet his blade but be eager for it.

The tip of Ivor's blade sketched a quick slash toward Janus's throat at a distance far enough it couldn't be misconstrued as an actual threat, yet it was enough to cool Janus's enthusiasm. Ivor was a
strong bladesman, a better duelist, and while Janus doubted Ivor would try to kill him in the Antyrrian palace, a serious wound, meant to slow and distract, could easily fit itself into his schemes.

Janus shook his head. “Another time, perhaps.”

Ivor scrubbed a towel through his hair, tossed it aside, letting it land over yet another ubiquitous idol of Haith, and took a seat on the single remaining chair in the room. “Have you come to join me for dinner, then? It'll be a few hours, yet,” Ivor said.

Janus shook his head, and Ivor smiled. “Cook will be sorry to hear it. She likes your appetite.”

Ivor set down the blade and took up a tin of oil and a polishing cloth. He sent a thin stream of oil onto the blade, let it spill down, illuminating nicks in the metal by creating tiny waves.

Janus saw the polishing cloth grow snags as it swept over the tiny imperfections: Ivor's weapon was both well cared for and hard used, a visible reminder of duels won, lives lost.

Janus sat on the pile of the rolled rugs, feeling much like a foreign dignitary of the Kyrdic court, and said, “I came to see if you would make good on your claims of friendship. I came to see if you would kill a man for me.”