Kings and Assassins (35 page)

The carriage lurched again, like a ship caught in the first touch of the outbound tide. Psyke rocked with the movement, tucked her skirts tight about herself. Without thinking, Janus leaned forward and caught first her knee, then pushing up the heavy drape of black-dyed wool and black-stained petticoat to reveal her bare feet.

He traced the white arch of her foot, the grit and dust beneath her heel and toes. She shivered.

“Even outside?” he asked. “Even then?”

“I crave the clay beneath my feet.” Her eyes on his were sober, testing, as if to ask what would he do with her honesty.

He rubbed at the delicate joint of ankle and foot, the curve of tight-drawn tendons. “Need I prepare quarters for you in the depths of the palace? Have the servants lay down dirt and stone instead of rugs?”

“Challacombe tells me my ancestor disappeared into those secret corridors. Perhaps I could spend my time hunting his bones.”

“And speaking to them?” And what was this between them? Gentle teasing or menace so oblique that Janus wasn't sure who threatened whom?

She only dimpled at him, as sweetly pretty as she had been the day he had first seen her, dancing with Maledicte. “Sir, I am a lady. I speak only to those I've been properly introduced to.”

“I must say I've missed you,” he said. “Your guests lack humor.”

She sighed, leaned back, her smile sliding away. He shifted to sit beside her instead of across from her, heedless of the poison that might emanate from her.

Psyke leaned her head against his shoulder, tucking her feet up on the bench. “Well, Aris and Challacombe are dour enough, I admit. But Mirabile finds many things amusing. Unfortunately, I do not. She speaks to me,
through
me, and even while I mouth her words, respond to her thoughts … all I recall is waking to find her by my bedside and my sisters slaughtered.”

The quiet horror in her voice, the weary pain, woke old memories
in Janus, nights when Miranda snugged herself tight against him and listed their friends lost to predation on the streets.

Was it any wonder that the Relicts thrived so? When dangerous women like Mirabile had had free rein in society? Only when Mirabile had turned blatantly murderous, when she turned her attention to the most innocent of the nobility—the debutantes—had anyone thought to stop her. Of course, by then, it was too late.

He idly stroked the curved bones of Psyke's ankle, feeling the skin warm beneath his hand; the pulse fluttering there increased from its slow and steady beat to something quick and light. Her lips parted, palest red and petal soft. He leaned closer, thinking of her saying,
I loved your passion
, thinking of her spurning the duchess's company for his, of her quietly translating the motions Parliament had made. His mouth brushed hers; her lips and breath were cold, but her tongue, pressing against his own, was warm, a lick of flame in the midst of frost.

He pulled away, thinking
poison
.

“You're very accommodating today,” he said.

“You brought Dionyses back to the palace.”

In her eyes, he saw it was as easy as that. For a woman who'd lost her entire family and friends to a murderous witch, Delight was her family regained.

Our estates marched together
, Delight had said.
We were to be wed
.

The carriage halted, nearly pitched them to the floor as the horses whinnied and jerked in the traces, refusing to be gentled.

The outcry in the street took on a feverish pitch. Janus pressed Psyke back to the seat.

Walker dropped off the foot rail, disappeared from sight with a grunt. Janus hissed, bent, pulled the knife from his boot, and put it into Psyke's hands. “Guard yourself.”

“I have better weapons than steel at my disposal, though I thank you for your concern,” she said. And it wasn't Psyke in her eyes, but the cold superiority of Mirabile. Challacombe would know better than to spurn a weapon of any kind. And Aris? Would he still be turning the blade in his hands, reluctant to admit the need for it?

Janus hastened out of the carriage at another shout and the splintering
of wood, the screaming of horses. Not their carriage, thankfully, but close.

The street was a seething mass of packed carriages—horses breaking free and shouldering through, heads raised, eyes white and wild—and in the midst of it all, the antimachinists, hands full of rocks, were laying concerted efforts into destroying everything they could. The chant demanding Poole's release had grown ragged, gone incomprehensible as all unison was lost.

A pistol shot cracked the air, and Janus crouched, hand going to his saber. A guard? Or did the rioters have more dangerous weapons?

A single antimachinist saw Janus, and his eyes widened in fierce exultation. “Ixion!” He plunged toward him, raising a stick studded with broken glass.

Janus fell back. He knew that sticks were far more dangerous than the nobles acknowledged; he had used them to considerable effect himself as a youth. He wasn't hampered by ignorance or surprise, and when the man moved into range, Janus unsheathed his saber into the man's heart. Clean and quick, the best way to deal with enemies in a shifting crowd of this size.

Simpson burst through a small knot of struggling men; common people going about their business who found their morning violently interrupted and were trying to get out of the way.

“My lord!”

Janus didn't have a response for him. His attention had been drawn across the square where Gost's carriage, distinctive with its heavy sun-shading draperies across the doors, was listing, nearly tilted over.

The epiphany burst over him.
This
was Ivor's plan.
This
was the manner in which he chose to remove Gost. A riot, where any death could be deemed accidental, but the damage done…. Janus gritted his teeth, regretting the bargain more than ever.

Gost's carriage swayed; the dark curtain billowed into the shape of two men, struggling. Janus kicked a man in the knee; the man—antimachinist or frightened citizen, it didn't matter—collapsed and
cleared a path for Janus's next few steps. Simpson called after him, doggedly pursuing.

The carriage door burst open, revealing a heavyset, hawk-face blond wielding a bloody sword, as overtly a murderer as any stage villain. Gost's body tumbled out after him, rolling into the dirt.

The man dropped from the step, landed with an awkward lurch; and Janus found himself suddenly too close to him, in a clearing that hadn't existed a heartbeat ago.

The assassin's face was shadowed by a low-brimmed hat, but his eyes flicked once at Janus, letting the bloody sword shift to preparedness again. Janus frowned but echoed it. Not a rapier, but a saber. An Itarusine to be sure, no matter the Antyrrian laborer's clothes.

The man's gaze shifted abruptly to someone in back of Janus; Janus half turned, unwilling to be caught from behind, equally aware that it might be nothing more than a feint. The man hurled himself into the crowd and did his best to disappear.

Simpson drew up beside Janus, pistol still held ready. “Who was that?”

“Harm, I believe,” Janus said. He stared at the crowd a moment longer, reliving the moment when Harm landed, that awkward lurch; Chryses had said the man was scarred heavily, but that argued scars that reached into muscle. It stirred small chords of memory, but came to nothing.

“Harm his avocation, also. Gost is dead.”

Most decidedly so. Closer inspection revealed the wounds to be ugly, sloppy, and indecisive, as if Harm had dithered between the heart, the liver, the stomach, and finally selected them all.

Make it hurt
, Janus had said. Ivor had apparently passed along those instructions, or Harm was just the sort to enjoy it. Gost's face was white and contorted, his eyes bulging, his mouth obscured by a froth of blood.

Hoofbeats and ringing handbells penetrated the shouts and screams, and Janus allowed Simpson to keep him sheltered against Gost's coach while the Particulars cleared the streets of rioters with shot, sword, and spear.

When he returned to his coach, Simpson in tow, he found Psyke sitting on the coachman's bench, face tilted back as if she were enjoying the quiet and the sunshine, her bare feet dangling, while all about her, men lay dead, including Walker. Janus bent, turned him over, but found no wound. Simpson, kneeling over first one corpse, then another, cast a burdened glance at Psyke and made the tiny
avert
against evil.

HE PALACE WAS SILENT THAT
night, dinner around the great table, subdued. Servants ghosted about with reddened eyes and unhappy faces: The Particulars' solution to the rioting had been to kill or arrest the commoners in the square whether they declared they were simple merchants or boasted of being antimachinists. Husbands and brothers had been taken to Stones, fathers and uncles had been killed, and still, the servers bent their heads.

Janus watched them and kept a careful rein on his appetite. Poison was too easy to come by, and there was a store of ill will focused on the nobility at the moment.

Harm, of course, had managed to elude the soldiers. Rue swore it wouldn't be for long, and had set the Particulars back to their hunt. Even now, they fanned the embers of the riot anew in their search of houses, shops, inns, and ships. Perhaps they had even braved the Relicts.

Janus turned his gaze from Gost's empty seat, found Ivor watching him. The prince tilted his goblet just slightly, enough so that Janus knew it for the toast it was, but others might see only a temporarily unsteady hand.

Psyke, seated at the head of the table, sat between two empty chairs—Aris's and Gost's. Her eyes were unfocused; her lips moved in constant whispers, and Janus doubted she felt alone at all. The rest
of the table was studded with other absences. Adiran—confined to his nursery under doubled guard. The duchess—sealed into her Garden Square residence, behind shuttered windows and locked doors, out of rage at Gost's death, or fear.

Janus sent back his plate, the meal untouched, and excused himself. Bull hastily took a last forkful and stood. DeGuerre grumbled but threw down his napkin and rose also. Ivor grinned, lounged back in his seat, and said, “Time for after dinner drinks already? I knew I was going to like you as regent, my pet.”

Janus froze, caught on the points of several different realizations, some of them pleasant, some of them … not. With Gost's death, with Blythe's odd absence, with Bull's apparent support, the regency was nearly his; Admiral DeGuerre might grumble, but he knew it. With Gost gone, Janus was the ranking man at the table. When he rose, the meal ended, as did his hopes for a quiet escape. Ivor, damn him, read the surprise on his face all too easily.

Janus refused to sit back down, refused to show he had forgotten such basic etiquette, and so merely nodded before retiring to the parlor. Psyke looked up, her eyes drowning blue, alone at the table with her ghosts.

Ivor followed them into the king's study, settled himself with all the smugness of a cat having gained access to a place it was forbidden to be.

Janus ignored him for the moment, but Ivor's presence cast a heavy pall over the room. Bull looked near to bursting; DeGuerre grew more dyspeptic by the second. The only thing lacking was Blythe sulking like a spoiled child or itching to duel.

“Where
is
Blythe?” Janus asked. It was the only question suited to the audience at hand. Any talk of the riot, Gost's death, or politics would have to wait.

Admiral DeGuerre was the one to break silence and answer, contempt for Blythe momentarily overriding his dislike of Janus. “Fled to the countryside,” he said. “Rethought his challenge to you.”

“Apparently,” Bull said, “he was much struck with your guard's account of how you held your own in the rioting. Simpson tells me you defeated several armed rioters on your own?”

“They had sticks,” Janus said. “I had a sword.”

“I understand your wife accounted for six men, including her guard, and with no mark upon them,” Ivor said. “How does she explain it? Or is it something you'd rather keep secret?”