Kings and Assassins (44 page)

Delight fell back, either out of breath or startled by Janus's implicit admission. It didn't signify much. Not when Ivor could be whispering poison into Adiran's ear, dooming Antyre. If Adiran
came after him, Antyre would lose both of them and be easy prey for Itarus.

Janus skidded as he reached the top of the stairs; his boot slipping on the marble. He thought it was soot, until he saw the guard lying in blood beyond it. A bruise blacked his temple, but he breathed.

Ivor was hurrying, indeed
, Janus thought,
to leave the man alive
. It gave him a brief spurt of hope. Perhaps he could catch Ivor with the boy, confuse the situation, though Black-Winged Ani, given the choice between killers to seek vengeance upon, would probably take both their throats.

Still, the living guard was evocative. If Ivor was in so much of a hurry, it was likely he meant to make his stand elsewhere.

The ships
, Janus thought. He'd take Adiran to the ships if he could, learning to corral Ani's power to best effect.

Janus's hopes dwindled as the silence of the hall struck him. If Ivor were still present, there would be struggle. A boy's pained whimper caught his ear, coming from the prince's nursery. He hesitated a moment, drew his blade. One-armed wasn't the ideal way to face Ivor; out of breath and agitated would see him dead.

Correction
, he thought drily. Black-Winged Ani could see him dead no matter his state, no matter his weapon. Terror washed over him like the flux, like the icy water of the winter sea that he had been forcibly bathed in. As then, Janus refused to let it shake him.

He wished, however, that he had Psyke at his side.

The boy's whimper sounded again, the choked-off sobs of a child in pain. Janus stepped into the room and dropped his blade.

“Evan,” he said. There was a tangle of guards at the far wall, one groaning, the other sporting a broken arm, whose bone jutted free of flesh.

Janus afforded them only a cursory look—they'd live—and bent over Evan. “J-janus,” the boy whimpered, his hands clutched over his belly.

“Shh,” Janus said, “hush, let me look.” His heart throbbed; his throat felt thick.

“Adiran stabbed—” Evan's face ran wet with tears. His cheeks should have been blotchy; instead they were bloodless. He grabbed
at Janus. “I want my da—” and suddenly Janus was holding a limp child. He gathered him up, though his bad arm trembled, and he had to roll the boy closer to his chest. Blood wet his shirt and skin.

No guards
, Janus thought wildly. There were always guards. He had spent cumulative hours bemoaning the fact, and now… he was on his own.

He headed for the stairs, trying to peer over the boy's jutting shoulder, the limp fall of his neck. “Rue!” he shouted and, by the gods, the man was there.

Rue swore. “The prince?”

“Gone with Ivor,” Janus said. “Help me get Evan to the physician. He's been gut stabbed.”

Rue winced. “Kinder perhaps to let him go—”

“No,” Janus said. “He
has
to live. Antyre depends on it.”

He took the stairs with a stride that tried to combine the nearly impossible mixture of haste and care, remembered the guard at the landing, and stepped over him. Rue caught up, his face white and set.

“Run ahead,” Janus said. “No matter who Sir Robert's helping, this boy must come first.”

Rue shot him a look mingled of horror and doubt, but he darted ahead, unimpeded by any burden but fear.

Janus, watching him go, nearly slipped. A quick shoulder under his steadied him, though his rescuer, Psyke, protested the effort it took. Janus checked Evan's security in his arms, tilted the boy's head back so his shallow breathing cooled the sweat on his neck.

“His mother's frightened,” Psyke said.

“His mother's dead.”

“She still knows her child,” she said. Her voice was serene, her expression not. “What's happened? I heard shouting and there's the stink of blood in the halls.”

“Ivor.”

“Did he strike Evan down?” Her fingers, wound into his sleeve, knotted. “Did he take Adiran?”

“He took Adiran. But Adiran dealt Evan's blow—”

“The compact,” she breathed. “Ani's compact.”

“Can you slow his death?” Janus asked.

“I…” For a maddening moment, he thought she meant to deny it, but she finished, “I only deal it.” As if in emphasis, the boy's breathing stuttered, his body twitched and spasmed, and Psyke nearly sent Janus down the stairs as she recoiled.

“Forgive me,” she said, backing away, taking the stairs one at a time, her eyes on him. “Save the boy.”

“Psyke—” Janus called. She paused. “There must be something you can do.”

“Haith brings
death,”
she whispered. “I can do nothing.” She turned and fled, bare feet soundless, sure-footed even in the spilled blood.

Janus found Rue coming to meet him, and though the man offered, refused to give up his burden.

“Do you know where Ivor will go? Delight said you thought the docks, but the gates will slow—”

“Ani will not be slowed, should she choose otherwise,” Janus said.

Sir Robert came out, blanched, and said, “Just a child!” He took Evan from Janus's arms, asked tersely, “Is it your blood or his decorating your shirt?”

“His,” Janus said.

Sir Robert hissed when he saw the wound.

“Will he live?” Janus asked. Rue leaned close to hear the answer.

“It's not so bad a wound,” Sir Robert said, after an investigation that had Evan whimpering, even unconscious. “It's shallow and untutored, a narrow wound, dealt by a weak man or—”

“A child,” Rue murmured. “The prince.” Dawning realization showed in his eyes; he drew a hand over his face and leaned back against the wall.

“On a man, I'd say he'd heal and well. But it's a foul big wound on a child….” Sir Robert's face went grim and set; he called out to his aide to bring Laudable and plenty of it.

Janus laid a hand over the man's wrist, tightened his grip. “Evan has to live.”

“Oh, his father's one of your privateers, I understand, but—”

“If he dies,” Janus said, “if he dies, then Adiran has given his soul into Ani's keeping. If he dies, Antyre's future goes with him.”

Sir Robert's lips thinned, and he bent over the boy, determination replacing the pity in his eyes.

T
HE NIGHT WAS DARK, FULL
of lingering smoke that clung to the greenery around the palace. Ivor's flames had burned hot, had succeeded in getting a foothold in the stables, and the soft grasses of the gardens were hummocked and pitted with the marks of horses being hastily led away from the flames. Janus stumbled over one of the ruts, saved himself from falling by catching at a thorny climber. He didn't know whether to be grateful or dismayed that his grip failed, sending him to a knee but sparing him a palm studded with thorns.

A form ghosted out of the night, and Janus shifted his weight, trying frantically to get to a stance where he could draw his blade, its sheath grating against the dirt. “My lord,” Simpson said, and Janus found himself pathetically grateful that it was a familiar face. Then he remembered the pistol shot aimed at him during the duchess's arrest: Simpson had been among the guards in the throne room.

Still, Janus took the hand held out to him, allowed the guard to pull him to his feet. And if his hand fell again to his sword hilt, Simpson said nothing but merely slid his gaze over it, then took a judicious step back once Janus had his feet again.

“We need horses for riding,” Janus said. “Steady tempered. I need an escort to the docks.”

Simpson—his hands stained with soot, exertion painting darker streaks along the sides of his shirt, his coat long ago discarded—looked as if he wanted to protest, but stifled it.

Instead, he nodded. “I'll inform Rue.”

F
ULL NIGHT WAS ON THEM
now, moonlight seeping slowly through the sea fogs, the smoke that blanketed the city. The sounds of their horses' hooves were muffled, and they went slowly, despite the lanterns they carried, despite the lamps lit along the streets. The guards' faces were grimly set, and Janus's heart echoed it. The night sky settled heavily upon him: the raspy flutter of wings as the rooks sought their destination; the swelter of fire pits that burned in the
poorer neighborhoods—dug deep, cheap burials for those who died of the plague.

Janus shivered; his mind felt empty, all his cleverness stripped away. He had no plan, at least none he could feel any certainty of, surely nothing Ivor would laud, only a tangle of fear, desperation, and the drumbeat rage in his blood that Ivor would not have his country for the asking of it.

If Sir Robert saved Evan, then perhaps Adiran could be turned from the precipice, from committing his soul to Ani's cruel guidance. The boy had always been sweet natured and biddable. If Evan survived, if Ivor could be separated from Adiran—perhaps matters could still be saved.

Likely though, Janus thought, his mood going grimmer, Ivor would have Adiran blooded again, simply to be sure the compact was sealed. If the boy had been willing to injure his only friend—Ivor would have little trouble beyond the limitations of Adiran's strength. Ani gave nothing of Herself until She had been fed Her bloody measure of devotion.

A single plague victim, lying in a feverish stupor, would prove no difficulty even for a weak child to dispatch, given a sharp enough blade. But Ivor feared the plague… perhaps he would trust to Evan's death now, escape the city….

The fragility of his hopes appalled Janus. He had never held to anything so delicate, preferring the security of careful planning, of sure knowledge and countermoves.

Instead, he was left with this, depending on Ivor's fears of the plague, on a child's good nature being more intrinsic than his hatred, and on the only certainty he had left: that if all else failed, if he and Adiran fell, and Antyre after, he would take Ivor with him so that he would be shorn of his triumph.

At least he could pride himself on that much, that even in despair and failure, he would attempt to take his enemies with him, rather than retreat into the apathy that Aris had nurtured so long.

They left behind the wide streets of the merchants' shops and homes, the horses filing into lines of two or three abreast. Simpson guided his steed to Janus's left, and a red-bearded soldier took his
right as their little procession of guards and soldiers headed into the Relicts and the piers beyond. There were other paths, but the docks that jutted out from the Relicts were the ones that had the clearest path to the sea, the deepest waters where the deep-bellied, long voyaging ships made their beginnings and ends.

The Relicts were silent as they rode through; and the soldiers, younger, less seasoned than the Kingsguard, were visibly uneasy. These soldiers had never fought for anything other than their own prestige, had never used their blades and pistols for anything other than show.

One of the soldiers behind them started at some imagined movement, jerked his horse to an ungainly halt, bumping into another soldier, the whinnies of two protesting horses as a result.

Janus said, “If you're imagining ravening hordes of Relict rats leaping out at you, stop. We're armed men on horseback, hard pickings for men with sticks. They're far more like to be scavenging the city for dead men's possessions.”

“You're certain?” the man asked. His gloved hands pulled at his reins; his horse tossed its head.

“Quite,” Janus said. Simpson turned in his saddle to shoot a glare that reminded the soldier exactly why that might be an unwise question.

Janus was pleased to have Simpson's company even if he was waiting his chance to kill him. Riding through the Relicts woke painful memories of fifteen years of hardscrabble living and willful neglect, his desperate struggle to keep Miranda and himself alive, and it woke later memories also. The slow, stumbling gait of his horse reminded him of the night he had followed Maledicte out to the pier to watch him kill Last.

He wished he were riding out to that moment again, when they had wrung victory from a man who had discarded him without a second's thought. Would he have done things differently? If he hadn't interfered, if Ani had left, the compact completed, and Maledicte freed of Her madness, would he still have Miranda at his side?

If he had her beside him now, he knew she would bare sharp white teeth and growl, “Stop thinking and
act!”

He wondered what advice Psyke would have offered had he stopped to ask. He doubted she would ever advocate action over thought; she was as moodily introspective as Aris had ever been, though she at least could be roused from it.

The young soldier danced his horse again, and Janus spurred his own mount in reaction; he felt as nervy as a winter wolf come down into the city. At this rate, he thought, listening to his heart race in its bone cage, he'd be grateful to face Ivor. At least then his impetuous nerves would serve more purpose than to sour his mouth and his belly.

The sound of the sea lapping at pilings reached out to him, brought a tang of salt rot to his senses, and raised the damp hair at his nape. There was a new and unfamiliar sound as well, a gurgling suck as the night tides crawled over and through the brass gates strung across their domain. Janus heard hushed voices carried on the breeze, a tease of meaning that swirled away without ever granting more than a single word here and there. But it was close enough, the words heard were important enough—
palace, guards, boat, escape
—that Janus said, “Dismount. We'll try for surprise, leave the horses here.”

“They'll be carved up for horsemeat,” Simpson said, squandering the fragile goodwill he had earned with Janus.

“Then leave a man behind, or do you fear the city's savages will devour him also?” He swung down from his mount hurriedly, using the reins to stabilize his uneven descent, his weak arm useless. Janus unsheathed his blade the moment his feet touched ground, and walked forward, choosing not to wait for the others, not wanting to get caught in the mass of jostling horses unhappy with their surroundings.

Instead he moved on through the rubble, treading a path into his past. He'd nearly forgotten how oppressive the nights could seem. Even the bobbing pole lanterns the soldiers carried seemed swallowed, surrounded by a blackness as unrelieved as the grave. He licked his lips, tasting salt.