Kings and Assassins (6 page)

Sir Robert's words came back to him. An amateur with the blade. An inexperienced hand.

His breath let out all at once. Of course it wasn't Maledicte. Hadn't he said it himself? Maledicte was an artist with his blade. The realization that it hadn't been,
couldn't
have been, Maledicte twisted into equal parts relief and pain. If Maledicte
had
done it, killed Aris, risked Janus—at least that meant Maledicte had returned.

Psyke took a breath, twisted under him, mustering herself for another round, and he pressed her back more firmly, her skirt an ungainly tangle around his knees, flakes of drying blood sifting free about them. “Hush,” he said. “Hush, or you'll have that fool guard in here to defend you, and I'm in no mood for that. My reputation's been blacked enough for one night; do you think I won't hesitate to add wife beating to it? I assure you, I will not—”

“Did you court Maledicte with such talk?” she spat. He rolled away as her words did what all her efforts hadn't—wounded him.

She lay sprawled, a discarded doll, and after a moment her hands crept up to cover her face. Her shoulders spasmed. Janus watched her cry, the wetness slipping out between her fingers, her face and neck growing pink blotches, wondering from what source the tears came. Had she loved Aris as well as been loyal to him? Was it grief or anger that fueled her?

Aris had expected too much of her—seen her intelligence and missed the gentle core.

Her breath grew rough, catching as her sobs continued. It grated on his nerves. Maledicte would never have wept. Maledicte would have lashed out with words, with blades, with anything to hand until his point was made. Psyke merely sobbed.

“You'll make yourself sick,” he said. “You should care for yourself first. Mourn
later
.”

Her sobs turned into hiccups; her breath narrowed and strangled, then the weeping began anew.

Enough
.

Janus collected the Laudable bottle, shaking it firmly. He grabbed her chin, ignoring the teeth that tried to bite a finger too close to her mouth, and ruthlessly tipped multiple thick mouthfuls of Laudable into her. She gasped and swallowed; for a moment, he thought she would choke, but then her breath steadied.

“You didn't simply kill Aris,” she said, her voice a rasp. “You destroyed a kingdom. Who will keep the Itarusines at bay?”

He hushed her with another mouthful of the bitter liquid, and though she spat some back at him, most of it disappeared into the pink recesses of her mouth.

“I didn't kill Aris,” Janus said.

She turned her face from his, but her sobs didn't recur. “Better,” he said. “I never guessed I had such a watering pot for a wife.” Her skirts crackled against the carpets, left rusty smudges on his breeches, on his hands.

Aris's blood on my hands
, he thought,
and all unearned
. There was something repulsive about it, about the smell of it, heavy in the room, warmed by their struggle.

She pushed him away as he reached for the buttons of her dress, ripping them free rather than unhooking them one by one; the damage the dress had gone through made it unlikely to be salvaged, even by the ragmen. “No,” she muttered.

“Would you prefer Dahlia back, dripping tears all over you and clumsier than usual in her distress?” Yanking her to her swaying feet, he worked at the fabric until it gave.

“No,” she said again. It surprised him, but perhaps the Laudable had taken effect, made her pliable. He didn't much care.

“There's the first sensible thing I've heard you say all evening,” he said. Her dress hung open from neck to hem, but still clung to her undershift, the bloody stain soaked through and fading brown
against the pale linen. He pulled the gown free, wadded it into a foul knot, and hurled it into the maid's chamber for disposal.

“Off,” she said, squirming in distaste. Her hands skated over her undershift, recoiling from the blood-soaked linen. “Take it off.”

“Do it yourself,” he said. He pushed her back onto the bed, tossed her dressing gown after her.

“You killed the king, and you balk at stripping your wife,” Psyke said, the Laudable loosening her tongue. “How—”

He yanked the laces down, and the draft on her pale skin shocked her quiet. “You sound like Mirabile, inciting men to mayhem.”

Blood had seeped through the shift, touching her skin, small dark discolorations barely recognizable as such, but they corresponded to the sodden clothes above.

As Maledicte's name on her lips had wounded him, so Mirabile's on his wounded her, leaving her flushed, silent, and miserable. Janus paused, his hands hovering over the curves of her shoulders. He had seen the one bruise earlier, thought it blood smeared through her clothes. But it wasn't blood, not this high on her pale skin.

Her shoulders bore dark and ragged marks, bruised nearly to the bone, and the bare touch of his fingers made her flinch and sigh.

They weren't his marks; his bruises were still incipient, places pink and puffed. These were older. “Hmm. Whoever would have thought Aris to be so rough?”

Her gaze, avoiding his, fell on her own skin and the black bruising rising on her flesh, the distinct marks of large hands on either shoulder, swelling.

“You think Aris's grip was so strong? He couldn't even hold on to life … and this is everything of death.” She laughed, high and wild, until he pushed her back into the mattress, and sealed her mouth again. She nipped his hand. He released her mouth, and she said “Murderer” on an outborne whisper. “Murderer.” Her lips and breath were warm against his palm.

Her eyelashes fluttered as the Laudable took hold; her body fell into a languor he knew well, having seen his harlot mother succumb to it nightly. He raised himself away from her, and she hooked a
hand on his shoulder and followed. “Will you kill me?” she asked. “I've accused you of murder, accused you of regicide. Now that I lack Aris's protection—you needn't pretend you ever cared for me….”

“Had I wanted you dead, my sweet, dead you would be. Yet here you live, and well enough to vex me.”

She touched his face gently; her eyes dazed but intelligent, questioning. Her face hardened as her emotions resurfaced beneath the smothering blanket of the narcotic. “Go away,” she said. “Murderer.”

“And abandon my wife when she's so beside herself? Trust your safety to a pair of kingsguards green and lazy? I'll stay. And, see, I'm so far from killing you, I'm offering to protect you.” He grinned and she squirmed back against the bedstead.

“You protect yourself,” she said, her words slurred and slow. “Rue might wait for evidence, but others would kill you given the opening, let matters sort themselves out as they might.”

He twiddled the edge of the blanket for a moment, a little taken aback, and then found himself surrendering to a tiny laugh. “I do believe I prefer you on Laudable,” he said. “You're far more interesting.

“There are those who want me dead, certainly. There are those who will think to use me as a placeholder to keep Itarus at bay, until I can be safely removed. And there are those who understand that to dispose of me is for Antyre to lose what little independence we have left. Aris's advisers may hate me, but they do need me.”

Psyke groaned into her pillow, tossing her head. He wondered if it was the politics that displeased her so, or that she found herself unable to comprehend his words through Laudables veil. Her eyelashes flickered; she rested her head on his thigh and fell asleep.

He touched the matted tangles of her hair, comparing it to her usual smooth coils, and found satisfaction in the physical disorder.

Psyke whimpered in the back of her throat, a muffled thing, her brow creasing, as if her worries were so vast as to chase her into Laudables dreamless sleep. When a small hand sought his warmth, creeping toward him with the blind instinct of a nursing animal, he left the bed and settled himself at her dressing table, knees banging the gilt tips off the elaborate wooden crenellations dangling beneath. A woman's room this, and a small woman at that.

He tugged the drawers open, one after another, hoping to find something to ease his own tension: the Laudable was all gone and the drinks at Ivor's table seemed hours ago. Psyke's furious tongue and temper had been a surprise coming from a young woman who might as well wear a porcelain mask for all her placid perfection. Mayhap her furniture hid secrets as well.

The drawers disappointed him, yielding nothing more than the usual fripperies of handkerchiefs and lace panels, the brilliant parure he had given her on their engagement, discreet boxes of rice powder, milled carmine, and the tiny pot of eyeblack. A bottle of perfume came to hand, oddly sharp scented for a woman, mint and vetiver, nothing like Maledicte's sweet lilac, so rich a scent that it clung for days, and to bury his face in Maledicte's black curls had been like finding an unexpected garden at the start of spring.

Janus unbarred and opened the door, shouted out at the guard to bring him
Absenté, even
if they had to roust every member of the palace staff to find him a bottle.

His darting gaze fell on Psyke again, the tidy tumble of limbs and long, pale hair; the stained shift and her bruising shoulder the only shadows on her. Psyke made another soft sound, a mutter that could be complaint or pleasure, and Janus's lips curled.

He hadn't expected her to be so … agreeable, even with Laudables influence. To go from spite and blackest rage to yielding in his arms—

He traced the bruises on her shoulders, so much like handprints but longer, broader than his and chill beneath his fingers. Leaving that mystery, he reached out to touch her lips, parted and soft, and a tiny breath wisped against his palm on a stuttered sigh. Janus drew away, repelled.

The sound woke memories that bewildered him, of standing above a royal infant's cradle with a dagger in his hand. The actions he recalled perfectly, the simple thrust that ended the threat his half brother posed to him, the moment when Maledicte drifted in, all wild eyes and feathered wake, to find the deed accomplished. Janus had been decisive then, his plans crystalline, and they had played out as he intended.

He had felt no hesitation as he struck, felt nothing more than surprise when Auron bled out, the fine lace gown sweeping blood into its traceries; the infant earl was so entrenched in his mind as a symbol of what he deserved, what stood in his path, that he had nearly forgotten it was a living thing.

But blood was necessary, and hardly something Janus minded. Nothing of his memories explained why he woke so many nights with the sound of that child's soft gasp in his ears. It hadn't plagued him while Maledicte was his; the sound grew in the wake of his leaving. Sometimes Janus thought he had borrowed some of Ani's ferocity from Mal, cradled it as close as he had cradled his lover. Sometimes he thought Maledicte had been all his strength, and without him, he … weakened.

Even as he shied from the thought, he made himself consider it. It would explain much; tonight he'd been more a fool than a plotter, allowed Ivor to kill Aris and reset the board too soon for Janus's players to be aligned. And instead of plotting a way to steal back the ground he'd lost, he'd reacted instead of acted, played into Ivor's scheme, and even Psyke's words had filled him with terror and rage. But how to turn the tide once begun? Ivor was a difficult opponent; Janus would need an ally.

Fanshawe Gost
, he thought,
the Kingmaker
. Aris had called him home from his long ambassadorship in Kyrda, where the man had aided an unexpected and unqualified heir to gain the Kyrdic throne. He could do the same for Janus.

The
Absenté
arrived, and he took it without thanks, mind working on what would please Gost most. It galled him to go courting in this fashion, but Ivor, damn the man, had left him little choice. He strained the
Absenté
through sugar and sipped. A vile drink, really, but for easing the body while keeping the mind active, there was no substitute.

W
HEN HE CAME BACK FROM
airy imaginings of himself king and Antyre prosperous, the false dawn was in the air, evident even in quarters without windows by the quiet scuffling of early morning maids beginning their day, the soft murmurs of the guards changing
in the hall. A new day, then, the first without Aris, and the first for him to prove his mettle to the country he would have.

Ivor's plans be damned; Antyre was his.

Still, he thought, it had been too bad of him to loose his temper on Psyke. Though he no longer needed to keep her happy to soothe Aris, he still required a noble wife if he was to have any hope of the throne. Currently, she loathed him, her whispered
murderer
argued that, even if the lingering scent of her on his skin suggested otherwise. She had been won once, even if it was at Aris's command; he could win her again, turn her into an ally.

He collected the blankets, fallen from the mattress, and laid them over her. His fingers brushed her cheek, and it was cold; her lips, still parted, gave no breath to the air, and her breast, when he laid his hand over it, was as quiet as the tomb.

Janus recoiled. He reached out once more, placed his fingers against the thin skin of her neck, and found only stillness.

He remembered this surprise, death of a sudden. The Relicts had seen children die overnight from scratches, from whippings, from poisoned food left out as if they were nothing but rats. One night, he and Miranda had fallen prey to such—back when Miranda had still been Miranda instead of Maledicte and as such, vulnerable to poisons—and spent the dark hours in a panic, waiting for death to claim them.

Now a similar panic stalked him, trying to stir blood slowed by his consumption of
absente
. Psyke's death was near as devastating to his plans as Aris's had been. The second shock left him reeling, left him dwelling on the past instead of the future.

The Relict deaths had been scattered and random; there had been one kill where he and Miranda had hit their robbery victim too hard, and spent a month scrabbling away from the sound of the Particulars' bells.