Maledicte (23 page)

“I never guessed you knew tales like that,” Maledicte said when his breath returned.

“I lived with the old bastard for eight years,” Gilly said, “and before that I lived on a farm. It’s only wonderful I don’t talk like that all the time.”

Maledicte stretched his arms across the table, his hands open. “Thank you, Gilly.”

With Maledicte’s bad temper assuaged for the moment, Gilly’s thoughts turned to the wreckage upstairs. “Let’s tidy up so that you’ll have someplace to sleep without worrying about glass shards in your sheets.” He tugged Maledicte to his feet, and herded him up the stairs, ignoring Maledicte’s complaints and mocking claims of being aristocracy.

Maledicte held a handful of shredded lace, and Gilly had the linens stripped and piled neatly, still glittering with thrown porcelain, when Janus returned. Janus opened the door and paused.

Maledicte dropped his bundle, kicked it beneath the bedsteps.

Janus righted the hearthside chair and sank into it. “Temper again?”

“Better out than in, as Celia used to say.”

“Celia used the axiom to excuse her drug fits,” Janus said. He reached down, picked up the boot resting on the hearth, stroked the long scrape down its side.

“Are you angry?” Maledicte asked, crouching before Janus.

“They’re your things,” Janus said.

Gilly picked up the kettle; its spout was cracked and he added it to the wastebin.

After the effort Gilly had taken to soothe Maledicte, he was not inclined to let Janus rile him again so he busied himself around the room.

“What are you thinking about to make you so quiet?” Maledicte said, settling into Janus’s lap.

“About boots. This one is ruined.” He dropped it from his hands, wrapped his arms around Maledicte’s waist. “At least, we consider it ruined. Now.”

Maledicte touched the supple, scarred leather with slow fingertips, tracing the damage. “I haven’t thought about that in years. We could have eaten off a pair of boots like this for a week.”

“You ate boots?” Gilly asked.

“No, fool,” Janus said. “We sold them for coppers, maybe lunas, if Mal did the haggling. Ragmen painted the flaws over, sold them at four times what they paid us.”

“Can’t eat boots, Gilly. They don’t digest, and if you use them to flavor water, it only tastes like feet,” Maledicte said. “If you could get the water at all. I was always thirsty in the Relicts.”

Gilly sat down on the bedsteps.

“Had to put a pebble beneath your tongue to stave off thirst,” Janus said.

“Rise in the dawn to wipe the dew from the walls. But so close to the sea, even dew tastes of salt,” Maledicte said. “I haven’t woken at dawn now in years.”

“I did, at first, no matter that I was in a gilded cage. I woke with the sun, but there was always a pitcher of fresh water by my bed, and later, the maids came to bring me tea.” Janus sighed into Maledicte’s neck. “It seems so hard to recall being hungry.”

“I remember hunger,” Maledicte said. His mouth drew down as if he felt that bite in his belly now, bread and milk and nuts notwithstanding.

“You were always hungrier than I was,” Janus said. “It’s amazing you haven’t gone to fat with the feasts you can have now.” He raised his hand, circled Maledicte’s wrist, spoke in a voice near dreaming. “It was so hard. And no one cared if we starved.”

“Not our mothers,” Maledicte said. “We’re well rid of them.”

“They ate what they would out of our hoard, and if there was nothing left, well then, wasn’t it past time for us to go get more? Never mind that we had to steal or beg for it.”

“You make me hungry now,” Maledicte complained.

“I can’t help you with past want, but if you don’t mind a simple dinner, I can make that,” Gilly said.

“Thank you, Gilly,” Janus said.

Gilly startled at the lack of condescension in Janus’s voice. Gilly nodded and went out the door, wondering what Janus was thinking. While Maledicte was all temper and secrets, Janus’s apparent openness was still harder to read.

M
ALEDICTE UNDRESSED IN THE NEAR
darkness of his bedchamber, the lamps both turned low, watching his shadow flicker and shrink. If he listened carefully, he could hear Gilly and Janus discussing Amarantha below in the unusual silence of a house emptied of servants. Maledicte chose not to make the effort, and let their words fade into a pleasant murmur like the crackling of a low-burning fire.

Carefully, he concealed his padded corset in the back of the wardrobe, trading it for a crisp white nightshirt. He caught sight of his reflection, ghostly in the mirror, and lingered, touching the snowy folds of cloth, the blunt cut of his unbound hair, and wondered, in a melancholy moment, if Amarantha hunted sleep attired in silks and lace.

But he wore silks aplenty during the day, and in the colors he chose. He went where he pleased; he carried a sword. The thought of the sword reassured him; the familiar lean length of it beckoned.

Unsheathing it, he sparred with shadows until the sulky set of his mouth shifted into a fierce grin, until the dark hair on his nape grew damp with the effort. Two final, quick slashes sliced the wicks from the oil lamps.

He woke to sumptuous darkness interrupted by wavering golden light, a flame in the room. His hand opened and closed, found the surety of the hilt in his palm. “Janus?”

“Who else?”

“I thought you were for home tonight,” Maledicte said, opening the bed curtains to allow himself the sleepy pleasure of watching Janus undress by lamplight, all planes and angles, alternately shadowed and limned in flame. The fine hairs on his arms and legs gleamed.

“When I could be here?” He slid into bed, all warm limbs and skin, and Maledicte sighed into the feel of him.

“And you’ve brought your wardrobe with you,” Maledicte said, catching sight of a valise by the door. He smiled and pushed Janus back into the nested pillows, arranging him for his own comfort before resting his head in the juncture of Janus’s neck and shoulder.

Janus raised up enough to tug at the bed curtain, sealing them into a cocoon, then lay back again. “I’ve scandalized the court once by wearing the same clothes when I should not. I won’t do so again. Damn.”

“Hmm?” Maledicte said, half drowsing.

“I left the light burning.”

“It will burn itself out,” Maledicte said. “We’re rich. We can waste lamp oil.” He yawned, rubbed his cheek over Janus’s chest and finally chose the spot over his heartbeat.

“It’s not the oil, nor the light that bothers me,” Janus said, tightening his arm around Maledicte’s shoulders. “It’s those cupids. Watching.”

Maledicte’s slackening mouth quirked into a smile; he let out a few puffs of silent laughter that stirred Janus’s hair on the pillow. “I suppose we could hire someone to paint them over, but I loathe the smell of paint, and I hate the fuss and bother.”

“You love fuss and bother,” Janus said, tenting his elbow over his eyes. “As long as you’re inflicting it.” His voice slowed, relaxed; his body slowly un-tensed, stretching out to fill the space. “Rats take it!”

Maledicte jerked back to wakefulness. “What now?”

“Your damn sword bit me. Why in hell have you given it its own pillow?” Janus sat up, dislodging Maledicte. A bleeding scratch etched the width of his biceps, a line of darkness against the paler skin, as if the night had left its own mark. “Look at that.”

“I wanted company,” Maledicte said.

“You have mine,” Janus snapped, pushing the sword out of the bed with all the distaste of a man removing vermin.

Maledicte’s mouth tightened as the sword hilt rasped along the edge of the bed before falling. “Don’t dump it there. You’ll wake in the morning and tread on it, and that will be my fault too. Get up and put it away.”

“It’s your sword,” Janus said, dabbing at the scratch with the lace edge of the pillowcase.

“You left the lamp burning.” Maledicte drew the blankets more firmly about his neck, burrowing after warmth. After a moment the sheets rustled and the mattress shifted as Janus ceded. Maledicte rolled over, stared at the ceiling, his mouth curling. “While you’re up, will you—”

“Will I what?” Janus interrupted. “Make you tea? Bring you a biscuit?”

“Since you mention it, I am hungry.”

“You should have stayed to dinner then,” Janus said. “Gilly makes an acceptable cook.”

Maledicte smiled. “Thank you, Janus, for being kinder to him.”

“He has his place,” Janus said. “As long as he realizes it’s not in your bed, I have no quarrel with him.” His face, exaggerated by faint light, stayed grim, belying his words. “Where do you keep this blade?”

“As with all my favorite possessions, I keep it near to hand,” Maledicte said. “Set it beside the trunk. There are biscuits in the trunk also.”

Janus paused, his hand on the lamp, then sighed. “Your sword by your bed, the sweets within reach—I am surprised you do not have Gilly sleeping outside your door. After all, he is also one of your favorite possessions.” He fished the tin out and tossed two biscuits toward Maledicte’s outstretched hands. “Will those suffice, or should I stay my hand on the lamp?”

“Put it out,” Maledicte said, nibbling on the first biscuit, cupping his palm to catch the tender crumbs, keeping them from the sheets. Belated recognition of Janus’s words filtered through his mind. “Gilly is no possession. You cannot own a friend.”

“You own him as surely as you owned Roach,” Janus said, moving through the darkness. He finagled his way beneath the sheets, drew the curtain shut. “I do not understand it,” he said, tugging Maledicte into his arms. “I make friends easily. You offend people with every outborne breath, and yet you end with worshippers. Roach, Gilly, even Aris.”

“And yourself?” Maledicte asked, wiping his fingers on the coverlet.

“No,” Janus said, catching Maledicte’s hands, and kissing the crumbs away. “I know you too well. I can only be your lover.”

“Only,” Maledicte said. “Isn’t that everything? Let them follow me as they will. I will follow you.”

· 20 ·

A
T TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING,
the elaborate lawns and paths of Jackal Park swarmed with aristocracy exercising their mounts and strolling along the rows of honored vendors permitted to hawk their wares in this playground. Maledicte clutched the reins and tightened his legs about his steed, trying not to collide with anyone, tensing as they passed the barricade that kept the antimachinist protestors from encroaching. If they shouted or threw stones, as they were wont to do—

“He’ll have you off if you don’t relax,” Janus said, frowning. “Vornatti taught you dancing, dueling, and etiquette, but not horsemanship?”

“Vornatti tried,” Maledicte said.

Janus sighed. He slowed his horse, reached out, and drew Maledicte’s hands back on the reins. “Don’t clench.”

“They can’t like being ridden,” Maledicte said, but forced his hands to loosen. Beneath him, the horse stopped feeling like a pile of agitated muscle.

“Better,” Janus said.

“Still, I don’t see why we had to ride,” Maledicte said. “And at such an hour.”

“This is the hour to be seen, you know that,” Janus said, shaking his hair free from his collar.

“I’d rather not be seen falling off a horse, thank you,” Maledicte said acidly, but followed Janus along the hedge. The hedges, carved into hounds and hares, alternately pursued and fled as they passed. Ahead, the trail broadened to incorporate the promenading aristocracy, the small, decorative carriages, and more riders.

Beside him, Janus drove his horse into a sudden, flashy canter. At the end of the path, he slowed to a showy halt. Maledicte kept his horse to its nervous walk, glaring at the amused glances he garnered. A thin, dapper man in an Itarusine frock coat laughed aloud, teeth flashing within his neat ring of mustache and beard, and Maledicte spurred his horse forward, drawing up beside Janus. “Was there a purpose to that display?”

“Mating dance,” Janus said, smiling. “The air is sweet, and courting is everywhere.”

Maledicte’s lips softened until he followed Janus’s gaze and found it lingering on two well-attended women promenading along a side path. Their dresses were the height of fashion, and their eyes were raised, discreetly watching Janus.

The older woman was well into her fifties, Maledicte knew, but as un-lined as powder and potions could make her. The younger woman’s beauty needed no such aid. “And Amarantha Lovesy is easily impressed by horse-men,” Maledicte finished.

“So they say,” Janus said. “Will you excuse me? I do not think my chances so good that you should come with me.”

“Then tell me why I accompanied you at all?” Maledicte said. “Why I must rise and ride with you, when I hate horses and despise mornings?” His horse crow-hopped beneath him, and Janus caught its bridle.

“I thought you’d prefer witnessing my wooing of Amarantha to imagining it.”

“No,” Maledicte said. He kicked his horse and sawed on the reins, trying to turn its head. Janus cantered away. Maledicte’s horse, as restless as he at being deserted, made an attempt to follow. Maledicte yanked the reins; the horse danced beneath him, and Maledicte slacked his grip, clutching its mane.

“Too much beast for you? Perhaps you should join me for a stroll instead.” Mirabile dimpled at him and tucked her gloved hand over the curve of boot and stirrup. Lacking his sword, Maledicte’s hands knotted around the riding crop; he was startled to find her alive and well after her disappearance into the Relicts. Maledicte had not dwelled much on her threats, but to run across her of a sudden—he found himself remembering the animal fury in her eyes. To see her so poised now when he knew her enmity made him cat-nervous.

“No steed for you, Lady, or are the rumors true—have you sold your riding habits for pin money?” He was rewarded by the tightening of her rosebud lips.

“You’d best keep your grip on the reins, or you’ll be at my feet before you know it.”

“Take your hand away.”

She stepped back, gloved hands spread wide, laughing. He was at a loss for her shifting moods, at her returning to his side time and time again, and the damn horse kept tugging at his hands. Maledicte could not keep himself from glancing over his shoulder, hoping for aid. But, now leading his steed, Janus was deep in conversation with the duchess of Love.

“He does the pretty very well,” Mirabile said, leaning her weight against the horse’s velvet side. “I hear he was quite well versed as a lover of women—do you suppose he’s reverting to type?”

“Perhaps he already has, and the ladies were the anomaly,” Maledicte said, lured into speech. “Some men lose all sense of self abroad, or so I’m told.”

“So confident in his affections? I hope your loyalty is not misplaced. But let us not quarrel today. Instead, come and have tea with me.”

“What have we to say to each other?” Maledicte said, his jaw tight.

“At the very least, tea would grant you an excuse to dismount. Come now, Mal. Is that horse really preferable to my company?” She leaned forward and blew into its flaring nostrils. The entire animal seized under him, going as rigid as a corpse, then it reared, hooves striking at the sky. Maledicte wrestled it down, panting, then dismounted with more haste than grace.

“I never did like having discourse on an unequal footing,” she said, smiling.

Maledicte wound the reins in his hands, reconsidering. There was rage in her voice, barely contained. But he was unwilling to back down, or worse, attempt to remount beneath her gaze. He hoped to see Janus returning, escaping the vapid confines of polite first conversation between suitor and sought, but Janus lounged against a tree, one boot propped on a mounting block, smiling down at Amarantha. Even from a distance, Maledicte could see him working to hold Amarantha’s interest. The duchess was his, but Amarantha looked away, plucking fitfully at her gloves.

Mirabile insinuated her hand into the crook of his arm. “Come and have tea,” she said.

“It’s early yet—” Maledicte said, looking at the angry shadows in her red-brown eyes. Something shifted and moved behind them, something sleek and dark, drowning his objections, as if her words were law.

“There, no protests,” Mirabile said. “Such kindred spirits as we should be allies.”

He walked with her, her hand around his elbow and caged by his free hand. Walking as if they were lovers. The horse? he wondered briefly, dragging his gaze away to look back. Had he loosed it in the park?

“Here we are,” she said, settling herself onto a marble bench in the shade of a beech tree. A small table, its top a maze of inlaid tiles, had been laid out with a teapot, two cups of wafer-thin china, and a covered tray. Maledicte sat beside her, took the cup she handed him.

Shadows fell from the tree above, one crow and then another, followed by a slew of rooks, all come to scavenge for scraps. The two sets of birds squabbled and jabbered while Mirabile laughed and threw them tea cakes. Maledicte watched their glossy wings, the slick emptiness of their dark eyes. What could drive a noblewoman to the Relicts? He very much feared he had the answer.

“Your tea’s growing cold,” Mirabile said.

The same slick darkness rested in her eyes, Maledicte realized, the blank gaze of a predatory creature. The cup hovered at his lips, smelling of sweet jasmine and warmth, and reflecting the crow-blackness of his own gaze. He set it down with nervous fingers. “I am not thirsty,” he said, standing.

She rose with him as if they were linked. She collected his cup and swallowed several mouthfuls. “There. In case your fearful heart cried poison, I have drunk from it as well.” She folded his fingers around the cup again.

Her eyes on his, the hush of the leaves in the faint breeze, and the squabbling crows at his feet all conspired together, making him feel he had stumbled into a dream. But he looked at the shadows in her gaze and forced a smile. “No.” He set down the cup; without looking back, he walked away, ignoring the quiver in his spine that urged him to run before her mask fell again and showed him more than he could bear to know.

G
ILLY WAS READING
in the parlor when the front door shut with enough force to rattle a sour note out of the spinet. “How was the park?” Gilly asked, as the carved door opened.

“Vile,” Maledicte said, settling down on a delicately curved love seat. “Janus went haring after Amarantha; Mirabile leeched onto me and tried to feed me dismal tea.”

Gilly folded the pages of his new book closed with casual fingers, hoping to distract Maledicte from it. A moment’s reflection showed him that Maledicte was unlikely to notice anything. “Mirabile? Are you well? You look…scared.”

“I am no coward,” Maledicte said, the words quick and hot, ragged in his throat. “At least, I never was before. But something was wrong. Mirabile’s…changed. She had shadows in her eyes, Gilly.”

“Shadows,” Gilly parroted, heart sinking.

“I know, such melodrama,” Maledicte said. “But I swear to you—No, I will think no more on it.”

Gilly shivered, thinking of other eyes, all too often shadowed. “Mal, did you drink her tea?”

“No,” Maledicte said, turning in his seat and gouging at the upholstery buttons. “I know there’s no rule against declining tea, so you needn’t frown at me like that.”

“It might have been poisoned,” Gilly said. “She hates you enough for that.”

Maledicte paused in his destruction of the chair. “I sincerely hope it was. When I chose not to drink, she swallowed it. Perhaps she’s ended herself?”

“Or found herself,” Gilly said. “Shadows and poison. Mal—you said that she had changed. Could she have sought out Ani’s aid as you did?”

“I never sought Her,” Maledicte snapped. “As for Mirabile seeking Ani—” His hands clenched on the chair, his voice tightening as he rose. “It’s those damned books you read. You see Her hand everywhere, when the simple fact is that I fled from Mirabile like a frightened child, afraid she’d pour poison down my throat.”

Gilly seized Maledicte by the shoulders, stilled his restless pacing. Something moved over Maledicte’s eyes, like the reflections of dark feathers, and Maledicte slumped.

“Let go of me.”

“Ani supposedly protects Her own from poison,” Gilly said. “Even had you drunk—”

“You say that—with stonethroat’s effects branded in my voice? You have read far too many tales, Gilly.”

“But that was before you sealed Her compact. Before you killed Kritos.”

Maledicte said, “The only gift Ani brings is the only curse She brings, that of resolve and obsession. No more nonsense.”

“And the sword?” Gilly said, watching Maledicte retrieve it from the divan where Janus had forced him to leave it before exiting the house. “She gave it to you. What might She have given Mirabile?”

“Gilly!” Maledicte said. “Are you trying to make me fear Mirabile more or less?”

Gilly sat, the book beneath him rustling as he did so, and Maledicte’s attention shifted like a cat’s. “What’s that? Another tract on the dead gods?”

“It is,” Gilly admitted, pulling it out and laying it on the floor between them. “Written by Mirabile’s husband, as it occurs.”

“I should have it burned,” Maledicte said, looking at the gaudy cover with an expression composed equally of wariness and contempt.

“You gave me the money that bought the book. I suppose it’s yours. Everything is, even me.”

“No.” Maledicte turned, the shadows fading from his face. “The money I gave you was only your share.”

“An accomplice to murder,” Gilly muttered.

Maledicte touched Gilly’s cheek and said, “Don’t fret, sweet Gilly. Or if you must, fret yourself to find something to entertain me until Janus returns.”

Gilly’s spirits lifted at the familiar petulance. Or so he told himself, dismissing the touch and casual endearment. Flushing, he cast about for diversion. “Want to learn to play the spinet?”

“No,” Maledicte said. “Do you know how to play?”

“Vornatti had me take lessons when he thought it might be pleasant to have private entertainment on command. Before he decided his private entertainments didn’t involve music.”

“Then play for me. It can’t be worse than the amateur talent they have at the courts.”

Gilly sat at the spinet, but shifted on the seat, ill at ease. “Stop staring at my back. It’s too much to ask of me, to play and to perform at the same time.”

Maledicte rose and joined Gilly on the bench. “What if I sit here? Then you cannot mistake me for a critical audience.”

Gilly set his hands on the keys and ran out a scale. The notes vibrated in the air, going flat as the untuned strings sounded. “Vornatti said my hands on the keys were too big. He was right.”

“Excuses,” Maledicte said. “I have found one thing you cannot do perfectly and you’re ruining it by making reasonable excuses. Just play, Gilly.”

Gilly turned his head to object and got lost in the sweep of dark hair sliding over Maledicte’s cheek and throat. He took his hands from the keys, brushed Maledicte’s hair away from his face.

“Are you going to play that instrument, Gilly?” Janus said from the doorway. “Or are you playing at fashionable music master instead?” At the palpable edge in Janus’s voice, Gilly stood, leaving Maledicte possessor of the bench.

“I hear you made contact with Amarantha Lovesy,” Gilly said. Behind him, Maledicte picked out notes at random.

Janus heaved a sigh, came into the room fully, and slung himself into a chair. “What a harridan. Despite her mother’s enthusiasm, she made it clear the only reason she would even consider me was that she coveted Lastrest. All that beauty cannot mask her greed.”

“Choose someone else,” Maledicte said, head still bent over the keys, adding trembling dissonances to the air.

“What other wife could grant me a counselor’s support so neatly? Lilia DeGuerre is wed and bred already, and Westfall has no child. No, I’ll wed the bitch, and leave her in the country house she admires so much.” Janus levered himself out of the chair, paced between Gilly and Maledicte.

“I thought we were to live at Lastrest,” Maledicte said, eyes fixed on the spinet keys.

“It only needs to be for a little while. So many of the Last countesses have died of childbearing, we can create one more tragedy without much suspicion.” Janus dropped a kiss on Maledicte’s bent head, and pulled Maledicte from the bench. He lifted him onto the low stage. “But as for now—her parents will push her to accept my suit, we’ll put my father in the ground, and you’ll be consorting with an earl before you know it.”