Maledicte (6 page)

“It’s all very well to suggest threatening him, to derive obedience through fear, but he’s not so blind as that. He knows you want him alive, and what else have I to threaten him with? He cares not for hunger nor cold nor beatings, though at least those serve to weaken his outbursts.

“No, cousin, if you have any hopes of firing him off among the Itarusine court, and then among our own, you will have to take a hand. As it is, I have the severest doubts he can ever learn our ways. I wash my hands of his education. I will be his jailer only. If you would have me do otherwise, you must take a hand yourself.

“Kritos.”

The boy stood, his hands shaking. “Kritos.” The loathing in his voice darkened the atmosphere of the room, bringing winter darkness to the fire-lit circle.

“How did you get this?” Gilly asked, turning the letter over in his hands, looking for some hint of the sender.

“A matter of enmity,” Vornatti said. “Last hates me. As does my heir, Dantalion. As such, they are acquaintances, at least during the days of the Winter Court. It’s a small matter to pay one of Dantalion’s servants to copy any interesting letters.”

“Is there anything else?” the boy asked. “Did Last go to aid Kritos?”

Gilly watched the tremor move from the boy’s hands through his spine and disappear, leaving him as still as a crouching cat.

“So greedy,” Vornatti said. “Here I’ve worked one prodigious collection of information, from my chair, mind you, and you only ask for more. Will you thank me?”

“You derive too much pleasure from your intrigues to need my thanks,” the boy said. “Tell me.”

“I did receive word that Last has retired to Ice Island,” Vornatti said.

The boy’s face shuttered, locking away emotion, but Gilly had seen a quick wash of perplexity cross his face, as if he didn’t know whether to take Last’s involvement as a good thing or bad.

“Come then, thank me,” Vornatti said. “Or are you as unmannered as Last’s whelp?”

“I’m worse,” the boy said.

Vornatti laughed. “How do you figure that, boy? You’ve been brought to heel, domesticated by food and a little frost. The only independence you have left is your stubborn refusal to grant us your name.”

The boy looked to the barren trees in the orchard outside. This winter, they had not gathered icicles for more than a night without rocks being hurled at them. The black rage in the boy’s eyes sank back; he dutifully crawled into Vornatti’s lap and kissed him. Vornatti stroked the black curls, but the moment Vornatti’s lips left his to draw breath, the boy was across the room, never mind that he left strands of his hair in Vornatti’s clutching fingers.

“Gilly,” Vornatti said, smiling. “I’m tired.”

Obediently, Gilly rose, folded the letter in neat quarters, and set it on the desk.

When he returned an hour later, flushed and straightening his clothes, he found the boy still in the library. Gilly hastily tucked his shirt back into his breeches, embarrassed anew under the boy’s dark eyes.

Seeking distraction, he discovered it in the boy sprawled beside the fireplace, in the book spread open before him. Gilly remembered the frustration he had felt once, touching the incomprehensible secrets of letters and words.

“I’ll teach you to read if you like. And write,” Gilly offered.

The boy propped himself on his elbows. “Do you think I come to look at the pictures?” He passed the book to Gilly.

The book was not one of Vornatti’s pornographic woodcuts. It was instead Sofia Grigorian’s text-dense treatise on exotic poisons used in the Itarusine court.

“Are you suggesting you can read?”

“I am telling you I can. And write.” The boy’s lips curled in a smirk that Gilly was beginning to recognize. It betokened the boy’s worst tempers. The news from Itarus was not to his liking, Gilly thought. Despite everything, the boy had hoped for Janus’s return this year.

“So you see how little I need you,” the boy continued. “I can read my own damn letters. And I don’t need Vornatti’s lecherous aid, either.”

Gilly’s own temper quickened as the boy’s words woke the caresses Vornatti had pressed to his skin.

He yanked the boy to his feet. Gilly handed him a quill and the Itarusine envelope. “Prove it. Write something for me then.”

“Anything,” the boy said, defiant.

“Anything?” Gilly grinned. “Promise?”

The boy hesitated in the face of that smile. But then he raised his chin. The smirk deepened. “Anything.”

“Your name.”

The boy’s face froze and he whispered, “Bastard. And you’ll run off to tell him, won’t you?”

“If you are incapable…” Gilly said, goading him.

The boy dipped the quill into the inkwell, shook the excess off, and bent over the paper with a faint awkwardness that spoke of inexperience. But the scrolling ink spread over the silky parchment smoothly and quickly, stirring Gilly’s breath while he read the letters as they formed.

The boy stepped back, bowed, tossed the quill onto the desk with a spattering of inky drops, and left the room, all so smoothly done that he was gone before Gilly’s eyes rose from the paper and the single word that the boy claimed as his name.

Maledicte.

G
ILLY WOKE TO THE ROUGH
sound of Vornatti’s labored breathing in his ear and, from farther down the hall, the distant protest of moving furniture. Gilly wondered drowsily if something new had distressed the boy and he had built barricades in his room last night, or if he was thieving furniture from the other rooms. A settee had already disappeared into the boy’s quarters, and once, Gilly had found the boy preparing to move an enameled table down the wide, slippery stairs. Gilly had carried it down himself, but the boy, as suspicious as a mother cat, had maneuvered it inside without Gilly’s help. The boy—
Maledicte,
Gilly thought, jerking awake all at once, unnerved again. The name rang in his ears like the voices of mad intercessors and witches, ill-omened.

Vornatti’s gnarled hand sought Gilly’s thigh. “Who would have thought,” Vornatti rasped, “the boy would find such tame pursuits to amuse him through the cold season.”

Gilly smiled, but when Vornatti’s hands stroked higher, he pulled away, freed himself from the smothering weight of eiderdown and fur. “I’ll start the fire,” he said.

“Linger yet,” Vornatti commanded. “It’s rare enough I wake with you in my bed these days. It makes me wonder what sent you fleeing into my arms last night.”

Gilly shrugged, fed the spills into the redly burning coals, grew a little flamelet, and fed the first log in.

“That’s not an answer, Gilly,” Vornatti said, mood souring along with his voice. He gasped, and Gilly knew the old man’s pains had caught up with him once again.

Gilly stirred a spoonful of Laudable into the leftovers of last night’s wine. “Drink this.”

Vornatti gulped it. “Tell me why, Gilly. Do you want something out of the ordinary way?”

“I’m not a whore,” Gilly said, stoppering the lid so hard the seal cracked in his hands.

“Well, not
just
a whore,” Vornatti said, mocking. “There are endless supplies of reasonably intelligent young men. There are endless supplies of reasonably willing young men. But there are few who are both. And gentle—” Vornatti touched the rough stubble on Gilly’s cheeks, his tone losing its petulance. “What was it that frightened you? The boy?”

“I suppose,” Gilly said. “I didn’t want to be alone in the dark, with only the boy in my head for company.”

“But such fascinating company,” Vornatti said, gloating.

Gilly knelt beside the bed, found Vornatti’s slippers, and slid them onto his feet. Head still lowered, he said. “Sir, have you never thought that this might be a dangerous thing? This boy—sometimes he seems merely a youth with a temper; at other times, he seems uncanny, his rage unnatural, that sword with raven wings like Black-Winged Ani….”

“Black Ani,” Vornatti said. In his voice, Gilly heard old remembrances, and wondered what it had been like, to live under the eyes of the gods.

“The sword, the hunger for vengeance. His will. His determination. Even his name. Ani could—”

“The gods are dead, Gilly. Any man who fought at Xipos in the endgame knows that. Xipos proved it; men made offerings grim and great, and men died, churned into mud and blood, screaming for Haith’s mercy and hearing
nothing.
That
sword
is nothing—stolen from some incautious aristocrat, nothing more. The boy has a magpie heart, we’ve seen that.” Vornatti tugged his dressing gown closer across his shoulders; it sagged where his flesh had once filled it, revealing the great, pitted scars over his spine and hip, the source of his pains and problems, the place where a warhorse had danced across his back with rough iron shoes.

“But—” Gilly started, remembering the feel of the sword beneath his hand and shivering.

“The gods are gone,” Vornatti said. “Baxit Himself gave us that gift. Though some swear it was His curse. To live at our own behest. To answer our own prayers.”

Gilly nodded, obediently.

“My superstitious Gilly, I am an old man,” Vornatti said. “I grew up in the god times. And I saw one god-possessed…. If this boy were Ani’s, he would have slaughtered us both rather than falter in his forward steps. There is an old book of such histories in the library, should you doubt me. I think you merely mazed with nightmares. Haven’t I heard you call out in your sleep while you dream of dead things?”

Gilly nodded, this time with more belief. Maledicte was likely nothing but a clever actor, skilled in evoking dread. It would serve him well, should he ever come to grips with Last, Gilly thought. He refused to think on the sword and the feeling it left in his skin.

“But you learned his name?” Vornatti said. “Tell me.”

“Maledicte,” Gilly said.

Vornatti threw back his head and laughed.

A
SHADOW CROSSED
G
ILLY’S LINE
of sight as he crouched beside the shelves, pulling out the books rarely read. His hand closed on the spine of one old enough to have grown foxed and spotted, the leather cracking.
The Book of Vengeances.

Vornatti, Gilly thought, had never succumbed to the worst affliction of old age, that of a faulty memory. The book opened in Gilly’s hands to an illustrated page black with ink and a raven’s eyes, to a man battling, though knives pierced his flesh. The shadow moved over him again, and he twitched, closing the book reflexively.

The boy stood behind him, eyes calculating. “You don’t guard your back very well.”

“I’m only a servant,” Gilly said. “I don’t need to.”

“I suppose that’s true. And you don’t have to fight for your food, your clothes, or your hair as Relicts children do.”

“Is that—”

“Where I come from? Of course. You’ve known that all along,” Maledicte said. “Or did you think Ani birthed me from an egg?” His lips curled in amusement.

Gilly sighed in embarrassment. “Vornatti told you.”

“Vornatti found it funny; you, fearing me.” Maledicte’s face darkened. “I could take you, though.”

Gilly said, “I shook you once, and I can do it again.” He kept his tone matter-of-fact, and the boy slid away from the confrontation.

“Your hair’s all over cobwebs,” he said. “No one would buy it in that state, not even for pillow stuffing.” The boy set the sword down, reached out, and tugged the ribbon from Gilly’s hair with agile fingers. “Turn around.”

Hesitantly, Gilly did. Maledicte moved behind him, unfastened his hair, and stroked cool fingers through to Gilly’s nape. Gilly tensed; the boy’s gentler moods all too often presaged a sting so delicate that only later did it smart and bleed. “What do you want?”

Maledicte backed away, spread his arms wide, and said, “Tell me what you see.”

Gingerly, uncertain of Maledicte’s mood, Gilly said, “A boy pretty enough to attract attention, disconcerting enough to repel, and very young.”

Maledicte’s brows snapped down. “Not dangerous? And why so young? I am near a man’s age.”

“You are not wearing the sword,” Gilly said. “And your slightness, coupled with your light voice, will always strike men as youthful.”

Maledicte sank onto the library stool, ran his hands through his hair, first pushing the curls back, then raking them forward to leave only his dark eyes visible. “I would not want Last to laugh at me,” Maledicte whispered. “Tell me how to be feared, Gilly. You who know so much.”

Gilly sat beside Maledicte, flattered that the boy sought his advice, a sign that perhaps he might think Gilly something more than just Vornatti’s pet. “You have time.”

“The trees are budding, the songbirds sing, and daylight grows. It is almost spring. Last will return, though not Janus….” Maledicte’s breath flowed out and with it, seemingly his strength. He slumped against the bookshelf, restless hands knotting Gilly’s ribbon, shaping the cloth as he could not shape the future. “If I kill Last, what will it avail me with Janus still caged in Itarus? Last sent him there, and only Last will bring him back.”

“Kritos would kill him if he could,” Gilly agreed, “rather than spend one copper on him. But perhaps Vornatti could be relied upon.”

“Vornatti, least of all.” Maledicte rose to pace the room. “Vornatti has his own agenda for me, his own desires. I am but a reflection of what he wants me to be. He shelters me, indulges me, and whispers sweet vengeful fancies in my ears, but they are his fancies, his vengeance. Not mine.

“My schemes are…far from complete. And I know of no way to make them more so. I will not have Last mock me, a boy with a blade. I cannot face him at all; my skills are too uneven, and there is no satisfaction in being cut down by Last’s men.

“So you see my dilemma, Gilly?” The boy held his hands out in calculated supplication. “You have all the answers for Vornatti; have you none for me?”

Gilly’s eyes fell before Maledicte’s steady ones, startled at the boy’s candor and need. The boy waited silently for Gilly’s advice, seemingly patient, though Gilly could see the boy’s hands twisting into fists.

Gilly hastened into speech. “Wait. Learn to use the sword. Last is a swordsman of some skill. And you—”