Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  Psyke sat motionless, though her hands twisted in her lap, knotting and unknotting over the bloody patches Aris's death had left, and her eyes sought escape as fervently as any prisoner faced with the gallows.

  “Tell me,” he said, and the deep growl of his voice made her jump. “What wrong have I ever done you that you would tell such a lie?” It was hard to come at her obliquely when all he wanted to do was demand the truth: Had she truly seen Maledicte? But that question couldn't be asked, not without betraying the deadly secret he had kept for near a year: that Maledicte lived.

  “Lies?” she said. “I told none.” Her voice wavered, thin and reedy, uncertain. She turned her back to him, but in the age-mottled mirror before her, her eyes were resolute.

  Janus let out his breath. “You should have held your tongue until you knew where I had been. If you hate me so much that you would see me hanged for treason, it's best to know my whereabouts before you make your accusations.”

  He approached her, felt stiff with controlling his rage, more a toy soldier than a man. Her eyes followed each step with rising worry; her hands fled her skirts, shifted to fiddle with the jumble of artifacts on her dressing table. A tarnished silver-backed brush, bristles nearly worn away; a child's locket; a scatter of stained ribbons. Not the usual clutter, Janus knew, but something closer to a shrine, the grisly mementos of her murdered family.

  She shook her head, breaking the connection between their glass-caught gazes. Head lowered, voice small, she said, “Your whereabouts are irrelevant when you have a killer on a leash.”

  He reached out to shake the smugness from her mouth, the prim hatred from her eyes; and she jumped away, spinning, standing, nearly falling over her seat. She pressed her back to the wall, and her expression veered toward panic. He seized her shoulders, gratified that she shuddered beneath his hands.

  “Your lie injured your cause as well,” he said. “The entire court whispers that the witch Mirabile left you mad when she slaughtered your family. Do you think this lie did anything to counter it?”

  “Careful,” Psyke said, a weird wild light in her eyes. “Be cautious which weapons you marshal against me. If no one believes my words tonight, neither do they trust yours. There is no madness in me—”

  “Appearances are everything in this court. Abandon your grief; wallowing in the past will only cause you misery in the present.”

  He reached for her again and she quailed; he caught her hands, dragged them down to her skirts. “Feel that?”

  The cloth, stiff with blood, resisted their touch, crinkled against the weight of their joined hands. “Tell me, my sweet, how mad must one be before one refuses to change out of a blood-soaked gown. To accuse one's husband of regicide on no evidence at all?”

  Her gaze shied from his, fell to the clotted stains, dark even against the dull navy of her dress. Her hands in his trembled and grew cold. “How mad,” he whispered, “to not even notice that you reek of Aris's death?”

  “A death you caused,” she whispered, even as her weight folded inward, her legs giving out. Janus tightened his grip, dragged her to face him.

  Her eyes were the blind blue of summer skies.

  “Aris is dead. My king dead,” she whispered. Her hands fluttered, tightened on his sleeves, so lost that she clutched him as an anchor.

  He shook her off. “Aris is dead. Most inconveniently so.” His temper swelled at the memory of Ivor's smile, and settled only when he thought Rue, at least, would be making the man's evening near as uncomfortable as Janus's promised to be. “Aris was a fool to hold his rendezvous with no one but yourself to guard him. Not even his hounds! The man wanted to be killed and, by the gods, someone obliged.”

  She slapped him. It wasn't much, a feeble blow, but the quickness of it, the angry glitter in her eyes, made him flinch. His enemy indeed.

  “He was your king and your kin,” she said, and the fury in her voice was the fury of generations bound by tradition and unthinking loyalty.

  “And such kinship,” Janus said. “To allow my abandonment, to turn my mother whore. Aris knew my father threw me away like refuse and said nothing until I was needed. Kinship means nothing to me but pain and rejection.” He found himself panting, his breath hot as it rebounded from her bent head.

  “So you destroyed it? When a country depended on Aris? You allowed your pain to rule you? Set your paramour upon a good man?”

  “Enough, Psyke,” he snapped. “No one will listen to you.”

  “I will make them believe me.”

  “Make them believe the dead walk? This is the age of reason, my sweet.” Janus forced a contempt into his voice he didn't feel, couldn't feel. The age of reason, yes, but a reason under siege by sickness and starvation, beset by fears of war and an uncertain future.

  “And a man that didn't die? Is that reasonable enough for you, my lord?” Her lips curved into a smile, but she couldn't hold it. They trembled and her next words were whispers. “I am not blind, Janus. Nor am I a fool. And bodies can be had for the taking. Tell me, my lord, whose blood did you spill to spare his? Another innocent's? Another good man's?”

  She slumped, and he nearly believed her fatigue, but years of Maledicte's companionship had taught him caution. Still, when her nails slashed at his eyes, he was taken off guard. He ducked; her clawing hands caught in his hair, and he grabbed her wrists, grinding the bones tight. She thrashed against him, kicked and cursed in a way that he had no idea an aristocratic lady could.

  He dropped them both to the carpet, jarring her silent, pinning her beneath his weight, thankful that she was so slight. Maledicte would have left him bruised at best, and worse—he'd suffered from Maledicte's love of sharp objects before.

  “Tell me,” he gasped. “Tell me what you saw.”

  “Maledicte,” she spat. “Just that. All dark hair in the shadows.”

  Hardly conclusive, he thought. Men of Maledicte's coloring were rare in Antyre, being both dark haired and pale skinned, but common enough in Itarus. The assassin could be any of Ivor's men.

  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 inten
ded.

  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.

  WHEN 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.