Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  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.

  There had been fights to the death with men who would have killed either of them for spite, for their clothes, for their accents, so far above the usual Relict rat's.

  It wasn't until Janus had been collected on his noble father's command, whisked abroad for a quick polish of his manners in the Itarusine royal court, that he had truly begun to understand murder, that it could have purpose beyond immediate satiation of rage or need.

  Janus twitched to his feet when a bell rang distantly in the hall—some noble demanding attention at an unfashionable hour—and his troubles still looming.

  Psyke was dead, and Janus the only one present. Janus, the one she had accused of regicide the night before. Damn her anyway, Janus thought—it had been her fault, goading him, and Celias fault also, for her habitual need for Laudable, so common that he forgot what a normal dose looked like, and damn Maledicte for leaving him when he needed help most.

  Blame, Janus thought, and like that, his nerves settled. Dahlia. The country clod of a maid. New to the court, clumsy, easily overwrought, and slow of intellect. She could be brought to believe she had mixed the Laudable incorrectly. Dahlia wooed disaster with her every action.

  He settled himself onto the bed, though his heart thumped oddly—he had always left his victims before, not lain beside them, and Psyke's face, even in death, held trouble on her brow.

  He willed himself toward sleep; he could feign it, but it would be more effective if Dahlia's cries woke him. That sort of sudden shock was difficult to counterfeit, and while Dahlia wasn't a critical audience, the guards would be.

  Psyke's skin, waxy now, drew his fingertips. Maledicte had called her a pretty little doll wife, something to play with and discard. Janus hadn't ever paid her much mind at all. She hadn't ever been real to him before last night, when she unleashed months' worth of fear and temper on him.

  Beside him, she gulped suddenly, the sound nightmare vivid to his ears. He jerked; she twitched as if she were hooked up to one of Westfall's engines, her spine attached to cogs and chains and gears. Her body arched and teeth gritted in her jaw. Her undershift slid off her shoulders, revealing knotted muscle and that black bruising like the marks made by a giant's grip.

  Alive, after all, but the relief was tempered by something like terror in his veins. He was no child to mistake sleep for death, and this weight in the air tasted of the gods.

  Janus scrambled off the bed as she began muttering in her sleep, not in Antyrrian, but the older language from time when Itarus and Antyre were one, the language of the dead. Her eyelashes fluttered, and Janus seized his coat and fled, unwilling to see what greeted him when she woke.

  ♦ 5 ♦

  HE KING'S LIBRARY HAD ALWAYS been a place Janus enjoyed, a place of purest pleasure; Aris's library was the project of generations, reflecting interests that spanned history natural wonders, legends, geography, memoirs, and genealogies. Aris had added social treatises and tracts on engineering and medicine. It was impeccably organized, well maintained, and dusted once a week. It was also completely useless in Janus's current search.

  He missed the library at Maledicte's Dove Street residence, the casual spill of pamphlets on poison and murder, the pornographic woodcuts, the histories of scandal and a hundred or more handwritten files kept on all the members of the court, details easily turned to blackmail.

  Once Maledicte had given his servant Gilly funds of his own, the shelves had gained a collection of religious treatises, rare in this time when the gods had been presumed dead, when the intercessors had been abandoned in Antyre, killed outright in Itarus.

  Those books were gone now, collected avidly by those people who had seen Maledicte in bloody action, or had been touched by Mirabile's madness, and knew the gods weren't gone at all. Janus would have paid dearly and gratefully for one of those tracts now and the answer to what had happened to Psyke.

  He had lived with Maledicte for more than a year, had grown to feel Ani's presence in his lover, changing Miranda into something new, strange, and glorious. He had felt that same strange glory in the air last night, blooming through the dark halls where Aris died: the presence of a god invading the realm of humanity. The question plaguing him was, If not Maledicte, was it still Ani's wings overshadowing the palace? Or another god entirely?

  Gilly, curse him wherever he was, would have known whether all gods raised the same tremor deep within a man's bones or whether this was a different god, focused not on Aris, not centered around the assassin's blade, but elsewhere. Perhaps on a woman who had woken from death as if it were only a deeper sleep.

  Janus brought down another book on medicine; accounts of apoplexies that paralyzed men, mimicked death's stiff touch, and poisons that echoed death's effects. Hadn't he used one to spirit Maledicte's “corpse” from the palace all those months ago?

  Stillheart was notorious for its deathlike sleep, the cold pallor of the grave it brought to flesh, but the poison was also rare. Psyke would have no chance at all to gather it; and, more to the point, the only poison she had swallowed last night was the Laudable Janus had fed her.

  He set the book aside with a growl of irritation; his reach toward another was interrupted by a faint cough. When he turned, Evan Tarrant was awaiting his attention, hovering nervously in the doorway.

  “Come in,” Janus said. “Come in and close the door.”

  The boy nodded, trotted in with an eager obedience only slightly dimmed by the black armbands he sported. Officially, Evan was one of the palace pages, and as a new one and junior, the one most likely to take on the disagreeable chores. Unofficially, however, everyone knew Evan was the Earl of Last's personal page, and so Evan spent his days idling about the palace, waiting to carry Janus's infrequent messages. Janus found the boy's enthusiasm pleasant but bewildering. At fourteen, Janus's entire world had been about keeping himself and Miranda alive; this boy's cheery nature was as foreign to him as the trust in his eyes.

  “I need you to go down to the docks,” Janus said. “Try not to get in the soldiers' way and steer clear of the Particulars. They'll be combing the ships, hunting for Aris's assassin.”

  The boy nodded, his smile fading. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You'll be doing the same,” Janus said. “A single boy can see far more than a squadron of soldiers, especially a clever boy who knows the docks as well
as you do. And one who still has a sailor's cropped cut. Report anything out of the ordinary back to me.”

  Evan said, “If I see the bastard what did it—should I call for help?”

  “No,” Janus said. Evan's pale brows furrowed. Janus had no intention of explaining his concerns to the boy—that if the assassin were caught, the Particulars, no friends to him, might encourage the assassin to name Janus as his patron. “Just send word to me. I'm going to give you coins—if you lose or spend them all on sweets, I'll thrash you—with which to bribe a ship's captain if it looks likely that the assassin is intending to set sail. If the matter seems urgent, send word to Delight and Chryses at Seahook.”

  Evan took the heavy purse with a widening of his eyes. “It's a fortune!”

  “Hardly that,” Janus said, but he said it without bite. Despite the boy's unaccountably sunny nature, Evan reminded him of his youthful companions, Relict rats who were dangerously envious of any wealth at all.

  Evan shifted foot to foot, and Janus said, “What is it?”

  “How will I know?” he said. “What's a killer look like?”

  Janus sighed, fought the urge to tell the boy he was looking at one. “You'll be looking for someone who's trying to remain inconspicuous, a man or woman, likely to be Itarusine, without luggage, attempting to buy or barter passage out of the country.”

  Evan nodded, turned toward the door, and paused once more, to say hesitantly, “The pages are all saying… what about the prince?”

  “Ivor's not like to be trying to escape—”

  The boy interrupted, and Janus reminded himself to go over basic etiquette with him once again. “Not him. Our prince. He's upset, isn't he? I know I was when my ma died, and I was only five. Will you take care of him?”

  Janus said, “He has guards to care for—”

  “You take care of me—”

  “I struck a bargain with your father. Do not think I am fond of children.”

  Evan said stubbornly, “Still, you're his family, aren't you?”

  If Evan's father hadn't been so important to Janus's plans, Janus would have boxed the boy's ears. But Captain Tarrant was essential to the kingdom's finances and he doted on his son.

  Janus settled for snapping, “Just go.” He waited for Evan to be gone from the corridors, paced the library three times round, casting displeased glances at the useless books, and finally gave in. Why not go see his sweet simpleton of a cousin? Aris's stricture against it was as dead as he.

  Aris had feared Janus meant harm to his son; as always, blinded by his own concerns, Aris had missed the obvious. Janus had nothing but the warmest feelings for the lad. How could he not? It was in Adiran's eyes, palest blue and utterly blank, that Janus had seen his future written. Until that moment, he had not thought of anything beyond claiming his father's title and land, of ensuring a future without want for himself and Maledicte. But Adiran changed that, his vacant eyes a spark to his ambition. Why stop at earl when he could have the throne? Only a fool settled for a mouthful of bread when he could have a feast with careful planning and effort.

  Antyre needed him as badly as he wanted it. The country was stagnant, its most certain future a slow decline into insignificance.

  But if Adiran was improving, then everything changed. If Gost, the Kingmaker, found Adiran a viable heir, there'd be no gaining his support; all Janus's plans would have to change.

  IN HER DREAMS, PSYKE WANDERED the dusty tunnels again, creeping to her rendezvous with Aris, walking those secret passages carved through stone. Her skirts trailed after her, sweeping away the dust and leaving a spiderweb stream of blood, thin traceries of black in the darkness. She knew she walked in a dream, simply by that—when she walked the tunnels awake, she held her skirts high, and the dust rolled over her shoes like startled mice.

  The lamp in her hand guttered and dwindled; she watched it with a numb horror. Left in the dark, the doors sealed tight—these tunnels would be her tomb.

  “They were mine,” a man's voice said, as dry as old bone, a mere frisson on the still air. “After my family … died, I sought the dark spaces and the cold silence drew on me until I lacked the strength to leave.” A light flared, a smoky yellow torch, oil-soaked rag around wood, and Psyke shied.

  “Have you never seen one god-touched before, child?” he said. He blinked mottled eyes at her, and adjusted the torch in its sconce so that it stood upright, sending thin trails of heat up a tiny shaft in the stone. His long fingers, clawed and scaled, rasped on the stone, through the stone, as intangible as the dream itself, and Psyke fought back the urge to run. She needed the light if she was to find the king; and this man, strange as he was, had offered her no harm.

  “No harm at all to you,” he said. “Blessed by the god.”

  “The gods are gone,” she said. “Or so I was told and so I believed, until my family was murdered by those who claimed Black-Winged Ani's—”

  “Shh,” he hissed. A narrow flick of a tongue made it more serpentine than human, and she shivered. “When you speak Her name, you court Her attention. These corridors are safe from Her; She loathes the close and dark so greatly that not even Her children will walk these halls. Remember that, should She come hunting.”

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Do you not know your king, child?”

  “Never my king,” she said.

  “Perhaps not your king but decidedly your kin,” he said. “I grow old, even in death, and my mind wanders. Would your king be the one bleeding below, wailing for his lost son? Or is yours the one fretting on blood and politics above the stairs? I believe them both yours. Which one are you seeking?”

  “Aris,” she said. “Aris.” And dreamlike she sank through the floor, the torchlight fading in her vision, until she had returned to the gods' chapel.

  “My son,” Aris said, turning his face toward her, eyes blind with desperation and pain. “Take heed of my son.”

  She woke to her own voice, the vow quivering on her lips. “—will, sire. I will.” She woke alone and to limbs that seemed weighted, as if the dusty stone of the chapel and the back passages had come with her, their chill grip lingering in her bones.

  It was Laudable that slowed her blood, she thought, Laudable that Janus had fed her, and as she recalled him, so she felt his absence with a jolt of pure terror. Adiran!

  Protect my son, Aris urged again. She choked on an inborne breath, found herself struggling for air, and gaping at the man seated at the foot of her bed. Aris, it was, but thinned and faded, a most melancholy ghost of a melancholy man. Adiran, he said, without looking up from the translucent bones of his hands, palms up in his lap, slowly filling with his own blood.

  Janus will kill him to see his ambitions met.

  Madness, she thought, her dreaming mind dragged into waking, grief playing with her mind as well as her heart. Aris sighed and on the breath faded completely.

  She scrabbled out of the linens, dropped gracelessly to the floor when her knees buckled under Laudables pervasive hold and her own fear.

  She glanced up at the man by the door, embarrassed he found her in such disarray. “Challacombe. Is Adiran guarded?”

  I did warn you, he said, still bracing himself against the wall. A lit cigarillo made a tiny flame near his thigh, burning red and redder as he let it dangle. The face Janus presents is only a mask, but you gave him your heart along with your body.

  She was across the room before she knew it, numb limbs forgotten in reflexive outrage that he should speak to her so, but the blow she dealt him only bruised her own hand as it passed through his shadowed flesh and brushed stone.

  Whimpering, cold to the bone, she backed away. Aris's ghost, she understood; it was the product of her grieving mind. This …

  The assassin killed me in the passageways, left my body for rats. Yet Janus walks free. Challacombe disappeared as Aris had done, leaving only a lingering scent of smoke.

  Psyke collapsed, stones clammy against her bare legs. Her
head spun; what was this? Her shoulders burned and ached, and a moment half remembered washed over her: standing in the chapel, staring at the assassin's tumble of dark curls, and feeling cold hands pull her close, shield her in the scent of earth. The scent of the grave.

  Challacombe's accusation lingered, settled in the crevices of her heart. It was true enough, she knew it by the aching sense of betrayal that stirred beneath her grief and guilt.

  She'd wedded Janus to serve as Aris's spy, to pick out truth from pretense, and instead, She'd been lulled, first into relaxing her suspicion and then, damningly, into supporting him. Hadn't she argued just last night that perhaps Aris misjudged Janus? That as unlikely as it seemed, perhaps Maledicte had acted of his own accord without Janus's instruction? Minutes later, her king was dead at the hand of a courtier who had been buried months ago.

  Janus profits when men die. It wasn't a ghost this time, only a memory. A phrase heard more than once, a phrase that Aris used against Janus's charm like a shield.

  Janus profits when men die. She shuddered. One step closer to the throne.

  Protect Adiran, Aris had pled.

  The lingering lassitude in her bones, the sluggish pulse of blood and breath, gave way to fear-inspired haste. She scrambled to her feet.

  If the guards, if even Janus's sworn detractors like the Duchess of Love had found him blameless of Aris's murder, then they had no reason to deny him the nursery.

  Psyke's hysteria, her own weakness and shock, had betrayed more than her own respectability. She hadn't been able to explain herself last night, had only been able to hold on to the truth: Aris died and it was Janus's doing. Maledicte's hand but Janus's command. Rue had dismissed her first strangled explanations outright, and she had faltered to rabbit muteness when Janus arrived.