Kings and Assassins

by Lane Robins

  Instead she headed toward the sound of argument and complaint drifting downward. “Nowhere's safe,” she said and passed the guards unhindered. She left them watching an empty room, more empty than ever, since its ghosts followed her.

  She climbed the stairs, hunting the sounds of quiet argument, following a deeper sound, a distant thumping like the beat of a distressed heart.

  She found herself at the base of the dowager's tower, the guards' voices coming clear. “We're not leaving the door. Rue said—”

  “But he'd want to know she's talking—”

  Psyke stepped up; the guards fell silent; and, as if the assassin had sensed her, she stopped pounding on the door and said instead, “Ani's come. Let me free, Lady. Let me free and I'll aid you. I'll tell you anything you want to know.”

  She sounded as if she had pressed herself against the door, as if the urgency in her words had pressed her as close to egress as possible.

  “Open the door,” Psyke told the guards.

  “Not for anything, Rue said,” the guard objected. Psyke merely held out her hand, waiting for the key.

  So sure of yourself, then? Mirabile asked.

  “Go away,” Psyke said. “You're not wanted or needed. Do not try my patience or we'll find out together what Haith enables me to do.”

  The guard blanched and dropped the key into her palm, startling her. Shed nearly forgotten the men were there. Nearly. She supposed there was a small part of her satisfied with the way they hastened to do her bidding.

  The old key's iron scrollwork was heavy and uncomfortable in her palm. The key turned easily enough; perhaps Rue had greased the lock once they decided to hold their prisoner in the tower. The door sagged, a monstrosity of old oak and iron, and it took Psyke resting all her weight on the handle to open it. She half expected the assassin to bolt past her, and Psyke was braced, ready to fling herself at the girl if needed.

  The assassin crouched at the base of the stairs; she looked up at Psyke with an expression that was as mutely miserable as Psyke felt herself.

  “How will you help me?” Psyke asked. “Are you even able to? I will close the door again, leave you to your fate—”

  “Ani will kill Ivor,” the girl said. “She'll kill your husband, and She'll destroy your prince. Vengeance only leaves its users hollow, and your prince was an empty shell to begin with. There'll be nothing left.”

  Psyke stepped back, took a deep breath preparatory to shutting the heavy door.

  The assassin scrambled to her feet, put her hand out against the edge of the door. “You can stop Ani. We can stop Her.”

  “You are imprisoned,” Psyke said. “I hardly think you can do—”

  “You need me,” the girl said. “Or do you think to save Janus on your own when you can barely stand?”

  Psyke straightened hastily, took her weight from the door, but her body missed its support, wanted to sag into its strength again.

  “Haith doesn't work as Ani does,” the assassin said. “Black-Winged Ani makes constant trades as one gains Her favor by killing more and more. Haith …” She turned, as if to go up the stairs, though Psyke knew it was only a bluff. The woman wanted out, wanted to aid Ivor with an intensity Psyke could nearly taste. She let the woman walk the stairs, and was rewarded when the assassin abruptly turned and huffed at her.

  “Haith,” Psyke murmured, and, oh, the sound of His name on her lips pleased the world. She felt the foundations quiver far beneath her feet, a little shudder of pleasure. “What does He want, then? How do I woo Him and gain more of Him than I have? While being safe from death benefits me, the ghosts do not—”

  The assassin flew down the stairs, clutched at Psyke's sleeves. “Let me out and I'll tell you. We don't have much time.”

  “We have too little time for you to play games with me,” Psyke said. A quick shimmer of movement in her vision, and there was a ghostly bird rushing toward the window, impacting it in silence and vanishing. Psyke reluctantly called Mirabile back. Confronted by her angry presence, the ghosts that were beginning to appear fell back. Mirabile's mouth turned down—shunned in death as in life.

  “You don't petition Haith or trade with Him. You don't entice Him into favoring you. You command Him by strength—”

  Psyke shook her head. It was ridiculous—but the girl leaned closer, her eye fever bright, her lips trembling with urgency, looming over Psyke like a raptor.

  “Listen,” she hissed, just as Challacombe echoed it. Listen. “Why do you think Haith bows His head in every representation of Him?”

  “Out of mercy,” Psyke said, repeating nearly forgotten catechism. “To spare us the death in His gaze.”

  “No,” the girl said. She shook her head for further emphasis, stamping a foot. “You're Redoubt's kin and you don't know! Your ancestor knew. It's why he killed his family.”

  “Haith killed his—”

  The girl shook her head again. “Thomas Redoubt rose to power on the death stored in the battlefield, rose to a throne and ushered in peace. When a new enemy emerged, Redoubt commanded Haith to rid him of his foe, but to no avail. The ghosts had worn away, you see, tired of dogging Redoubt's path, no longer interested in the world of the living. So Redoubt made new ghosts. He killed his wife and his children, one by one, sparing only the daughter who was wedded and away. Then, with their ghosts in tow, he commanded Haith to kill his enemy.

  “Haith did as commanded, but when the urgency was gone… when Redoubt realized what he had done … he became a ghost himself and faded away into Haith's domain.

  “Haith doesn't bow His head for mercy. He doesn't bow it out of sorrow that all creatures fail and die. Ani doesn't call Him Her crawling brother because He's part of the earth. Haith is a subservient god. And all it takes to command Him is strength of purpose and an army of the dead.”

  Psyke shuddered; the world shuddered with her, Haith's dismay at being stripped so bare. The windows warped and grew ragged cracks. Plaster sifted down like snow, and the tower swayed.

  The girl clutched Psyke, hanging on to her as if Psyke could echo Haith's urge for flight and leave her. The shaking slowed, and Psyke pushed free, pushed harder until the girl was pressed against the wall, half falling down against the stairs, all torn skirts, wild hair, and one glittering eye. “I can command Haith? I can do more than kill with my presence?”

  “It's not killing,” the girl babbled. “Not you. More like you're encouraging the death they would have—”

  Psyke borrowed a movement she'd seen Janus use on Savne once, when he was goaded past discretion. A tight hand on a slender throat. Mirabile leaned close and whispered. I stopped your youngest sister's breath like that. She squirmed and thrashed, but the poison had made her weak and I held on until I felt her last breath leave and the heaviness of dead flesh.

  Psyke's hand flew back.

  The assassin, rubbing her neck, skirted Psyke warily and headed for the open door, her back tense as if she expected Psyke to stop her at any moment.

  “Where will we find them?” Psyke said.

  The assassin stopped. “You have to promise me you won't use Haith to kill Ivor. Or I won't tell you the last of it. How to command Him.”

  “You've told me enough,” Psyke said. “Strength of purpose, ghosts. There are ghosts aplenty waiting without the palace.”

  “You need His attention first—”

  “Your scholarship fails you,” Psyke said. She caught up with the assassin, taking quick steps, seizing the girl's sleeve, fought vertigo for being so far from the earth. “I've had His attention from the very beginning. It's always on me.”

  The girl's face hardened; Psyke held her sleeve and said, “You needn't look for a weapon. I have no great desire to see Ivor dead, only gone from these shores. I prefer peace to war.”

  The girl hesitated; the hardness dropped from her face, leaving only a girl who had been roughly treated. Psyke's fingers, pressed into the assassin's arm, were collecting the sticky residue of old blood.<
br />
  They whipped her, Mirabile said. She didn't scream.

  Psyke said, “Come with me,” to Mirabile, to Challacombe.

  The assassin's body was one long knot of tension against Psyke's side. She muttered, “Collect your ghosts if you must, only remove your elbow from my side.”

  “Won't you take the pain for a chance to save your precious Ivor?” Psyke said. “Or should I go alone, and leave you locked away, wondering … ?”

  The assassin shifted, wrapped her arm around Psyke's waist, supporting her. “I'm the injured one.”

  “I'll be better once there's earth beneath my feet.” Psyke could feel the lure downward, an anchor on her flesh, drawing her toward Haith, toward the dead. She raised her head. The palace ghosts were filing toward her: Challacombe; Mirabile; murdered Savne; the guard who had tried to kill Janus; and Psyke's poor stupid maid, Dahlia, who looked bewildered even in death.

  One missing, she thought, and deliberately focused her will. “Come, Aris, your kingdom has need of you. Your son has need of you.” He wisped into being but barely, his eyes blue flames and resting on the assassin. Psyke thought briefly that it was good the girl couldn't see the ghosts, or even her nerve might fail under that seething gaze.

  Instead, the assassin only strengthened her grip on Psyke and together they led the ghosts downward. The guards on the floor below said nothing, but cleared their way. It was the first indication Psyke had that perhaps the ghosts were no longer invisible. The way the men drew back, long after she passed, suggested they felt some presence beyond her own. Captain Rue joined her and the assassin at the main door; before he could make the obvious offer to join her, she shook her head.

  “Stay here, Captain. Keep the palace secure. Should we succeed, we'll need a safe harbor.”

  She held his gaze, tilting her head back to meet his eyes, and finally, he dropped his, bowed. “Yes, my lady.”

  The assassin murmured, “Finally,” and tugged. Psyke stepped out onto the streets of Murne, and all around, those dead or dying, took notice.

  ♦ 30 ♦

  VOR'S BREATH RASPED IN HIS throat; Janus took a ‘moment's distracted pleasure to think that at least he had given the man a bit of a fight, before all his attention was riveted on the approaching figure, and the death he might carry. Adiran had always been the very image of an Antyrrian child, hair like gilt, sky-colored eyes, and skin as pale as winter milk. The child approaching them was studded with shadow. The sunlit hair was tousled and tufted with dark feathers, the pale eyes were mottled black and blue, as piebald as any of the northern horses. His translucent skin … seemed as full of movement as the sky was full of rooks, a shifting, pulsing wingbeat.

  Surely with all these changes, Janus thought, despair washing over him, surely Evan was dead and Adiran was well and truly wing-bent, his vengeance as much a need as breath.

  Ivor's men swore, and they stepped forward, swords at the ready. A single, simple action, and it changed everything.

  Janus shuddered with new understanding, how close he had come to throwing it away, and it seemed the city shuddered with him, a vast exhalation of relief.

  “You didn't wake him,” Janus said, still numb with relief. “He's not coming to aid you. He's coming for you. The blame apportioned correctly. Ani's sworn to kill you.”

  Ivor let out a breath of his own. “I'm not certain. Are you? If I didn't set him on, and you didn't—who does he blame?”

  “Too late to muddy the waters,” Janus said. “All I need do is stand aside.”

  “If I die, Grigor, loathsome father though he is, will turn your streets red with blood,” Ivor said. “He's lost too many prince ascendants these last few years.”

  “At your blade—”

  “And yours, my pet, and yours. That alone would give him the excuse.”

  Their argument broke off as the rooks darted and fell like arrows. Janus flung himself away from Ivor, rolling out of sword's reach, out of the way of the plunging birds. Adiran dropped to a crouch, watching with head-cocked interest. The birds made no distinction between Ivor and the other men. Simpson passed Janus a blade from one of the fallen soldiers, and they hunched and swung and batted while beaks tore at their clothes and talons left bloody stripes on their hands and faces. Rooks fell to their swords, but others kept coming.

  Janus wondered grimly how Ivor fared, and sliced a sharp-edged wing away from a bird seemingly determined to fly directly through him if it had to carve a path with its beak.

  A shriek reached his ears, a man screaming in agony, followed by a splash and more shrieking. Janus turned, shielding his face and neck, and looked out over the water. A man thrashed and flailed, pinned on the spines of the water gate, while a cluster of swarming rooks made nest material of his face and hair.

  Ivor cursed, his escape cut off. The boat the man had been in drifted slowly away from the pier. Adiran moved for the first time since the rooks had begun their attack; he giggled and walked forward, the dagger held loosely before him.

  If Adiran weren't possessed, the scene might have been amusing, watching Ivor's face as the untrained child came toward him. But in the midst of slashing wings, beaks, talons, with a kingdom at stake, with a man screaming and drowning… Janus thought again of Ivor's claim that if he died, Grigor would declare war. It was more than possible. Grigor wanted Antyre badly.

  “Adiran,” he said, though he had to force the breath out. He felt more like a Relict rat than he had for years—at the mercy of instincts that urged run, hide, seek shelter, and wait for this to pass.

  Simpson hissed warning and disapproval, and Ani's rooks swept over him in a flurry of stabbing beaks that pierced his throat. Janus watched his only ally die. Shaking, Janus raised his voice, tried to project the same confidence that Maledicte had sometimes responded to; but Maledicte had been his lover, their shared history a leash on them both. “Adiran,” Janus said again and again, until the boy slowed, turned those light-dark eyes on him.

  “I know you,” he said. The voice was wrong, not the prince's, not the boy's who had giggled as men died, but something more disturbing. A voice that made Janus's head hurt and Adiran's lips gloss dark with blood. “I warned you not to think to use Me again.”

  Ivor shuddered, his hands coming away from his face. In the slick shadows on Ivor's palms, Janus thought the man bled from the eyes at the sound of Her voice.

  One of Ivor's remaining men—the baker, his white coat gone dark with blood, feather, and gunpowder—narrowed his gaze at the closing distance between Ivor and Adiran, between life and death, and darted forward, blade slashing.

  The rooks confused the air; the baker bulled through, and Adiran threw the dagger into the air. The glittering blade disappeared mid-toss; the rooks’ wings took the shine for themselves, and the baker began screaming as the newly razor-edged wings ripped him apart.

  “There's a machine for you,” She said, the words ragged in Adiran's young voice. “Do you like it?”

  Janus decided not answering was probably wiser than misspeaking and drawing Her ire. Ivor looked at the dark water, considering his chances. If he could swim out far enough, would he be safe? Janus doubted it. Being out of Her chosen element would annoy Her—it had made Maledicte violent and crazy while in the underground cell at Stones—but not slow Her.

  The razor-winged rooks took to the air again, the chime of their wings as dangerous a harbinger as the sound of acid bubbling in Delight's laboratory.

  “I didn't kill Aris,” Ivor said.

  The rooks shivered, their smooth flight stuttering a moment, as if Ani's attention had faltered, as if the unnatural thing She had done to them made them less creatures of air than they had been before.

  Adiran came forward another step, his hands empty, his eyes full of hatred. “You did. I heard the guards say so.”

  Ivor licked his lips, took a step back, to the very edge of the docks. “Men can be mistaken. Men are not as infallible as gods.”

  Ivor was a fool, Janus
thought. Only a fool argued with gods, and only a fool thought Ani capable of reason. Whether or not Adiran chose to believe, Ani would see everyone on the docks dead, just to slake Her temper.

  “You did, too,” Adiran said again. His own voice this time, a child's argument. And only a fool argued with a child.

  The rooks rose, circling higher, gaining speed, spreading apart until it was evident that when they stooped again, the only one left standing would be Adiran. Everyone else would be shreds of flesh and bone.

  Janus clutched the sword tighter and tried to decide if it were better to go out fighting or, just this once, accept that he had been beaten. He had never expected his life to end due to an overabundance of years, but this was too soon.

  The rooks descended all at once, but it was in an uncontrolled fall; limp bundles of feather, metal, air-touched bone, and eyes gone white with old death. Adiran whirled, his attention shifting.

  “See to your prince,” Psyke said as she stepped out of the Relicts. A pale, luminous fog tumbled after her, like swirls of fog blown over ice. A black-clad shadow detached itself from her side, darting toward Ivor.

  Adiran let the assassin pass, let her join Ivor, his attention all on Psyke. “Why do you interfere?”

  “Why do You?” she countered. “You were not summoned. Adiran knows nothing of hatred.”

  “It's love that engenders vengeance. I know love,” the prince said. “I know my father was taken from me by Ivor Sofia Grigorian.” The boyish treble sank to a crow's low mutter under the weight of his grievance. He turned away from Psyke, reminded of Ivor's presence.

  “You're mistaken,” Ivor said, “misled by gossip or outright slander. Do you have no care for the truth? Your father was a stickler for it… for proof of wrongdoing. Are you his son? Or Ani's?”

  “I want my father avenged!” Adiran cried. “I killed my friend to give me strength to see you die.”

  “Evan's alive,” Psyke said. “And fretting for you.”

  The vise that had fastened itself around Janus's heart eased. They could be clear of this madness, if they could only keep Adiran from killing Ivor. They could save Antyre.