Kings and Assassins (20 page)

“I have larger concerns than gossip,” Psyke said. “My motives are far different from yours.”

“I suppose you think it so,” he said. “But I ask you to consider the methods you will employ. I imagine the Duchess of Love to be indelicate in her stratagems. She must be, to upset you so. Does she plan to assassinate me outright? Or something more, perhaps see Adiran killed and me blamed….” He stifled Psyke's retort with a quick kiss, her breath misting against his lips, a lick of a heated tongue.

He pulled away and continued. “She is quite capable of such, I assure you. Her hatred outstrips her love for the country Have you learned that yet?”

He studied her expression for any signs that he might be verging on truth. But her face held no expression at all, had fallen back into the formal mask of composure that he had first mistaken for a widespread lack of intelligence among the noblewomen of the Antyrrian court.

She shook her head abruptly, her hands clenching in her lap as if she had only just managed to keep herself from repeating her earlier motion, covering her ears. Her lips moved, twisted, spit out silent words he couldn't interpret. He felt that same withdrawal in himself that he had felt when confronted with her waking from the dead: that cautious pause to reassess an enemy once he had accomplished something unexpected.

Psyke seemed not to notice his hesitation, and having won the argument with herself, pressed into his arms, tilting her mouth up to his in clear invitation. He bent to accept it, her mouth moving against his, drawing him closer, hands fisting in his coat, ruining the crisp line of the wool. Was this what drove her tonight? Not desire but the same thing that drove him to her rooms, loneliness and the urge to leave the incomprehensible mysteries of politics and enmity aside? Or was this an attempt on his life in some subtle fashion; women of the Itarusine court had been rumored to coat their skin with poison and encourage lovers to have their fill.

He licked a delicate stripe from her collarbone to the fast-beating pulse in her throat, but tasted only warmth and the lingering residue of myrrh in the air. She arched herself against him and he drew her up, drew her closer, nothing loath to lose his own troubles in something so simple and pleasant.

The door opened behind them, and Janus growled. Psyke stepped back as her lady's maid entered, guiding another maid carrying a heavy tray. The maid curtsied awkwardly and set down the food in the sitting room, then vanished. The scent traveled toward them, as did Dahlia, though Dahlia hesitated in the doorway.

Janus said, “Don't dither, girl. Come help your mistress out of her gown.”

Psyke's lips curved. Dahlia came forward, visibly reluctant. Janus thought it at his presence until he saw her hands shake as she pulled the first pin from Psyke's hair.

Janus leaned against the wall, and watched, oddly fascinated by this routine. He couldn't imagine Maledicte standing still for a dresser; he barely managed to do so himself. Psyke had been doing so since birth.

Dahlia undid the tiny buttons along the back, frowning briefly at the strained loops where Janus had forced the fabric from Psyke's shoulders. Overall, though, Dahlia worked with more haste than was seemly, letting the gown fall to the floor rather than catching it and waiting for Psyke to step out of its confining loop.

Psyke undid the first lace on her chemise, half turned so she could watch Janus as she did so. When Dahlia rose to help her remove the chemise, Psyke stopped her. “That's all for now, Dahlia. You may go.”

Dahlia nodded, snatched up the dress, then dropped it over the nearest hook, and fled, her duties barely begun.

“What have you done to her?” Janus said. “She was always inept, but now she's both inept and frightened. If you're beating your servants, you might make sure the results are—”

“She blames me for her recurring illness,” Psyke said. Her chin tilted upward; her expression challenged him. “She finds my presence tends to exacerbate her symptoms. She fears me.”

Janus let his lips curl into a mocking grin worthy of Maledicte. “Fears you?” He circled her, all tousled blond hair, creamy linen, and that one stocking-clad foot. “You look like a girl's doll done hard by.”

Psyke laughed, a bit brittle. “You're the one who plays with me. If I'm damaged, who bears the blame?”

Again, that tiny frisson touched him. The rumor he had alluded to, of Psyke's madness, had not been an invention meant to wound. Her own actions had seen to that on the night of Aris's death. But for the first time, he wondered if there was some truth to it.

Rationally, he knew madness was the likely answer, that she had been fed a surfeit of death, and found it indigestible.

Irrationally—he kept remembering the feel of a god in the air, Psyke's unaccountable waking from death.

“Not I,” he said. “You know me well enough to know I value my possessions, having had so few until recently.”

She tilted her head, and said sweetly, “You valued Maledicte so much, you ran him through with your blade, then imprisoned him in your country estate. Or was he never your possession? He left you, after all.”

Janus grabbed her, slammed her back against the wall, and Psyke laughed. “I was so frightened when we were wed. I'd never known men beyond a single kiss, and then there you were, my husband, my enemy, my duty…. You treated me gently then.”

Janus breathed hard for a moment, trying to put away the red tide before his eyes. Her hand curled around his forearm, scratching lightly, and he turned his gaze downward. “Don't fret,” she said. “I'm sturdier now. Well able to withstand you.”

She reached up and pulled his mouth toward hers, her lips hungry, her tongue questing; and he let all his immediate questions go as his skin woke to need, woke to its own loneliness. The sudden urgency of it made him pause, made him cautious, but Psyke writhed in his arms, and his body yearned in a fashion entirely uncharacteristic of him.

Loneliness
, he thought,
and best stamped out with Psyke, here and now, than fall prey to it later
. He drew her over to the bed, finished unlacing her chemise, removed that final stocking, and she twined her arms around his neck. “You feared to unwrap me the other night, my murderer.”

“Not feared,” he growled. “Never feared.” He pressed her into the mattress, the clean, sweet scent of rosemary rising from the linens. She clawed at his back, making him rise, and she reached for his buttons, pulling his shirt off with as much haste as Dahlia had taken with Psyke's gown. His cravat and collar stayed behind, choking him until he removed them himself, flung them to the floor. An imaginary Padget wailed at him, and Janus bit back an oath. If he was concerned
with what his valet would say, he was coming perilously close to being just another aristocrat.

Psyke's hands worked at his breeches with a bewildering boldness, her lips bitten and reddening. Janus helped hasten the task, and then they were pressed together again, their bodies working against each other in concert, trying for mutual satisfaction all the more elusive for the unlikeliness of finding it.

Janus gasped as Psyke sank her teeth into his shoulder. He was no innocent, no stranger to women's bodies, but Psyke was fast becoming like no woman he had bedded before. Not a clueless sycophant or a bored aristocratic lady, not a prostitute—all of whom had seen only his superficial self, his title, his wealth, his golden looks.

Psyke saw deeper, saw as deep as Mal had, but where Maledicte was his conspirator, Psyke was his enemy; and still she took him in, her hips shifting to meet his, deepening their connection, her nails crosshatching the ridge of his spine, her breath ragged in his hair.

The sting of her nails, the sharp edges of her teeth against his jaw, made him ponder poison even as he stifled his moan against her skin, nuzzled sweat from her cheek. Would such explain her unusual boldness? Had Celeste sent Psyke to bed and kill him?

She shivered against him, echoing his shudder. He grabbed her hands, tasted each of her fingernails, finding only salt and the faint hint of his own blood. No poison there.

Psyke whimpered into his shoulder; he worked a hand down between their bodies and turned that whimper into a soft wail and a long series of shudders.

Entangled by her sudden pleasure, he plummeted quickly after and disengaged himself. He lay beside her, and she drew the sheet over herself.

The aroma of their dinners cooling made his stomach growl, and he rose to investigate what the kitchens had sent, judging the state of Cooks aggravation by the complexity of the dishes: stew meat and bread meant they might as well be chastened children. But the chafing dishes revealed tiny roasted hens, so delicate that the bird came apart in his hands, the juice dampening his skin with salt and oil. He licked it away, curling his tongue into the crevice between thumb
and forefinger, feeling as feral and as hungry as he ever had in the Relicts.

Psyke joined him, draping her dressing gown over her shoulders and fastening the buttons herself “Your breeches,” she said, “are on the floor.”

He tugged the sheet from her bed, wrapped it about himself partially to annoy her, partially because his breeches were too tight to promise comfort at the moment.

She made a face, but no further comment on his manner, and he was oddly grateful. Meals in the palace had turned into rather an ordeal. If he could get through even one in peace, it would be a pleasant change.

Psyke nibbled at her own fowl with hungry unconcern. Her right hand disarticulated it, wing from breastbone with aristocratic ease and a single gilt-tipped fork; her left held paper spread open on the low table.

Janus felt his temper spike uncertainly. She was poring over the letter he had liberated from the study.

“Can you read that?” he said.

“Can you not?” she replied. “The Ixions have always been trained in High Antyrrian.”

“And the Bellanes?” he asked. “What need had your family to learn the king's language? Did your family aspire to the throne?”

Psyke sighed. “My family
was
the throne once. Did you study only recent history?”

“I was rather pressed for time,” Janus said. “Keeping myself alive in the Itarusine court was a bit more involved than I had bargained for. Then I returned home and found things even more complicated.”

Psyke made no comment, but instead began to read aloud:

Psyke said, “Need I continue?”

Janus laughed. Blythe was an idiot and a transparent one, a lord with an overabundance of self-importance and no common sense. He said, “Did Blythe sign it himself? The duchess won't like that. Him laying out her hand so soon.”

“It's unsigned,” Psyke said. “Coward, I suppose. A rare sin you lack.”

“Careful,” Janus said. “That ran perilously close to approval.” He reached out and tugged on one of the long tangles of her hair, idly sleeking it with his fingers. She brushed his hand aside, and bent back to her meal, her dressing gown sliding over her pale skin.

“Will you tell me,” Janus said, “who marked your flesh?”

Psyke set down her fork with a noticeable clatter; her hands shook, and she tucked them beneath her dressing gown, as if the room had suddenly grown chill. “I crawled beneath the altar to get to Aris, and rose too soon. There's no great secret there. The deepest of hurts linger as the pain works its way to the surface.”

“I'm familiar with such injuries,” Janus said. “We fought with stones in the Relicts.”

She rose and faded back into the inner bedchamber without another word.

Janus applied himself to the second covered dish, found it was rabbit wrapped in pastry and very tender. No wonder DeGuerre had complained; rabbit was a commoner's dish, suitable for grounds-keepers and staff, hardly the thing to grace a noble's table.

Janus reached over and collected the letter again, trying to make sense of the words and the meaning Psyke had ascribed to them.

Let 'em whistle for it
, Bull had written. As well he might to such a litany of ridiculous requests. But to write that rejection, not beside the paragraph with his own name, but Janus's, the only request anyone was like to consider …

For a moment, Janus wondered whether Bull could be trusted. Hadn't he offered advice earlier? Or he could be setting up an elaborate charade meant to lead Janus into trusting him. And that was all presuming Psyke's translation was truthful.

Janus put his chin in his hands, missing Maledicte, the comfort of knowing who his best ally was. A rustle behind him made him turn. Psyke stood in the doorway. “Come, see how well you can bruise me.” She dropped the gown, let him admire the red bloom of his bite mark on her neck, and disappeared into the room.

He took the time to secrete the letter away again—perhaps Delight could read High Antyrrian; he seemed prodigiously well educated—and then followed his wife.

FINE SPRING DAY, THE
newsboys proclaimed as they progressed, pleasant enough that Last's mad start at the docks should be well attended. Janus, jostled between Fanshawe Gost and Evan Tarrant on one coach bench, with guards lining the outside, thought the weather not as fine as the criers declared, though attendance swelled as if it were. In older times, the people gathered for hangings, too, with every bit as much interest.