Kings and Assassins (25 page)

“Aris was a good man,” she said.

“Good enough to watch his brother throw his pregnant and noble-blooded paramour into the streets and make no objection,” Janus said. “A good man overall though, given his rank, his expectations. But as a king? What will history praise him for? For surrendering to Itarus when the cost of lives grew high?

“More people suffer now—hunger, fear, uncertainty—under the Itarusine treaty rules than died. War kills soldiers. The treaty starves infants and women, turns soldiers to forgotten toys and our future to ashes. Aris was a scholar, well versed in history; he knew the cost, but his tender heart couldn't allow the war to continue.”

“People were dying,” Psyke said.

Janus turned her to face him, and whispered close, hot in her ear. “We would have won, Psyke.” She pulled back to look at him, blue eyes sober and calm. Listening, he dared hope that her reasonable mind could sort truth even from a distrusted speaker. “Each winter that the battle dragged out brought us closer to a victory. It was a seaman's war: our ships were superior, quicker to be replaced, and Itarus froze each winter, locking them in, leaving them with supply—”

“I know the history; I lived it,” Psyke said. “I watched my father leave and never return, watched as the royal house diminished from six to two. War is about more than strength and logic, Janus. The country couldn't stomach the grief.”

“Couldn't stomach the change,” Janus countered. “Aris gathered his apathy from Antyre itself. Its own worst enemy. The war bit into
the nobles' lives and so had to stop before the season could be disrupted again.”

“Will you bring war back on us?” Psyke said. “Is that your idea of the future, why you treated us to the spectacle at the docks?”

“I don't want war. But neither do I think Antyre should cower, afraid to grow, afraid to breathe, for fear of Itarus's displeasure.”

“A schoolboy's idealism,” Psyke said.

Janus laughed. “I was born in the Relicts, trained in politics by the most ruthless Itarusine prince ascendant—do you believe idealism is a fault of mine? Antyre must change or die. Aris was content to let us fade.”

Psyke shook her head, but it was a quick, aborted gesture; her eyes were sad, as if she would like to debate the point but couldn't, trapped in her own memories of the king.

“Adiran is a sweet child, but he cannot claim the throne. To rule by committee is a fool's game. Help Antyre, Psyke. Help me. Cast your support with me. The past is only peopled by death and despair. Aid me, any way you can,” he said. He stroked his fingers over the marks on her shoulders; she arched into him, lips parting on a silent moan.

“At the very least, don't hinder me,” he continued, pitching his voice to show nothing but earnestness and entreaty. “Allow me to bring Antyre into the future, help her prosper and grow. After that, if you still wish me gone, you're welcome to try.”

She shivered against him, close enough that his breath ruffled back to him when he sighed. She turned, mutely presenting the last space of bare skin to be buttoned away.

He stroked his hand up the delicate knobs of her spine, let his hands sink into the warmth beneath the tangle of her hair, before pressing the last tiny buttons into their matching loops. “Your plans for the day?”

She smiled at him, slow, sweet, uncomplicated, the very picture of demure trust. “I thought to see to Adiran's needs, and then Celeste is sending her carriage for me.”

Hot fury spiked in him; he swallowed it, though it burned his
throat and belly; and her face paled, arguing against his complete success. But he refused to revisit last night's confrontation. Psyke was dangerous enough as a noblewoman and wife; last night she had been something far more deadly. If it slumbered now, coiled within her skin, he chose not to wake it.

“Take a guard,” Janus said. “If things are so unsettled that Harm will strike within the palace—”

“Will you suggest a guard I can trust?” Psyke said. “Or should I take your boy Tarrant and save you the trouble of spying on me?”

“Do as you will,” he said, pulling away. “Give Celeste my warmest regards and tell her I remember her.”

“I'm sure she'll find that… comforting,” she said, wrapped in an armor he couldn't penetrate with words.

He let her go, sick with frustration and for the first time contemplating that as bad as his position was, it could be worsened. The gods seemed minded to play with Antyrrian souls of late; Janus meant to see they caused little harm. As much as Ani had been a boon, granting Maledicte immunity to hurt, She had also been a curse.
The gods
, Janus thought,
should have no place in mortal deeds
.

Janus returned to his own rooms, grimly pleased at the bloodstain beside the bed and hearth, signs that he had had his moment of triumph amid adversity, and rang for his valet.

Padget sighed when Janus ruined the line of his best coat by strapping his blade to his hip, but made no comment. The man learned. So did Janus. His blade would be at his side from now on, no matter the comments it occasioned.

He sent a page with a message to Ivor, requesting a moment of the man's time. A letter awaited him spattered with transparent grease marks around the seal. Chryses or Delight undoubtedly, and when Janus broke the seal, he found a tight smile on his face. Chryses, in the aftermath of his disobedience, was not so sanguine as to his continued employment with Janus, though he cloaked it in a too-careless demand about Janus's next wishes. Janus could almost hear Delight's exasperation with
his brother, the idiot
.

Janus bent to the letter, crossed the sepia pen strokes with blue ink and sent Chryses back to spy on Harm. Dangerous, yes, but
Chryses had seemed certain he could gull Harm. If the antimachinist was, as Psyke seemed to imply an Itarusine agitator, Janus needed the information. He folded the paper over, melted the old wax, and dribbled it over the edge.

Another page, unluckier than most, and well aware of it from the huffy sigh barely suppressed, was dispatched to the streets outside the palace and to Seahook. Without waiting longer for a response from Ivor, Janus headed toward the prince's suite. Visiting Ivor would fuel gossip; best it be done before the rest of the palace awoke, and Janus knew Ivor well enough to know the man was awake with the dawn. The prince had a ferret's obsessive interest in everything to do with power; if anyone could guide him to what… possessed… Psyke, Ivor could. The difficulty came in getting an answer without betraying how much Janus needed one.

SMALL PARADE TRAILED
J
ANUS
down the stairs and halls of the palace. Six guards traveled in Janus's wake, studying one another as warily as they studied him.

Assassination attempts always complicated matters. The guards' uniforms, overnight, seemed to have sprouted minute but meaningful differences; three of the guards sported a black-edged ribbon twined about their sword hilts.

Janus hoped the ribbons weren't the marks of those loyal to him: How infuriating to have defenders unable to free their blades from the tangle of ribbon and sheath. On the other hand, if they were his enemies' marks, well, how kind of them to tag themselves so visibly for him. He would have to see whether Evan Tarrant appeared beribboned or not. In the interim, he thought of them all equally as unreliable allies, much like the gang of children he and Miranda had led in the Relicts.

As they clattered down the last flight of stairs, the guards' boot heels noisy on the stone, they were met by a squad of the palace soldiers, set to watch Ivor Grigorian, and Janus stifled a sigh. He had known his visit to Ivor would be a matter for gossip, but with as many witnesses as he had gathered, and with the ribbons' rapid appearance a clear sign of exactly how quickly word could spread within the palace walls … well, he had hoped for more time.

He thought briefly about turning around, but caution and cowardice were two separate traits; caution was acceptable, cowardice was not. Janus tapped on Ivor's door. Dmitry opened it to him with a bow, a smile, and a murmured, “My lord, good to see you again,” before ushering him into Ivor's private dining room.

Ivor, seated at one end of the long table, let his pen fall, and raised a smile with an ease that Janus could only attempt to imitate. “My pet, how considerate of you to save me the time otherwise spent assuring you of your welcome.” He folded the note, added a careless splash of wax that nonetheless sealed the note with exactitude, and stamped it.

He tapped the edge on the desk, testing that the wax had firmed, and passed it, plus a sheaf of others, to the manservant.

Janus couldn't help but eye the correspondence with suspicion, thinking of Itarusine agitators beneath his very nose, of assassins paid in foreign coin. The expression on Ivor's face—calculation and amusement—stifled Janus's desire to confront the prince ascendant regarding Harm. Ivor expected him to do so, and Janus had had enough of performing as the man wished.

“You're turning into your father,” Ivor commented. “All pinched-face disapproval and suspicion. It doesn't suit you, pet. It augurs anxiety and self-doubt.”

“For you to correspond so much argues your unhappiness here. Perhaps you should ask Grigor to recall you.”

“Come now, you know better. Vying for a throne requires constant vigilance and effort.” Ivor stretched, long and lean, as smugly content as a cat, the type of self-aware pleasure that sent debutantes into ecstasies of speculation over what secrets such a smile held.

Janus could think of one reason for Ivor to be so satisfied: if he had made progress in his plans.

And what was he to take from that assumption? That Ivor had nothing to do with Harm's attempt on Janus's life? If Psyke's words could be trusted, and Harm was indeed the instigator … then perhaps Ivor and Harm were two separate agents of the Itarusine court, and Antyre was in more difficulties than Janus had dreamed.

“I begin to wonder why you came at all if you have nothing to say,”
Ivor said, still draped across his chair, as confident as if it were a throne and Janus his supplicant.

Coming here had been a mistake, Janus thought, but there was no retreat. He squared his shoulders and said, “You once told me there comes a time when respect demands honesty instead of fencing with words.”

“Between equals,” Ivor said. “And friends. Are we either of those?”

Janus dropped onto the chaise beside the breakfast table, looked at the remains of Ivor's meal, chose a pastry from a plate, and picked at it, sorting shreds of spiced game from the crust. His stomach growled and he ate, irritated at the waste of food.

A rough hand stroked his hair, crown to nape, and he jerked. Ivor sat beside him, and sighed. “Such a difficult pet, always reverting to the wild just when you believe him tamed.”

Janus chose not to reply; sometimes silence was the safest retort.

“Surely you didn't come here to cadge scraps from my plate? Tell me, what can I do for you?”

Janus said, “No barter, no consideration? You simply want to know? You've gone native, Ivor.” He found a ginger amusement in the slight stiffening of Ivor's posture. Something had struck more closely than Ivor would care to admit. Something like his desire for the Antyrrian throne. Janus's amusement faded.

Ivor saw a chance for a throne with only a few men standing between him and it. Janus, a handful of Antyrrian lords, and an idiot child—far better odds than Ivor faced in Itarus.

“So tell me, pet, how I can aid a man who once controlled a god, even secondhand?” Ivor took a sip of cooling coffee, grimaced, then pushed the cup away. “I wonder what it is about Antyre that directs women to pacts with the dead gods.”

Janus slumped. Outmaneuvered, his interests apparent to Ivor, likely before he ever arrived, he admitted, “Psyke is no longer what she was.”

“People alter their habits, their wants. Women more so than most, being fickle at heart. Still, as one who lay with Ani, I suppose I must believe you. Do you seek to use another god? I wonder if you could. Psyke, unlike your Maledicte, bears no love for you.”

“Perhaps not,” Janus said. His tone was sullen, and he knew it, felt the petulant cast of his mouth. His stomach churned with temper. “But she fails at hating me. I've seen hatred in men's eyes, and she lacks it.”

“Indifference or duty can kill as neatly as hate; you should be aware of that. Or did you hate those political enemies you killed at my command?”

Janus shook his head, unwilling to revisit the days at the Winter Court when he had let Ivor dictate his actions.

“I suppose much depends on which god it is.” Ivor looked speculative and pleased with the puzzle Janus had given him. “If Baxit chose to bestir Himself, Psyke would be a creature of logic and indifference, perhaps capable of claiming Antyre's throne for herself, could she be bothered to care.”

“No,” Janus said, though the thought was unpleasant and showed Psyke in a new and disturbing fashion. More like, Ivor meant to divide Janus from any aid Psyke could grant, were she so inclined.

Ivor shrugged. “Please yourself.”