Kings and Assassins (36 page)

Janus's neck tightened. Ivor's tone was amused, light, but Janus could read the demand in it clearly enough. Ivor had upheld his end by killing Gost; now it was Janus who had to do the same.

“Bull, DeGuerre, if you'll excuse me. Again. It's been a difficult day, likely to be as difficult tomorrow—”

“Don't worry so, pet,” Ivor said. “When the Itarusine fleet arrives, we'll calm any remaining pockets of unrest.”

Janus seized Ivor's arm, pulled him from his chair, aware as always of the solidity of muscle and sinew over bone. Ivor was a bruiser for all his cat lounging and graceful mannerism; he rose because he wanted to go where Janus led. Adiran's nursery.

J
ANUS WAITED UNTIL THEY WERE
a safe distance from the study, from Bull or DeGuerre deciding to join them or object, belatedly, to Ivor's tone. Waited until they were in the quiet corridors leading to the main stairwell.

“I asked you to kill one man,” Janus said, “not turn my city into a battlefield.”

“Some tasks are easier to begin than end,” Ivor said. “And it was your error, not mine. You were unclear in your boundaries.”

Janus hissed out a breath, but it was true, and he should have known better. Asking Ivor for a favor was more akin to dealing with a wish granter than a man. If the deed could be twisted, Ivor would be quick to see the path best suited to his own needs.

Ivor smiled. “Come now, admit your true irritation. It's not the uprising; you should be thanking me for that. I gave you a clear reason to be rid of the antimachinists. And some of them, permanently, I understand.”

“Not Harm,” Janus said.

“No,” Ivor said, “though you could have seized him, were you not slowed by expecting another assassin in his place.”

Ivor moved ahead of him, making Janus take quick steps to catch
him up, and each one of them an echo of his inner frustration. They rounded the corner, found the guards lurching to attention, their faces writ with dismay. Janus alone would have perturbed them; Ivor's presence was another level of discomfort.

“My lord,” the guard said.

“We've come to see Adiran,” Janus said. “We won't be long.” That with a meaningful glance at Ivor. Janus waved the guards in alongside them as their unhappy escort.

Adiran sat up as they entered, coming awake all at once. Beside his narrow bed, another slim body rested. Evan, Janus identified, asleep not in the penitential servant's quarters allotted him, but wrapped in furs and velvet as if he were a replacement for the banished hounds.

The boy prince crawled out of his bed, carefully stepping over Evan, and came toward them. Once in the low, yellow lamplight, ever burning, near the door, he raised his face and Ivor shifted behind Janus when he glimpsed the piebald eyes, one gone yellow-black, one blue.

“Janus,” Adiran said. In his childish voice lingered earlier reminders of Ani's displeasure with him. It made Janus cautious, made him wish he knew what Ivor wanted of the boy.

Adiran was on that fragile cusp; Black-Winged Ani had improved the prince's mind, no doubt preparatory to striking a compact with him. If Adiran fell—then Antyre fell also, no matter Janus's attempts to hold it. Regent was one thing, a polite lie that the nobles would allow.

A usurping bastard king? Unthinkable.

Adiran tugged at Janus's sleeve, all boy, just a boy, the hope for the kingdom. Janus knelt beside him, ruffled his hair, trying to ignore the tiny stiff prickles against his palm that might be pinfeathers mixed into the blond tufts. “Brought Prince Ivor to see you,” he said. “Be polite.”

Adiran slid out of Janus's loose hold, walked fearlessly up to Ivor though the guards' hands tensed so tightly on their swords the hilts creaked.

“Prince,” Adiran said, a question in his tone. Janus wondered how
much lessoning the boy was getting. It was one thing to lock him away, to teach him only how to play when he was mindless. Now, though, perhaps there should be tutors. If Janus could find any he trusted. Adiran could be too easily shaped by information.

As if such thoughts passed to him, Ivor said, “I meant to visit you sooner, your highness. After the death of your father.”

Adiran stiffened, tilted his head for a better angle, shifting the crow's eye upward to study Ivor, but he said nothing.

Ivor reached out slowly, allowing the guards time to see his hands were empty, allowing Adiran the chance to step back. But the boy held his position even when Ivor's fingers tucked themselves beneath Adiran's chin.

“Ani's child,” he said. “A seed sown by Maledicte.”

Rue spoke up from the hall, his voice harsh, his breath coming quick, as if he had run to the nursery on hearing of Adiran's unexpected visitors. He waved the other guards out and they looked grateful. “Prince Ivor, the child can be of no interest to you.”

Ivor ignored Rue entirely, and asked, “Do you know who killed your father, boy?”

The question dropped like a stone into water, setting ripples of tension through the room. A rustle and a sigh heralded Evan waking; his sudden, whistled breath heralded his recognizing Ivor.

Ivor's face blanched as Adiran turned to study him more intently. Ivor withdrew his hand, shaking it as if lightning had coursed from Adiran's flesh to his.

Janus, regrettably close, thought something like that might have happened. The boy's human eye began to splotch, dark shapes bleeding through the blue.

“Do
you
know?” the boy echoed. “No one will tell me.”

As if to prove the boy's assertion, the silence stretched. Ivor caught Janus's gaze in his own, the battlefield clear between them. Ivor could blame Janus; Janus could lay the blame at Ivor's feet, but the death of Itarus's favored prince ascendant would only bring war faster.

Adiran stamped his foot; the ripple ran across the room, and the toys on his shelves began to dance and stutter. Evan closed the distance
between them and said, “They don't know either, Adi. I told you. Now come lie down.”

The wildness in the room, a feathery musk that Janus had last smelled when fighting Mal, faded under Evan's small dictatorship. Rue smiled briefly at Janus. “I'm afraid I've commandeered your page.”

“Welcome to him,” Janus said.

Ivor turned, blindly left the room, hand seeking the wall for support. Janus followed him. Ivor turned, expression savage. “You intend to let him live?”

“He's a boy,” Janus said. “The Antyrrian prince, and your words are perilously close to treason.”

“He's tainted,” Ivor said, but the usual banter was gone from his voice. “He's dangerous. There'll be no kingdom for either of us while he lives.”

“Less for you,” Janus said. “After all, you killed—”

Ivor hit him, tried to, but Janus had been expecting it and avoided the blow. Ivor wouldn't want him to finish that sentence, not anywhere near where Adiran could hear him. Janus hadn't intended to, but enjoyed that brief show of panic on Ivor's face nonetheless.

The guards rushed forward and Ivor took a few steps back, hands raised. “A misunderstanding,” he said. “But if you gentlemen would care to escort me to my wing, I'd be appreciative.”

Janus admired it. Even shaken, Ivor remained poised. Far more so than Janus, who felt trapped between the problems Adiran posed and the pressing approach of the Itarusine fleet, bringing Grigor's letter of censure for breaking the treaty.

“Trust me,” Rue said abruptly. Janus jerked. “I've done my scholarly studies. If Adiran can be kept from killing anyone, he should stay as he is. Safe.”

“For how long?” Janus said. “Until he's grown? Until he learns what anger is? Until we have a mad king with feathers in his skin and death in his eyes?”

Rue's jaw firmed, expressing displeasure or determination. “That's up to you, my lord. You have the plans for the future. You used the
god once before to suit your needs. Surely you have a similar plan now.”

Sudden bitter amusement swelled in Janus's breast, bubbling up into mad laughter. “But, Rue,” he said, “I didn't believe in the gods then.”

He left Rue gaping after him, took to the corridors with exhaustion and a mind too numbed to do anything but turn facts this way and that, like a blind jeweler going through the motions when the talent has been lost.

It was only the scent that saved him: a curl of sweet lilac in a dark hall preceding the bitter tang of oiled steel. Janus reared back and took the dagger across the side of his left forearm instead of through his throat.

Over the blade, Savne panted, face going witless in panic, the face of a man who had been relying on a single thrust and the element of surprise.

Janus pushed back hard, giving himself a much-needed space between them. If it were at the cost of the blade slicing deeper into his arm, it didn't matter. The brocade of his sleeve had been pushed in at the same moment as the blade, clinging to the open lips of the wound, staunching the blood flow. Janus punched Savne beneath the join of his rib cage. It was the first blow he'd ever learned, though when he was a child, it involved a stick or stone to add force he lacked. Those days were past and Savne's breastbone cracked, a wet pop; the man folded inward, breath gone, the knife dropping from a hand gone lax.

Janus let him fall, kneed him in the same spot as Savne folded forward. The man wheezed pain, the sound going liquid as ribs gave under the second blow. Janus caught the knife and bent over Savne's huddled form.

Savne rolled to his back, raising his hands to shield his face, but the movement was a mistake. The man's eyes rolled in his head as the shifting bones in his chest caused him to pass out.

Janus cast a quick look down the hall to see if anyone had heard Savne's choked-off cries. The corridors remained empty; the attack
hadn't been loud or long, and the carpet was thick, the wallpaper flocked and hung with sound-muffling tapestries.

Janus tapped the knife against Savne's face, leaving delicate wounds in court-pampered skin. He could, of course, slit the man's throat now, but he found there were words he needed to say. He spread the man's hand out and stabbed downward. Savne jerked to consciousness, Janus's other hand over his mouth, and then fell back. Janus pulled his hand away from the man's mouth—it wasn't in Savne to bite, he wasn't a scrapper—but blood washed Janus's palm all the same.

“A word of advice,” Janus said, pleased that his breath was no faster than usual, his voice no harsher than his usual pleasant baritone. “If you would ambush someone, best forgo drenching yourself in scent. It betrays your position.”

Savne gasped, gasped again, ugly gulps, trying to force air into lungs ruined by the double blow. “But… the scent… His scent… exactly his scent… It should have soothed you. She said …”

Janus put his hand on Savne's shoulder, leaned in; the man groaned as Janus's weight radiated toward his broken sternum. “Soothed me? When I've spent the past six months learning to associate it with you and your crawling ways, your borrowed mannerisms, and your oh-so-blatant attempts to woo me? Savne, you taught me to loathe that scent.”

“Please …” Savne gasped.

Janus shook his head. “It was unfortunate that the duchess sent you.”

Savne whimpered beneath him, and Janus loosened the grip he had on the man's throat. Savne twitched; a hand flailed at Janus's wrist, manicured nails leaving feeble scratches, but really what did the man think was going to happen? There was no escape. Not for his crimes.

Janus felt the crushing weariness return again. Savne was no challenge; worse, he would never truly understand how he had earned Janus's enmity. Janus dragged the knife blade across the man's throat, digging it deep until he got not only the tide of blood but the quick wheeze of escaping breath after it.

Once Savne was entirely still, Janus said, “Besides, you were wrong. It wasn't his scent. Underneath it all, Maledicte smelled of blood.”

And so did he, now, Janus thought; the air was full of wet copper, overriding even the distinctive aroma of dust and lamp oil that filled the palace hallways. He slumped back against the wall and gingerly pried the heavy brocade out of his wound, noting that the blood had spread through brocaded loops and whirls, puddled to the floor.

The slice wasn't long, running the width of his arm, rather than the length, but it was deep enough that when Janus pressed, he could see the creamy shine of bone, the pulse of a vein.

Stitches then, if Sir Robert could be trusted. If not, well, Delight had at least a passing familiarity with medicine, enough to treat him if needed.

On the wall opposite him, a mirror swung slowly back into place, knocked askew by Savne's dying spasm, sprayed with a thin freshet of blood.

Janus forced himself to his feet, misliking the vertigo it brought. A strengthening tonic might not come amiss or, even simpler than the iron and wine tonic, a cup or two of beef broth from the kitchens.

He'd go to the physician's office in a moment. Once the vertigo passed. He leaned forward, rested his hands on the wall, either side of the mirror, panting now as he hadn't during the deeply unequal struggle.

His own gaze caught him, and he stared at his reflection; he wasn't a man given to looking into the glass beyond the necessities of dressing, preferring his internal sense of self. The mirrored glass all too often reflected a stranger.

But now—the man looking back at him was surprisingly young, going gaunt with too many missed meals that might be poisoned, gray with lack of sleep and blood loss. For the first time in years, he felt it was his reflection again. Not some sleek, well-fed, overdressed lordling. No, this young man was a predator, pressed hard.

He laughed, his head spinning again, throat as ragged as if it had been his lungs spitting blood instead of Savne's.

Footsteps in the hall, approaching; Janus turned, the knife held low. If it was more of the same, if it were another attacker, perhaps he would overlook the weapon until it was buried between his ribs.

“Janus!” Rue said. A measure of his shock, that the captain addressed him by his given name.

And a measure of his own shock, Janus thought, that he dwelled on such inconsequentialities as titles and not the simple concern in Rue's eyes. Rue was either his man or a far more able actor than he had ever exhibited.