Kings and Assassins (46 page)

“
Who?” she asked, but Mirabile, viper tongued and smug though she was, was correct. She did know.
Janus
, she thought.

Janus
, Mirabile echoed.
He's proud and possessive of what's his. He claims Antyre and he'll fight to the death for his chance to keep it
.

“Can I help?” she asked. “You bartered with Ani. Surely you must know how to ask Haith for aid.”

Mirabile said,
You don't listen well. I have no advice for you. I thought I understood Black-Winged Ani, but Maledicte knew Her better than I ever did. What makes you think I paid any attention to the lesser shadow Her brother cast?

“Then leave me alone,” Psyke said. She threw a book at Mirabile; the ghost faded and the book thumped to the floor, creasing its pages.

Psyke knelt, collected it, smoothing the damage. Aris had given it to her, the old genealogy of her family from the time her ancestor was king. Before Haith had taken his family from him.

She flipped through the pages, paused at the portrait of Thomas Redoubt, wondering if he had felt Haiths touch, if his skin had rearranged itself to reflect the god. If he had felt as drowned as she did.

He couldn't have
, she thought. Not and fought as he had, not and shaped the kingdom as he had. He had had Haiths aid, not merely His presence.

Her hands balled themselves into fists, fury lancing inward. Difficult to make a choice to act when every action she took seemed to be the wrong one. She had sought the duchess's aid, a woman who threw her allegiance to their sworn enemies. Psyke had aided the assassin she sought. She had accused her husband of a crime he hadn't committed, worked against him when she should have worked with him. Now, she was going to let him die because she couldn't act?

You might stop wallowing
, a new voice said,
and listen. Learn. Hark above
.

Psyke watched Challacombe fade as silently as he had come, ghostly in life, silent in death.

She opened the door to the hall, ignoring her guard's suggestion that she withdraw into her rooms where she'd be safe.

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.

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.

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.