Maledicte (33 page)

M
ALEDICTE WIPED HIS MOUTH
one last time; the bitter taste of bile, tannic fluids, and belladonna lingered. He climbed the wide steps from the garden and gained access to the balconies, unwilling to enter under the watchful, fearful eyes of the other attendees. Seen through the open doors of the ballroom, Janus danced attendance on Psyke Bellane, his eyes alight with an amusement she didn’t share.

White around her rosebud lips, the china doll curtsied and attempted to take her leave. Janus stopped her with another question, a hand on her silkdraped arm, smiling down at her. Her chaperone watched with a smile. When Janus lifted his hand from her sleeve, she flew like a dove.

“What kept you?” Janus said, turning as if he had sensed Maledicte’s approach. “I’ve had to entertain myself with sweet, scared Psyke. What did you say to her?”

“Nothing she took seriously enough,” Maledicte said, watching the slight girl slip through the crowds. He fought an absurd sense of betrayal, as if he had expected Psyke to forswear Janus simply because the time spent listening to Maledicte’s threats had spared her from Mirabile’s touch.

He swayed on his feet a moment, off balance by the imagined weight of his hatred. Janus smiled at him and led him back out to the seclusion of topiary and stone.

“You look so fierce,” Janus said, kissing Maledicte’s throat and cheek. Maledicte turned his head to avoid his lips, thinking of toxins on his, feeling as if he’d stumbled into an odd, repetitive dream world. Turn from Gilly’s warmth, turn from Janus’s arms; face the cold wind and the dark alone. He dreaded Ani rising up through his throat, stabbing out from his mouth, the long beak terrible and gore-smeared, Her wings scratching through his chest, pushing out past his lungs and ribs, dragging him up into the night sky, a soaring, bloody puppet. Distantly, Maledicte realized some of the belladonna must have lingered beyond the antidote, sparking hallucinations.

“What kept you?” Janus asked.

“Gilly kissed me in the snow gardens,” Maledicte said. “He killed the coachman and kissed me….” He shook his head, shaking the moment from his mind. “I fear his ethics have been severely compromised by our association.”

Janus shook him. “Mal, are you mad?”

“Yes,” Maledicte said. “I think I must be.” Lips moving against the roughness of the brocade, Maledicte imagined the threads snaking out to drag him into Janus’s skin.

“To let Gilly kiss you, I must agree,” Janus snapped, pushing Maledicte away. He paced a quick circle and then came back, blue eyes smoldering. “Do you want him, desire him? Is that it? Why you would risk all for a tumble? In the king’s garden? Tell me, Mal—do you love him?”

Janus’s hushed words sounded wounded, stripped of strength, but Maledicte, dark-dreaming with the belladonna’s aid, saw what the low tones disguised—the red cloud settling around his bright form, splintering out from the steady flame of rage behind his pale eyes.

“You are all my desires,” Maledicte said, twining his arms about Janus’s neck. “And so I told him. That I am yours and yours alone. Though you are not exclusive to me…you will marry.”

“And why shouldn’t you?” Janus twitched within Maledicte’s arms at the familiar deep voice. Maledicte felt near panic himself—how long had Aris been listening? Behind the king, Psyke stood in the doorway. Maledicte fought a growl—had she led the king to Janus?

“Sire,” Maledicte said, sinking into a bow.

Beside him, Janus nodded. “Uncle.”

“I would speak with Maledicte,” Aris said. “Janus, I owe Psyke this dance. Please take my place.”

Janus bowed and left, Psyke on his arm once more; Maledicte stood as still as a wild creature unexpectedly cornered. His heart pounded. Inside him, Ani stretched Her wings, whispering. His fingers itched for the sword hilt, for its cold security, with a desire not his own.

“Be easy,” Aris said, settling himself onto a bench with visible weariness. “You are in the fortunate position of the king requesting a favor.” Aris patted the bench.

Maledicte slipped over to him, sat on the very edge of the stone, among the carved vinework. “You want me to marry?”

“All men should marry, if only to see themselves through others’ eyes. Wedding Aurora changed the way I saw my kingdom and myself. Under her tutelage, I saw my court as it was—decadent, violent, concerned more with matters of style than of state. We have chosen to mirror Itarus, but we have chosen to reflect only their surface. Their courtiers vie and kill, but they further the kingdom as a whole, whereas my court—cares only for entertainment.” He sighed, breath loud in the night; frosty clouds carried his words away, scented with the sting of wine.

“Aurora was a queen to be revered. She knew we had to change, and I did so. I have attempted to make the court do so as well, and failed on that count.”

“Such foolish heads can be led,” Maledicte said. “Make them bend to your will.”

Aris laughed. “I am merely a king and not a god.” His laughter faded into bitterness. “And while some kings can ape gods, make their will and their people’s one and the same, I am all too aware that I am only a man. But I understand Baxit, who looked on His own court and despaired, who forced the gods into oblivion. Were it not for Adiran, for other innocents who would suffer, I could do the same. Stop the struggle and let us fall—”

Maledicte shivered. Aris’s face, so like Janus’s in structure, might have been uncarved marble for all that Maledicte could learn of his mood in it.

“Were it not for love—” Aris said, his gloved hand touching Maledicte’s chin, his voice thinned by exhaustion. Then his mouth claimed Maledicte’s, his lips not tentative like his words, but so fierce that Maledicte felt Ani dwarfed beneath the sensation. It wasn’t simple desire that Maledicte felt in Aris’s hunger, but bleakness, a desperate attempt to quicken the blood.

Aris’s tongue touched his, wine-rich, and Maledicte shoved him away, panic racing in his veins. It was done without grace or subtlety, but all he could think was what if the belladonna lacing his mouth was enough to kill a king? He fell off the bench, awkward in fright and dismay.

Maledicte knelt on the cold, damp stone, silent and waiting, his agile tongue gone dry along with his bravado, tracing the tangling lines of the stony vines.

“It is bewitchment,” Aris said, “that feeds this fascination. But I think one of my own making.”

His voice, empty of any emotion but despair, wicked some of the dread from Maledicte’s spine. “Aris,” Maledicte breathed.

“Shh,” Aris said, laying his hand over Maledicte’s mouth, then taking it away as if desire would spill over again. “I will be done with this nonsense, and ask my favor of you. The Lady Amarantha fears you. Fears your eyes on her belly, beyond all reason. I would have you avoid my court until her child is born.”

“Exile?” Maledicte said, striving to put some flippancy in his voice, striving to restore himself. He was Maledicte, the unflappable, dark cavalier. Why should a weary king and a despairing kiss have had the power to over-set him so? “On a woman’s whims—you are a gentle man indeed.”

“It is my brother’s child,” Aris said. “Antyre’s future.”

“I will do as you ask,” Maledicte said, rising to his feet and stepping toward the balustrade. “But you know, Aris, you needn’t have asked my compliance. You could have demanded it.” Without waiting for leave, Maledicte dropped down the few feet to the garden and fled back to the stables, to Gilly, who was fiddling with harness straps and buckles.

“Done so soon?” Gilly asked, without looking up from his hands.

“Yes,” Maledicte said. He leaned against a mossy wall and closed his eyes, stopped fighting the belladonna; it took him into the dark clouds above, a raven’s-eye view of the city wheeling and spinning beneath him. He wouldn’t want to be in any coach driven by a man hallucinating the way he was. “Poor Aris,” Maledicte murmured, thinking of the king with distant regret. “If only I could trust it to be a girl—”

“Are we waiting for Janus?” Gilly called back, busy with the harness.

“No. He’ll have to chase Amarantha away. I’ve been banned,” Maledicte said, sliding down the wall, pressing his back against it until the stone’s dampness sank through the layers of silk and linen, touching his skin with the intimacy he had denied Gilly and Aris. Gilly spoke but Maledicte heard only the comforting sound of his voice, watching as coaches came and went in the spaces of his blinking.

“Come on now,” Gilly murmured in his ear, pulling him to his feet. “You’ve dozed enough to miss Amarantha on the move. Best we leave before her coachman spies us lurking…. Mal, you’re shaking,” he said, his calm slipping away.

Maledicte’s thoughts tangled in his mind, strangling the words of reassurance in his throat.

“The antidote
is
working?” Gilly said.

Again, Maledicte’s response died stillborn. That the belladonna was more potent than he had thought, that the antidote was less effective than he had been led to believe, that Ani sulked and shirked Her aid.

Clutching the hilt of his sword, Maledicte staggered to the coach. Gilly caught him, his words lost in the rushing murmur of Maledicte’s blood. Gilly bundled him into the coach, tucked him round with heavy warmth, and shut the door.

“Ani,” Maledicte whispered. Inside his heart, his belly, his bones, the whisper of wings stirred and rustled, sounding their susurrant reassurance. Maledicte sprawled across the seat, wrapped in the rough leather of Gilly’s greatcoat. Rocked by the movement of the coach, he slipped into waking dreams.

Ani pressed out through his ribs, sending out long feathers to row through the air. Rising, She soared above Maledicte’s coach, the cold winds parting beneath Her strokes. She rose above the wide streets of the palace surrounds, the smooth cobbles glistening like scales beneath Her. Circling above the palace, She watched the coaches moving like bright beetles, finally spotting Her goal—the glossy blue coach, its color robbed by darkness, trundling slowly along the cobbled road out of the city.

How afraid Amarantha must be, She gloated, to brave the overnight journey to Lastrest with a weary coachman. Flanking the coach, four kingsguards on gray horses and Dantalion on a blood-colored bay insured her safe passage.

As She neared, the coachman yanked on the reins, frightening the team into arrhythmic canters. His face blanched. The kingsguard wheeled their mounts and wheeled them again, confusion and concern written on their faces.

“She’s there!” the coachman screamed, his voice spiraling into the sky like a prayer. She reveled in it, dropping closer. The kingsguards gaped at the road, at the sky, at the trees alongside; Dantalion kept his eyes where it mattered—the coach. He drew his steed nearer the door, preparing to dismount and climb aboard. But the coachman snapped the reins, lashed out with the whip, and set the horses to a panicked gallop, leaving Dantalion still reaching for the frame.

Caught flat-footed, the kingsguards milled for a moment, a tangle of reins and stirrups and pistoning hooves, then they streamed after the swaying coach. Dantalion was a length ahead and gaining when She opened Her wings to their fullest extent, spreading the stench of carrion fields, the sweet rot of the grave. The horses reared and frothed. Two kingsguards were thrown, rolling hastily to avoid being trampled by their maddened horses.

Dantalion savagely held his horse to his will, but he lost ground, and the coach hurtled away, Amarantha’s screams trailing in its wake. The coachman still peered over his shoulder, panicked, trusting the horses to stay on the road. Their hooves pounded out the cadence of a frantic heart.

Her feathers sliced the air, driving Her over and beyond the coach. The coachman’s head swiveled, his mouth slackened. She wheeled, soared, and came back at the coach. The coachman’s face, seen head-on, was that of a ghost, gibbering and hollow-eyed.

He sawed on the reins and the stressed leather snapped. Kicking their heels, heads flat out and flecked with foam, the horses bolted. The coach tipped to the left, putting one edge in the dirt, skidding, rolling, broken wheels crashing through the enamel and gilt, and coming to a shuddering halt. Lying in the road, the coachman whimpered, “Ani.” She devoured his prayer, his worship.

Dantalion gained the scene, his mouth taut with rage. He dismounted his chastened horse, tied it to a piece of the wreckage, and started sorting through the remains of the coach. Lifting the door, he found Amarantha, her eyes staring at the sky, her belly huge. Dantalion knelt….

“Mal?”

The voice distracted Her, and the scene faltered. Strong hands confined Her, dragging Her away, Her feathers dwindling, Her sight gone. She protested.

“Easy, Mal,” Gilly murmured in his ear. “Or you’ll have us tumbling down the stairs.”

Blinking, Maledicte pieced the details together. That steady rush and thump was not the downbeat of wings, but Gilly’s chest beneath his cheek, the swaying sense of flight nothing but Gilly’s slow ascent up the staircase, cradling Maledicte in his arms. The shattering of wood and wheel was the damage done by Maledicte’s trailing scabbard against the delicate ornaments in the railing. “Put me down.”

“Two more steps,” Gilly said, tightening his grip.

Maledicte tensed, uncomfortable with such proximity to Gilly, too aware of secrets, Janus’s potential arrival, and his own weakness that urged him to slide his arms around Gilly’s neck.

At the top of the stairs, Gilly set him down, patiently making sure he had his balance before stepping back. Throughout it all, his eyes never met Maledicte’s. “Are you well now? Your shaking has stopped.”

“Yes,” Maledicte said.

“I thought you were immune to poisons.”

“I’m not dead, am I?” Maledicte croaked; his throat felt stiff, as if it wanted to voice words not his own, to finish Ani’s triumphant cry.

Gilly nodded, eyes sluing toward the stairs and the front hall.

“Thank you, Gilly,” Maledicte said, touching his cheek.

Beneath his fingers, Gilly flinched. “I’m going out,” he said.

“Are you well?” Maledicte asked.

“No,” Gilly said. “I killed a man tonight. You nearly poisoned yourself, and all the way back, I listened to Ani ranting in your voice. All I want is to be someplace far from death. I know Lizette won’t ask me to kill anyone.”