Maledicte Read online

  The boy smiled, not the faint flicker from last night, but a slow thing that bloomed into a mockery of pleasure. “How enlightening. To know what my price is. Some silver, the offer of food, and nebulous mention of vengeance. I just hope the food is good.”

  Gilly caught his breath at the self-loathing in the boy’s voice, sought for words, and finally said, “There’s usually venison steaks, fresh-made bread, milk, and eggs.”

  He reached for the boy’s elbow to escort him to the breakfast room, but the boy jerked away. Gilly gestured him down the hallway.

  The boy’s eyes widened in the breakfast room as Gilly handed him a loaded plate. “Here. If you want more, look on the sideboard. I’ll be back presently.”

  It was a gamble leaving the boy alone, but Gilly thought that the food, in such quantity, would occupy the boy long enough. After all, on that first morning in Vornatti’s house, Gilly himself hadn’t fled. And Vornatti offered the boy more than he had ever offered Gilly—his vengeance.

  Baron Vornatti was only now rousing to querulous waking. He gave Gilly no time to speak, but began issuing complaints and commands. “My hands are numb, Gilly. Rub them, get me warmed water, and some damned hot tea—that raddled bitch left the trays too early again. I want my gold dressing gown today, and it’s near time for…” His voice trailed away and the dissatisfaction dragging his tone sharpened to anticipation. “The boy, Gilly. The boy.”

  “The boy is eating, and will be doing so, I judge, for some time. He is starving.” Gilly yanked the bell cord, and when Chrisanthe appeared, demanded hot tea and warmed water for the washbasin. Vornatti’s fire was burning low, and Gilly stoked it to life again.

  Gilly poured the tea, washed the old bastard’s hands with the rest of the warm water, watched the knotted fingers uncurl. He helped him into the quilted robe, found slippers for his feet, and added yet another log to the fire until it blazed. When he would have aided Vornatti to his bath, the old man shrugged him off. “I want to see the boy. See if he’s worth the trouble I mean to expend on him.”

  In the breakfast room, the boy had finished his sampling of the chafing dishes, and paced the length of the room, pausing to stare out the windows at the blustering wind and snow. He spun at their entrance, poised to flee.

  “Ah, come here, boy,” Vornatti said, from the depths of the wheeled chair. “Come and let me look at you.”

  Catlike, the boy approached. He took his time, pausing to look at a portrait blurred with age, the ice-silvered windows, the pattern on the parquet, the engraved dishes still heating on the sideboard, making it clear that he was obeying only his own whim and that if he ended up before Vornatti, well, that was only happenstance. But he stood before Vornatti docilely enough, the sword hanging loose in his hand, waiting for the man’s eyes to stop tracing his features.

  “How old are you, boy?”

  “Near fifteen.”

  “Small for your age. And slight. Do you know how to use that weapon of yours?” Vornatti said.

  “Well enough to strike from behind,” the boy said.

  Vornatti laughed, delighted by this boy’s audacity, by his blunt scheming. At least, Gilly thought, delighted by audacity in such a pleasant form.

  “Don’t laugh at me,” the boy ground out.

  “You’ve a lot of Itarusine blood in you, right enough,” Vornatti said. “More than just your looks—it’s in your very manner, that touchy pride. I don’t suppose your heritage is anything more than the usual Relicts tangle of sailor and whore?”

  “If my mother thought my father Quality instead of a conscripted sailor, she’d have battened on him like a lamprey. One useless woman feeding off a useless kind. Aristocrats.” He spat on the floor.

  “Such an insolent tongue. Once, I would have challenged you for such in-civility, and you would have trembled. I was held a master of the blade in my youth,” Vornatti said.

  In the first act of courtesy Gilly had seen, the boy did not laugh, though Gilly saw the retort quivering on those curling lips. But perhaps it was not courtesy, only belated calculation. Gilly had invoked the specter of Vornatti’s aid against Last, offered a coach to Last’s estate. Would the boy jeopardize that for a retort better swallowed?

  “What is your name?”

  The boy ignored the question, paced back to the windows, looked over his shoulder, a black shadow against the daylight. “Will the coach travel in this snow?”

  “The open coach, in this weather?” Vornatti asked. “No. Gilly, go with him, take the carriage. Take hot bricks, and wine, and furs to keep warm. It’s near a day’s journey in this muck.” He clutched his robe tighter about him as if he could feel the bite of the wind, the snow flung from the horses’ hooves.

  “I can’t leave you,” Gilly said, though the chance of a day free from Vornatti’s demands tempted him. Even if it were spent nursemaiding an entirely too irritable boy.

  “Give me my Elysia and I’ll doze the day with wine and books,” Vornatti said.

  Gilly kept his eyes lowered as he nodded, but a quick series of thoughts had crossed his mind. The boy wanted coin and a trip to Lastrest. Gilly could provide both as payment to see the problematic boy gone, without Vornatti there to object.

  “Gilly, I expect you to bring our lad back safe and sound,” Vornatti said, and Gilly nodded again, mutiny fading. Vornatti always knew.

  He called for the carriage to be brought around, the coachman rousted from his warm rooms in the stable. Vornatti insisted that they take every precaution against the cold, and Gilly set the housekeeper to heating bricks in her oven, to filling flasks with spiced tea and a basket with food. Gilly watched the boy’s face, hoping to see some hint of appreciation that all this was done for him. But the boy’s face stayed blank, as sublimely arrogant as the Quality he claimed to despise.

  At Vornatti’s instruction, Gilly brought Vornatti’s best greatcoat out from the wardrobe, a supple thing of leather and fur. Throughout all this, the boy stared out the window, his breath clouding the glass, his hand knotted around the sword.

  “May I see that?” Gilly asked, his hand outstretched.

  The boy twitched, his reverie shattered, the blade swinging up in startled reaction. Gilly caught it in his gloved hand, and the thick glove parted beneath the blade. A thin stripe of blood crossed his palm. “Well, it’s sharp enough,” Gilly said, “But you cannot continue carrying it like that. You need a sheath, or better still, leave it behind.”

  “And if Last is there, then what will I do? Pelt him with stones and snowballs?”

  “Last will not be there,” Gilly said.

  “So you say. I will keep the sword by my side.” But he accepted the sheath Gilly found, even suffered him to strap the belt around his narrow hips. The boy shrugged into the heavy coat Vornatti offered, allowed the man to fumble the fastenings shut.

  Vornatti stood on careful legs, his fingers at the top button, soft fur touching his hands, the boy’s dark hair mixed with sable. He stooped, caught the boy’s tense mouth with his own, and fell back into his chair. “Travel well.”

  Vornatti had calculated well. The boy’s face flushed red, but the sword was safely sheathed and buckled beneath the greatcoat, essentially unreachable. The boy scrubbed at his mouth with a gloved hand, stormed out of the room. Gilly followed, and despite the inherent unfairness of Vornatti, rich and powerful, controlling the boy, found himself suppressing a laugh at Vornatti’s incorrigible nature, and at the would-be murderer’s indignation. Perhaps they deserved each other.

  · 3 ·

  G ILLY REGAINED HIS CUSTOMARY PLACIDITY by the time he joined the boy inside the carriage. The boy sulked in the corner, face nearly buried in the fur collar, eyes shuttered by dark lashes.

  “Drive on,” Gilly called. “The sooner there, the sooner back.”

  The coach lurched to motion. A strange, silent ride it would be, too, Gilly thought, traveling through the snowfall with a shadow for a companion. When the hiss of snow and silence numbed Gil
ly’s ears, he determined to coax the boy out of his megrims. “Are you warm enough?” Gilly asked.

  The boy turned his head to meet Gilly’s eyes but made no answer, his face scornful. The boy, wrapped in fur, a hot brick at his feet, full-bellied, was probably warm for the first winter of his life.

  Basic civilities having failed, Gilly tried bluntness. “Tell me about this Janus of yours.”

  The boy looked out at the falling snow.

  “You intend to rescue him, so there must be some fondness there. Is Janus your protector? Your friend? Your brother? Lover?”

  “Stop saying his name like you have a right to it,” the boy said, a frantic edge to his voice. His chest heaved, visible even beneath the bulky coat, and Gilly sighed.

  “You are a nervy creature. I only thought to pass the time by getting better acquainted. Since I don’t know you, I asked questions, but you may ask them of me, if you prefer.”

  Drifting snow and the muffled rhythm of hoofbeats were the only response he got. Gilly shrugged, sank down into the seat, and composed himself for a nap.

  “Are you his whore?” The question jerked him out of his doze, made heat scald his face and ears.

  “All servants are such,” Gilly said, taking shelter in philosophy. “We do as we’re told for money, whether we want to or not. The most we can do is choose our masters.”

  “I’m my own master,” the boy said. “And semantics aside, you’re a whore.”

  Gilly flinched at the weary contempt in the boy’s voice, reminded of the only time he went home. His father had spoken to him in just that tone. Un-fair, Gilly had thought then. They’d sold him to Vornatti; what had they expected? “I—Vornatti—I obey his whims and accept his advances. Why shouldn’t I? He took me from a farm that couldn’t feed me, and gave me a library, good food, a room to myself, and free license when in the city.” By the end of his speech, Gilly had nearly convinced himself once more of the wisdom of his bargain. “He will grant you similar gifts.”

  “If I please him,” the boy muttered. “Make myself a toy for his whims and desires. Make myself a thing rather than a person. A possession easily replaced when he tires of it. How long have you been with him?” When Gilly choked on his answer, the boy smiled before staring out the window; his breath frosted on the cloudy glass.

  Quiet minutes passed with the only sound being that of the wet impact of snow spattering the carriage like sea spume.

  “How uncivil you are,” Gilly said. “Vornatti’s offered to aid you—”

  “Catch me believing anything that an aristocrat says,” the boy bit out. “They all cleave together.”

  “And you know so much of their ways,” Gilly said, gently mocking. “Do you think you’re the only one to hate Last? I promise you, Vornatti’s distaste for the man runs to the bone.”

  At the boy’s skeptical expression, Gilly said, “It’s true. They met more than thirty years ago in the Itarusine court. It’s a dangerous place, rife with assassin princes and poisonous noblewomen. A frozen land of coldhearted people who pride themselves on their courage, their aggression, and their willingness to do anything to see their desires met. It makes our court seem milkwater in comparison.

  “For Last, only a fourth son even if of royal blood, a season in the Itarusine court was his opportunity to marry well, to gain a fortune he would not inherit on his own, perhaps make an alliance between the two courts. But Last proved too stiff-necked, too conservative in his views to thrive there, and when he met Vornatti—well, I believe they arranged a duel before they finished making their first bows to each other.”

  The boy gazed out the clouded glass again, seemingly uninterested, but his fingers sketched brittle shapes in the fog his breath left. Tiny crosses that could be daggers, could be swords. Gilly said, “By the time the duel became fact, Last had absorbed enough of Itarusine ways that he paid Vornatti’s whore to render him insensible. When Vornatti missed the duel, Last declared him a craven. It wasn’t done out of fear; Last is an admirable swordsman. Rather, it was done out of spite. It ruined Vornatti, far more effectively than even a lost duel could. It took until Xipos for him to regain his reputation.”

  “One thwarted duel and you think Vornatti can hate Last as I do?”

  “There’s more, there’s always more. And far too much to explain now.” It wasn’t time so much that stilled Gilly’s tongue as consideration. Vornatti had few weaknesses, but the reminder of his sister was one of them. Aurora Vornatti had been the old bastard’s heart, the only person he loved purely. When Aris Ixion had chosen to wed her, Last had spread slander wide and far trying to dissuade him. Whispers of wantonness, of inbreeding, even of flesh turned poisonous. Aris had earned Vornatti’s friendship by denying the rumors. But when the long-awaited heir proved damaged, when Aurora died of his birth, the slander rose again and followed her to the grave.

  Sometimes, it seemed to Gilly that Antyre itself was trailing after her into the grave. Xipos the first blow, and Aurora a deadly second thrust. Aris seemed unable to recover from either.

  Gilly frowned. If the boy hadn’t known Aris, their king—“You understand about Xipos?”

  After a blank, black look, during which Gilly recalled the utter self-absorption of his audience and the lack of education, he explained the Xipos War. As much as that prolonged and bloody decade could be explained. The cause was simple enough: Itarus attempted to seize Xipos and its winter ports from Antyre’s grip. But the battling grew so protracted and vicious that even the gods grew sick of it, the cause of their vanishment.

  The poisonous offshoot of battle, assassination, claimed the king and crown prince; the second son died on the front; and the third son, the quiet scholar, Aris Ixion, inherited a kingdom at war. Aris, who valued life more than land, acted decisively. He surrendered, no matter that the terms of concession were ruinous: tithes, taxes, forced exports to Itarus that were sold back to Antyre at a hefty profit. If it weren’t for Antyre’s colonies in the Explorations, Itarus would have conquered Antyre one coin at a time.

  “Grigor, the Itarusine king, sent Vornatti to be Antyre’s auditor and warden, which places him ideally to aid you.” The boy raised his head from where he had been resting it against the cushions. “I thought that might wake you,” Gilly said, smiling.

  “I don’t need his aid,” the boy said.

  “You’d be frozen back at the first hedgerow without it,” Gilly countered.

  The carriage came to a halt, rocking gently on its wheels in the wind and snow. The coachman leaned his snow-crowned head in, pulled the ice-crusted muffler from his mouth. His breath plumed in the still air. “Gates are closed to Lastrest, Gilly.”

  “Open them and drive on.”

  A rush of cold air greeted Gilly’s words. The boy had clambered out and was floundering through the deeper snow beside the road. Gilly framed himself in the door and called out, “It’s still a mile or more. Too far to walk, boy.”

  The boy stepped between the bars of the gate while the coachman shoved at them, trying to free the gate from the clutch of the snowdrifts. Gilly cursed and went to help. On the other side, the boy tripped over the long skirt of the coat, and sprawled, frosting the sable fur, then got up again, heading for the trackless white of the drive.

  Once the gates were ajar, Gilly’s longer legs allowed him to catch the boy. He grabbed the boy’s shoulder and shoved him back toward the coach. “Get in. You’ll freeze and Vornatti will be angry with me.”

  The boy’s face was white, blanched by strong emotion, and he shivered under Gilly’s rough grasp. “There will be no one there. Don’t fuss yourself so.” The boy sat with deceptive patience as the coach furrowed its way through the snow.

  At the manor, the coachman pointed out the shuttered windows, the door knocker taken off the latch. “No one’s here, Gilly.”

  “We’ll ask the servants, to be sure. At the least, they might offer us some hospitality from the cold,” Gilly said. He pounded on the door. Snow crusted his
shoulders, and his gloved fingers had gone numb before an old man answered.

  “Last has gone abroad to join his son. He will not return until the spring.” The old man spoke it all in one breath, as inanimate as a puppet, and as disinterested. He started to shut the door, but Gilly leaned against it.

  “Join his son?”

  “Yes, the boy has been educated abroad these sixteen years, and the earl wishes to see how his lessoning has gone before he introduces him to the court.” More puppetry speech, but irritation surfaced in the old man’s eyes as the wind stung his exposed face.

  “His bastard son, Janus?” Gilly said.

  The butler’s mouth primmed. “It is my understanding that Janus is the son of a prior, unreported marriage.”

  “Of course,” Gilly agreed. “My mistake.” An unrecorded marriage, and a new heir for the earl of Last, a new member of the royal family? The immensity of the news left him stunned. A bastard—heir to the earldom, to the throne? Gilly turned to see what the boy was making of all this, and found him gone. The door slammed at his back. “Where is he?” Gilly asked the coachman.

  “Went round ’longside, like he knew what he was doing.”

  “You didn’t stop him?”

  The coachman shrugged.

  Faintly, Gilly heard the chime of glass breaking. Exasperated, he hurried after the boy, stumbling in the deep footprints of his path.

  The coat had been discarded, a dark blotch in the snow beside an ivy-covered wall. The ivy was brown and sere, withered by the cold, but up above a window flashed, and something weightier than ice fell to the drift beside him. Gilly stooped, picked up the shard of glass, and swore. He backtracked, pounded on the door until his hands stung with impact, but this time no one answered.

  “Drive down to the gate, blanket the horses, and wait for us. I’d rather them not grow suspicious of our continued presence.”