From a dazzling new voice in fantasy comes a mesmerizing tale of treachery, passion, intrigue, betrayal, and an act of pure vengeance that threatens to bring down a kingdom.
Seething with decadent appetites unchecked by law or gods, the court of Antyre is ruled by the last of a dissolute aristocracy. But now to the kingdom comes a handsome, enigmatic nobleman, Maledicte, whose perfect manners, enchanting charisma, and brilliant swordplay entice the most jaded tastes . . . and conceal a hunger beyond reckoning.
For Maledicte is actually a woman named Miranda—a beautiful thief raised in the city’s vicious slums. And she will do anything–even promise her soul to Black-Winged Ani, the most merciless of Antyre’s exiled gods—to reclaim Janus, the lover whose passion still haunts her dreams. As her machinations strike at the heart of Antyre’ s powerful noble houses, Miranda must battle not only her own growing bloodlust, but also her lover’s newly kindled and ruthless ambitions. As Ani’s force grows insatiable and out of control, Miranda has no choice but to wield a weapon that may set her free . . . or forever doom her and everything she holds dear.
Release date:
May 29, 2007
Publisher:
Del Rey
Print pages:
464
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Baron Vornatti was an old man, hunched in his chair, staring at the wonders of his extensive library with a jaded and bleary eye. A sable pelt poured over his wasted legs. Absently, he ruffled the furs while he flipped pages of the book of pornographic woodcuts on his lap. A hedonist and a sensualist, he was much withered by time and pain; on a cold winter’s night, he fondled old memories as he once did flesh. But all his precious memories, of women’s softly rounded shoulders and mounded breasts, the sweet juncture at their thighs, of young men’s ripe buttocks, greedy mouths, and strong square hands, all these could not distract him as they used to do.
His back flared and spasmed. His glassy eyes flew to the old grandfather clock by the door. “Gilly,” he roared. “Time!”
Grinding his teeth, Vornatti sagged forward in the chair to ease the strain. The book fell to the floor, splayed on opened pages. He wanted a distraction, something beyond the torment of his bones and illusory remembrances of the flesh. Once, he had found engrossment in the bloody game of court intrigue, but even that had palled with his mastery of it.
In the distant recesses of the library, beyond the firelight, beyond the lamps, glass broke with a sound like cracking ice. Slow, crunching footsteps echoed.
A chill serpent of air wound around Vornatti’s ankles, hissing with blown snow.
“My lord?” Gilly said from the doorway. The large silver tray of drug and drink was dwarfed in his hands. His voice put a temporary stop to the footsteps.
“We have an intruder,” Vornatti said, straightening with a wince.
“Who’s there?” Gilly said, as the footsteps resumed their slow progress, now thudding against the bare wooden floor. He squinted against the glare of the built-up fire, set the tray down on the thick carpeting beside Vornatti.
The footsteps gained the carpet and disappeared in the muffling softness. Gilly lifted a book pole, holding it across his chest, the hook facing the shadows.
“Put it down, damn it, Gilly. Put it down, and give me my Elysia. Let the bastard wait.”
Gilly hesitated, but finally set the book pole back against Vornatti’s chair.
He bent, turning his back to the shadows, and cradled Vornatti’s withered arm against his own. He drew the Elysia into the glass syringe in a cloudy swirl that held something of its origin in it, the elixir left in Naga’s serpent-scaled wake. Letting it settle long enough so that the contents stopped their eddying, Gilly pushed the needle into the old man’s ropy veins. Vornatti closed his eyes as Gilly worked the plunger, hissed against the bite of it in his blood.
When Gilly looked up, they were no longer alone in the circle of firelight. The intruder shared it with them. It was only a boy, shivering in his thin shirt, blue at the lips. He had shadowed eyes, made darker by a cropped tumble of black curls that seemed to spread shadow out behind him. A thin scar sliced along the left side of his jaw, and he held his right hand behind his back.
Vornatti’s eyes opened and he smiled as if a bit of his past had come back in salacious detail.
“What young toothsome have we here?” he murmured, lazy on a release of pain and burgeoning euphoria. “Gilly, only look what the gods have brought me.”
“Be silent, old man,” the boy said, drawing his arm from behind him. In his hand was a sword.
And such a sword. It was black-bladed, black-hilted. The pommel was a burnished mirrorstone, and the edges were so sharp as to seem blurred in human sight. The cross-hilt was made of stilled, dark wings with wickedly edged feathers more reminiscent of daggers than of flight. Like some remnant from the god-touched times, the sword radiated presence beyond its workmanship.
“Are you Last?” The boy raised the sword, its glitter matched by the wildness in his eyes.
Vornatti wheezed into laughter, slapping Gilly’s arm, startling him. “Last.”
The boy’s face grew red temper lines around the jaw and nose. The scar flared to whiteness. “Don’t laugh at me.” He pushed the blade forward; Vornatti parried with the book pole, still laughing despite the slice the sword had carved in the wood.
Gilly stepped between Vornatti and the blade, and Vornatti stilled his laughter. “There is more than one noble house in Graston. No, boy, I am not Last. Look here.” He thumped the end of the pole on the carpet. “Gilly, get your big feet out of the way and fetch us all drinks.”
He stabbed at the floor again. “See that, boy?”
The carpet was burgundy and blue, and in the center a fantastical creature writhed in golden embroidery.
“I am Vornatti, Baron Vornatti, since you are not likely to know that. An Itarusine subject, now living in Antyre; Aris’s brother-by- law, and accountant. The winged serpent is my crest; Last’s crest is a twisted hourglass, and his motto is ‘only a Last at the last.’ Smug bastard.”
“Who’s Aris?” the boy said.
“Our king,” Gilly said, carrying the tray to the table.
“Oh. Him.” The boy studied the elaborate embroidery on the carpet, the slippers Vornatti wore, the crest imprinted on the spine of the long-forgotten book.
“Are you listening, boy?”
The boy didn’t answer, but his dark eyes flickered to Vornatti’s face, studying the sagging, spotted flesh, the dark rheumy eyes. He let the sword point lower to threaten the floor. “Where do I find Last?”
“What sends you seeking him, blade in hand? Answer me that, first.”
The boy frowned, but visibly needed the answer too badly to play coy. “Last took Janus from me, and left me for dead. I will return the favor, reclaim Janus and leave Last dead. Though I will be less careless and see his heart stop before I go.”
So much emotion was invested in the reply that it seemed a cantrip or incantation, and as rote as a nightly prayer. It silenced Vornatti, and the only sound was Gilly and the chinking of crystal as he poured the requested drinks.
“I doubt that was Last himself,” Vornatti said. “He so rarely soils his hands, and is far more dedicated to a task once undertaken. If it were Last, make no doubts, you would be dead, boy. But who is Janus to warrant such attention?” Vornatti took the goblet Gilly offered him, sipped at the steaming negus. He gestured to Gilly, and Gilly turned the second goblet, the glass meant for him more usually, toward the boy.
Distrust furrowed the boy’s features, and he finally said, “The earl of Last’s bastard son.”
“Last has no living children,” Vornatti said.
Gilly pressed the cup into the boy’s left hand, spoke to Vornatti. “There were rumors. You remember. Celia Rosamunde, the admiral’s daughter.”
“Oh. Her.” Vornatti mocked the boy’s earlier words. “That weak- willed, wanton wench.” He laughed at his own wordplay, and to Gilly’s surprise, even the boy flickered a bitter smile.
“I thought she died,” Vornatti said.
“She was disowned and abandoned when her condition became evident. I heard she made her way to the Relicts and died there.”
“Not yet,” the boy said. Across the room, the boy’s stomach growled audibly. He raised the goblet, and swallowed three great gulps of the sweetened, spiced wine, throat working. Making a face, he dropped the goblet to the carpet.
Vornatti shifted his slippers away from the spreading stain. “If you didn’t want it, all you had to do was give it to Gilly,” Vornatti said, without heat, his mind occupied. “He reclaimed his bastard son? I had heard that Last’s newest wife died of childbed fever and the babe of milksickness.”
“This talk means nothing,” the boy said. “Tell me where to find Last.” He dragged the sword point up to menace Vornatti once more.
“Let’s have less of that,” Vornatti said. “It grows wearisome. I will tell you what you want, for all the good it will do you. Last’s estate is yet ten miles from here. Will you walk it in ice and snow?”
The boy’s face sagged into momentary despair, and then the determined mask slid back into place. He started for the door.
Vornatti caught his arm with a sudden movement, surprising in a man so seemingly infirm. “Stay the night,” Vornatti said. He stroked the boy’s scarred cheek.
The boy jerked free, no longer listening, caught up in his own thoughts, bent on following some inner drive that denied obstruction.
“Gilly,” Vornatti commanded.
Reluctantly, Gilly roused himself to comply, though had he a choice, he’d be relieved to see the boy’s back. Still, obedience was ingrained, and he stepped before the boy, keeping a wary eye on the boy’s sword hand. “Come on then. Humor the old bastard and stay.”
The boy halted, staring at Gilly. “Get out of my way.” Shadows danced in the depths of his eyes, and Gilly stepped out of easy harm’s range. Still, he balked the boy at the door.
Gilly was good at anticipating his Lord’s requests. From the moment that Vornatti smiled at the intruder, Gilly knew he desired the boy. Other intruders had been summarily and unpleasantly dealt with, the pistol fished out from beneath Vornatti’s lap furs, not teased to flushing. With that in the forefront of his thoughts, Gilly had drugged the boy’s negus, the Laudable’s sticky sweetness masked by the honeyed spice of the heated wine. Gilly was surprised the boy still stood. A single mouthful should have been enough to incapacitate one skinny youth.
Still more surprising was the force of the boy’s presence. Gilly found it harder and harder to keep himself blocking the boy’s egress. Only Vornatti’s expression of cupidity and interest kept Gilly still. Vornatti’s mood could shift like the tide; he’d grow bored soon enough with the filthy, bad-tempered lad, but until that moment occurred, Gilly had best obey or suffer Vornatti’s own bad temper.
“I’ll pay you,” Gilly said, inspired. “Enough to rent a hack to Lastrest in the morning.”
The boy put out a hand, palm upward, waiting.
“In the morning,” Gilly said.
His hand clutched the black hilt. “I should trust you after you’ve drugged the wine?”
Gilly saw it now, the slackening mouth, the loosening fingers. The signs he had expected long minutes ago—but the boy was fighting the effects of the drug with the considerable force of his will. Gilly wondered how much longer the boy could stay standing.
“I’m tired, Gilly. Show our guest to a room and be done with it.” Vornatti leaned forward, creaked out of his chair, and reached for his fallen book. “The painted room, mind you.”
Gilly nodded. He bowed to the young savage as if he were truly a guest, and said, “Follow me.”
His back was tense with his concern that the boy was not following, and tense with the cat-feeling that the boy was following, albeit on footsteps too silent to hear. Gilly turned and found the boy paused in the long stone-paved hall.
The boy stared into the great, clouded mirror that hung on the gilded and flocked walls, a spot of uncertain shadow in the midst of rich colors and elaborate hangings. Touching the rippled glass, the boy leaned close, fingered his reflection.
“You are comely enough,” Gilly said, wondering if the boy had ever seen his face in a looking glass before. Despite the jarring notes of sword and accent, Gilly knew the boy was no more of the aristocracy than he himself was. “But it’s no assignation we head to, only rest.”
“There is nothing before me but a rendezvous,” the boy said, his thickening tongue slurring his words. The boy pressed his face against the cool glass, closing his eyes.
Gilly took the boy’s arm, and the boy leaned against him, looked up at him with enormously pupiled eyes. “Have you seen Janus?”
“I have not. Is he fair like Last?”
“Fair,” he agreed on a sigh. He tugged Gilly’s blond tail of hair; his dark-fringed eyes closed, then flickered open in sudden awareness. “Bastard. I’d better get my lunas in the morning.” He shoved Gilly away.
Gilly led the boy away from the mirror, and looked back over his shoulder, expecting to see the boy’s reflection lingering behind, as stubborn as the boy himself.
At the painted room, Gilly unlocked the door, went inside, and lit the gas lamps. The boy stared at the furnishings in a near stupor.
The room was shadowed. The gaslight illumined only a circle the size of a man’s outstretched arms, and the chamber was easily thrice that, if not more. The bed itself was a small room, walled of swagged draperies, embroidered with gilded serpents. Even to Gilly’s eyes, they seemed to undulate in the wavering light; how must they appear to the drugged boy? Thick carpeting underfoot stifled sound, turning each movement into a secretive whisper. Heavy, dense curtains draped the distant walls, though Gilly knew there were no windows behind them, only the murals that gave the room its name. One drape, drawn back, revealed nothing but the image of rushing water, full of movement without progress. This room was a well-appointed prison.
The boy shivered as if he had sensed Gilly’s thought, but headed for the swaddled bed as if for a long-sought rest. Gilly watched the boy clamber up the bed steps and lie down. Only then did the boy release the sword from his grip. It sprawled over the counterpane beside him like a living thing.
Gilly closed the door, drew out the key, and locked it, sealing away the boy and his sword.
The click of the bolt sliding home sounded as final as a headman’s ax in the silent hall. Gilly winced, expecting the boy to rouse, sputtering curses and making futile strikes against the heft of the oaken door, but the moment passed in peace. Tucking the key into his vest pocket, Gilly returned to the library.
Vornatti waited, slumped down in his chair, too worn tonight to make the walk to his chambers without aid.
“The boy?” Vornatti said, without raising his rough-whiskered chin from his chest.
“Caged. Asleep,” Gilly said.
“Good. I’m not inclined to conduct business at this hour.” Vornatti pressed his hands into the arms of the chair, trying to raise himself. Though his face grayed with effort and his hands whitened, his body stayed motionless. Gilly forestalled further effort, slipping the rug from Vornatti’s lap, setting the pistol aside, and, his hands beneath Vornatti’s shoulders, hefted the diminished weight of what had once been a big man. Vornatti fell against Gilly’s side, muttering. “Too much Elysia,” he said.
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