Free Maledicte by Lane Robins

ways. I wash my hands of his education. I will be his jailer only. If you would have me do otherwise, you must take a hand yourself.
    “Kritos.”

    The boy stood, his hands shaking. “Kritos.” The loathing in his voice darkened the atmosphere of the room, bringing winter darkness to the fire-lit circle.
    “How did you get this?” Gilly asked, turning the letter over in his hands, looking for some hint of the sender.
    “A matter of enmity,” Vornatti said. “Last hates me. As does my heir, Dantalion. As such, they are acquaintances, at least during the days of the Winter Court. It’s a small matter to pay one of Dantalion’s servants to copy any interesting letters.”
    “Is there anything else?” the boy asked. “Did Last go to aid Kritos?”
    Gilly watched the tremor move from the boy’s hands through his spine and disappear, leaving him as still as a crouching cat.
    “So greedy,” Vornatti said. “Here I’ve worked one prodigious collection of information, from my chair, mind you, and you only ask for more. Will you thank me?”
    “You derive too much pleasure from your intrigues to need my thanks,” the boy said. “Tell me.”
    “I did receive word that Last has retired to Ice Island,” Vornatti said.
    The boy’s face shuttered, locking away emotion, but Gilly had seen a quick wash of perplexity cross his face, as if he didn’t know whether to take Last’s involvement as a good thing or bad.
    “Come then, thank me,” Vornatti said. “Or are you as unmannered as Last’s whelp?”
    “I’m worse,” the boy said.
    Vornatti laughed. “How do you figure that, boy? You’ve been brought to heel, domesticated by food and a little frost. The only independence you have left is your stubborn refusal to grant us your name.”
    The boy looked to the barren trees in the orchard outside. This winter, they had not gathered icicles for more than a night without rocks being hurled at them. The black rage in the boy’s eyes sank back; he dutifully crawled into Vornatti’s lap and kissed him. Vornatti stroked the black curls, but the moment Vornatti’s lips left his to draw breath, the boy was across the room, never mind that he left strands of his hair in Vornatti’s clutching fingers.
    “Gilly,” Vornatti said, smiling. “I’m tired.”
    Obediently, Gilly rose, folded the letter in neat quarters, and set it on the desk.
    When he returned an hour later, flushed and straightening his clothes, he found the boy still in the library. Gilly hastily tucked his shirt back into his breeches, embarrassed anew under the boy’s dark eyes.
    Seeking distraction, he discovered it in the boy sprawled beside the fireplace, in the book spread open before him. Gilly remembered the frustration he had felt once, touching the incomprehensible secrets of letters and words.
    “I’ll teach you to read if you like. And write,” Gilly offered.
    The boy propped himself on his elbows. “Do you think I come to look at the pictures?” He passed the book to Gilly.
    The book was not one of Vornatti’s pornographic woodcuts. It was instead Sofia Grigorian’s text-dense treatise on exotic poisons used in the Itarusine court.
    “Are you suggesting you can read?”
    “I am telling you I can. And write.” The boy’s lips curled in a smirk that Gilly was beginning to recognize. It betokened the boy’s worst tempers. The news from Itarus was not to his liking, Gilly thought. Despite everything, the boy had hoped for Janus’s return this year.
    “So you see how little I need you,” the boy continued. “I can read my own damn letters. And I don’t need Vornatti’s lecherous aid, either.”
    Gilly’s own temper quickened as the boy’s words woke the caresses Vornatti had pressed to his skin.
    He yanked the boy to his feet. Gilly handed him a quill and the Itarusine envelope. “Prove it. Write something for me then.”
    “Anything,” the boy said, defiant.
    “Anything?” Gilly grinned. “Promise?”
    The boy