Free Maledicte by Lane Robins Page A

hesitated in the face of that smile. But then he raised his chin. The smirk deepened. “Anything.”
    “Your name.”
    The boy’s face froze and he whispered, “Bastard. And you’ll run off to tell him, won’t you?”
    “If you are incapable…” Gilly said, goading him.
    The boy dipped the quill into the inkwell, shook the excess off, and bent over the paper with a faint awkwardness that spoke of inexperience. But the scrolling ink spread over the silky parchment smoothly and quickly, stirring Gilly’s breath while he read the letters as they formed.
    The boy stepped back, bowed, tossed the quill onto the desk with a spattering of inky drops, and left the room, all so smoothly done that he was gone before Gilly’s eyes rose from the paper and the single word that the boy claimed as his name.
    Maledicte.
             
    G ILLY WOKE TO THE ROUGH sound of Vornatti’s labored breathing in his ear and, from farther down the hall, the distant protest of moving furniture. Gilly wondered drowsily if something new had distressed the boy and he had built barricades in his room last night, or if he was thieving furniture from the other rooms. A settee had already disappeared into the boy’s quarters, and once, Gilly had found the boy preparing to move an enameled table down the wide, slippery stairs. Gilly had carried it down himself, but the boy, as suspicious as a mother cat, had maneuvered it inside without Gilly’s help. The boy—
Maledicte,
Gilly thought, jerking awake all at once, unnerved again. The name rang in his ears like the voices of mad intercessors and witches, ill-omened.
    Vornatti’s gnarled hand sought Gilly’s thigh. “Who would have thought,” Vornatti rasped, “the boy would find such tame pursuits to amuse him through the cold season.”
    Gilly smiled, but when Vornatti’s hands stroked higher, he pulled away, freed himself from the smothering weight of eiderdown and fur. “I’ll start the fire,” he said.
    “Linger yet,” Vornatti commanded. “It’s rare enough I wake with you in my bed these days. It makes me wonder what sent you fleeing into my arms last night.”
    Gilly shrugged, fed the spills into the redly burning coals, grew a little flamelet, and fed the first log in.
    “That’s not an answer, Gilly,” Vornatti said, mood souring along with his voice. He gasped, and Gilly knew the old man’s pains had caught up with him once again.
    Gilly stirred a spoonful of Laudable into the leftovers of last night’s wine. “Drink this.”
    Vornatti gulped it. “Tell me why, Gilly. Do you want something out of the ordinary way?”
    “I’m not a whore,” Gilly said, stoppering the lid so hard the seal cracked in his hands.
    “Well, not
just
a whore,” Vornatti said, mocking. “There are endless supplies of reasonably intelligent young men. There are endless supplies of reasonably willing young men. But there are few who are both. And gentle—” Vornatti touched the rough stubble on Gilly’s cheeks, his tone losing its petulance. “What was it that frightened you? The boy?”
    “I suppose,” Gilly said. “I didn’t want to be alone in the dark, with only the boy in my head for company.”
    “But such fascinating company,” Vornatti said, gloating.
    Gilly knelt beside the bed, found Vornatti’s slippers, and slid them onto his feet. Head still lowered, he said. “Sir, have you never thought that this might be a dangerous thing? This boy—sometimes he seems merely a youth with a temper; at other times, he seems uncanny, his rage unnatural, that sword with raven wings like Black-Winged Ani….”
    “Black Ani,” Vornatti said. In his voice, Gilly heard old remembrances, and wondered what it had been like, to live under the eyes of the gods.
    “The sword, the hunger for vengeance. His will. His determination. Even his name. Ani could—”
    “The gods are dead, Gilly. Any man who fought at Xipos in the endgame knows that. Xipos proved it; men made offerings grim