Maledicte (49 page)

A girl in a much-turned dress of bottle green, clutching a case to her side, waited near the door of the tavern, visibly nervous; her chaperone, an old woman, glared at Gilly and he looked away. The last to take shape was a maid in a heavy dark dress, coming slowly down the tree-lined path. The shadows clutched at her, only resentfully relinquishing her to the thin morning sunlight.

Her thick wool dress was too big for her; she seemed bent under it. Her face was obscured by an ugly bonnet, years out of fashion, and her dark hair spilled dully from behind it. She held herself with the fragile rigidity of sickness or hurt. Consumption, Gilly thought, or simple hunger, maybe a beating—He wondered what her story was, whether she was waiting for someone to arrive, or going somewhere, and if she would be welcome when she got there. He welcomed the curiosity, indulged it, knowing it heralded healing, to feel interest beyond the scope of pain, love, and vengeance.

Gilly was the last to get on the coach, still studying his enigma, wishing he could see her face, know if she were young or old, worn or serene. All his conclusions could be dismissed with the face. He left the little mystery with reluctance and climbed the steps into the coach. When he looked back, he saw her approach, a passenger after all. From his height he saw only the top of her bonnet. She paused at the step, and held up a thin, sinewy hand.

A faint whisper, like a voice from a dream. “Help me up, Gilly.” She tilted her face to his. So thin, so pale, the scar white as bone, her eyes dark as the grave.

Is this what Janus felt,
Gilly wondered,
that first night at the solstice ball?
This heart-racing immobility? This disbelief, this impossible joy?

Wordless, he stretched out his hand, jolted when her hand in his was real, and not some product of his grieving heart. She climbed up beside him, her weight mostly in his hands, managing her skirts with visible impatience. She folded herself into the space beside Gilly with a gasp and a wince. He found his voice, breathless but audible. “Mal—”

Her raised hand cut him off. The horses started, and, flinching, she rocked with their movement. He slipped off his coat and tucked it behind her back, trying to cushion her body. Run through, they’d said. Through the heart.

“What’s your name?” Gilly asked, the question of years ago, new again.

“Can’t you guess?” The rasping voice was an anomaly in the maid’s throat. Her lips quirked downward.

Gilly shook his head. He couldn’t put two rumors together at this moment. She only smiled at him, and he found he had an answer after all, a collection of pieces belatedly put together. “Miranda,” he said.

“Miranda,” she agreed. She wove her fingers into his, sat upright, with only that tenuous connection between them.

Gilly could only stare, wondering at his blindness all these years. It was as if a painting had been blurred and out of focus, and he had finally found his spectacles. After a cautious glance at the other passengers, she said, “I own I am surprised to find you live and hale. I had heard otherwise.”

“Your surprise is nothing to mine, I assure you,” Gilly said, smiling like an idiot. It hadn’t been a ghost after all, peering down at him, but flesh and blood. “But how?”

“It wasn’t complete,” she said. “Ani would not loose me, not while my vengeance lay undone. And Janus made it impossible.”

“The babe?” Gilly said, his voice a whisper. The coach seemed full of prying ears, and his happiness felt fragile.

“Not by my hand,” she said.

Gilly brought her fingers to his mouth, kissed them, studied the veins standing out in such relief. “You’re so thin,” he said.

“I need looking after,” Miranda said. “I admit as much. Maybe I can find someone to do so.” She curved her mouth in a way that made him want to laugh. So falsely demure.

“Where are you journeying, Miranda?” Gilly asked, teasing in return. “Only the city? Or farther still—” The question, asked in amusement, ended in uncertainty. He was afraid to hope, though sense told him otherwise.

“I thought to seek the Explorations,” she said. “I want to see some savages. Did you know they wear feathers instead of leather?”

“I told you that,” he said.

“Ah, that’s why I believe it then, but Gilly, I hope you have money. The pawnbrokers took ruthless advantage of me; I wasn’t in any fit mood for haggling. All I’ve got are the clothes on my back, and I’d rather not have them.”

“Anything you want. Just tell me, will it be breeches or skirts?”

“Skirts until we reach the Explorations. I cannot chance recognition. After that,” she said, smiling up at Gilly, “breeches, I think. I had forgotten how unwieldy these things can be.”

Gilly’s smile grew wider as another thought touched his giddy mind. “Ship captains are notoriously choosy about female passengers. Shall I claim you as sister—?”

Miranda smiled back. “I think not. Perhaps you’d best reassure the captain. Prevail on him to marry us. What’s more common than that? A wedded pair seeking a new life in a new land.”

“I will speak to the captain as soon as we step aboard,” Gilly vowed, laughing. Then he sobered. A question burned in his mind, one he was loath to ask, loath even to mention. But it had to be asked. “What about Janus?”

“Janus—” She turned her head as if she could see her past behind her along the road. “He was taken from me and I fought to reclaim him. I would have died for him without hesitation, were it not that he was not as I remembered. Were it not for my vow. Ani knows, Ani told me, but I didn’t want to listen. Where there’s love, there must be vengeance. But I’m done with vengeance now.”

“You sated Ani?” Gilly asked.

“Ani cannot be sated. I will bear Her company for the rest of my life. Janus, clever creature that he is, saw to that. I cannot wreak vengeance on the one I vowed to love. On the one I vowed to hate, when they are one and the same. Still,” Miranda said, sighing, “I can leave him, and find some small measure of satisfaction there. But be warned, you take a perilous creature to wife….”

“I’d have no other kind,” Gilly said. He kissed her closed eyes, tasting salt in the soft tangles of her lashes, and dreamed of the sea waves ahead of them.

About the Author

L
ANE
R
OBINS
was born in Miami, Florida, the daughter of two scientists, and grew up as the first human member of their menagerie. When it came time for a career, it was a hard choice between veterinarian and writer. It turned out to be far more fun to write about blood than to work with it. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Beloit College, and currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas.

Maledicte
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Del Rey Books Trade Paperback Original

Copyright © 2007 by Lane Robins

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Robins, Lane.

Maledicte / Lane Robins.

p. cm.

“A Del Rey Books trade paperback original”—T.p. verso.

I. Title.

PS3618.03177M35 2007

813’
₊
6—dc22                                             2006035571

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50049-6

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