Maledicte by Lane Robins Read Free Book Online Page A

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