Long Live Evil, page 26
Power Octavian had not yet unlocked.
She realized everybody was staring expectantly from her to Lia, and back again.
Rae said, “Break a leg, sis.”
The court gave Rae a collectively horrified look.
Rae mumbled, “It’s a saying that means good luck.”
Octavian proceeded as if he hadn’t heard, though the edge in his voice said he had. “One last inconsequential matter. This guard trespassed on the balcony. I sentence him to fifteen lashes in the Room of Dread and Anticipation.”
Half hidden behind a curtain, Emer’s hand flew to her mouth to trap a protest. Above her hand, her eyes reproached Rae.
“Do you desire to speak for him, Rahela?” the king invited. “Perhaps you wish to be banished from the court and me? You’re a holy woman now. You could be bound to a cave like the Oracle, meditating on the lost gods.”
If she was banished from court, she wouldn’t be there when the Flower of Life and Death bloomed. If she was exiled, she died.
Rae opened her mouth, then bit her lip.
“Boss.” Key stood, shaking off the broken glass, and shook his head. Loudly he said, “I’ll take the whipping.”
Guards clamped hands on his shoulders. By now Rae knew how Key fought. He could bring these guards down, but the king would simply summon more. No man could stand against an army.
She understood why the hero was always the most powerful man in the room. The king was the god of their court. He made it so the sun would shine and the winds blow gently on you… or not. You didn’t want to imagine what that kind of power could do, if you weren’t on his side. It was predetermined by the story that the power would be on the right side. It was good for the hero to have more influence than anybody else. The heroine and the righteous were protected by the hero’s power.
But they were villains.
Octavian leaned across a space of glittering destruction and peered into Key’s face, already bleeding from being shoved into broken glass. Key’s snarl was feral, wilder than his hair. Octavian’s smile and smooth hair gleamed like his masked crown.
“I wasn’t asking your permission to whip you. I don’t need anybody’s permission for anything. Keep your eyes and your mind off my woman. Remember your place. In the gutters of the Cauldron, with the rest of the trash. There is only one place lower. One more wrong move, gutter brat, and you will be hurled into the abyss.”
The train of the royal cloak swept over shards of glass, drifting away over the black mirror of the ballroom floor. The future Emperor departed, triumphant. Rae was what she hated to be, silent and helpless. She had to watch as the guards dragged Key out through the ballroom to be whipped. She had to watch as Lia sailed away at the king’s side, arm shining with the mark of his favour.
Rae stood alone amid ruins of blood and glass, even her maid cowering from her. Rae’s face was ripped and stained as her harlot’s dress. She lied and cheated and killed. She betrayed loyal servants and did not utter even a word to defend them.
She looked bad. She was bad.
Once again, a messy situation turned into a crushing victory for Lia.
The lights of the chandelier sparkled through the broken doors and refracted in Rae’s eyes, sparks of stray thoughts that might start a blaze. Lia had said, “The loser pays a forfeit” at the archery tournament, and inspired Lady Hortensia to exile Rae. Lia wept on command. Every time, Lia was too helpless and sweet to effect anything. Lia said, “Being useless is all I have,” and she used it. This wasn’t just the story working out for the heroine.
Rae negotiated around the broken glass into the ballroom, where Emer silently joined her. She trailed back to her room in a daze.
Someone was whipping Key. Someone was attempting to murder Rae. And Lady Lia, innocent and beautiful, was coolly climbing her way to the top.
Rae wasn’t the only one who could scheme. Rae was an amateur compared to the girl who never let her façade slip as she engineered every situation to her benefit.
Emer always looked at Lia with such serious attention. Rae had believed that was guilt, but perhaps it was something more.
“Did you know Lia was clever enough to beat me at my own game?” Rae asked, sitting at her bronze mirror as Emer brushed her hair.
“Yes, my lady,” Emer murmured.
“And did you know someone was trying to kill me?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Rae couldn’t hide the edge of frustration slipping into her tone. “You didn’t think any of this was worth mentioning?”
“Servants shouldn’t speak unless they are spoken to. And my lady, you didn’t ask.”
The accusation on Rae’s tongue stilled as she heard a noise from without her chamber door.
Scarcely daring to speak, Rae whispered, “Since you know so much, Emer, do you know who’s coming?”
Emer shook her head slowly.
Footsteps echoed on the stone steps, against the stone walls, like the tolling of a bell. It could be another assassin. It could be the king or the Last Hope, Key or the Cobra. It could be life or death.
Rae and Emer watched the door handle turn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Cobra in the Cauldron
“I will take you to a place of safety. First we must find the Cobra.”
“My lord?” whispered Lia.
The Last Hope’s face changed as he remembered the Cobra had been dead for weeks.
Time of Iron, ANONYMOUS
Marius’s voice echoed in the tunnel, hollow against stone. The Cobra glanced over his shoulder, dark eyes going wide. Marius anticipated shock or fear. He wasn’t prepared for fury.
The Cobra wheeled on him in the close quarters of the secret tunnel. “You’ll ruin everything! What are you doing here?”
Marius raised a defensive arm, a soldier’s instinct arising before his conscious mind intervened. The Cobra sheered off and smiled sidelong.
See me laughing, that smile said. I must be a joke. That smile was disaster on the horizon, sun glancing off the spears of an advancing army. Marius’s every sense burned like strained muscles, struggling to find the threat. His father called it a gift that a Valerius was always armed against the foe. Yet this all-enveloping awareness turned the whole world into an enemy.
Marius answered through his teeth, “Catching a thief.”
The Cobra sidled out of the tunnel. Marius followed on broken rooftiles sliding underfoot like wet pebbles on a beach. The other end of the tunnel was a vast cracked effluvia pipe long disused, running parallel to a rooftop so waste could pour out over the high city walls. It wasn’t a bad disguise for a secret tunnel. Numerous effluvia pipes led from the palace into the city. People didn’t explore them for obvious reasons.
Simmering lights, a more garish red than the sullen glow of the ravine, burned in the narrow street below. Thick scented smoke wafted up from torches. If a pipe burst, it might improve the atmosphere in the Cauldron.
The Cobra danced along the edge of a rooftop in the scarlet-touched smog. “I’m not caught yet, my lord.”
Two of the tenement buildings were set slightly apart. The Cobra hopped from the corner of one rooftop to the next, ornaments chiming. The Cobra sauntered over the rooftops of hovels as he did across ballrooms: carelessly adjusting his hair and pretending not to notice his surroundings while noticing every detail.
He feigned indolence well. He feigned everything well.
Marius set his jaw. A Valerius could track prey across any terrain. The Cobra couldn’t escape. “Tell me what you’re stealing.”
“Have you considered, all property is theft?”
“It is when you steal it!” snapped Marius.
The Cobra reached into his jerkin. Marius expected stolen goods. Curves of hammered gold caught the wicked light, outlining the coiling shapes of snakes. Marius recognized this jewellery from years ago. These earrings belonged to the Cobra. Bracelets already gleamed gold above his biceps.
Wearing such adornments in the Cauldron was a signal you were a criminal, or ready to hire one.
“Men’s adornment is outlawed.”
“That was the prime minister’s petty revenge on me.”
“Oh, really?” This man was so vain, he probably thought the troubadours’ songs were about him.
“Since I was responsible for the crackdown on imports that played merry hell with Pio’s investments.”
Few travelled to the cursed land of Eyam, but profit was dearer to men’s hearts than demons or the divine. Merchants still brought their ships to the harbour and offered gold and goods in exchange for orichal. Years ago, city guards, paid off by the Cobra, had broken through a false hull and found secret cargo: peasants being indentured against their will. The Cobra had snarled, “Those are real people,” and lunged across the table at the young lord who owned the ship. Marius held him back by force.
After a tense moment Cobra called Marius boring, and departed the assembly. The young lord was heavily fined, and the Cobra’s bill monitoring imports passed. Marius hadn’t considered the matter again.
Marius said slowly, “Was the ship owner the young lord you deliberately ruined?”
The Cobra shrugged.
He had his freedom, the Cobra had said when Marius reproached him on the matter. It seemed the Cobra hadn’t ruined anyone on a whim.
Even so, the prime minister wouldn’t make a law out of spite. Only villains like the Cobra plotted revenge.
The king must keep his crown, so men’s head adornments were still legal. From the day the law passed the Cobra wore so many hair ornaments they rang together like music, playing a faintly mocking tune. Prime Minister Pio looked pained whenever he heard the Cobra coming. Balancing on the edge of a rooftop like an acrobat on the trapeze, the Cobra was making far less noise than usual. This proved he created a fuss on purpose to annoy everybody.
“What are your personal thoughts on men in jewellery?” the Cobra asked, deceptively soft.
“They shouldn’t blackmail me.”
The Cobra’s laugh made Marius’s spine feel like a dry torch set ablaze.
“You’re a spoiled, frivolous care-for-naught pretending to be an outlaw.” His words held the snap of burning wood. “Land in the Cauldron streets, you’ll be stripped with your throat cut.”
“Thrilling,” murmured the Cobra.
Marius frequently remembered their first meeting. He was eighteen, wandering alone out of the palace gates into the city. One of his best friends was the king. The other was dead.
The boy seemed to drop from the sky. After a moment, Marius realized he’d swung from the branches of a hawthorn tree. The boy was Marius’s age, slight and dark-complected, and his face was impossibly luminous. Marius glanced around, but there was nobody behind him.
“Marius,” the stranger breathed. “Lord Marius Valerius. The Last Hope.”
As though a cloud had passed to show twin stars, two things became clear to Marius. The first was nobody ever looked this pleased to see Marius. The second was Marius was very lonely.
Torn between wariness and delight, Marius asked, “And how do you know me?”
The boy hesitated. Shadow touched his face, and stayed like a mask over the sun. Years would pass. That first golden openness would not return.
“Even if I told you,” the boy said, “You’d never believe me. Just know this: I’m your number one fan. And I’m sorry for what I’m about to do.”
Alarmed, Marius demanded, “What are you planning to do?”
The boy proceeded to blackmail him.
For the Golden Cobra, blackmailing a Valerius had only been the beginning.
There was a hush on the rooftops, high above the noisy streets. Marius realized he’d made a mistake. What Marius had seen as adjusting his hair was the Cobra undoing fastenings on his ornaments, letting a rain of gold snakes pour down.
A beggar in rags caught one. Next the Cobra flicked a shining serpent into the hands of an urchin, giving her a little wave. The girl grinned as bright for him as she did for the jewel.
Nobody catching treasure looked surprised. They appeared exalted, as though they’d heard stories of blessings showered from above, and believed with faith born of possibility that glory would come to them.
“Do you regularly spread largesse in the Cauldron so you will always have spies ready to recruit?”
The Cobra smirked. “I’m experimenting in destabilizing the local currency.”
Marius’s teeth ached with anger. “Why did you join our law-making assembly if you insist on being a criminal?”
“Make better laws or make criminals,” the Cobra snapped back. “The crimes will continue until the justice system improves.”
“It will never be legal to steal from the king!”
“I don’t believe in the monarchy.”
The Cobra swung insouciantly around a chimney. Marius rolled his eyes so hard he expected to hear a rattle.
“Wonderful news. I don’t believe in gravity, so I’ll never fall again. The king exists, and will execute you for treason. And…”
Light didn’t dawn for Marius. It flared and sputtered, rising slow as the ominous red sparks from the ravine. The Cobra often talked nonsense, but never to no purpose.
“You’re chattering to distract me.”
“Caught on, did you?”
At the very edge of the rooftop, the Cobra fell backward with a smile.
Through the rushing wind and the roar in his own ears, Marius heard the Cobra shout: “Not fast enough!”
Marius ran to the edge of the roof, tiles crashing to the cobblestones. Lord Popenjoy had leaped onto a rattling cart piled high with goods Marius doubted were legally acquired. The smugglers’ cart whisked around a corner. Crouched on a stolen carpet, the Cobra waved farewell.
Panic lost wars. Though his muscles coiled for the leap, Marius didn’t jump down. The rooftops afforded him an aerial view. If he stayed on high, he had a chance of catching up. He ran along the roof, chasing the cart. When a rotted gutter gave out under him, he took the impact of the fall on his shoulder. He leaned into the pain, letting himself plummet into the yawning gap with cobblestones and criminals below, until he grasped the edge of the roof. Marius swung so his boots hit the wall, tearing his cape free when the ends caught on the jagged broken-off edge of the gutter, and jumped to the next roof. A burst of excited conversation exploded from below. He’d been recognized. Other scholars from the Ivory Tower occasionally visited the capital for short visits, but – with respect to his scholarly brethren – Marius didn’t believe they engaged in rooftop chases. Devotion to scholarship had a disastrous impact on physical fitness.
Marius’s too-acute senses were like having every door in your house flung open to the world, but sometimes the invasion of sensation proved useful. The smuggler’s cart had one wheel slightly askew. It gave a distinctive squeal, two streets to the left. Marius vaulted the roof and grinned at the dark. A rooftop chase beat a ballroom any day.
The rattle of the cart slowed before resuming its usual rhythm. A graceful long-haired silhouette darkened a moonlit cobblestone. The Cobra slipped from one shadow to the next, into a narrow grey building on Lockpick Street.
Under a sign of black wheels and gold flowers, twining script read Life in Crisis.
Marius followed the Cobra. Oddly, a tattooed doorman glanced at his clothes and wished him good hunting. Inside was a crush as bad as the ballroom. The soft sound of metal clinking meant concealed weaponry and displayed jewellery. Every man was wearing at least an earring or a bracelet, and the women were not to be outdone. Candles shone on the bar under different-coloured transparent shades turning flames red and green and blue. Over the bar a sign read Welcome All Travellers… & Thirsty Residents. At the far end of the bar was a stage where a woman crooned a low song while wearing a lower-cut gown.
The Cobra was at the bar, talking to one of the few not wearing jewellery. By the scars and the muscle definition, the woman was a blacksmith. Marius watched them slap palms, either making a bargain or exchanging an item. The blacksmith disappeared into the crowd. Marius let her go. She’d be back.
It wasn’t easy for a man Marius’s size dressed entirely in white to be discreet. The effort was worthwhile for the Cobra’s slight start when Marius spoke in his ear.
“You commit theft and treason, flee the palace, swagger into the lowest tavern in the Cauldron as if you own the place, and now you’re drinking?”
Flicker of surprise fading, the Cobra finished his beverage. “Drinking’s not illegal. If swagger was against the law, I’d already be doing life.”
Marius felt his mouth thin like a piece of paper folded sharply in half. “Alcohol is a crutch.”
“Useful things, crutches,” drawled the Cobra. “Ever see anyone using a crutch they didn’t need?”
He took refuge from uncertainty in silence.
The Cobra shrugged. “Sun rises in the east, Marius seriously disapproves of me. Oh, apologies. My lord.”
This was miserable. “Just say Marius!”
“Couldn’t so presume, my lord. If you don’t find the atmosphere to your liking, leave. See the men at the doors?”
There were six thickset individuals, a pair at each door, bulging with muscles and bristling with weapons.
“They insist on being called thugs,” the Cobra said chattily, gesturing for another drink. “I referred to them as bouncers once. They said people don’t bounce back from what they do. People are straightforward in the Cauldron. In the palace we call the thieves and cut-throats our ministers, and the doxies our ladies-in-waiting.”
A woman drew near, with a cloud of red hair and bright green malachite paste around her eyes. She was more adorned than anyone he’d ever seen bar the Cobra.
“My, my,” she murmured. “This is the best costume for the Last Hope the bawdy houses have turned out yet.”
As Marius froze in shock, she slapped Marius’s left pectoral.
“You’re a hefty boy, aren’t you! Mmm. Put me up between a brick wall and a beef wall, that’s what I say.”
