Long Live Evil, page 43
Eric’s gaze flitted from one bloodied corpse to the next, lingering on a young soldier’s torn body hurled down on his ripped sofa cushions. Marius groped for understanding. Eric liked things to be pretty. Was he upset about his parlour being a wreck?
Uncertain, Marius righted a chair. He searched across the room and saw Eric leaning forward to close the dead soldier’s eyes.
Understanding flooded back, cold as horror. Marius sat, covering his face with his free hand. Battle fury was peace to him. It felt good to be mindless and desperate to kill. Marius had forgotten murdering people should matter.
A hand settled on the back of Marius’s neck, cool with rings. Marius looked up, hopeful.
Yours is the will I have chosen.
“Come with me,” Eric said steadily. “I know the way.”
Marius hadn’t known being damned and dishonoured would be such a relief.
Outside the palace, raiders were looting and killing in the streets. The Golden Brothel shone bright as a sun nesting in the city, lit by the fires of war. Heading towards the brilliant dome, they were intercepted by a squadron of ice raiders. Marius glanced at the Cobra.
Eric braced his shoulders to take on a great weight. “Kill.”
The sword felt good in Marius’s hand, like freedom after years of living bound.
Three bloody seconds later, the Cobra commanded, “Stop.”
They moved on.
The lowering clouds were dyed scarlet as if the sky bled. As they made their way through the outer city, Marius saw people kneel in gutters that ran red, praying.
Those Marius had rescued from the raiders followed them. Others noticed the Cobra, the darling of the commons. By the time they reached the brothel there was a long line.
On the street of the Golden Brothel, a red-headed woman threw herself into Eric’s arms. She kissed him full on the mouth and clung to Eric’s jerkin with her fists gone white.
“Marius,” said Eric. “Amelia. Amelia, Marius. You made shocking advances to him in a bar where he was hunting me down for my crimes?”
Amelia nodded impatiently. “What took you so long?”
“A burly lunatic broke into my bedchamber and vowed to protect me.”
“I wish that would happen to me.” Amelia cast her sparkling gaze on Marius, who receded behind Eric with dignity. “Hello again. You the burly lunatic?”
“I wouldn’t characterize myself in that fashion, no.”
Amelia laughed. “I love how he talks like a book on manners.”
“I know,” said Eric, amused. “Always in a whole different genre to everyone else.”
Amelia gave Eric a glance of total incomprehension, which Marius felt was more than fair. “You prattle nonsense whenever you’re overset.”
“The sky is splintering like a mirror with evil red strobe lights over our heads. I can’t be the only one who finds that disturbing!”
Eric pointed upward. The sky trembled as though it were a dew-heavy spiderweb touched by a giant’s fingertip.
Streets away, a plaintive young voice sang. “Oh how we adore you, we are waiting for you…”
Steady as the drums of war, issuing from darkened houses and the dust of unloved graves, a chant rose across the city.
“The child of gods is dead and grown
He is coming, he is coming for his throne!”
This land had waited a long time for its Emperor. Marius recalled his father talking of divine wrath.
Marius told Eric, “You’re not the only one. But duty calls.”
“Duty doesn’t know my name,” Eric claimed, but he sighed and headed for the Golden Brothel. Marius followed. So did Amelia. The woman had a name from the upper echelons of nobility: Marius couldn’t understand why she was dressed and painted so. He’d ask Eric later.
For now, Eric seemed busy. The doors of the Golden Brothel were figured prettily with carvings: birds flying from open cages to trees. Eric gave a complicated series of knocks, and Marius heard the sounds of bolts being drawn back.
Eric shoved open the doors. “Daddy’s home!”
“He says that every time,” reported Amelia. “We have tried to stop him.”
The doors opened into a grand hall filled with people. A little girl ran to the Cobra, who swung her into his arms and returned her to a silver-haired couple who appeared to be her aged grandparents.
“I am far from an expert on brothels,” said Marius, “but this doesn’t seem right at all.”
The Cobra coughed. “Let’s say you had information about tragedies certain to occur in the future. Dramatic massacres that would lead to massed heaps of unnamed peasants. Nobody would notice if you scooped a few out of the heap.” Eric misinterpreted Marius’s stare. He snapped defensively, “Somebody had to save refugees from the plot.”
“Are you also a prophet?”
“Have you ever seen a more unlikely candidate for holiness than me!”
Marius nodded acknowledgement of this point.
The Cobra continued, “So you’re a lord of suspicious origin and even more suspicious character. You require a place to stash people out of the way.”
“Hence you built a giant golden brothel?”
“It made sense at the time!” Eric glared. “Some people here do entertain guests for a price. Amelia runs that side business.”
“It’s very profitable,” Amelia contributed. “Especially as he lets me keep all the profits.”
“Because I’m not a pimp,” Eric said shortly. “I use the brothel as a cover for the real business.”
Marius thought of Eric’s rooms, his plays, even his sleeves. “‘Give ’em the old razzle dazzle’?”
The words sounded strange coming from Marius’s mouth. Maybe Eric thought so too. It made him smile briefly, in the midst of looking extremely worried.
“Nobody has questions about a Golden Brothel. The answer’s in the name.”
Eric turned away, calling for everyone to grab their things. Red-haired Amelia caught Marius’s eye.
Marius hesitated. “It’s not… normal to pretend you run a golden den of sin, is it?”
Amelia shook her head. “He’s having the most flamboyant and prolonged descent into madness I ever saw. But it says a lot about a man, when the form his madness takes is saving lives.”
Marius nodded thoughtfully, and withdrew to help people gather their belongings. Several paled when they recognized the Valerius. Marius left them alone. They didn’t need to be any more afraid.
The walls shook with the passage of soldiers and the rising storm. A teenage boy was slipping golden candlesticks into his bag. The Cobra helped him get one down from a high shelf.
The Golden Brothel, the treasure chest of the city. The wicked marquis’s hoard was the lives of those discounted as worthless.
Isn’t character who you are when nobody is there to see you?
“Oh,” said Marius.
Eric noted Marius’s gaze. His own eyes went wide with new horror.
“Don’t give me that look! Stop right now! I cannot believe one of the main characters found out about my well-hidden heart of gold. I’m going to die. I’ll get a whole touching death scene. I’ll have to think of something witty to say. You’ll be sad for about twenty pages before Lia – or your new love interest, I guess – heals your wounded heart with her sweet words. You were always going to be the death of me. You’d better be sad for at least twenty pages!”
Marius understood Eric was frightened, but he didn’t feel it had been well judged to take actual hallucinogens to cope with the situation.
No, it was only natural. Eric was a man of courage, but he hadn’t received any martial training. The debauched palace lifestyle had made him skittish as a high-bred horse.
“You’re not making any sense,” said Marius, “I have no interest in ever loving Lady Lia. I—”
Eric put a hand over his mouth.
“Please do not attract the attention of the narrative. Let’s escape the burning city with a train of terrified refugees in a low-key way. In a way that should be told in a paragraph. Better yet, a footnote. If you think of any dramatic speeches, keep them to yourself.”
He lowered his hand. Marius took this as permission to speak again.
“Eric—”
“Maybe I’m a library, because all I want is quiet! I need to work out where to bring these people.”
“I thought you had a getaway plan?” Marius reminded him. “You have a getaway bag.”
One side of the canvas bag had got splashed with blood in the streets.
“I do have a getaway plan! For myself. I have faraway boltholes where I could live out my life in—”
“Humble repentance,” murmured Marius. Often he’d dreamed of a place where he could rest and pray.
Eric scoffed. “Have you met me! Luxurious dens where I could live a life of quietly sinful decadence. I had carts to take these people away at the first sign of trouble. They should already be gone.”
That was why Eric had raced here the first chance he got? Marius regarded the Cobra with fascination. Was this how people felt watching plays? Marius was most entertained.
“You thought you’d abandon them?” Marius laughed. “Eric. Have you met you?”
Eric regarded him with loathing. “Focus instead of making cryptic remarks! I can’t stand characters who make cryptic remarks. They’re never helpful. Can you be helpful?”
“I can try. Let’s take your people to my manor.”
For once the Cobra was shocked silent. Outside, fires raged. Eric’s eyes were dark and still as the night between the mountains and the manor.
“It might be a good idea,” Eric told him softly. “Things go wrong at the manor. Trouble is coming for your sister. Perhaps I could help. But can you bear going back?”
Marius didn’t ask how the Cobra knew. Marius couldn’t fathom this strange creature from a strange world.
But Marius could take a leap of faith.
He said, “Come home with me.”
The refugees from the Golden Brothel made room in their carts for those who had followed Marius and the Cobra through the streets. Somewhat to his surprise Marius’s personal guards were still at their posts at the stables, and seemed relieved to receive orders. Marius got as many people mounted as possible.
The Cobra got upset Marius’s stable was entirely warhorses. He worried over the war steeds having fangs. Apparently Eric expected people to ride to war on vegetarian horses.
“You saw this horse born,” Marius reminded him. “I told you his bloodline could find their way anywhere. You named him.”
“That was a joke,” said Eric.
Marius didn’t see what was humorous. He’d thought it was a nice name.
The Cobra stared at the expanse of the warhorse’s arched neck, up to the rolling eyes. “So this is my noble steed, Google Maps?”
Firelight painted the stable red. A simmering moan rose like wind across the city.
“Hurry!” Amelia was handling her steed competently.
Marius reined in his mount. “Ride with me, if you want.”
One of the Cobra’s people hesitated in the doorway. “My lord—”
He was cut off by a man blundering past in a rush of expensive fabric and panic. The strange minister from the ballroom staggered towards them.
He gasped, “Thank the lost gods there are some of our kind still alive.”
Eric frowned. “What do you mean, our kind?”
As if in answer, a pack of ghouls crashed through the stable wall. Blank-faced, eyes streaming black tears, they swallowed Lord Zoltan in a dead sea. Blood splashed on the golden hay.
Marius rode for Eric, but Eric was already swinging himself into the warhorse’s saddle. He shouted at the carts to get moving. The wheels picked up speed slowly through muck and blood. The sound of marching footsteps echoed past the broken walls. A girl in her teens, no older than Marius’s sister and looking thoroughly overwhelmed, gave a faint sobbing cry.
“My family motto is ‘Honour in my heart, death in my hand’.” Marius reined in his horse so he could shield the girl, and drew his sword. “On my honour, you are safe.”
A force in Eyam’s black and blue colours turned the corner, led by Captain Diarmat.
Diarmat saluted. “My lord, the dead are killing the raiders, but also a great many of our own people. I’ve returned for new orders.”
“I’ve committed treason by disobeying a royal command,” said Marius. “Thus, I am a villain fleeing the king’s justice. The city burns and the dead rise, so I am taking any who wish to leave under my protection. We head towards the Valerius estate. Try to stop me, if you can.”
Marius would have to kill these men.
Captain Diarmat nodded. “Fall in, boys.”
“I said I disobeyed the king,” Marius said sharply. “Are you loyal until death, or not?”
“I am, my lord,” the captain replied. “But not to him.”
They rode hard down several streets before Marius drew his horse alongside Eric’s. By then Eric was handling the horse smoothly. He always caught on fast.
Something worried Marius. “The ghouls made for his lordship specifically, but why?”
As if coming to a dark revelation, Eric murmured, “Eat the rich.”
Marius frowned. Ghouls didn’t choose victims. Ghouls answered to nobody and nothing but their own hunger.
The dead were meant to obey the Emperor when he rose, but why would Octavian wish for ghouls to eat lords?
Grey ash blanketed ruined buildings, but the outer walls of the city were in view. More people joined their retinue, fleeing for safety. Marius swung his mount, gesturing to his men to protect the new refugees. As he turned, a rotting woman lunged from the dark and grasped Marius’s reins with shrivelled hands. She growled in his ear, dragging him off his horse.
The Cobra’s horse came alongside his, riding her down. The sound of bones crunching under hooves made Eric’s face turn sick and grim.
They passed the last square in the city. Blood covered the frescoes, so Marius didn’t know if there was a god in the painting at all. Another ghoul leaped from a darkened window directly onto Marius’s horse. Marius’s steed, well trained, didn’t startle when Marius cleaved the ghoul in two. When it was done, the horse stepped daintily over one of the bloody halves.
The barbican passage was meant to keep soldiers out of the city. Except the raiders had come in with the river, and the dead had risen from the ravine. Now the barbican had transformed into a stone trap where ghouls or soldiers could lunge in the dark.
The royal coat of arms, the crown atop the mountains, was painted above the central gatehouse passage. Even that blue and silver was stained with blood.
Marius took Eric’s reins in one hand as they rode, so he always knew where Eric was. Marius could see in the dark better than the rest. The orichal steel of Starving for Blood gleamed red even in shadow. Marius rode up ahead, holding the blade high, and people followed as though the sword was a torch.
Their party emerged from the shadow of city walls, leaving behind the hungry dead and the living enemy. Eric leaned back in his saddle, checking on the others, then looked at Marius. His face was serious. For a moment, Marius believed Eric would ask him to let go.
Instead, Eric said, “I’ll do my best to honour the oath, and you. But I can’t work out why you did it.”
The road to the mountains was long, but not long enough for Marius to find all the words he needed. He didn’t know how to make Eric feel what he’d felt from the broken door to the ice cliffs, to the hawthorn tree and beyond. Marius couldn’t trace a line on a map of the realization he’d come to.
Saying I had no other choice would be false. He could have obeyed the king. According to the laws of his land, the word of his gods and his own code of honour, he should have. Choosing one person above all else was the act of a monster. Marius had deliberately done evil. He had chosen to be blasphemous, treacherous and monstrous.
Every rule of Marius’s world said Eric did not matter. Since that was a lie, they must have new rules. Eric could make up the new rules as they went along. He was good at that.
On the roof Eric had explained, I love watching how you live. The Cobra always did know how to find the right words.
“I’m your number one fan,” said Marius.
That surprised a laugh out of Eric, bright and startled on the shadowy path to the silver mountains.
At their backs, the ravine howled like a wolf about to swallow the city. Though it was night, the sky was all red sunset. Ferocious in its obscenity, the sound was a discordant scream of hate against nature itself. Faint shrieks of terror and rapture rose from the throng behind them. Eric’s face wore a different emotion.
“What are you thinking?”
Eric’s compassionate gaze fixed on the burning horizon, as though he pitied the crowned shadow stretching over half the livid sky. “I think Rae made a terrible mistake. I should have known the story couldn’t happen the way she claimed, but if I went to her I’d be abandoning everyone else. There’s nothing I can do for her now.”
His eyes travelled from the people escaping their city, to Marius, to the horizon under a rain of ash. Behind the mountains waited a dark manor and darker memories. Seven years and a long road, but Marius was finally going back.
They set their horses’ heads towards home. The Cobra led the way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Villainess Under Siege
“The strength of bulls cannot stop him. No, he will not leave off,” said the Oracle. “Until he tears the city or the enemy limb from limb.”
Time of Iron, ANONYMOUS
After you pushed the king into an abyss before a thousand witnesses, it was wisest not to stick around. Fortunately, the crowd of courtiers and worshippers were distracted. With the sounds of war clashing in her ears and a crowned shadow covering the sky, Rae wrenched herself free from restraining hands and made a break for it. The earth groaned and shuddered like a dying man as she ran, the palace battlements tilting beneath her feet. She saw a pair of hands, mottled green as though gloved in rot, grasp the parapet. As the ravine opened wide and wider, the dead were being vomited out.
