Chapter Eleven The Villainess, the Heroine and the Horde of the Undead

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Villainess, the Heroine and the Horde of the Undead

Ghouls are the unloved dead laid to rest in earth not made safe by an enchanted stone. Those who died unmourned, left rotting in ditches or flung into the ravine. No mercy lives in those dead hearts, but echoes linger in the tomblike hush of their minds. They listen and parrot what they hear.

A time may come when you are tucked up in your bed, warm and safe. Outside your locked door on some lonely midnight, a beloved voice might call your name. You must never answer, my dear.

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

A held breath broke from a dozen lips as the creatures began crawling down the wall. Withered fingers burrowed into stone, leaving behind viscous stains. Dead limbs moved in sharp jerks, as if the ghouls were spiders being continuously electrocuted. The sound of muscles ripping and bones cracking carried on the rot-thick air. Ghouls no longer knew how to move their bodies in a way that wouldn't damage them. They no longer felt pain.

Rae was outraged.

The undead didn't storm the palace until the end of book one. She couldn't believe the story was going off the rails like this!

She wouldn't cower as death came. She'd had enough of that.

"Listen up, y'all! We need to move."

"Why should we listen to you?" Hortensia asked.

"Because I'm a death-cheating harlot. Remember?" Rae winked.

Her words seemed to break the collective trance. A few ladies began to weep, but red-headed Karine sent Rae a sudden, surprisingly sweet smile. Apparently Karine approved of death-cheating harlots.

The princess's guard drew her curved sword and charged at the dead with a battle cry. " A thousand, thousand years of ice! "

"Destroy the head!" Rae yelled at Karine's back. "The gods told me."

It sounded better than ‘a lot of zombie movies agree on this'. Stories often called the walking dead a different, too-good-to-say-zombies name, but there tended to be overlap in how they acted and how to deal with them. Ghouls would eat and tear flesh. They were dead bodies possessed by the urge for destruction. Close enough.

With one silver sweep Karine struck off the first ghoul's head, then spun and held at the ready. Rae's gaze slipped to the battlements. The dead were swarming the walls like ants covering a pastry left out in the sun. Help wasn't coming.

One girl broke away from the single terrified organism the ladies-in-waiting had become, running for the doors. A ghoul leaped. Clear across the courtyard, Rae heard the crack as dead legs broke on impact. Ghoul and girl fell together in a tangle of limbs and screams.

Rae resolutely ignored the agony-high squealing and wet muffled sounds. None of this was real. She didn't have to care.

She only needed one person to survive this.

Rae found Lia close to the dead-infested wall. Lia was squinting incredulously, standing still as a girl caught in the headlights of a speeding car while the audience screamed at her to move. Before the dramatic moment when the hero swept her away.

Except where was the hero? Where was the second leg of the love triangle? Nowhere, because this was a ladies' only event!

Lia was slender as a willow wand, which made it easy to lift her bodily and shove her behind Rae's back.

Red sparks glinted on links of metal as Rae clenched mailed fists. A ghoul bore down on them. Long lank hair was plastered to its sunken cheeks. It smelled worse than a dead cat left by an open sewer.

Through teeth clicking loose in rotten-fruit gums, the ghoul murmured, " Rahela …"

"Sorry, but the old Rahela can't come to the phone right now." Rae wound up, and punched the ghoul in the face.

Skin and bone collapsed beneath her fist, as if she'd struck a melon already rotted through. Her stolen power launched the creature into the air. The ghoul's body hit the stone wall with a slap like wet laundry.

Lia was finally looking at Rae, eyes wide enough to swallow a whole sky. It wasn't Rae's job to rescue a damsel in distress. She wanted to talk to this story's manager. For now she gripped Lia's bird-boned arm, pulling her towards the terrified flock of ladies.

"Vasilisa's guard can't hold them all back. Those with power must protect the others until help arrives."

Princess Vasilisa advanced. "Gather together! Form barricades!"

Vasilisa wasn't a snappy dresser, but she'd mastered the art of regal command. When she gestured to the archery butts, half the crowd surged forward, then looked startled to find they'd moved. Rae made meaningful eye contact with the ladies still hanging back. In this emergency, they forgot Rae's fall from grace and defaulted to habits of obedience. Women dragged together the canvas-covered wooden structures meant for a game, which might now save their lives.

Ladies' maids were doing most of the dragging.

Not Rae's maid. Rae became aware Emer was no longer behind her when she saw Emer darting into the path of the undead.

Lia made a strangled sound.

Karine made a louder exasperated sound. "Civilians out of the way!"

Emer zipped around Karine as though twisting by a maid with a large tray, then threw herself down by the crumpled form of the dead guard. A ghoul dropped directly onto the body, caving in the ribcage on landing. The ghoul trampled the corpse to red mush as it went for Emer, lips parting on her name.

Emer drew the guard's sword from his scabbard and hacked at the ghoul's calves. When the ghoul toppled sideways, Emer efficiently chopped the blade down on its neck. She rose, wiping blood from her face with her sleeve. The gesture smeared blood across forehead, cheek and chin. Her apron, where she'd knelt in blood, was scarlet.

Nobody but Rae realized they were looking at the future Iron Maid. Still there was a sudden hush.

"Forgive me, my lady." Emer returned sedately to the group carrying her sword. "I wished to arm myself so I might be of help."

Rae lifted an eyebrow. "It's not that you don't trust noblewomen to protect you?"

"I would never say that."

Emer joined the ring of women forming the front line of defence, the rest wearing gauntlets or in one girl's case holding a knife she'd produced from her undergarments. Good thinking. Rae should start carrying concealed.

Princess Vasilisa asked, "Why are so many women not armed with Eyam's magical weapons? Does this land not value its daughters?"

Guys usually got the magic weapons in books, the rightful king drawing a sword from the stone or inheriting the lightsaber.

Horatia said, strained, "Father only lets Hortensia wear the gauntlets because our elder brother refused them, and our baby brother is too young."

Horatia still wore her sister's gauntlets. She was in no shape to fight, slender hands wrapped in enchanted steel trembling too hard to hold a weapon. When a ghoul got past Karine, Horatia flinched back. Rae grasped the ghoul's shoulder in a gauntleted hand, holding it still for the instant Emer needed to hack its head off.

Vasilisa gave Emer an approving glance. "Your family trains their maids in combat?"

Emer seemed taken aback to have attracted the notice of royalty. "The butcher at the Felice estate taught me to use a cleaver."

Rae was so glad she was a villain. Innocent maidens were useless and Rae's evil minion was making her proud.

Karine was fighting three ghouls at once. That left six ghouls on the ground, lunging not for the armed women but the makeshift barricades. Rae winced at the impact of their bodies hurling themselves against the archery butts. The thud of dead flesh and sharp crack of splintering wood bounced off the high walls. The barricades were breaking down.

Rae grabbed Lia. "Stay near me!"

" Hortensia ," crooned a ghoul.

Amid the riot came a particular terrible scream. Everyone turned to see Hortensia's lemon-fair head vanish from their midst, a ghoul bearing her to the ground.

Women streamed past Rae, fleeing the breached wreckage of barriers. Only one swam against the tide. Lady Horatia fought her way through and flung herself bodily on the ghoul attacking her sister. Her pink skirt whirled giddily as she rode the undead like a cowboy on a bronco. Keeping her balance with difficulty, Horatia reared up, raised her gauntleted fists and crushed his head between her clenched hands. She shoved the ruined body aside, falling to her knees beside her twin.

"My dear, my dear, speak to me."

Hortensia lay face down in a pool of blood. A sob caught in Horatia's throat as she turned her over, and the light fell on Hortensia's closed eyes.

Then Hortensia blinked.

"I shan't loan you my gauntlets again in a hurry," said Hortensia faintly. Her gaze travelled over Horatia's shoulder, at the smashed heap that had been a ghoul. "On second thoughts, my dear, I suppose it turned out all right."

It was possible Rae had underestimated the maidens.

While Horatia embraced her sister with one arm and smashed another ghoul's skull with the other, Rae scoured the courtyard for dropped bows. Emer stayed a step behind, guarding their backs. When Rae found a second bow, she shoved the weapon into Lia's hands.

A single tear welled in each of Lia's eyes, dewdrops on cornflowers. She accepted the bow in limp hands, managing to fire an arrow directly into the earth. "I can't—"

"Ugh, why are you always like this?"

Lia made a helpless noise. Typical.

"We should try to fight our way to the doors," said Emer.

"The doors will be barred," Lia whispered.

Unexpectedly, Lia was right. A few ghouls did occasionally escape from the ravine. All doors in this land could be barred from the outside or the inside, either to keep the undead out or to keep the threat contained. Seeing ghouls on the battlements, the guards would have followed protocol and barred the doors before joining battle. Judging by the state of the battlements, those guards were now dead.

Rae's eye ticked over the ghouls. "I count less than twenty. Someone will eventually open the doors. We have to live until then."

Their group edged towards the doors. Rae strung another arrow and fired at a ghoul coming at Karine, whose red braids had come loose and poured down her back. She gave Rae a thumbs up, flicked her braids aside and kept fighting. She and her curved sword formed a crimson-and-silver ribbon of protection around her princess.

" Lia… "

A ghoul on Rae's left lunged. Rae swung wildly, but her gauntlet turned the strike true. The ghoul staggered, but didn't go down.

" Rahela! "

It wasn't a ghoul's voice. It was Lia's, raised in a warning that came too late.

Pain bloomed along Rae's arm as a ghoul sank blackened teeth in down to the bone. Darkness flickered like a swinging curtain, but Rae had learned to withstand pain.

She used her free arm to shove Lia in Emer's direction. "Protect her!"

Rae whirled and hit out at the ghoul. Her clumsy blow barely connected. While she was off balance the other ghoul rushed her, and Rae tumbled to the ground with the first ghoul's jaws still clamped on her arm. Unable to break her fall, she landed hard. Rae wrenched a breath from compressed lungs, and punched the second ghoul with the force of desperation. She felt its skull splinter and the creature slump. Suddenly dead weight was pinning her legs.

The first ghoul's teeth were replaced by cold fingers, flesh ragged and worn away so nubs of bone protruded. The dead thing crawled up Rae's body like a vast clammy worm.

Foul breath gusted into Rae's mouth. Kissing close, it whispered, " Rahela ."

Fingerbones, sharpened into jagged claws by climbing the walls, pierced her skin like ten needles. Fluids leaked from its eyes like stinking tears. Foul droplets hit Rae's cheek as she clamped her mouth shut.

A banner billowed against the grey clouds. Silver thread gleamed on blue silk, and the embroidered crown caught faraway sunlight. It couldn't end this way, under the weight of death, her last story a scream. She wouldn't die helpless under the flag of a faraway land. She wanted to die fighting.

The thunder in Rae's ears was replaced by the sound of cloth tearing. The ghoul's clawing fingers went slack.

Key's sword pierced right through the body, so the tip of his blade grazed Rae's bodice. He'd snatched the banner and swung from the battlements, stabbing before he landed. The banner ripped, the embroidered crown now rags in Key's hand. He threw the crumpled scrap carelessly aside and reached for Rae.

"Does getting the heart work as well as the head?" Rae asked.

Key rolled both ghouls helpfully off her. "Get the heart, get the head or set them on fire with burning arrows. Life at court is so thrilling."

There were dead girls on the ground whose names Rae had never bothered to learn. Their spilled blood and torn flesh was scattered across the courtyard like cast-off unravelled ribbons.

Rae levered herself up on one elbow, and vomited.

When she looked up, wiping her mouth, Key was watching her. Lia's eyes were summer sky blue, but Key's were skies without sunshine. When troubled, his cold, dark-grey eyes went flat black, from cloud to storm cloud.

He asked, voice uncertain, "Did I not please you?"

She had no idea why he would think that, or what to make of those occasional uncharacteristic moments when he sought reassurance. Rae held up a hand until her urge to be sick again passed. "You did. I'm proud of you, minion."

He nodded, then deliberately positioned himself in front of her, so she had a wall to her back and a killer as her shield. She drew her knees to her chest and put her head down, huddling on the bloodstained ground as the battle raged. Protected by her very own bloodthirsty maniac, Rae snatched a moment of stillness without fear.

She felt a gentle tap against her hunched back. It wasn't a hand.

"Did you pat my back with a knife!"

"I'm holding a sword in the other hand," Key explained.

Rae fixed a smile on her face like flying a flag – nobody afraid here! – and lifted her head. This might look real, feel real, even smell real, but it wasn't. This was a story, and she could beat it.

"Sorry. What a mess. The famous Beauty Dipped In Blood, covered in flop sweat. Wait, real ladies aren't supposed to sweat. Covered in flop glow."

A real lady wasn't allowed to be a real person.

Idly stabbing a ghoul, Key asked, "If you shouldn't call it sweat when women sweat, what do you call it when women vomit?"

"Nobody's come up with a dainty word."

Heroines were effortlessly lovely at all times, but Rae had spent whole days lying on a cold bathroom floor with her head in the toilet, vomiting bile. She'd spent years writhing in agony like a hairless, screaming animal. A woman turned into a wicked worm. That didn't happen to heroines. Only villains became withered and twisted, fate making sure their outsides matched their insides. If your suffering was ugly, stories said you deserved it.

Key reached inside his jerkin, producing an embossed silver flask. "Here."

Rae tipped up the flask and coughed when the contents burned. A sharp taste filled her nostrils as well as her mouth, which was a huge relief. "Nice flask."

"Looted it off a corpse on the battlements."

"Course you did."

She rose to find her hand seized. Key pulled her in, dropped to his knees and fastened his mouth over the wound on the inside of her arm. Rae stared at the top of his head. Key's black locks had gone past unruly into rising in rebellion against unjust rule. His mouth was warm.

Chemotherapy was poison intended to kill your disease before it killed you. When poison was injected into your veins it felt cold, as though your blood was filtered through a slushie machine. Iced blood moved sluggishly through your body, pervading the whole system. Nobody had ever tried to save Rae from poison before. She hadn't known she wished someone would.

When Key lifted his head, she missed the warmth.

"Thanks for the rescue," Rae said awkwardly.

Key spat poison onto the gore-slick flagstones, then grinned, white teeth red with her blood. "My pleasure."

"You're so weird." Rae patted his head. "I'm fond and everything, but wow."

Briefly she worried the gesture was condescending, but he tilted his head into her hand and stayed on his knees despite the raging battle, so he must not have minded. Rae petted his wild hair again, encouraging him in a mentoring fashion. The fleeting shade of his lashes hid his eyes. His grin slanted from glee to pleasure.

"Actually, I read sucking poison out of a wound doesn't work. Poison floods the system too fast for sucking to be efficient." Rae paused as an idea occurred. "Does it work here?"

"With ghoul bites? I've done it before. It works if you're fast enough."

Most people, Rae suspected, would find Key's airy tone wildly unsettling. It comforted her. He didn't take anything seriously either.

"Fascinating. Do people die of broken hearts?"

"People die when ghouls eat them. Focus, my lady."

Key palmed a knife from his boot, spinning as he rose. Another ghoul went down with the knife driven to the hilt through its sunken eyeball.

"Cease saying ‘my lady' in tones of dark sarcasm."

"These are the only tones I've got. Want to be called something else?"

"‘Boss'," Rae decided. "How many knives do you have on your person?"

"I can't do complicated mathematics and kill ghouls at the same time."

That sounded like too many knives. On the other hand, perhaps the socially appropriate number of knives depended on the situation.

Key whirled with a fresh knife in hand, and the fresh knife clattered to the stone. In the several days she'd known Key, Rae hadn't seen him make a single clumsy movement. As she stared in alarm, the gold drained from his skin, turning the same ashen shade as his eyes.

Rae pulled Key off the null stone, firing at an incoming ghoul while she tried to figure this out. Was Key magic? Rae recalled several mysterious origin stories, but wasn't sure which was his. Maybe he was a Valerius born out of wedlock. There was one Valerius bastard around, Rae seemed to recollect. All she remembered about that storyline was it didn't end well.

She reached for another arrow. Key was there before her, colour returned to his face. He kissed the arrow lightly with his bloodied lips, then pressed it into her hand, cracked leather glove brushing her palm.

"Thanks for the rescue, boss."

Rae didn't have to fake a smile. Real smiles came easily around Key. "My pleasure."

Across the courtyard, Rae saw Emer and Lia backed into a corner. Emer had Lia behind her. She was swinging against a gang of ghouls.

"Hey, Emer's doing great." Key sounded pleased to spot a familiar face. "Won't be good enough."

"We have to rescue them!"

Key considered this proposition and shook his head. "Nah. Too many ghouls. What a shame, always mourned, never forgotten. Come on, I'll get you over the walls."

The price of the Cobra's help was putting the story right, not getting Lia killed quicker. Rae couldn't shout ‘That's the heroine, she's vital to the plot!' Perhaps she should inform Key he was fated to love Lia. Rae studied his cheerfully amoral expression, wondering how he'd take it.

" Lia …" murmured three ghouls in sibilant chorus.

Lia screamed, the first unbeautiful sound Rae had heard her make, high and terrified and young.

"That's my sister!" Rae shouted. "Key, please ."

She started forward. Key grasped her elbow above her gauntlet.

"For the record? This is stupid."

He exploded into violence. No other word could describe how he jumped into the air over two ghouls' heads, throwing one knife and producing another in a single movement. Landing crouched, he killed two more before he straightened up. A girl in mint-green organdie shoved Rae as she raced by. Rae staggered before she steadied herself. Key grabbed the girl's trailing hair, knotting curls and ribbons around his fist.

She gave a thin cry, half pain, half terror. "The Villain of the Cauldron."

Key swung the maiden by her hair into the path of a monster. "Guilty."

He slew two more ghouls, then used the slippery mess of brains and blood on stone to slide back and stab the last ghoul while it was focused on its kill.

The whirl of knives and blood lasted mere moments. Even the ghouls seemed to hesitate and hang back, shrivelled mouths forming mushy " muh muh muh " sounds as if trying to remember how to beg for mercy.

Key held out a hand for Rae in a courtly gesture. Blood pooled in the leather-clad curve of his palm.

"You might want to take off those gloves."

"I never do," Key answered absently.

Rae raced over to herd Emer and Lia out of the corner.

"Thanks for guarding Lia for me," she told Emer, who only lifted an eyebrow, as was Emer's way. Rae nodded towards Vasilisa and her tireless bodyguard. "Let's join up with the princess."

The vipers made their way towards Vasilisa, Rae in the lead.

She realized she shouldn't have taken her eyes off the heroine when she heard Lia give a faint, silvery scream. Rae's heart twisted as she turned. A ghoul leaped for Lia as she slipped in a pool of blood and fell.

The heroine always was adorably clumsy.

Nobody could have moved fast enough to save her. Except Key cut through the air so fast it created a small private wind. His ragged black locks and her golden hair swirled together in the breeze. His knife flew home to the ghoul's heart while his head bent over the helpless beauty. Lia leaned against his chest, a radiant treasure worth saving. Her face was a pearl.

"Thank you," whispered both sisters. Rae doubted Key heard her.

He'd stopped grinning, which was big for Key. Rae felt the relieved smile on her own lips dissolve like sea foam.

She knew how this story went. Moth, meet flame. Compass, meet true north. Cat hair, meet expensive sweater. Some girls were made to be loved.

But Key was a palace guard, he didn't have a chance. Not for romance, since Lia never showed interest in anyone on account of being so pure. Not even for extra page time. Being a minor character infatuated by the heroine was rough.

She remembered her best friend and her newly ex-boyfriend, at her bedside holding hands. Looking at each other, not her, as if she were already gone. Saying they were meant to be together. Rae's friends said they wanted to be neutral, which effectively meant they were neutral about Rae getting hurt. Rae guessed it was natural they wanted to keep the friends they could have fun with, the ones who would live. A girl on Rae's cheerleading team said Rae shouldn't be so angry, as if anger was a sin and not a consequence of mistreatment. Anger apparently made Rae more guilty than those who wronged her. Alice was right: Rae got fooled by costumes. She'd believed because they wore the same uniform, they were on the same team.

"You said hurtful things," her friend announced sadly, ignoring that Rae had been hurt first. "Think how they will feel, when—you're being a little selfish."

Rae answered, "Then I guess I'll die a selfish bitch."

Everyone wanted to be on the side of the winners. If it was the victim's fault, nobody had to defend her. Nobody had to fear horror could happen to them. It was more convenient if the victim deserved her fate.

So Rae would do everyone a favour, and deserve it.

She ignored the ache, as though someone had pressed on a bruise. Other characters were just part of the machinery in a great love story.

Key dropped Lia on the ground.

" Hey! " Lia shrieked.

"I need my hands free for stabbing," said Key. "Learn to walk."

Emer helped Lia up. Somehow Lia had avoided falling in the blood puddle. Only a few fetching smudges outlined her perfect features. Rae guessed Lia and Key were going to have a bickering kind of love. Fine with Rae, that meant less pining. Characters turned useless when they were pining.

From outside the barred doors, bugles blew.

"The king!" Lady Hortensia's once-strident voice was thin, but ringing with joy.

Horatia defended her fallen sister, gauntleted fists up. The princess stood safe in the ring of death her bodyguard had made. Ghouls circled and snarled their names, but the king would soon be here.

The Emperor was nigh. Rae's blood sang with prophecy. He is coming.

Red-headed Karine grinned. "Ah, his handsome Majesty. Good news."

"What with the king's tower of ladies, and now the undead," muttered Vasilisa, "Perhaps I should have stayed home and married the count."

That startled Rae, but of course a princess would have options. Maybe not any good ones. "Is the count old and hideous?"

"No!" Karine answered. "He's gorgeous."

Rae wondered if this was the count who would be important later.

The princess had armed herself. She waved a piece of wood salvaged from the broken barricades. "The count cares only for battle and brothels. I was hoping this king would be different."

She was holding out for a hero, Rae realized with a pang of fellow feeling. And she'd found one, but that only ended well if you were a heroine.

Karine scolded Vasilisa. "Hide that object before the king sees and thinks I can't protect you. My family will be shamed!"

"Yes, you shamed me so much this day," Vasilisa teased. "So much that when we go home, I'll be buying you drinks for the rest of your life."

Karine laughed. "Don't be stingy, Your Highness. After what I did today, your royal children should buy my children drinks."

Sharing smiles, it didn't matter that Karine was prettier. It never had mattered. While the ladies-in-waiting judged the princess for having an accessory that didn't flatter her, Vasilisa the Wise was walking with her sister.

There came the wood-on-stone scrape of massive doors pushed inward over the flagstones. Rae glimpsed the royal black garments against a background of ministerial blue, dark as a shadow against the sea.

Rae turned to share her joy with Key, then went cold at the sight of his bared blade. She chopped her hand down hard on his wrist. The sword dropped from his nerveless grasp.

Swift as the flick of a whip, Key was on her, driving her up against the wall. "What are you doing ?"

Rae waved frantically towards the open doors. King Octavian and his party halted on the threshold. The prime minister goggled. The Last Hope loomed at the back of the crowd. And the guard beside Octavian, sworn to slay any who drew a weapon without permission in the royal presence, pointed his crossbow at the princess's bodyguard.

"Watch out!" Rae shouted.

Karine dodged the crossbow bolt and threw her sword. Not at the guard, but at the ghoul lunging for her suddenly undefended princess.

Karine was vulnerable for only an instant.

The instant was too long. A ghoul's mottled, shrunken claw impaled her, bone fingers sharp as knives carving her heart out. A bloody lump tumbled onto the grimy floor. The ghoul, hand shoved through the hollow of Karine's chest, lifted the corpse off its feet.

" Karine! " shrilled the dead voice, in what sounded like triumph.

Vasilisa's human howl drowned out the ghoul's. "Karine!"

The story had gone violently wrong once more. Karine should have lived to stand by the Ice Queen's throne, the flame-haired guardian always answering her queen's call.

Her princess was calling, but she could not answer. Her bright head lolled and her limbs flailed, not a girl any more but a ragged puppet made of flesh.