Chapter Twelve The Cobra and the King
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Cobra and the King
Princess Vasilisa met King Octavianus at the ball. The palace was shimmering, the young king magnificent, and the princess judged not worthy of her welcome. Hearing the whispers, Vasilisa's heart sank. She almost wished her ship had done the same.
Octavian knew his duty. He proclaimed her one of his ladies-in-waiting and his partner for the dance.
Vasilisa loved him at first sight and forever.
Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS
T he bar on the courtyard doors did not concern him at first. Doors were barred for many reasons in Eyam. As the bar slid free and the doors opened, Marius braced himself for another social occasion. The royal crest of a silver crown atop snowy peaks would ripple across blue banners, flying over orderly rows of archery butts. A bevy of beauties would compete for the king's attention.
Reality shattered expectations like a fist to a mirror.
The courtyard was crawling with ghouls and strewn with corpses. The archery butts belonged at the bottom of the sea with other wrecks. The flagstones were coated in a thick paste of blood, grime and the dripping fluids of the dead. The foreign princess wielded a blunt instrument, and a maid concealed a blade beneath her apron. Some vandal had torn the royal banner so its rags waved, forlorn as a beggar ghost. A blonde in blood-spattered pink stood over another blonde like a tiger defending her cub. Yet the gaze of Marius's king seemed irresistibly drawn to the worst sight of all: the ice-hearted, treacherous Beauty Dipped In Blood, suddenly become a Beauty Drenched In Blood. Slick gore coated Lady Rahela's arms to the elbows. Not the faintest trace of snow-white remained on her red-stained dress.
Their tense tableau was broken by the roar of General Nemeth, charging through ghouls towards his daughters. He called their names and the battle cry of his house, swinging his double-bitted axe. He left the guards without a leader, and the king without protection.
Marius moved through courtiers as though they were corn and he a scythe, fastening his hand on Octavian's shoulders. "You cannot enter!"
"Indeed, sire," agreed the prime minister, gaze searching for his niece. "You have no heir. Think of the realm."
Someone must lead. Marius wished he had his men here, but Octavian said the force Marius had personally trained were over-disciplined killjoys.
"Send word for Captain Diarmat." Marius pointed at two guards. "Stay and shield your king. The rest, follow me. The ghouls are coming over the walls. Let's cut them off."
He didn't await a response. None would disobey. He set his boot against the bar of the door, grabbed the banner overhead, and swung up onto the battlements. For some unaccountable reason the guards took the narrow flight of steps set into the wall and crowded with the dead. Marius killed two ghouls before they arrived.
Most guards knew to follow, fear, and never question a Valerius. But there was always one raw recruit. He lingered beside Marius, moon-pale and terrified, eyes fixed on the ravening monsters that ringed the battlements.
"M'lord, there is no way—"
Marius shook back his hair in the hot wind blowing from the ravine, scoured the walls for a useful item, and spied a stout chain wrapped around the parapet. He broke the steel chain free from the stone. As he hauled, he felt a weight attached to the chain: what it was attached to, he did not know and for the moment did not care. What Marius needed was the length of steel. Links wrapped around his forearm as he heaved and swung the great metal whip he'd fashioned. The chain struck and caught, hurling the foul undead back into the abyss from whence they came. Marius's blood roared the battle cry of his own house. Death in my hand, honour in my heart, Valerius!
Five ghouls down, and the path was cleared.
"Soldier?" Marius gave a cool nod. "I lead the way when there is no way."
The new recruit offered both sword and spear to Marius, as if presenting a lethal bouquet.
"I cannot touch a weapon. I took vows."
No blade, no beloved, no blood spilled by my hands. I am for the words on the page. I am for the goddess. Those were the oaths of the Ivory Tower. Such oaths didn't come naturally to a Valerius.
Marius hoped this recruit wouldn't be overcome by admiration of his battle prowess, following Marius until awe became terror. It was embarrassing when that happened.
Below them, General Nemeth reached his daughters. He dropped his axe to cradle Lady Hortensia to his chest. She was badly wounded, that was clear. The new princess was on her knees clutching one of the many dead.
Lady Rahela stood surrounded by a band of evildoers, untouched.
"Crossbows," ordered Marius. "Cover the general."
He surveyed the carnage of the courtyard. The undead were on the loose. Nobody dared pass this bloody threshold.
Nobody save the Cobra. Lord Popenjoy raced past the royal retinue, the gold-encrusted hem of his cream-coloured herigaut flying behind him like shining wings. He shoved the sovereign of the realm carelessly to one side.
"Popenjoy!" Octavian sounded amazed with indignation. "Do you have something to say to me!"
The Cobra's stride didn't check. "Move."
He couldn't fight, couldn't hope to survive this, but the Cobra prowled onto the battlefield that the Court of Air and Grace had become.
A ghoul charged, slack death-wet mouth fumbling for a name. The Cobra swerved, bending backward almost in half, twisting nimbly out of the creature's grasp as though an attack could be a dance. He caught the ghoul's bone-and-black-rot hands and shoved the creature onto a makeshift spike in the wall from which a banner had flown.
"We're not on first-name terms," he told the undead. His gaze swept the courtyard and found Lady Rahela.
He would have made it to her, if not for his herigaut. A ghoul lay on the ground quiet as a beast in the undergrowth, until it grabbed for the Cobra. Grey fingers closed on his trailing golden hem, and the Cobra was caught.
Marius seized another banner still affixed to the wall, broke the pole against stone, and threw the broken shard like a javelin. The undead monster shuddered and strained, pinned securely as a butterfly on a board.
"Cobra!" Marius roared, pulse bolting like a terrified horse. He was absolutely furious. "Get out of there!"
"Mind your business, my lord."
The Cobra didn't spare a glance for Marius or the ghoul that could have killed him. He dashed headlong towards Rahela, reaching to take her in his arms. Rahela's guard tensed for a spring, Rahela flung up a bloodied gauntlet, and the Cobra instantly stepped back.
Thank the lost gods the lady hadn't surrendered all notions of modesty.
"I apologize," said the Cobra, as if he were a gentleman.
"I'm covered in blood," Rahela explained, wrinkling her nose.
The Cobra's tone gentled. "That's all right. If you're all right."
She nodded and let him pull her in, golden arm looped around her naked shoulders. Marius withdrew his thanks to the gods.
"My gosh, are they married?" whispered the new recruit hovering at Marius's elbow.
"They are not married , they are deranged harlots ," snapped Marius.
The recruit's startled gaze swung to him. Marius had not intended to say that out loud. He tore a ghoul's arm off with unnecessary force, kicked the creature in the chest and sent it spinning down into the ravine.
" Marius ," hissed another dead voice.
Dead hands reached for him, dead maws gaping wide. The recruit cowered behind him as the dead closed in. Marius let the leash on his rage go slack. When his mind cleared, there was blood on his face and no ghouls moved on the battlements. The new recruit cringed away from Marius in terror.
Below came the sound of marching and swords slashing, in formation even against the undead. Captain Diarmat and his men had arrived.
It was unusual for someone of the serving class to attain the rank of captain, but Marius had noticed his dedication to discipline on the training grounds and asked, ‘Are you loyal?' Diarmat responded, ‘Until death, my lord.' Marius had hand-picked every member of Diarmat's force. They would brook no threat to the king.
The Cobra was safe. Rahela's guard and, oddly, her maid were defending their nest of vipers. Once Diarmat's men swept through the undead, stillness descended on the courtyard.
There was no need for the Cobra to keep hugging the lady of snow and flame. Lady Rahela had made the bone-chillingly scandalous decision to tie her hair up so it bared her neck. Doubtless the Cobra could see her entire nape, as he was whispering in her ear. Marius heightened his senses to catch the words.
"Does this happen in your version?"
"Believe me, if I'd known I would be immured in a trap with the bloodthirsty undead, I wouldn't have attended the ladies' archery tournament!"
Marius didn't know what they were talking about, but he knew embraces on the battlefield were unseemly. Lady Rahela's guard gave the Cobra a venomous look. Marius was glad somebody in their wretched gang observed propriety, though startled it was the low-born thug. The Cobra's keen eyes combed over the chaos, clearly observing something Marius could not.
Marius ordered Diarmat's men to gather the dead, and went along the parapet examining the fallen.
Soon after, he bellowed from the battlements: "Someone has been looting these bodies!"
Rahela's treacherous guard tilted his oil-black head, eyes wide with feigned innocence. "Shocking! Who would do such a thing to my fallen comrades?"
He began to whistle. Marius wanted to strike the leer from his face.
Outside the courtyard walls, a woman screamed.
Marius's first thought was that ghouls were loose across the palace. He leaped to the edge of the battlements, rushing unchecked by embrasures until he reached the end of the wall over the Court of Air and Grace.
Beyond the courtyard was a garden, flowering bushes and winding paths enclosed by high golden walls. Steps were set in one wall. If you climbed those steps and stood on the broad stone lip of that wall, you saw straight down into the abyss.
At the top of the wall Princess Vasilisa, restrained by palace guards, fought to get free.
"Stop!" Vasilisa screamed. " I command you! "
Two guards stood on the stone lip above the ravine, holding a cloth-swathed bundle between them. A braid of red hair slipped free of the sheet, a firefly-small glimpse of colour. The guards heaved the wrapped body over the side. Marius winced at the sound of flesh hitting the jagged sides of the cliff. A hungry murmur issued from the depths below.
The murmur was a roar issuing from a thousand starving dead mouths, a long way down.
The penalty for wielding a sword in the king's presence without permission was to be flung in the ravine. Alive or dead. This was justice.
The foreign princess didn't know that. She fell silent, as abruptly as the body had fallen. Marius made a gesture of command. The guards, realizing they were no longer restraining a hysterical woman but roughly handling a princess, released her.
Princess Vasilisa strode down the steps in the wall, raced down the winding path among the flowers, and slapped the king full in his royal face.
Even the Cobra and his new friends, sauntering from the gore-splattered courtyard as if on a morning stroll, started back.
"Oh damn," the Cobra said under his breath.
The red mark of the slap stood out on Octavian's cheek like a single flaw in a priceless vase. "How dare you," His Majesty said slowly.
The princess had made a bad mistake. Octavian could forgive anything but an injury to his pride.
The princess wasn't done making mistakes yet.
"How dare you ? Karine wasn't your subject, she was one of my dearest friends. She laid down her life to protect me. Now I cannot even bring back her body for burial. You threw her away like refuse from the streets!"
Octavian's handsome face twisted with fury. "You laid hands on me. That is sacrilege."
His younger ministers murmured agreement. Their voices made Marius recall the distant roar from the starving dead. Prime Minister Pio gave a sharp, alarmed cough.
"May I remind you the princess is our esteemed ambassador from Tagar!"
Several days ago at the cabinet meeting, the older ministers insisted Princess Vasilisa must be admitted to the ranks of ladies-in-waiting despite reports the lady was not fair. The lady's brother was a king with a reputation for cleverness and ruthlessness, whose ice raiders vastly outnumbered Eyam's army. They needed the raiders for allies, not enemies.
It was the first cabinet meeting the Cobra hadn't attended. Apparently he was shut up alone with the Lady Rahela. The servants gossiped about strange noises heard behind closed doors.
Now the Cobra hissed at their king, "Diplomatic relations, have you heard of them?"
Octavian seemed too angry to pay heed. "Our country has stood alone for centuries. Our power protects us. I am king and will bear no insult."
When Marius was young, he believed he could defeat the family curse. His ancestors weren't out-of-control killers. They were generals. He went to train at the Palace on the Edge with a single aim: hoping the future king was someone he could love and trust.
On their first day as pages, Octavian clung sullenly to the walls of the training yard, unwilling to risk disappointing his royal father. Marius found training simple, but talking complicated. Perhaps they would never have been friends except for Lord Lucius of the fox-fire hair and silver tongue. Lucius made everything easy, even conversation. Marius never forgot the moment Octavian's green eyes brightened on understanding Marius was there to serve and not outshine him. After that they were a charmed circle of three. When he completed his training, Marius was determined to make the blood oath and swear to obey his king or die. His murderous fury would be leashed. His dark impulses would have shining purpose. He was a weapon, so he would put himself in safe hands.
Marius never completed his training or made his oath, but he knew Octavian enough to know he was better than this.
He spoke low into Octavian's ear. "You are too good and wise a king to resent the words of a woman wracked by grief."
It was Lucius who knew the art of persuading him, and Lucius was dead. Marius wasn't sure Octavian would listen. Relief warmed him when Octavian turned his way, eyes searching and brightening when he saw Marius's faith. All Octavian needed was someone to believe in him.
"Of course you're right, my old friend."
The king approached Princess Vasilisa, whose fury must have abated a fraction. She watched Octavian warily instead of screaming or slapping him. Her injured hand was cradled against her heaving chest, but when Octavian clasped her wrist, Vasilisa let him draw her fingers to his lips.
"Princess. Accept my apology. I didn't consider newcomers cannot know our customs. From now on, I will personally devote myself to teaching you."
His king's voice was assured and reassuring. His green gaze on Vasilisa dazzled, emeralds held up to catch sunlight. Octavian and Lucius had once competed to woo women. Marius never saw either fail.
The princess forced her back straight. She didn't have charm, but she had training. "Accept my apology for behaving in a manner unfitted to my position."
Octavian nodded. "Let us consider this matter settled."
Princess Vasilisa nodded shortly back, turning away from the king and his ministers to walk away alone.
Octavian scoffed. "Vasilisa the Wise? I'd as soon call her Vasilisa the Beauty."
The ministers laughed. It was well-known Marius had no sense of humour, so he didn't have to. Lady Rahela's gang stood to the side coldly watching, spectators rather than participants.
"Octavian will have to lay it on thick at the ball to win Vasilisa's heart," murmured Rahela. "Lucky he has that pretty face. Women always find the Emperor compelling."
"If you say so." The Cobra sounded distinctly unconvinced.
Why would Rahela want Octavian to charm the princess? Did the plot they were hatching involve the ice raiders?
Marius didn't know. He did notice Octavian's gaze lingering on the Cobra's arm draped across Rahela's shoulders. Octavian had not shown so much interest in Rahela in years.
It was very clever of Lady Rahela. Well. She could leave the Cobra out of her schemes.
"Come here." Marius addressed the Cobra, softly commanding. "I wish to speak with you."
About his apparent desire to feed himself to ghouls, among other things.
The Cobra raised an eyebrow. "Then we are in conflict, Lord Marius. I want nothing further to do with you."
The attention of the entire court swung their way. Nobody had ever heard the Cobra speak to Marius thus. Marius sent the courtiers a glance strongly suggesting they indulge in no curiosity on this topic.
"Found entertainment elsewhere, have you?" Octavian addressed the Cobra, his voice sharpened like a blade upon the whetstone. "I thought you knew all the tattle at court. Have you not heard Lady Rahela is a merciless witch who drags men down into despair and disgrace?"
Octavian spoke out of loyalty to Marius, but if there were any men left in Rahela's family they would have been forced to avenge those words. Marius winced.
The Cobra winked. "Don't threaten me with a good time."
Rahela ignored the king's insult, concentrating on a fair-haired girl with her back to Marius. Smile glittering like shattered glass, Rahela asked, "Since I saved your life, I presume I'll be welcome at the ball in your honour?"
If Marius didn't know better, he would have thought Rahela's indifference to the king was real.
"Is that what you hoped to gain by protecting me?"
The girl had a lovely voice. Marius wondered where he had heard it before.
"You talk of balls when people died?" the beautiful voice continued. "You smile?"
Rahela's grin flickered like the wings of a suddenly uncertain moth.
Marius observed, "You are quick to use a disaster for your own ends, Lady Rahela. Perhaps you find this tragedy convenient."
A hum of suspicion rose.
"Everyone blames the wicked stepsister," Rahela grumbled. "Just because I committed many crimes."
"She couldn't have done this. Nobody but the future Emperor can control ghouls," pointed out the Cobra.
That provided Marius with what the Cobra would call his cue. He motioned to the soldiers on the battlements and caught the chain they threw, the chain he'd seized to fight off ghouls. Marius dragged the contraption on the end of the chain over the walls. It landed with a resounding clang on the stone before his king.
His discovery had iron bars. It was a cage on a chain. The cage held a human corpse, mauled past recognition through the bars.
Marius lifted his voice so they could all hear. "Nobody controlled the ghouls. Somebody lowered this cage into the dread ravine, and baited the dead to climb the ravine. Somebody let them loose on a courtyard with barred doors!"
The only sound following his accusation was the echo of ringing steel.
The fair-haired woman with the beautiful voice recoiled from Rahela, stumbled and fell. Octavian swept the lady off her feet and held her cradled to his chest, a picture of chivalry.
"Ah, fairy-tale romance," Rahela muttered. The vixen appeared to be mocking a girl for falling down.
Her guard snickered. "She's useless."
"Do you think I want to be useless?" The girl's whisper was small and lonely as a deserted child. "What choice is there? All my choices were taken away."
Hearing her voice in misery, Marius recognized her at last. This must be Lady Lia. He'd heard the lady was fair and Octavian was infatuated, but all he could see was a blue-edged skirt and tumbled golden hair. Octavian touched that hair with a gently protective hand.
The Cobra made a face at Marius. "You can't catch people? What are those arms even for?"
Marius's soul froze into a stalagmite of outrage. "There is a murderer in the palace using the undead to slaughter women!"
The Cobra rolled his eyes. "I noticed that too. I notice a lot of things. It was just a question, my lord. Don't kill me."
Somebody would murder the Cobra one day. He was too aggravating to live.
Prime Minister Pio, staring at the cage from whence the ghouls had climbed, said, "The culprit is obvious. Only one lady-in-waiting has proved she wants her rivals dead."
Even Lady Rahela's brazenness seemed to fail under a dozen condemning stares. The Cobra's arm tightened around her shoulders.
Rahela's purr faltered. "I saved Lia."
"So you could get an invitation to the ball," said Octavian. "We heard you."
He drew himself up, facing down the villains with a helpless beauty in his arms, every inch the king Marius had always believed he would become. Confronted with royal judgement, Rahela had nothing to say.
Unfortunately, the Cobra always had something to say. He tipped his head down to whisper in Rahela's ear.
Prime Minister Pio demanded, "Will you not even deny the accusation?"
"Who believes the wicked?" Lady Rahela fired back. She picked up her blood-drenched skirts and left the field to the Cobra.
Who crossed his arms, head not respectfully bowed, in reckless defiance of the king and his court. Something Marius had always known was suddenly clear to the whole court: the Cobra was taller and more strongly built than the king.
Once Marius had criticized the ridiculous volume of the Cobra's sleeves, which would get in the way when reaching for weapons. ‘What are they for?' he'd snapped, and the Cobra replied, ‘A diversion.' His frivolous costume was intended to deceive the eye. His mask could drop at will.
At the Cobra's challenging look, the strings of shock jerked Octavian's mouth sharply downward. "Lower your gaze, Lord Popenjoy. Or I'll give the coward of the court something to be afraid of."
This appeared to amuse the Cobra. "Give a man an inch, and he thinks he's a ruler. I always considered you beneath my notice, Your Majesty. Leave the lady alone, or I'll start paying attention."
Octavian snarled, "Is that a threat?"
A collective metal whisper sounded as Diarmat's force, to a man, drew steel. Marius shoved the cage aside with a scream of metal on stone, clearing a path to move between the Cobra and his king.
Popenjoy sneered. "From a coward like me? Unimaginable. I've struck up a friendship with Lady Rahela, so I'm concerned. She was trapped in that courtyard as well. Seems far-fetched to suggest she'd plot to get herself killed."
Octavian flushed darkly furious red. "Who could it be, if not Rahela?"
Against the uneasy whispers of the court, the Cobra murmured, "We should all ask ourselves that question."
His meaning was plain. If everybody suspected Rahela, the culprit who had let ghouls loose on the ladies-in-waiting might escape punishment. That nameless villain would be free to kill again.
"Maybe you did this," Octavian suggested.
Marius knew the Cobra well enough to see Popenjoy was deliberately drawing attention away from Lady Rahela and towards himself. The result was stark. Marius's chosen leader, and the traitor Marius had called his friend for six years, faced each other like enemies on a battlefield.
The Cobra gave his evil golden laugh. "Maybe I did."