Chapter Thirteen The Villainess Approaches the Tomb

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Villainess Approaches the Tomb

"Honour demands I respect my ladies-in-waiting."

The young king's hands remained, as though fastened by a spell, on the rich curves of her hips. Though her years said she was a girl, her body promised she was a woman. The red ribbon lacing Rahela's bodice unwound like a snake uncoiling.

Who can resist the wicked?

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

O ut, damned spot! Would her hands never be clean? Dried blood was a bitch to remove from under the nails.

As a venal and shallow villainess, Rae enjoyed luxurious baths in a copper tub behind a painted screen. This evening the lukewarm water around her had turned faint pink. The blood was barely washed away when a summons arrived from His Majesty demanding Lady Rahela attend him.

No rest for the wicked. No relaxing soaks for the wicked either. No doubt His Majesty wished to accuse her of murder again.

When she swept in with Key at her back, they found the throne room empty. The torches on the walls burned low as the sun on the horizon as they waited. Even the golden floor turned grey.

Octavian finally entered with a ruffled demeanour. "Why did you come here?"

Rae blinked. "Because of the royal summons?"

"You always come to my chambers when I send for you."

Ah. It seemed the king didn't want to talk about the murder plot.

Rae took a deep breath, which might have been a strategic error. Her dress was pulled slightly out of shape by the weight of garnets decorating its hem. The gauzy material at the collar flirted with shadows over her skin. Maybe she should have worn something else, but a high-necked dress would make Rahela's assets obvious in a different way. She wasn't shaped for modesty.

Actually, her modesty wasn't the issue. She hadn't shaped herself.

King Octavian wasn't wearing the crowned mask. He lingered near Rahela so they seemed less monarch and subject, more man and woman. His eyes were warm as sun-drenched grass. His voice was low as a summer breeze. This had the potential to be a highly romantic scene.

Awkward.

"Shall we send your guard away?"

"No," Rae said, too quickly.

Palace customs hit differently now they applied to her. Nobody could disobey a royal command. If Octavian dismissed Key, Key would have to leave her.

Alone. With a man who must be obeyed.

With a man expecting a lady who knew what she was doing in bed.

Through the hexagon window above the winged throne, Rae saw threads of smoke rise to veil the broken moon and the nearly lost sun. The horizon burned above the ravine. One day Octavian's eyes would turn red as the setting sun, and his crowned silhouette would be painted across blood-coloured clouds. He already had the power of life or death over her.

Rae hadn't realized she'd moved back, until she felt Key's warmth. She glanced around and their gazes caught. He looked startled, as though nobody had ever before considered him a safe harbour.

She wrenched her attention back to Octavian and found him nodding acceptance of Rae's refusal. Rae told her sprinting heart to stop outracing her mind. She knew the Emperor. He treated Lia as a holy statue he barely dared touch. Getting laid didn't matter that much to Octavian. He wanted someone to care for him. The Emperor didn't target anybody who hadn't come at him first. He was a predator, but he didn't prey on the helpless.

Rae remembered how much she would like this guy and found herself smiling. Octavian drifted closer, as though her smile was a magnet.

Her heart had broken over the insatiable loneliness of the Emperor on his throne, master of the dark sky and burning abyss. Perhaps Octavian had cared about the ladies-in-waiting who died, and sought consolation. Reading the books, she'd thought the Emperor must be the loneliest man alive. She would have given a lot for the chance to comfort him.

"Hey," Rae said brightly. "Why don't we talk about murder?"

At her back, Key stifled a laugh. Octavian seemed able to dismiss Key's existence from his mind.

"Very well," the king indulged. "I was wondering if there was something you wanted to tell me. You can tell the future, yet you walked into a trap filled with ghouls? A suspicious man might believe you feigned a prophecy to get out of trouble."

The Emperor always was quick on the uptake. Rae liked that, though she found it currently inconvenient. Octavian held out a hand. He wasn't wearing the clawed gauntlets Rae knew he hated to take off, and his bare open palm seemed an invitation. Octavian's eyes danced like emeralds swinging from an ear in sparkling arcs. He didn't look mad Rae had lied. Rae could confess she wasn't really a prophet.

She'd be expected to be the king's girlfriend again.

Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Books often described kisses as ‘searing' which made Rae think of salmon, but characters seemed to enjoy the seared-salmon kisses. She could get the experience she'd missed her chance on. In a book, orgasms seemed far more certain than in reality. Rae could use the practice for when she got better, and went girl gone wild in college. This wasn't really her body: it wouldn't really count. Octavian was impossibly, fictionally handsome, and after some character development he would be her biggest book crush. Rae's choices were: Keep up the blasphemous deceit, or go to bed with the world's most gorgeous and powerful man.

The snake bracelet rattled as she lifted her hand. Then she clenched her fist.

"I can absolutely tell the future," Rae lied. "But the future can change in small unpredictable ways, as with today's attack. Only the great moments are fixed and certain. Such as your future glory as the Emperor."

Judging by what the Cobra said, the big building blocks of the story would stay the same. The Last Hope and the Emperor always fell for Lia. The Emperor always ascended to greatness. The heroine got love, the hero got power, the villains got it in the neck.

The mention of his destiny made Octavian brighten. Rae fluttered her eyelashes encouragingly.

It's all about you, baby! Rae projected. Emperor baby.

"The attack on the Court of Air and Grace didn't happen in the future I saw. Someone might want to kill me so I won't be able to help you," she added, inspired. "They don't realize nothing can stop you."

The king's voice went low as a limbo dancer. "You really believe in me."

"I do. And I believe in your love for my sister."

At the mention of the heroine Octavian's expression turned awed. "Lady Lia has the purest heart in the palace."

Other women only existed to lose against the heroine.

Rae's lip stung beneath her own teeth. "Nothing pure about me. I'll get going."

If she'd slept with her old boyfriend, Rae would've expected him to respect her in the morning and every morning after. It was true Lia wouldn't offer the kind of comfort the king expected from Rahela, but being a teenage virgin wouldn't last, not for Lia or anyone else. Somehow Octavian considered Rae stained but not himself, filth only sticking to her, but men weren't rubber and women weren't glue. If worth had an expiry date, it wasn't worth much.

The king stared in bewilderment. Rae could be a modern woman all she wanted, but she couldn't expect Octavian to understand her point of view. Perhaps he only meant Lia was good. Rae couldn't be good. She might not have the experience Octavian believed, but she had experienced horror that sank deeper than bones and stained the soul. Nobody stayed pure.

Octavian caught Rae's hand, which wasn't the body part she was currently concerned about. "Let me help you understand. The Room of Memory and Bone awaits."

"Sure, we can go to the Bone Room. I mean! What you called it, absolutely."

As they passed through the golden doors down the dark passageway to the room pale as loss, Rae was uneasily aware of the hand clasping hers. The press of skin felt so solid and real it was terrifying. The king was strong enough to pin her down, and his superior strength was the least of his power over her. Rae's mind knew this character, knew he wouldn't lash out like that, but this body kept betraying her. A chill eddy of fear snaked through her blood at the thought of how much worse this would get. He is coming for his throne. When the Emperor rose crowned in the shadows of death, he would command clouds and crush stars.

Her cold feet dragged until she felt a single point of warmth, brief as a match strike. Key reached out and tapped his smallest finger against hers, in the most sneaky high five imaginable.

Rae stole a glance over her shoulder and smiled.

"Hang back, guard," Octavian ordered.

Key looked to Rae.

Octavian's voice, which would become the Emperor's hoarse growl of command, dropped like a guillotine. "Disobeying your king will earn you an hour in the Room of Dread and Anticipation."

"Go!" Rae snapped.

Key withdrew into shadows.

The Room of Memory and Bone by moonlight was radiant, reflecting white on white as though the moon was trapped in a funhouse of mirrors. The little child skeleton grinned his ceaseless grin from the wall. The marble throne carved for a long dead queen gleamed. The traces of decay, sunk into the stone from where royal bodies had rotted, became shadow stains by moonlight. One day the queen's throne would be dragged into the throne room. The Emperor would put Lia's body in it and make the courtiers who betrayed her kiss her feet. His power would preserve her beauty, heroines were always beautiful in death. And still dead, despite all their beauty. Rae wrenched her gaze from the seat for the dead, but couldn't avoid her knowledge of what was to come. The throne waited, cold and inescapable as the future.

King Octavian brushed his hair back from his high and noble brow, sighing with eyes full of moonglow. "This room is a graveyard. When I cannot find time to visit my parents' tomb, I come here to remember my ancestors. I shouldn't have doubted your powers. Only one other person knows the secret of what happened at my parents' tomb, and he is dead. Now you know my secret, too. But do you know how I felt?"

Oh no! Rae didn't actually know the secret. She did recall Alice mentioning the Emperor had recounted his past to Lia in a graveyard. Definitely parents and blood were involved. Rae licked her lips, feeling out of place. Villainesses weren't equipped for tender confessions. How to tell a guy she'd skipped his tragic backstory?

"Tell me about your feelings," Rae encouraged. "Don't skimp on the details."

Drop the tragic backstory, not the pants!

"As a boy I had every luxury, but I was lonely. Until I began my page training, and met Lucius and Marius. My mother the queen couldn't bear another child, and my father always let me know I wasn't enough."

Like so many heroes, the Emperor had daddy issues.

Rae nodded wisely. "Except your mother the queen didn't bear you, either. You were born of the gods. The king pushed you too hard because he knew of your great destiny."

The look Octavian gave her was uncertain and a little heartbreaking. Her claims to be a prophet weren't working because Rae was a good liar. They worked because the king badly wished to believe.

"My father wanted a son like Marius, of unimpeachable birth and unassailable honour. Everyone preferred Marius. Even though he never touched a woman, women always looked at him first." Octavian's lips twisted. "Until I was king. Yet he and Lucius were my only friends. I believed we would never be parted. Then Marius spent a night at his father's house and sent word he was bound to the Ivory Tower."

People who journeyed to the Cliffs of Ice and Loneliness were not expected to return. Octavian's voice was slightly raspy with emotion. Rae remembered the Emperor's crow-hoarse voice grew ever harsher when he felt deeply. She laid a hand on Octavian's sleeve.

His mouth curved in a beautifully sad smile. "Marius was always a restraining influence. Lucius and I went wild after he left. My royal parents cut off our funds. I thought they were being harsh. I believed Lucius was my most loyal friend. He stayed by my side when my parents were killed in the carriage accident. He went with me to visit the tomb."

A grave in Eyam was laid with an enchanted marker called a touchstone, to stop the dead from rising. In the case of ordinary people, it was a single stone like a gravestone. In the case of the royal family, it was the cornerstone of a great tomb. The blood on the stone of the tomb , the Oracle would say one day. Octavian must have spilled blood on the stone, and sworn vengeance.

Wait, had Octavian sworn vengeance against a lousy carriage driver? Also, should he be dropping tragic backstory to someone who wasn't his true love?

Rae guessed he could let Lia know later. She fixed an expression of extreme interest on her face, as if at a party with a college guy telling her about film studies.

"Lucius told me he'd arranged my parents' death. Now I was king, he said. Now I could do whatever I wanted. So I cut his throat, and his blood spilled on my parents' touchstone. I tossed Lucius's body into the ravine. I told everybody I sent him on a mission, and he perished. But you know this, don't you?" Octavian's gaze searched hers.

Rae nodded, transformed by panic into a bobblehead doll.

"This is no way news to me!"

The Emperor seldom killed those he cared for, and never without reason, but what better reason could there be? His best friend had betrayed him. Rae knew how that felt. When she felt most alone, she would read through furious vindicated tears of the Emperor taking revenge. She burned secretly at injustice. He burned down the world.

Octavian's eyes shone silver over green, frost covering grass. "You know everything, and believe I will become Emperor."

He leaned down, lips a breath away from brushing hers. She would be the only person in the universe ever to be kissed by her fictional crush. She should do it for everybody who would never kiss the pirate, the goblin king or the girl in the gold bikini.

At the last possible instant, she turned her face away. "I can't."

"You can't?"

It seemed guys didn't like being prophet-zoned.

On Lia and the Emperor's wedding night, Lia trembled with fear. The Emperor lay down beside her.

"I gave you my word," Lia whispered.

"You gave me your hand. I can't repay you for that gift," the Emperor told her. "Stay with me. Never leave me. This is all I want."

Lying on her stomach, swinging socked feet over the side of her bed, Rae told the page, "Aw, love him ."

When it was Rahela, the Emperor felt differently. An anti-hero devoted to a special woman sounded great, until you were one of the less special women.

She couldn't really blame Octavian for expecting her to run back to his arms. Even where Rae came from, boys said ‘she's easy' as if girls could be disqualified as complicated human beings. Rae recalled a flashback about the king and Rahela's first night together. Reading it, she'd frowned at the weaselly passive language. ‘The red ribbon lacing Rahela's bodice unwound.' If Rahela had unlaced it herself, the text would've said so. The ribbon hadn't magically unlaced itself, so surely the king did it. That sounded like the excuses her ex made when he moved on without telling her first. Gosh, it just happened . The hero and heroine were fated.

Or fate was something people claimed when they didn't want to take responsibility for their actions.

By the time Rae remembered these were fictional characters who actually were fated, it was too late. Octavian saw the scorn on her face.

The king's voice twisted like a vengeful knife. "Since you're so dedicated to the gods, my prophet, I won't insult you by inviting you to a ball."

The vulnerability he'd shown by soft moonlight closed off like the drawbridge of a castle. Rae knew how lonely he was. She'd handled this wrong. Once someone felt abandoned, they stopped reaching out. Lashing out was all they had left.

She should go to his arms. A heroine received gifts, but a villainess must make bargains. She needed to go to the ball, needed the key and the flower. If she gave Octavian what he wanted, she could have what she required.

She had to do it.

Somehow, she couldn't.

Lady Rahela curtsied, dark-red skirt blooming on the white marble. "How well you know me, Your Majesty." She tilted one poisonous glance upward. "Or do you?"

She stormed from the Room of Memory and Bone. Key fell into step with her storm.

"It seems the wicked stepsister shall not go to the ball."

"I heard."

Rae's stalk was halted by alarm. "You heard the king admit to killing someone?"

This was how secrets got out, and people got executed!

"One person," Key scoffed. "Amateur."

It became ever more clear Key was a terrifying murderer, but Rae found his atrocities endearing. He'd stayed close enough to listen, despite the threat of a king.

Having dismissed a royal murder as tedious, Key studied her. "You could go to the ball if you took the king to bed. Why didn't you?"

Why hadn't she done what everyone expected? Even Key.

Rae sighed. "Why is it if a woman says yes to sex once, she's meant to be up for it anytime? Nobody believes saying ‘I'd like spaghetti for dinner' means ‘I want to live under an eternal rain of spaghetti.' Everyone pretends this is a confusing issue because they want women to keep putting out."

Odd to think if she slept with Octavian to get something, people would count that as her sin, not his. Nobody would condemn the king for taking what a woman only offered because she was desperate. The king couldn't be ruined.

Key's gaze was thoughtful. "I meant you… love him, don't you?"

She loved who he would become. Rae remembered the Emperor on his desolate throne beneath a sunless sky, and nodded.

She saw Key believed it. That helped her believe too.

"You wanted to see him so much, that first time in the throne room. You plotted to be his queen." Key's voice was soft. "You still have a chance. He hasn't forgotten what you insinuated on the steps of the throne. That you were pretending to want him. He'll try and prove you're a liar."

Rae scoffed. "I guess guys don't care if a girl's faking it, until she stops faking it for them. I am a liar."

It was the truest thing she'd said since she came to Eyam.

"So why not lie to him again?"

He sounded curious, not condemning, but Rae resented the question. Lady Rahela's ruby lips were made for cruel smiles and scorn. Rae sneered. "Will you tell me why you were called the Villain of the Cauldron? Why you never take off those gloves?" She nodded towards Key's hands, which clenched as though her mocking gesture was an invitation to combat. "I never asked for your tragic backstory."

If any eyebrows could make demands, Key's did. "What's a backstory?"

"The story behind a story. The shadow that trails behind a character to tell you why they are who they are. The story that makes them feel real. You're not real with me. I won't be real with you. We're villains. We don't have to know or trust each other. We just use each other for our wicked schemes."

Key leaned in, as the king had in the Room of Memory and Bone. His face made Rae think of the king's, not because they were alike but because they were a contrast. Octavian was illuminated by a steady moonbeam, while Key stood in shifting shadows. Octavian was handsome as a prince in a painting, as a young girl's unchanging dream. Key was beautiful like swift lethal movement, and a knife in the dark.

"What's the new scheme, boss?"

They had made a bargain. He was her knife in the dark now.

Calm returned to Rae's heart, so her mind could return to plotting. Evil stepsisters didn't get sent to the ball. Evil stepsisters were doing it for themselves.

In the end, the answer was simple. Through tall windows, the moon crashed merrily into the clouds. Darkness swallowed the sky, and Rae smiled a red-lipped smile.

"Listen up, minion. Here's my evil scheme."

The second step of the plan was getting out of the palace. A secret passage led out of the palace hidden in the Room of Memory and Bone, but the king was still there.

The first step was costuming. The red velvet of her cloak swayed like a curtain on a stage. Rae arranged its folds to hide the bag containing her gauntlets, and flipped the hood to conceal her face. Key grinned, wolfish. He offered his arm, and they went into the kitchens, heading for the gates through which produce was delivered. Guards were often ordered to usher certain visitors via the kitchens late at night.

The royal kitchens had low stone ceilings, the floor slate instead of elaborate mosaics. A skinny girl stood at an open fire, turning a pig on a spit. Someone had made the unusual culinary decision to put a chicken's head where the pig's head should be. The kitchen was so warm Rae feared she would stifle in the velvet cloak.

"Make way, lady of the night coming through!" Key shouted.

Many turned to stare. Rae waved. "Nothing to see here. Just a regular harlot from the Golden Brothel."

A man chopping vegetables snorted. "Every soiled dove claims to be from the Golden Brothel."

A woman rolling pastry sniffed in collaboration with the snort. "Every guard knows the ladies of the night should be escorted discreetly ."

"Hush! That's the Villain of the Cauldron." Her assistant drew a finger along his own throat while making an illustrative guttural noise.

"Not actually what throat-cutting sounds like," contributed Key. The kitchen went horribly quiet.

Rae felt they might be unsuited to secret missions.

They passed the horror-struck crowd, through the wrought-iron gates curling on top to form the shapes of the royal crest. Key ducked into the nearest alley and started to take his clothes off.

Rae whipped around so her back was to the alley. "What's happening here?"

"Can't be seen wearing a palace uniform. My throat would be cut. Worse, my reputation would be ruined."

"I see."

"I have getaway stashes in a few different places," Key elaborated. "The Cobra told me he has a getaway bag too."

Rae stole a glance over her shoulder to see the line of Key's back. He was bare to the waist, bar his leather gloves. Moonlight poured silver on the flat of his stomach, over smooth skin and ridged muscle, liquid illumination halted by the shadowed indentation at his hip. His waist tapered to a belt, hanging low under the weight of many knives.

"Do you work out?"

"What does work out mean?"

Sure. She'd seen superhero movies. Those people had no time to work out. Fiction simply had abs. Marvellous, inexplicable abs.

"Do you lift?"

He tossed a smile gone sly over his bare shoulder. "Knives. Spoons to my mouth. A woman, once."

The too-sharp hook of his smile set low in her belly, and twisted. A memory returned to her, less thought and more the echo of sensation: how he'd carried her over the pool of blood to the throne room.

Key emerged from the alley, wearing clinging black and grey. A supple leather collar glinted around his throat. His hair was even more askew than usual, as though fashioned by a rakish hurricane.

Key gestured to her dripping rubies. "Want to give me an earring? So people know I'm yours."

Since jewellery was illegal, men wore jewellery in the Cauldron as a signal between fellow outlaws. Hence the studded collar. Rae unfastened an earring, gave it a kiss for luck, and tossed it his way. The ruby flashed with Key's grin.

"Probably won't return this."

That lovable relentlessly mercenary scamp. Avarice was beneath main characters, who always mysteriously ended up with piles of the filthy lucre they disdained. Greed was such a reassuringly unheroic detail, placing Key firmly among the minor villains with her.

The backdrop of the city rather than the palace made her feel as though they were changing scenes. Rae wasn't sure which role she should play. She reached for Key, the way she'd wanted to when Octavian touched her. This time the king wasn't there to stop it. Their hands brushed, a continuous point of awareness as the streets went strangling-narrow, houses leaning in as if to make threats. A shutter above them flew open.

"Gardyloo!" called a woman, flinging the contents of a pot out into the street.

Rae veered sharply to the other side of the street. Key seemed amused, head tilted towards hers, choppy ends of his hair flying in the night air. Hair always disarranged and eyes always deranged, and always laughing at the world.

She called, "These are the mean streets you come from?"

He shook his head. "I'm from the wicked alleys off the mean streets. This isn't even the Cauldron yet."

The palace was crowded, but Rae could identify people by their costumes: ministers and soldiers in regalia, noble ladies in gowns of butterfly hues, servants in uniform. These men and women wore material Rae wanted to call homespun , until she remembered everything here was homespun. Still, the word ‘homespun' evoked a certain look. So many ordinary people lived in Themesvar. When the wars came and the Emperor rose, they would die.

Rae shivered, moving closer to Key.

They passed through a more prosperous neighbourhood, taking a side street onto the Chain of Commerce. The broad path was bright with painted storefronts and squares centred around the official guild houses where merchants conducted their business. Each square had religious frescoes painted on the walls. The gods wore different aspects in every picture, except the great god was always pale and the great goddess never was, he wore silver and she gold, and he always looked away and she never did. Each wall told a different phase of an old story. The great god and the great goddess on their wedding day, blossoms in their hair. The god and the goddess with their small god-child. The wall that was all red.

Rae nodded at the fresco. "Do you know the legend of how Eyam was created?"

Key's sing-song voice fell into a nursery cadence, as though somebody had told him bedtime stories once.

"When the world was young, people believed and gods were born. The great god and the great goddess loved their people and each other. From that love was born the god-child. Their world and happiness seemed complete. But the great god resented having power given to him by belief. He wanted power all his own, and power is gained through sacrifice. So one day he took the god-child and slaughtered him. The great goddess climbed the mountain of truth, and found him with blood dripping fresh from his hands. He said, ‘Now I can live without love and belief.' She said, ‘Live without mine.' He begged her to understand. ‘I sacrificed. Now I have the power to change the world.' She carved out his eyes and responded, ‘The sacrifice was not yours. You are not worthy to look on the world you stole from our son. I would have loved you until the last sunrise, but if I see you again I will slay you where you stand.' The great goddess, our kindly mother, departed into darkness. The great god, who wished independence of every living thing, tried to live without love. He could not. Bitterly weeping, calling her name to the stars, the great god went in search of his lost one.

"As the gods departed the world, the god-child's blood fell on the soil and changed the land where it fell. The divine blood's terrible power ripped a wound in the earth that is now our ravine. Once this land connected to a continent, but we were torn away, we were set apart. Eyam is the land like no other. Here, the dead rise, the flower blooms, our weapons drink blood and our children are born hungry. Other countries feared and craved our power. Eyam was caught in a war between the dead and the living. We prayed, and the lost gods answered. The great god sent the First Duke, the warrior who could not be conquered. The Duke chose our king and banished strangers from our shores. The great goddess sent the Oracle, the voice of the goddess who lives in the mountains cold as truth. The Oracle gave us the prophecy. Kings of Eyam wear the crowned mask, for the throne is not theirs to keep. One day the songs will be truth, the sky will be fire, and the god-child will rise again. Our Emperor. He is coming . We must have faith, for we have nothing else. Our gods are lost, and the child is dead."

That was the legend of creation, born from destruction. The tale of belief and sacrifice was true as far as it went, but nobody knew the First Duke and the great god were one and the same. The god had grown lonely, returned, took a new bride and set up the whole kingdom as an elaborate stage for his son's return. People preferred to believe in a distant god, and love that would search among the stars forever.

Rae kept her voice neutral. "Do you believe?"

Key nodded to the wall drenched with red paint more vivid than blood, dripping from guilty hands. He laughed. "I've killed enough to know the dead don't return. Stories don't come true, and there are no gods."

The street narrowed and didn't open back up. The smell grew worse, the gutters choked with refuse and buzzing flies. Peasants called gong farmers were paid to clear the streets of waste. It seemed the gong farmers hadn't visited recently.

Rae pointed out, "The dead do return. Remember battling the undead? I personally found it hard to forget."

"They don't come back to life," Key argued. "They're furious and starving for life. The god-child would be no different. If there ever was a god-child, which there was not. People make up stories so they can pretend they have answers. Nobody ever does."

"They have a child's skeleton in the Room of Memory and Bone."

Key shrugged. "There's no shortage of skeletons. People are always leaving them behind. If the Emperor of prophecy ever did crawl out of the ravine as the unforgiving ruler of the hungry dead, what a warped corpse god he would be. Lucky he's not coming."

Except Rae knew better. Octavian would descend and rise again, but by the time the Emperor came Rae would be gone. Key might be dead already. She kept wracking her brains to recall what happened next for the guard, and grew more and more convinced he didn't make it out of the first book alive. If Key was in the books she'd actually read, she would remember him.

If Lia and Lord Marius could be saved, she wanted to rescue Key as well. Saving him couldn't affect the story. It would only be a little change.

The street opened one last time into a blackened square. There were no more frescoes. The walls had crumbled to cinders. Even the flagstones were cracked and blasted by heat, bright shards embedded deep in broken stone. On the far side of the square stood the remnants of a grand timber-framed building. It was the charred skeleton of a house, blackened lines like hollowed-out limbs that would collapse into ash at a touch.

"What happened here ?"

"The glassblowers' guild was set on fire."

Soft enough to not disturb the ash, Rae asked, "Did the fire kill many people?"

"The fire didn't kill anybody." Key directed her attention to a narrow street snaking from the blackened square. "This guild was built close to the Cauldron, so they could get cheap labour. The tavern you want is down in the Cauldron, on Lockpick Street."

Most storefront signs here were illustrations without words. On Lockpick Street, buildings so close together the street must always be shadowed grey, hung a sign showing wheels and dead flowers, interwoven with flowing script that read Life in Crisis.

This was the place the Cobra said Forge Strike frequented. Forge Strike, the blacksmith who would cut the king's key after they stole it.

First Rae needed an invitation to the ball.

She headed for the street and the sign. To her astonishment, Key held her back.

"The Cauldron is a liberty, boss. Do you understand what that means?"

"A place where people are free?"

Sounded good to Rae.

"A place where people are free to kill, rob and rape, without the prosecution of the law. You can commit any crime in the liberties, if you're strong enough to bear the consequences. Life in the Cauldron is dangerous. And you're worth a lot to me."

Rae winked. "I know, my weight in gold."

He winked back. "Keep eating big breakfasts," Key urged. "And be careful."

"Trust me. I'm an ice-cold schemer."

She bounded up the broad step under the sign of wheels and crushed flowers. Flame flared from the guttering torch by the door. The doorknocker on the Life in Crisis tavern was a twisted brass face, half weeping boy and half laughing man. Rae raised the knocker and rapped urgently.

A gentleman with a scowl and bright blue facial tattoos poked his head around the door. His face paled under the tattoos. "You're banned."

Rae did her best purr. "Don't break my heart."

"Not you. The Villain!" The doorman shook his head. "No arsonists. The boss is clear on this."

Rae glanced at Key, startled. "Are you an arsonist?"

He was leaning against the wall across the narrow street. He fit in here as he didn't in the palace, the Villain restored to his Cauldron. Brick at his back and shadows across his eyes, Key looked like an illustration of a crime in process.

"I don't make a habit of arson. It was one time." The notorious Villain of the Cauldron added primly, "I don't want to go in. My father said this was a den of sin."

"You had a father?"

Key was so clearly not the product of a happy families situation.

As if he could read her mind, his smile turned ugly. "It didn't end well."

She'd promised she wouldn't ask.

Rae turned back to the doorman, resuming her coquettish air. "We don't need to come in. Just tell me, is Forge Strike here? We were having a raving love affair last year. I wish to pick up where we left off!"

Most of Rae's face was shadowed by the hood, but she let her scarlet lips curl.

"Ah." The man's scowl cleared. "Lucky Strike. She's at the Night Market tonight, selling trinkets at the Death Day festival. Try there."

She? Served Rae right for blacksmith stereotyping.

Rae turned her throaty purr thrilling. "Thank you unkindly!"

The man hesitated before shutting the tavern door. "I understand hiring protection in this place, my lady, but I must warn you. Of all the horrors lurking in the Cauldron, the Villain is the worst."

The man's whisper was cold as the breeze making the torchlight flicker. Rae looked in the direction the wind was blowing, towards Key. His shadowed expression reminded her how he'd looked outside the throne room, and in the Court of Air and Grace. He was always waiting for her to turn away.

Rae reached out. "I'm a fan of horror stories."

As the tavern door slammed, Key slunk out of the shadows towards her, readily as a wild creature who had learned which was the hand that fed him. They headed for the Night Market together.