Chapter Fifteen The Villainess and the Death Day

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Villainess and the Death Day

"The great god said, ‘Come, my calf. Don't be afraid.'

"‘You are the strongest of all gods. What is there to fear when you are with me?' asked the child, on the day he died.

"The great god walked up the mountain with his axe in hand. The god's son was so small, he had to run to keep up with his father.'

"And then…" The Emperor cut off the tale of tragedy that was his first life by making an alarmingly realistic throat-cutting sound.

"It must be fearful to think of," murmured Lady Ninell. "You were so young and helpless."

"And now I'm not," said the Emperor. "What is there to fear? Nobody will ever hurt me again."

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

K ey asked with interest, "What's a sociopath?"

Rae frowned. "It's like the children's book about the stuffed rabbit."

Key's eyebrows mocked her. "Peasants aren't taught how to read. Do the children kill and stuff the rabbit themselves?"

Surprise shook a laugh from Rae. "It's a toy rabbit. Because the kid loves it so much and it loves the kid, because they suffer, the rabbit becomes real. If nobody loved it, I guess it never would. Sociopaths don't have strong emotions about other people, so people and their feelings never become real to them."

"The merchants always did say there was something wrong with me," Key said thoughtfully. "So that's what we are, you and I."

She supposed he was. In this world, she supposed she was too.

Whatever. There were many sociopathic villains in books, and Key was on Rae's side. She recalled again that Rahela was several years older than he, and she must take care of her team. She believed he wasn't a monster. He lacked empathy, went into a dissociative state and killed people serially, that was all.

"I liked that story," Key added. "Tell me more."

Rae slipped her hand back into his, resolutely ignoring the thrill she blamed on this villainous body. They went strolling down the stalls. "I'll tell you all the stories you want. I like you even if you struggle with violent impulses."

That was true, even if so much of what lay between them was a lie. She liked him a little too much.

In fiction, if you were cute and funny it made being a murderer okay. But she knew how this world worked – everybody loves Lia . The twin terrors of death and loneliness loomed. Tomorrow she would be smarter than this. For tonight it could be her hand in his, and who cared what evil these hands might do.

Key laughed. "I don't struggle with violent impulses. I revel in violent impulses. Speaking of, here's the metalworker's stall. Nice knives, Strike."

"Thanks, Villain," murmured the woman behind the metalworker's stall, who had an awesome henna-dyed high fade and even more awesome arms. Rae thought Strike must live at the gym, then remembered she was a blacksmith.

The metalworker's stall was built on more stable lines than most of the stalls in the Night Market, and twined with silvery ribbons. Two iron-bound buckets were filled with the embers of dying fires. Across the stall was spread a gleaming assortment of the decorative, practical and lethal: jewellery, horseshoes, crossbows, and many, many knives. There was what looked like a Rubik's cube made from teeth and coated in metal. A customer was counting out coins in the four shapes made by the different mints. Crown shapes, from the royal mint. Swords for soldiers. Leaves, for farmers and those who dealt in produce. Quills, for merchants' ledgers and scholars. The coins were bronze, and there weren't many.

"We take Cobra coin here too," said Strike.

The woman put down a small bronze star and a snake, and scurried off in joyful possession of an axe.

"Hiii," said Rae ingratiatingly, opening her red velvet bag and dumping one enchanted gauntlet onto the stall. "I need links taken out to make this smaller. You keep the links once you take them out. Since they're magic, I think they're priceless. Deal?"

Hers was the only metal on the crowded stall that gleamed red.

Strike the blacksmith folded her muscular arms. Her slight smile vanished like smoke. "Or I could keep the whole thing. You have no power to stop thieves here, my lady."

Rae leaned her elbows against the stall. "You could keep it, but every noble in the city would unite to burn down the Cauldron and drag out the peasant who held the enchanted weapon for torture, followed by execution. Also if you steal my gauntlet, I will ask Key to kill you."

"I would," confirmed Key. "Sorry, Strike."

"Are you two friends?" asked Rae.

Forge Strike eyed Rae in an unfriendly manner. "He used to steal weapons out of my shop."

"As a compliment to your excellent craftsmanship." Key grinned at Strike. "I learned to make weapons watching you. Let's be friends?"

Strike slammed her hammer down on the stall. "You just announced you'd kill me on this noble's orders!"

Key rolled his eyes. "Gosh, I said sorry. I wouldn't say that to just anyone. She's paying me, it's not personal."

"Bootlicker." Strike spat into the fire burning in the bucket by her side. "I'll do your job, but I don't want to see either of you around here again."

Since the Cobra was the one who'd bring the stolen key to be copied, Rae thought that sounded fine. The gauntlet being altered was a crucial element in her evil scheme to attend the ball. If her scheme worked she would soon be out of this world, far away from them all.

"Deal." She offered her hand, but Strike sneered. "Never mind that. FYI, I told the doorman at Life in Crisis we used to be a steamy item. Sorry if that's awkward!"

"I prefer blondes."

"Guess I'm so sexy, I made you break your own rules!" Rae dropped her a saucy wink. Meeting Strike's steadily unimpressed gaze, she backed up. "We'll wait over there."

Strike didn't even acknowledge she'd spoken. "Can I give you some advice, Villain?"

"Sure, since we're friends now."

Strike's face was as closed as an iron door on a furnace; it made Rae think she'd seen the kiss. "Noble ladies love entertainment. You're nothing more than a night out at the theatre. Don't think she feels anything once the story's done. Her jewelled dress alone could pay for the stone you want, with money to spare."

There was an odd, contemplative pause.

"I… didn't know that," said Key.

Strike gave him a significant nod. "I didn't think you did."

The blacksmith bent her head to her work in clear dismissal. Key stalked off towards the graves of the unloved dead. Rae followed him to the flat grey desert beyond the lights and stalls. The earth was parched by proximity to the ravine's sparks and dotted with tokens: dead flowers, broken dolls, roughly carved wooden statues. There was even a tiny lopsided mausoleum, made of cracked unmagical stones.

Key halted beside a knife, buried up to the hilt in the dry earth. Then he removed his cracked leather gloves. His movements were jerky, as if he'd forgotten grace. When Key dug his teeth into the edge of the leather and pulled the glove off, Rae had the strangest impression it was because his hands were shaking. That didn't seem remotely in character.

The gloves tumbled into the dust. He held out his hands to her.

Key's skin was stretched in shiny strips over the backs of his hands, scars raised over veins and bones that must once have been livid welts. Marks in the shape of swords. Rae remembered how much the first needle in the back of her hand, when they couldn't find veins in her arm for the canula, had hurt. She wondered how badly this had hurt.

"What happened?" Rae whispered.

"Sword coins." Key was still smiling. "For soldiers, and those who uphold the law."

Clear as dawn over a ruined city, Rae understood how Key had come up with the idea for the hot iron shoes.

"I'm so sorry."

His smile went a little soft, the way it did when he thought Rae was being naive. The edge returned almost immediately.

"You said everyone has a backstory, hanging behind them like a shadow. This is how I became the Villain of the Cauldron. The day I was born, I was found on the edge of the ravine." Key's voice was distant, clinical. "People leave children there when they have too many mouths to feed, or the baby's fatherless. Usually baby wakes up, baby rolls off the edge. No more problem child. But an old peasant who ran errands for the glassblowers' guild found me before I fell. He gave me to a barren merchant couple, so I'd have a good life. Except I wasn't a good child. Abyss foundlings swallow a spark as they lie on the edge. We are stained by the smoke, angry as the dead. The merchants, who called themselves my parents, called me a mad dog of a boy. I tried to please them, but I found inappropriate things amusing. I never got scared and clung to them. I wasn't the son they wanted. I wasn't a son anybody would want."

A horrible theory formed for Rae. It was true sometimes minor characters didn't act like people, but puppets made to fulfil a purpose. Key was one of many designed to fight for the damsel in distress. Real players in the story had family and friends and motivations, had enough to them that they seemed believable and worth believing in. A less important character existed only for one scene. Key was created for love and violence.

What would you be, if you weren't well rounded but the broken pieces of a character made to be used and tossed aside?

"There was a happy ending. But not for me. When I was six the merchant's wife bore the son they wanted. I was no longer required, so the glassblowers' guild sold me off. Apprenticed me, they called it. I was small enough to go down chimneys."

Rae had read about children forced into work in Victorian London. "You had to be a chimney sweep?"

When he was six.

"I went down chimneys and cut people's throats while they slept," Key corrected her calmly. "I can't clean. When it comes to killing, I have real talent. The children are sent down the chimneys to open doors for assassins. I thought I was being clever cutting out the middleman, but when I opened the door covered in blood I saw I'd made another mistake. The masters sent me in because they wanted a man murdered, yet those precious hypocrites acted shocked when I killed him."

Suddenly Rae understood Key's hangdog look in the throne room, in the Court of Air and Grace, and outside the tavern. This was a habit formed from childhood. He committed horrors out of a genuine desire to please. The lonely nightmare child never understood why he was cast off every time.

Key shrugged. "The masters decided I'd save them money. From then on they sent me out alone. A few years later I got cocky and got caught. Soldiers found me in the target's house, outside the Cauldron. Luckily, they thought I was stealing. They tossed sword coins on the fire, fastened burning metal on my hands, and watched me squirm, then tossed me out once the entertainment was over. The masters left me in the gutter, since I was no use now."

His laugh sounded genuinely amused.

"Strangest thing. The old man was still watching me. He got sentimental about baby birds and sick animals. And me. The small thing he saved. He still thought of me that way, even though I was a disgusting little monster scrabbling with filthy infected hands in the gutter. I woke in his hut as he nursed me. I said, ‘I'll kill them all.' He sat by the bed, because he'd given me his own bed to sleep in and he was sleeping on the floor. He begged, ‘Please be my good boy.'" Key took a deep breath. "He told me to call him father. Have you ever had the sense – someone was important, even though they weren't? That you wanted to belong to them, and have them not throw you away?"

Rae tried to work this out. "Have I ever… loved someone?"

Key stared across the graves of the unloved dead, towards the ravine, and nodded.

"Yes," Rae whispered.

"Strange, isn't it?" Key mused. "I never did it before or since. I didn't do it right. I wanted to belong to him. So I was good. I didn't kill anybody."

Faint wonder surfaced, as though he were discussing an astounding feat performed by a stranger.

"I worked for scraps that fell from the glassblowers' guild's table. My father was old and weak. He'd never had enough to eat in his life. We spent too much on medicine that couldn't fix damage done long ago. A lean year came. I was out hauling loads to make money on the side, and a glassblower hired my father to make a delivery in the rain. He caught the fever that finished him in exchange for one bronze leaf. His last words were to buy something for myself. Because I was such a good boy. What an idiot. Don't you think, my lady? What a stupid old fool."

Rae shook her head, but Key was still looking at the ravine. He didn't stop smiling. She wished so much he would stop.

"I was in debt by the time he died. I didn't have money for a stone, so he was buried here in the graves of the unloved dead."

Forge Strike had talked about Key wanting a stone. It was for his father.

When people in Eyam died, they were buried under magic stones so their bodies wouldn't rise as ghouls. She knew this piece of worldbuilding, but she hadn't thought through the consequences. The longer the body stayed in the magic-soaked ground, the more magic was needed to hold it down. Those who didn't have money for a proper stone buried their lost ones in this desolate place, hoping to put a powerful magic stone over them one day. Everybody knew they were dreaming. Too poor to keep your beloved in the ground , people sneered, and named this place the graves of the unloved dead . Key used the name casually. As if his love was so worthless, it didn't exist at all.

Key continued, "My masters offered me my old job. My father wouldn't have liked that. What the dead want doesn't matter, but I said no. Only time wore on, and the price of a stone rose. Being good earned so little. A rival emerged for the glassblowers' guild, and they offered twice the usual fee to be rid of him. I was tired of trying to be good. I earned my fee, but I'd waited too long. The price of the stone had tripled. I buried the coins over his grave, with a knife still wet with the blood from the kill. My first cut throat in years."

Key nodded to the knife hilt at their feet.

Running might be wise. A screaming nightmare lurked behind Key's calm smile. Every word sounded raw, as if cut from his throat.

"My father was a good man. He never said a bad word, never had a wicked thought, worked every day of his life until he dropped dead in the dirt. And what's left of him? An unmarked grave and a killer. That's where goodness gets you. Let's never be fools like that, my lady."

She'd thought Key being a mercenary side-character was funny. You could dismiss someone with ‘all he cares about is money', never acknowledging what money might mean. Not a useless luxury but your future, the life of someone you loved, or the last thing you could ever do for them.

Rae reached out and touched the scars on Key's hands lightly. He tilted his head at that eerie angle, his stare lost in bewilderment. "It doesn't hurt any more."

She thought of her mother worrying when she sold people a house at a steeper mortgage than they could afford. She thought of her own hospital bills. How hard the desperate tried, to be left with nothing in the end.

Key seemed to read her mind. "I haven't told you the end. I was the best cut-throat in the city. People called me the Villain of the Cauldron. I didn't care. I was making money, but I couldn't outrace the climbing prices. Coming home from a job, I heard one of the glassblowers' guild say he was sorry the old fool had died. Now they had to actually pay someone to do the work he'd done for food and shelter. Glass costs a lot in Eyam. The glassblowers were rich. My father died so they could save money they would never miss."

His smile turned sweet. "That night I went to the glassblowers' guild and killed them all. I gave my father every life who counted his life worth nothing. I set the guild house on fire. I knew I wasn't getting away with it. I'd be executed without ever being able to save up enough for that stone. When I left the burning building and saw ghouls climbing from the abyss, I thought they would kill me. Better ghouls than soldiers."

He shook his head, rueful. "I'm not a planner like you. I lived. The good citizens of Themesvar believed ghouls laid waste to the guild, and I was the loyal servant who fought in their defence. The merchants who wouldn't spit on me suddenly called me the Hero of the Cauldron, and the king summoned me for a royal reward. The people of the Cauldron know the truth. Now so do you. I'll always be the Villain. You said we were friends. You said you're like me. Maybe you can understand what I have to do."

He pulled his hands from hers, picking up his gloves and sliding them back on. He reached out and traced her throat with his fingertips, as if memorizing the lines.

Rae didn't have time for this. "I understand what I have to do. Unbutton me."

"That story inspired an amorous mood?"

Key sounded incredulous. Rae turned her back and wriggled her shoulders illustratively. When he stepped in close, she shivered. This near, it would be easy to reach around and cut her throat. It would be easy for him at any distance. She couldn't possibly escape.

Clever hands undid her. A whisper ran warm down her nape, gloves brushing the bare skin above the laced back of her corset. "Time for one more magic trick, my lady."

She headed for the rough little tomb made of unmagical stones. It took wriggling to squeeze inside.

"Stand guard at the door, please."

There was a silence. "You're… climbing into a tomb?"

"Have some sense, there are no ladies' changing rooms! Hold my cloak."

After a pause, Key took her cloak, held over his arm like a gallant gentleman awaiting his lady emerging from her boudoir. Or, in this case, tomb.

Rae scrambled out of her dress, garnets hanging heavy on the gauze she peeled off her skin. She was left standing in the tomb in her corset and chemise. Heroines always complained about corsets in stories. Not being a heroine, she found corsets entirely necessary to support wicked curves. Emer had made clear the chemise was a scandalous garment. Dressed thus, the scaffolding that heaved Rae's bosom high was obvious. Night breathed through the stones of the tomb, in a cold caress over her skin.

"My cloak," Rae commanded.

The cloak offered velvet welcome across her bare shoulders. Rae scrambled from the tomb in her underwear, clutching both cloak and the shreds of her dignity. She led the way back to Forge Strike's stall.

"New deal. You can keep whatever money is left over, if you take this dress and buy the stone for Key's father."

Key jerked at her side as if he'd been stabbed.

Rae glanced his way. "Sorry, did you want to pick the stone out yourself?"

He shook his head speechlessly.

Rae was starting to get worried. "Can she not be trusted?"

"Strike doesn't go back on deals," Key said, after a moment.

"So what's the problem?"

There was another silence. He was pale.

Strike snatched the dress out of Rae's hands as though Rae might change her mind. "There's no problem."

"Great!" Rae turned to Key. "Can we go back to the palace? I must execute my evil scheme. Plus there will be huge trouble if the royal guards catch me outside the palace walls in my undergarments."

She headed alone down the path by the ravine. For an instant she feared Key wouldn't follow, but he did.