Chapter Twenty-One The Cobra in the Cauldron

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Cobra in the Cauldron

"I will take you to a place of safety. First we must find the Cobra."

"My lord?" whispered Lia.

The Last Hope's face changed as he remembered the Cobra had been dead for weeks.

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

M arius's voice echoed in the tunnel, hollow against stone. The Cobra glanced over his shoulder, dark eyes going wide. Marius anticipated shock or fear. He wasn't prepared for fury.

The Cobra wheeled on him in the close quarters of the secret tunnel. "You'll ruin everything! What are you doing here?"

Marius raised a defensive arm, a soldier's instinct arising before his conscious mind intervened. The Cobra sheered off and smiled sidelong.

See me laughing , that smile said. I must be a joke. That smile was disaster on the horizon, sun glancing off the spears of an advancing army. Marius's every sense burned like strained muscles, struggling to find the threat. His father called it a gift that a Valerius was always armed against the foe. Yet this all-enveloping awareness turned the whole world into an enemy.

Marius answered through his teeth, "Catching a thief."

The Cobra sidled out of the tunnel. Marius followed on broken rooftiles sliding underfoot like wet pebbles on a beach. The other end of the tunnel was a vast cracked effluvia pipe long disused, running parallel to a rooftop so waste could pour out over the high city walls. It wasn't a bad disguise for a secret tunnel. Numerous effluvia pipes led from the palace into the city. People didn't explore them for obvious reasons.

Simmering lights, a more garish red than the sullen glow of the ravine, burned in the narrow street below. Thick scented smoke wafted up from torches. If a pipe burst, it might improve the atmosphere in the Cauldron.

The Cobra danced along the edge of a rooftop in the scarlet-touched smog. "I'm not caught yet, my lord."

Two of the tenement buildings were set slightly apart. The Cobra hopped from the corner of one rooftop to the next, ornaments chiming. The Cobra sauntered over the rooftops of hovels as he did across ballrooms: carelessly adjusting his hair and pretending not to notice his surroundings while noticing every detail.

He feigned indolence well. He feigned everything well.

Marius set his jaw. A Valerius could track prey across any terrain. The Cobra couldn't escape. "Tell me what you're stealing."

"Have you considered, all property is theft?"

"It is when you steal it!" snapped Marius.

The Cobra reached into his jerkin. Marius expected stolen goods. Curves of hammered gold caught the wicked light, outlining the coiling shapes of snakes. Marius recognized this jewellery from years ago. These earrings belonged to the Cobra. Bracelets already gleamed gold above his biceps.

Wearing such adornments in the Cauldron was a signal you were a criminal, or ready to hire one.

"Men's adornment is outlawed."

"That was the prime minister's petty revenge on me."

"Oh, really?" This man was so vain, he probably thought the troubadours' songs were about him.

"Since I was responsible for the crackdown on imports that played merry hell with Pio's investments."

Few travelled to the cursed land of Eyam, but profit was dearer to men's hearts than demons or the divine. Merchants still brought their ships to the harbour and offered gold and goods in exchange for orichal. Years ago, city guards, paid off by the Cobra, had broken through a false hull and found secret cargo: peasants being indentured against their will. The Cobra had snarled, "Those are real people ," and lunged across the table at the young lord who owned the ship. Marius held him back by force.

After a tense moment Cobra called Marius boring, and departed the assembly. The young lord was heavily fined, and the Cobra's bill monitoring imports passed. Marius hadn't considered the matter again.

Marius said slowly, "Was the ship owner the young lord you deliberately ruined?"

The Cobra shrugged.

He had his freedom , the Cobra had said when Marius reproached him on the matter. It seemed the Cobra hadn't ruined anyone on a whim.

Even so, the prime minister wouldn't make a law out of spite. Only villains like the Cobra plotted revenge.

The king must keep his crown, so men's head adornments were still legal. From the day the law passed the Cobra wore so many hair ornaments they rang together like music, playing a faintly mocking tune. Prime Minister Pio looked pained whenever he heard the Cobra coming. Balancing on the edge of a rooftop like an acrobat on the trapeze, the Cobra was making far less noise than usual. This proved he created a fuss on purpose to annoy everybody.

"What are your personal thoughts on men in jewellery?" the Cobra asked, deceptively soft.

"They shouldn't blackmail me."

The Cobra's laugh made Marius's spine feel like a dry torch set ablaze.

"You're a spoiled, frivolous care-for-naught pretending to be an outlaw." His words held the snap of burning wood. "Land in the Cauldron streets, you'll be stripped with your throat cut."

"Thrilling," murmured the Cobra.

Marius frequently remembered their first meeting. He was eighteen, wandering alone out of the palace gates into the city. One of his best friends was the king. The other was dead.

The boy seemed to drop from the sky. After a moment, Marius realized he'd swung from the branches of a hawthorn tree. The boy was Marius's age, slight and dark-complected, and his face was impossibly luminous. Marius glanced around, but there was nobody behind him.

"Marius," the stranger breathed. "Lord Marius Valerius. The Last Hope."

As though a cloud had passed to show twin stars, two things became clear to Marius. The first was nobody ever looked this pleased to see Marius. The second was Marius was very lonely.

Torn between wariness and delight, Marius asked, "And how do you know me?"

The boy hesitated. Shadow touched his face, and stayed like a mask over the sun. Years would pass. That first golden openness would not return.

"Even if I told you," the boy said, "You'd never believe me. Just know this: I'm your number one fan. And I'm sorry for what I'm about to do."

Alarmed, Marius demanded, "What are you planning to do?"

The boy proceeded to blackmail him.

For the Golden Cobra, blackmailing a Valerius had only been the beginning.

There was a hush on the rooftops, high above the noisy streets. Marius realized he'd made a mistake. What Marius had seen as adjusting his hair was the Cobra undoing fastenings on his ornaments, letting a rain of gold snakes pour down.

A beggar in rags caught one. Next the Cobra flicked a shining serpent into the hands of an urchin, giving her a little wave. The girl grinned as bright for him as she did for the jewel.

Nobody catching treasure looked surprised. They appeared exalted, as though they'd heard stories of blessings showered from above, and believed with faith born of possibility that glory would come to them.

"Do you regularly spread largesse in the Cauldron so you will always have spies ready to recruit?"

The Cobra smirked. "I'm experimenting in destabilizing the local currency."

Marius's teeth ached with anger. "Why did you join our law-making assembly if you insist on being a criminal?"

"Make better laws or make criminals," the Cobra snapped back. "The crimes will continue until the justice system improves."

"It will never be legal to steal from the king!"

"I don't believe in the monarchy."

The Cobra swung insouciantly around a chimney. Marius rolled his eyes so hard he expected to hear a rattle.

"Wonderful news. I don't believe in gravity, so I'll never fall again. The king exists, and will execute you for treason. And…"

Light didn't dawn for Marius. It flared and sputtered, rising slow as the ominous red sparks from the ravine. The Cobra often talked nonsense, but never to no purpose.

"You're chattering to distract me."

"Caught on, did you?"

At the very edge of the rooftop, the Cobra fell backward with a smile.

Through the rushing wind and the roar in his own ears, Marius heard the Cobra shout: "Not fast enough!"

Marius ran to the edge of the roof, tiles crashing to the cobblestones. Lord Popenjoy had leaped onto a rattling cart piled high with goods Marius doubted were legally acquired. The smugglers' cart whisked around a corner. Crouched on a stolen carpet, the Cobra waved farewell.

Panic lost wars. Though his muscles coiled for the leap, Marius didn't jump down. The rooftops afforded him an aerial view. If he stayed on high, he had a chance of catching up. He ran along the roof, chasing the cart. When a rotted gutter gave out under him, he took the impact of the fall on his shoulder. He leaned into the pain, letting himself plummet into the yawning gap with cobblestones and criminals below, until he grasped the edge of the roof. Marius swung so his boots hit the wall, tearing his cape free when the ends caught on the jagged broken-off edge of the gutter, and jumped to the next roof. A burst of excited conversation exploded from below. He'd been recognized. Other scholars from the Ivory Tower occasionally visited the capital for short visits, but – with respect to his scholarly brethren – Marius didn't believe they engaged in rooftop chases. Devotion to scholarship had a disastrous impact on physical fitness.

Marius's too-acute senses were like having every door in your house flung open to the world, but sometimes the invasion of sensation proved useful. The smuggler's cart had one wheel slightly askew. It gave a distinctive squeal, two streets to the left. Marius vaulted the roof and grinned at the dark. A rooftop chase beat a ballroom any day.

The rattle of the cart slowed before resuming its usual rhythm. A graceful long-haired silhouette darkened a moonlit cobblestone. The Cobra slipped from one shadow to the next, into a narrow grey building on Lockpick Street.

Under a sign of black wheels and gold flowers, twining script read Life in Crisis.

Marius followed the Cobra. Oddly, a tattooed doorman glanced at his clothes and wished him good hunting. Inside was a crush as bad as the ballroom. The soft sound of metal clinking meant concealed weaponry and displayed jewellery. Every man was wearing at least an earring or a bracelet, and the women were not to be outdone. Candles shone on the bar under different-coloured transparent shades turning flames red and green and blue. Over the bar a sign read Welcome All Travellers… these men weren't trained to kill but to administer beatings. They wouldn't get the chance to do that today. Marius scattered them with a rush, breaking a chair and skewering one thug's limb with a hurled chair leg. The fragments of the chair knocked out another thug, and Marius seized the last by his collar.

"Yield," he commanded.

"Please don't kill me," gurgled the final thug.

"No. I took vows." Marius strangled him efficiently and kindly into unconsciousness.

The man slid in a heap at his feet. Marius scanned the bar, upon which silent stillness had fallen. Five minutes had elapsed since the thugs came at him. Scholarship was making Marius slow.

"Lost gods, you're the real Last Hope," murmured the glittery woman on the bar. "Sorry for manhandling you. Unless you liked it, in which case I'm Amelia. You can find me any time, day or night, at the Golden Brothel."

No blade, no beloved, no blood spilled by my hands. The vows were clear. Nobody paid attention to the vows!

"Good night, madam." Marius fled.

He'd calculated which window was closest to the rooftop. Marius swung onto the roof of the Cobra's tavern and scanned the city laid out before him. Bright sloping roofs turned various murky shades by moonlight, fitting together like the pieces of an old tortoise's shell, stretched on until they met the city walls. The expanse of roofs was broken on one side by the pale-gold palace walls, and on the other by the pewter line of the river. The Cobra was too intelligent to head for the palace, but anyone who'd seen battle knew people headed for landmarks. Marius's eyes scoured the roofs leading to the river and found a familiar shadow.

The Cobra was crouched peering down into the dark streets, a smoking torch lighting his face from below.

Marius landed on the same roof. "Yield."

The Cobra sprang up with the burning torch in his hands. "I wasn't made to yield."

With an economy of movement Marius would have been pleasantly surprised to see in a palace assassin, the Cobra spun the torch around in a bright blur to dazzle Marius's sight. When Marius lunged to prevent the Cobra's next escape attempt, the Cobra didn't make one. Instead he set Marius's cloak on fire. Through a whirl of burning white and sparks flying, he caught the Cobra laughing. His eyes were alight, though not as alight as Marius's cloak. Marius laughed incredulously back.

This was the coward of the court!

The Cobra bolted for the rooftop edge. Marius tackled him. Only sheer brute strength prevented them both falling off the roof. Even as Marius dragged them back the Cobra made a furious attempt to get loose. He was tall and powerful enough that Marius had to put him up against a chimney, arm against the Cobra's throat cutting off his air supply, or risk hurting him. Marius reached inside the Cobra's jerkin and wrenched out two keys. One was wrought in the king's orichal silver and one was brass. With all his might, Marius hurled the brass key into the river.

" Don't ," the Cobra shouted, though he shouldn't have been able to breathe. "This is someone's life! You don't know what you're doing."

The key inscribed a small bright arc onto the night air before being lost in the shadowy churn of the river below. He might not know what he was doing, but it was done. The Cobra ceased struggling, but his body didn't go lax with surrender.

" Damn it, Marius! " the Cobra exclaimed once Marius removed his arm from his throat. "You chased me across the city! You're the terminator!"

"Don't call me names."

Marius was breathing slightly hard. He must cut down on sleep: five hours a night was vile indolence.

"I wasn't calling you names," the Cobra grumbled. "It means you're a total beast."

Marius glared. "That's another insult!" He got his breath back, and willed scholarly calm to descend like snow in winter. "You will explain Lady Rahela's villainous scheme to the king. Including what her guard did and who else is implicated. Apologise for aiding her wickedness. In exchange, the king will grant you mercy."

"I'm sorry?"

"Not to me," snarled Marius, "to the king—"

Leaning up against a crumbling chimney stack in the Cauldron, the Cobra was serenely composed as if attending court.

"I don't know what you're talking about," the Cobra lied with perfect, beautiful assurance. "Lady Rahela? Her guard? I stole this key from the king on my own. That's what I'll confess. His Majesty won't ask follow-up questions. He's never liked me."

It was summer, but the night was cold.

"During the dance, I saw—"

The Cobra's voice was a flaying knife. "I trust my sleight of hand. You might guess, but you didn't see. And you won't swear anything that's not absolute truth, will you? Leave women and servants out of this, Marius. Deal with me."

The world was flipped over and wrong, as though somebody had tossed the broken moon down at his feet. The whole court knew the Golden Cobra was a venal, shallow and heartless villain, but now he was ready to die for somebody.

"Are you in love with this woman?" Marius demanded despairingly.

The Cobra was never sincere about anyone. A courtier swore he'd seen the Cobra cast himself upon a chair and whisper he missed his lost love Nettix. Or possibly Netsix? Netflix? Marius had never believed it: that was not a name.

Fury turned the Cobra's golden voice dark. "I'm trying to do something real. I'm trying to change something!"

"Whatever you want to change, it can't be this important."

The Cobra said, "It's vitally important to me."

He didn't explain further. He never did. Marius couldn't take his eyes from him, in case he committed another lunatic crime. He had to watch as the Cobra smoothed over the cracks in his fa?ade, erasing traces of pain and rage. Marius realized with growing dread the Cobra was about to laugh this off.

The Cobra sighed theatrically. "I'm too stressed to fall in love. I got more play when I was fourteen and my wardrobe consisted almost exclusively of anime T-shirts."

This was a crisis, so Marius made the effort to puzzle out what the Cobra meant. In context, ‘anime T-shirts' must be the traditional costume wherever the Cobra was from.

"What game were you playing?"

"I mean, I don't date much," said the Cobra. "Occasionally I hook up."

"Whatever you are doing that involves hooks, cease immediately!"

The Cobra shook his head, laughing. "Never mind."

He often said that. It didn't help. Marius did mind. Now more than ever, when the Cobra intended to die without explaining himself.

The cloak of night over the city was suddenly rent apart by white light. The fireworks in honour of the foreign princess shone as if the moon had dissolved into a hundred stars, transforming the river from pewter to silver, icing every roof.

The Cobra sat on the roof's slope. "If I'm being dragged to my execution, I'd like to watch the fireworks first."

Criminals couldn't simply demand to be arrested later, at a time that was more convenient. Marius frowned down to find the Cobra's face lifted to the sky, all lit up as though he were the night and his feelings were fireworks.

When such small strange things made him happy, it seemed churlish to interfere.

Marius felt obliged to point out the absurdity. "Lady Lia and I prefer moonbeams to fireworks."

He shrugged off the charred remnants of his white cape, tearing a long strip free. Marius bound the Cobra's wrist, tying the other end to his own wrist, then sat grudgingly on the rooftop.

The Cobra regarded him with unconcealed mockery. "Bless. I'm sure your favourite ice cream is vanilla."

"Why do you say ‘vanilla' in those tones? Vanilla is an extremely expensive spice!"

The leaping flame of mirth in the Cobra's face subsided into an amused glow. "Okay, vanilla boy. I agree the lady is lovely. I'm glad you got to experience peace in the moonlight, gaze upon her and think oh ."

"Oh?" Marius repeated, dubious.

" Oh . The oh is italicized to suggest a revelation," the Cobra told him sternly.

"I don't know what ‘italicized' means," Marius muttered.

"It's like a word being underlined for emphasis. My point is, you need someone you can talk to. It's heartbreaking that for years you never had a conversation lasting longer than a handful of minutes, until the shining night with Lia on the moonlit balcony."

So the Cobra had veered off into dramatic hallucinations.

"I've had conversations that lasted hours. With you! Even worse, with the book club!"

"If I wasn't around, you wouldn't talk to anybody."

"I might!"

The Cobra shook his head, convinced of Marius's social ineptitude. That was insulting. Chances were the Cobra was right, but he couldn't be sure.

"Also I didn't talk to Lady Lia for hours," Marius pointed out. "We talked for five minutes. If you wanted us to talk for hours, perhaps you should've reconsidered the treason!"

The blaze of fireworks faded. The Cobra's face fell.

"I didn't mean to mess up the romantic balcony scene."

The one time he knew what the Cobra was trying to say, and it was horrifying.

"I don't like the insinuation I would break my vow."

Everyone knew the rules of the Ivory Tower. No violent delights, no violent ends. It was forbidden to touch wine, women, or weapons. Nobody believed a Valerius could keep the promises Marius had made. But he would. He must.

The Cobra suggested tentatively, "Surely, with Lady Rahela's mother…"

"I never broke my vows with Lady Katalin."

Many believed Marius had, but he'd always thought the Cobra knew everything about him.

Marius let people believe the filthy gossip. He'd returned to court for his king, but Octavian was distant and Lucius was dead. Marius couldn't go to the training grounds or taverns, and could never go home again. Though he was eighteen and a man grown, he missed his mother. The lady was lovely, her hair like shadow and her laugh like gold, and experienced enough to know listening was more important than being lovely. It was humiliating he'd let secrets spill not because she was beautiful, but because he was fool enough to think she was kind.

"I wasn't sure," the Cobra said gently. "But I should have known. You're a one-woman kind of man."

"I'm a no-women kind of man!" Marius snapped. When the Cobra's face went exceptionally startled he clarified, "I'm a nobody kind of man! I took vows ."

Octavian and Lucius made jokes about the other matter when they were young, teasing Marius for refusing to enter bawdy houses. The soldiers made similar jokes about General Nemeth's eldest. Considering how Lord Fabianus fawned over the Cobra, Marius suspected those jokes had truth behind them. Marius deeply disliked Lord Fabianus, but the man was harmless.

Marius was not. Marius couldn't ever love anybody. At the ball, Lady Lia had been beautiful as a dream of spring on a winter's night. She was important to Marius because he'd done right by helping her. He never wished to wrong her, but if there was speculation about them he had done so.

A Valerius could not help hurting anyone who came close.

A Valerius fell in love like falling off an ice cliff into dark water. Fast enough to snap a neck, love like a sentence of death. The memory of a splintering door and screaming echoed in Marius's ears. The love of a Valerius was a weight that would drag his beloved under the ice to drown.

Love was impossible. Love was an unforgivable sin. Marius wanted a guiding light.

"At the Ivory Tower," the Cobra began, delicately. "There's that house of women in the village at the foot of the Cliffs of Loneliness…"

This was what happened when a man had spies across the kingdom. Spies had filthy minds.

"People shouldn't believe the worst of women living alone."

Clearly, the lady of the house was a widow who moved to a remote place near virtuous charitable men, for financial assistance raising her many daughters.

"Sweet cinnamon roll. Too good for this world, too pure."

The Cobra sounded at a loss. That seemed fair, since the Cobra often left Marius at a loss himself.

"At the Tower, if we confessed to impure thoughts we were whipped with a blackthorn branch while kneeling on the edge of the ice cliffs."

"Eurgh!"

The startled sound broke from the Cobra's chest as though he couldn't repress it. Marius blinked, puzzled.

"It's standard."

The other students never confessed as frequently as Marius, more fitted to scholarship and purer of heart than he. The methods of the Ivory Tower were honed over years of trial and tradition, and extremely effective. After enough whipping and nights kneeling in the wind off the cliffs, impure thoughts were almost completely banished.

"Forgot that part." The Cobra made a face. "No wonder you're so intense."

"I'm not intense," Marius said. "I have faith. I have honour. You wouldn't understand."

The Cobra's mouth twisted into the wry expression he wore when secretly judging someone. "Maybe I have my own kind of honour."

"There's only one kind of honour!"

"That's a matter of opinion. Or do you think only one kind of opinion counts? I never understood why you cared if people knew you'd spilled secrets to a glamorous older woman. Aren't you a man of character? Isn't character who you are when nobody is there to see you?"

Marius opened his mouth to argue he was protecting his family honour, and closed it, shaking his head. That wasn't the whole truth. The truth was, he thought ill enough of himself. He didn't want the world to agree.

The truth burned. It was shameful that Marius would care.

People at court whispered the Cobra was secretly of peasant origin. Marius saw what they meant. Popenjoy didn't understand the values of nobility or unstained reputation.

That was proof the man was base, in birth and every other way.

For once the famous Golden Cobra wasn't bedizened with treasure, but sitting on the rooftop in dark simple clothes, knees drawn up to his chest, long hair loosed from its fastenings and falling over his shoulders. Nobody seeing him thus would think he was a noble.

Marius felt as he often did around the Cobra: that he'd been given an enormously complicated riddle to solve.

He asked slowly, "Is this who you really are? Lord Popenjoy is the disguise?"

The Cobra waved this off. "They're all disguises."

"You seem as at home in the Cauldron as you are in the palace."

The Cobra propped his chin on his fist, eyes full of reflected fireworks. "Everywhere I go is the same place. Everywhere is far from home."

"Do you want to go home?"

From the bizarre way the Cobra talked Marius believed he must be from impossibly distant lands, with customs different from anything Marius knew. Marius couldn't imagine such a kingdom, but on the word ‘home' Marius's mind always went back to the manor of his childhood. The place Marius could never go again. How strange, that he and the Cobra might have something in common.

"The past is another country, America never was America to me, and besides…" The Cobra shrugged. "I tried. My mother paid the price."

A firework blossomed in searing white and fiery scarlet across the cracked face of the moon. The same thing happened inside Marius's skull. The Cobra always seemed to exist entirely without context, no childhood and no connections, untethered and ultimately unreal.

"You had a mother ?"

"You met her." The Cobra spoke as if he weren't wielding a verbal morningstar. "She was a woman from my household, killed on the king's orders."

It was long ago, but Marius remembered. Marius had been furious to be blackmailed, but the Cobra kept making sure Marius wasn't alone at parties, asking servants about their lives, and finding shy forgotten girls to dance with. Once Marius believed there must be a reason the Cobra would stoop to blackmail. He'd never been good with words, but he was planning to ask the Cobra why.

Then the Cobra's servant committed treason. The Cobra spent the next year drinking and building his golden bawdy house. Marius lost all desire to understand him.

"How, exactly, was that woman your mother?"

She'd been from the outer city, from her appearance unlikely to be related to the Cobra by blood.

"She was my mother because I believed it, and she believed it too," the Cobra answered steadily. "She saved me when she adopted me. My birth parents died when I was small."

Finally a tragedy Marius could understand. "Were they killed by the undead?"

"Well, no."

"Plague?"

"Sure, plague," agreed the Cobra. "My sister raised me. She took me to Shakespeare in the Park and helped me get a scholarship somewhere with a theatre programme, but her husband wouldn't let me call her my mother. That was for their real kids. I don't blame him. I was a burden. That makes what I did worse. I insisted on returning to a place where nobody missed me."

The fireworks scrawled meaningless shapes across the dark. The Cobra's speech was likewise unintelligible. Marius had spent days now without the Cobra's flow of nonsense. He'd believed that was what he wanted, until he found himself alone in silence.

The silence would be endless if the Cobra was dead.

"Why wouldn't your sister miss you?" He cleared his throat. "I… I miss mine."

The Cobra laid his hand on Marius's arm. "I know."

That gave Marius pause, recalling the Cobra tossing a smile and a jewel into the hands of a beggar child. Nobody had touched Marius, except Lady Lia graciously accepting his hand for a dance, since he and the Cobra parted ways. People avoided touching a Valerius even in the most casual manner.

"Is this pity?"

"It's affection. You do know about affection?"

The Cobra's voice lived on the edge of a laugh. This was not a laughing matter.

Valerians tended to marry cousins. Love was dangerous, but heirs were necessary. There must always be a duke to defend the land.

Valerius women were mousy as protective camouflage, but a generation ago a distant cousin was declared a beauty. She visited, chaperoned by a plain sister. The young duke, Marius's father, was struck at first sight.

Struck, fell, smitten. All words for love were violent, and Marius knew why. The beauty was found with her neck broken. The duke married her mousy sister the next day.

The duchess lived in the east wing. Marius saw his mother only when gathering in the great hall to praise the lost gods. When his father flew into rages, grown men cowered. The duchess said, ‘Decorum, my lord.'

The duke would resentfully subside. On feast days, they behaved properly. After the feast she lit a candle for the great goddess and they knelt. The candle cast a pale gold circle on the wall, small as the reflection of a coin.

The duke didn't think much of his bride. Marius thought a good deal of his mother.

The direct Valerius line usually followed from only son to only son. Marius's mother bore her second child when Marius was eight. His father lost interest when it was a daughter.

Dukes of Valerius wore a hooded war cloak called a caracallus. Marius wrapped the baby in his to keep her warm in their cold manor, and his lady mother named her for it. Boys his own age feared Marius, but when he carried her to bed Caracalla put her baby arms around her brother's neck with perfect trust. After she was safe, Marius sat outside the locked and barred door listening to the duchess sing over his sister's cradle.

Once his father summoned his mother when Marius was outside eavesdropping. As the duchess swept by, Marius felt the curve of her hand briefly cup his cheek.

Marius knew about affection.

He sneered internally at the Cobra's hand, warm on his arm.

The light cast by his mother's candle on the wall shone, dimmed by the shadows of years. Truth was a small precious circle of illumination and sanctity. This reckless profusion of light and warmth must be false.

"You claim a criminal servant as your mother?"

"Yes, my mother was a servant." The Cobra's voice put a thousand frosty miles between them. Once again Marius experienced the disorienting sensation that a blackmailing traitor was furious with him. "So to you she was barely a real person. Do you know the names of any servants not your own?"

None that could be skimmed like cream from the top of his mind, but Marius was sure he would momentarily recollect several.

"I don't even know your name."

He threw that reminder like a sharp bitter dart. The Cobra slanted a grin his way.

"Wanna know something funny? I never gave the character a name."

The character , as if the Cobra was writing a play that was his own life. If people built roads the way the Cobra held conversations, they would wind around a looping scenic route then careen wildly into the ocean.

Marius insisted on a destination. "What did your mother call you?"

"My real name." Popenjoy blinked. "This conversation must be confusing for you."

Conversations with you always are , Marius wanted to spit, then remembered he could say whatever he liked to the Cobra now. He'd dreamed of that.

"Conversations with you always are." Since Marius was allowed to say it, his voice came out mild enough. "I keep getting lost, but perhaps I could find my way."

Amusement rang in that irritating voice. "Doubtful. Since I'm to be executed, this is our last conversation. You'll find it easier to win arguments with me when I'm dead."

Even then, Marius feared he wouldn't win. The man had a mouth on him that infuriated you until you knew him, at which point it infuriated you more. The Cobra was joking his way into the grave.

"Stop. I wouldn't even have a name to put on the stone."

The Cobra pointed at Marius triumphantly. "Won't be a problem. They throw traitors' bodies in the ravine."

Marius wasn't a child, so he couldn't put his hands over his ears. He put his head in his hands instead. "Will you stop !"

The Cobra said, inexplicably, "Eric."

Marius looked up. "What?"

Fireworks shot towards the moon in golden streaks, brightening the night in a luminous false dawn.

The Cobra wore a faint smile. "My name."

"Eric," Marius repeated uncertainly.

It didn't seem to fit.

"Eric Mitchell. A very ordinary name, where I come from. I was a very ordinary boy. No doubt I would have grown up to be a very ordinary man."

The infamous Marquis of Popenjoy. The Golden Cobra. Eric. A very ordinary man.

Marius echoed the Cobra's earlier mocking tone. "Doubtful."

Finally a clue to the riddle rather than an addition to his confusion. Finally some truth.

Far below their rooftop, the city stirred.

"The day we met," Marius began.

"I've repeatedly apologised for the blackmail."

"That's not important," Marius said impatiently. "The day we met, you said, ‘I'm your number one fan.'"

"Did I?" The Cobra made a comically embarrassed face. "Cringe!"

It was so rare to see the Cobra flustered, Marius ducked his head to hide a smile. "It was the first incomprehensible thing you ever said to me. ‘One' is a number and a fan is an object. You might as well say ‘I'm a number five wooden duck.' What did you mean?"

"It means I want you to win."

How nice, but, "To win what?"

"The love triangle!" The Cobra frowned. "That's not right. A person isn't a prize to be won. What it really means is, I love watching how you live. I want you to be happy, and for everybody to acknowledge you're the best."

"The best at what?" Marius asked in a small voice. "Fighting?"

The Cobra never showed the slightest interest in martial prowess.

"No," the Cobra answered briskly. "Speaking of, don't ever come at Lady Rahela's guard. You won't win."

Marius went blank with surprise. "I don't lose."

The Cobra scoffed. "Whatever. I don't care about your hit points."

"What do you care about?"

When Marius risked a glance at the Cobra, he was gazing pensively across the city. Fireworks briefly turned the silver ribbon of the river to gold. "You try very hard to do the right thing."

Strange to realize someone had noticed the painstaking effort he'd believed went unseen. Stranger still that it was this someone.

"If I try to understand you," Marius said quietly. "Will you explain what's happening?"

The final firework exploded silently into the night, an ephemeral silver crown that sparkled against a black sky with the faintest trace of blue, as if a single tear had fallen in a pot of ink. The last of the king's fireworks. The last of the light until true dawn.

In a grave voice, Eric said, "Imagine there was a book."

Oh no. Marius braced himself for literary metaphor.

"Imagine someone could open a book telling the story of this place, flip through people's thoughts, know the secrets of their hearts, and you were someone's favourite—" Eric stopped when he saw Marius's expression.

His face had twisted with his stomach, nauseated at the very idea. "I would hate anyone who read the secrets of my heart!"

If someone knew why he'd gone to the Ivory Tower, Marius would have to remember the time he found the door to the east wing broken down. The door that must be locked and bolted, to keep his lady mother and baby sister safe.

"That was our problem, I guess. Don't kill me," Eric added.

The old terrible fury descended on Marius, covering the churning dark of his distress like flame touching pitch. It was the Cobra's fault Marius felt this way. The Cobra was like everyone else, leaping to conclusions when Marius wasn't trying to harm him. When Marius had, in fact, been far too lenient. Marius should cut this criminal down where he stood.

"Stop talking in riddles. Why does Lady Rahela want that key? Why are you doing this?"

The Cobra smiled, dazzling and horrible. "Because of my wicked, rotten heart. What's it to you? I stopped tormenting you."

"You are still tormenting me!"

There was a ring in his own voice like rattled chains. It terrified him. He never let himself think about being unhappy.

Eric stared, and shook his head. "There was no need for a one-man mission to chase me down. You see somebody steal from your king? Summon the guards."

"They would cut your head off!"

The Cobra's raised eyebrows were a challenge. "So?"

"You being executed won't get me answers," snapped Marius. "You're lying to protect a secret. Having you dragged off to execution won't tell me what I need to know."

"Fantastic news." The Cobra stood and stretched lazily, hands linked over his head, his body an arc against the lightening sky. "Since I'm not being dragged off, I'm going home. Collect me for execution at your leisure."

Marius stared at his own wrist in outrage. He hadn't even noticed when the Cobra's clever hands undid the tether linking them together. For an instant, he was confused about why the Cobra had untied it on Marius's side. His question was answered when the Cobra tied the strip of still-white material to the gutter and swung down onto another moving cart, rolling off the cart with acrobatic grace onto the cobblestones.

Marius was trained to sustain a fall from a warhorse. He jumped, landing by the Cobra's side. They made their way silently back to the palace, its golden walls still in shadow but slowly brightening with the rising sun.

Last time he'd walked the Cobra home, the Cobra was drunk. He sang into a large spoon which he called his microphone, a sign he must be taken away and poured into bed. On the way the Cobra stood on the walls overlooking Themesvar.

"Amazing this city was imagined," he said then.

"Isn't every city imagined?" Marius asked, and on the Cobra's interrogative glance: "Someone had to think of building a house. A lot of people had to think of building a harbour."

Slowly, the Cobra nodded. "We're all living in our imaginations. Love the story you're in, the song you made, the city you dreamed. I'm a city boy myself."

In that moment his sharp luminescence seemed blurred into more gentle brightness. He was always a riot of rapid movement and more rapid thought, animated sound and light. Marius understood what he meant. A city boy. A boy like a city.

"Thanks for being real," added the Cobra.

That was one night, and this was another.

The world had gone wrong years ago. Marius didn't know how to put it right. "You cannot simply go home."

"Stop me," the Cobra answered wearily. "We both know you can."

The Cobra rapped on his own door, outlawed rings striking the wood.

Marius turned away.

Seven years ago, the door to the east wing had been shattered. His father's men had broken it down. Marius refused to dwell on what he'd done, but the rage still burned. The storm of heat in his own breast, the same emotion that broke necks and painted fields with blood. Marius was a cold stone manor, but smoke might fill the corridors to choking. Fire might consume until only a charred skeleton remained.

No family, no friends, no beloved. He was Valerius. It was not safe.

The truth hit him. Marius whirled around, threw the Cobra against the wall, and found the king's key. The key the Cobra had stolen when he patted Marius's arm.

"Affection, was it?" he demanded icily.

With Marius's hand clenched tight on his jerkin, the Cobra shrugged. "Worth a try."

"You villain ," Marius snarled.

Eric winked. "You know it."

He used Marius's split second of shock to shove him backward. The Cobra's maid held the door open for her master, giving Marius a poisonous look. Marius was furious to realize he had no idea what her name was.

The door slammed in Marius's face. No matter. He would come back with an army to break it down.

First he must share the truth the Cobra had let slip.

Marius didn't remember the name of the Cobra's treacherous servant, his executed ‘mother'. He remembered her crime. She was seized in the act of plucking a flower. Tonight, Eric had stolen the key to the royal greenhouse.

Lady Rahela and the Cobra were after the Flower of Life and Death.