Chapter Twenty-Seven The Lady’s Lies Laid Bare

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The Lady's Lies Laid Bare

The night before Lady Rahela was executed, her maid embroidered through the dark and past dawn. She tried not to think of Rahela, who had betrayed her. She tried not to think of Lia, who she had betrayed. She watched the steel of her needle under the stars, piercing the cloth a hundred times, and felt hate past thought.

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

T he white marble hall in their new chamber was the same as in the favourite's chamber, except the arched stained-glass window was closer to the ravine. Sparks flying upward lit the diamond panes like brief red stars. Occasionally, Emer heard moans or screams. Now Emer heard only the sound of Rahela singing in the bathtub to her snake. Apparently, Rahela was hot-blooded. The snake should check it and see.

Emer sat in her curtained alcove, at a loss. Rahela and Lia were friends now. Lia would be queen. Peace between the stepsisters always seemed impossible, but the impossible had become real.

Across the hall she saw the flash of Key's smile, slightly less unsettling than the flash of his knives. He seemed pleased his threats to ensure Lady Rahela's bathwater arrived hot had been successful again. When Rahela's shadow swayed behind the screen, Key set his jaw and looked at the wall.

Even the elderly guard Rahela believed was fatherly used to peek, but Key worshipped the ground Rahela swaggered on. He'd mistaken the cheap flower for a jewel, and he would flat out murder anyone who tried to tell him different.

Emer had imagined Key's eyes would be opened when Rahela tried to inveigle the king back to her bed, and Lia into her grave.

Except Rahela had declined her chance to sabotage Lia. She'd put the king in Lia's hand instead. Emer saw nothing in this uncharacteristic behaviour to benefit Rahela, but she was proved wrong when Lia offered an alliance. They were vipers together.

Lia would marry the king, but Emer had always known she would marry someone. This way, Emer would still see her.

In the evenings, Rahela told them stories for what she called ‘after-dinner entertainment'. They were halfway through the tale of Lord Ross and beauteous Lady Rachel, who Lord Ross suspected of infidelity to their lovers' vows. Emer assumed Lord Ross would soon have Lady Rachel's head chopped off in accordance with the laws of the land. Key would sit adoringly at Rahela's feet, cheek in hand, eyes uplifted. Emer would sit in the corner with her embroidery, pretending not to listen.

Perhaps this evening Lia might come to their door again. Perhaps Rahela would tell them all a wonderful story.

A tap came at the door. Emer's heart did a little skip, then took a long fall.

The person in the doorway was the king.

Octavian still wore his court regalia, embroidered cloak streaming from his shoulders, masked crown pushed up to rest on gleaming hair. Beneath his crown, his face was restless.

"I desire to see Rahela."

Here it was. Whenever something went wrong at the ministers' assembly or Octavian felt slighted at a party, Rahela was needed to say Octavian was the king of her heart.

Rahela had ignored her opportunity to claim him. Princess Vasilisa had humiliated him in front of the entire court. And he was scared, Emer thought, of being the Emperor.

She knew this look on Octavian's face. She knew her duty. She should escort Octavian to her lady's chamber.

Emer wasn't sure why she rose and said pointedly, "My lady is in her bath."

Octavian's perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted in perfect affront, but he gestured to the palace guards behind him. It had been a long time since she granted the king access to her lady, his air suggested. He would pardon her insolence by ignoring it, and carry on as usual.

The guards retreated into the stairwell and turned their backs. Octavian stepped inside and closed the door behind him, almost all the way. It was as much privacy as you ever got with a king.

"Summon her," Octavian said, lightly enough.

It was a royal order. He could not be refused.

Emer twisted her embroidery, a cushion cover showing the golden turrets of the palace with a steel needle struck through the gold.

"It would better fit your royal dignity if you retired to your chambers, sire. Once she is dressed my lady will hurry to your side."

The king's power extended across the whole land, but the fact of his power felt oppressive in close quarters. His crowned shadow stained the marble as he approached.

Octavian set a hand on Emer's shoulder. "I won't be lectured on my dignity by a servant."

His touch was heavy with the weight of a sceptre and a crown behind it. Emer felt her knees buckle. If he wanted her to kneel, she must.

The beads of Key's curtain rattled as they swung open.

It was Rahela who said: "Let her go."

The pressure released. Emer was free. Octavian turned towards Rahela, standing wide-eyed at the threshold of her bedchamber. She was wrapped in her crimson robe figured with white nightingales, silk clinging to her skin with the heat and moisture of the bath. Octavian's eyes lingered on silk-cradled curves.

With all the poise she could muster in a robe, Rahela drew herself up. "What do you want?"

"Let me come into your bedchamber, and shut away the rest of the world."

Rahela's eyes darted around the room. Perhaps realizing they were a tell, she lowered her gaze. "You wish to consult your prophet, but I'm sure you don't want a whisper of being shut up with another woman to reach your true love."

It was a barely concealed threat. He wouldn't want her to tell Lia. Even a king wouldn't risk losing Lia.

"Rahela, stop !"

The command came down hard as a boot heel.

"The more you talk of true love, the less I feel it," declared Octavian. "I confess, at first I was taken by your stepsister. She's different from you, and the change was pleasant as a rest. I didn't know you would get so angry. Enough with the prophecy and the Cobra and the ugly princess. Let everything be as it was before."

Rahela's eyes searched the king's handsome face. She trembled from head to bare feet. "What are you saying?"

That pleased Octavian. His mouth curled, inviting her to smile back. "Poor Rahela, you truly thought you had been replaced. I'm sorry, if you must hear it. There is no need to be jealous. Though it suits you. Desperation set you burning like a lamp. I was swayed, but even Lady Lia's beauty could not stop my gaze from going back to your light. She is not my true love. You are. And you shall be my queen."

"This isn't how the story goes," Rahela murmured under her breath.

Emer agreed. This wasn't the story anyone told about these two women. Key was the only one who didn't seem surprised.

"Don't you want to be the heroine of the story?" asked Octavian.

After a moment, Rahela nodded.

Her lady's plans had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Octavian reached out a hand, curved as though he was already caressing her. "Say something, darling."

Rahela spat, "So this is the great love story? Don't talk about my dazzling light that made you look away from the fairest of them all. You like me because you're afraid I stopped liking you. You would have sentenced me to death, then turned to Lia and told yourself that was true love. You either want the newest toy or the toy someone else is playing with. None of us is real to you. And that makes you a villain."

Octavian's hand whirled through the air to strike her.

The blow never landed. Key caught the king's wrist. Octavian tried to wrench away, but though his arm trembled with the force he was expending, he couldn't break Key's hold. Key bared his teeth in the king's direction like a mocking wolf.

The smile dissolved like sea foam on Octavian's face. His face twisted, like a child about to throw a monstrous tantrum.

"If you're all toys, I wonder who will get broken first?"

His emerald eyes flashed carelessly from Key to Rahela. His meaning was clear.

"Release His Majesty, Key." Rahela's voice cut like a dagger in a lady's dainty hand. The weapon might be pearl-handled, but it would hurt. "Now."

A moment of quiet passed, swift as a scared heartbeat. Reluctantly, Key let go.

"Beg his pardon," continued Rahela. "On your knees."

Key, who laughed when people called him a gutter brat, went cold and pale with insult. Rahela met his gaze with raised eyebrows. Teeth locked, fire quenched, Key sank to his knees.

It wasn't enough.

Octavian asked, "You call the gutter scum by his name ?"

"Pay no attention to the man who should be behind the curtain." Rahela let her voice drop, low as she could go. "You're right, Your Majesty. We should talk. Alone. In my bedchamber."

The cadence of Rahela's voice was intimately familiar to Emer. She'd heard this voice wielded as a weapon at a hundred private moments and in a hundred gatherings. This new Rahela used it as the old Rahela had, but there was always an undercurrent of playfulness in the new Rahela's voice. She was always playing, never taking anything seriously.

Now her amusement had drained away.

Octavian didn't care to notice the nuances. He smiled benevolently. If she would act the wicked seductress, he could play such a good king.

Rahela fluttered her dark lashes, clumping together with bathwater, not tears. She reached, nails tipped with red like the claws of a cat after a kill, to capture Octavian's hand. Any stranger would have seen a heartless lascivious beauty, a snake determined to charm the king.

Perhaps Rahela, like Emer, had lost the habit of submission. There was a shake in her outstretched hand. After the deliberate sweep of her lashes, a swift involuntary tremor followed, difficult to capture as the movement of a butterfly's wing. Every hard line of the wicked jade's face and body set in silent protest.

"Kiss me first," the king commanded. An infinitesimal shudder passed beneath Rahela's skin.

Nobody wished to serve all the time.

This new Rahela had forgotten how to pretend.

As Rahela sashayed forward, her sway stopped dead. On his knees, Key caught at her robe, black leather fist clenched on the red silk. His face was uplifted to Rahela's, that cynical strange young face absorbed as when he listened to her stories. There was no pure illumination in that scarlet-bathed dungeon room. Light seemed to touch him anyway. His expression was that of a man in a shrine.

"You told me you were forgettable, replaceable, and insignificant," Key said. "You said not to risk myself, unless I had an absolutely imperative reason. I do. My universe is altered by your wishes. And you never want him to touch you again."

The villain of the Cauldron bowed his wild dark head and kissed the hem of her garment.

Octavian clicked his fingers impatiently. "Come, my lady. Or else."

King Octavian strode forward to grasp his possession.

Key of the Cauldron rose like the surge of dark water in a storm, and punched his king in the face. The blow sent Octavian reeling against the marble wall, hand flying to his mouth. Blood seeped through his fingers. The king's eyes above his hand flew wide, stunned past fury.

"Hands off," Key said simply.

"I am your king !"

Key shrugged. "Hands off, Your Majesty."

Voice thick with blood, Octavian snarled, "Are you mad ?"

Delighted, deranged, Key smiled. "Yes."

Octavian's gaze slid to the crack in the door, which made Key's lip curl with contempt. Emer saw the moment Octavian recalled that, mere weeks ago, Key had been whipped to within an inch of his life.

Octavian shook his crowned head. "I don't need guards. I'll teach you a lesson myself, gutter rat."

Key beckoned the king towards him. Octavian drew his sword. The blade remade because of Rahela's prophecy. The sword re-forged in the bone fire of legendary beasts, its steel bathed in a deep red glow of magic. The sword that waved to split silver clouds and scarlet sky at the Queen's Trials.

"Longing for Revenge." Rahela's voice was crushed small with terror. "The blade none can withstand."

Key swung his ugly, common short sword to meet the king's. The last of Emer's hope shattered.

So did the royal sword. A deep fissure ran along the steel beneath the red glow, and shards of magic sword fell like rain.

Emer remembered General Nemeth at the Queen's Trials, saying the manticore's chains had been too hastily forged. Belowstairs they said the king had re-forged the sword himself. Surely he wouldn't skimp on time or skip steps, impatient for a showy result. Surely even the king wouldn't be that arrogant.

"Keep teaching, Your Majesty," Key sneered. "I'm learning a lot."

Blank with disbelief, Octavian stared at the bladeless hilt. "I will be the Emperor," he said, as if trying to remind the universe.

Key laughed. "You're not the Emperor yet."

"Don't kill him!" Rahela screamed.

Key nodded, and deliberately cast his sword aside. He stepped in to Octavian, close enough to kiss. Instead Key picked up the king, a man roughly his own size, by the front of his embroidered doublet and shook him like a rat. He hurled the king across the room. Octavian's cloak, heavy with embroidery, flew in his wake. Octavian landed in a silver heap on the floor. When the king lifted his head, blood gleamed on his pouting mouth and his tooth was chipped. He would never look the part of the perfect prince again.

"‘Beg for mercy,'" Key suggested. "‘It amuses me.'"

" Guards! "

At the king's word, the palace guards rushed for the beauty's chamber.

Octavian's eyes narrowed hatefully up at Key. "My men will bring you down in twelve seconds."

Face alight with glorious ruin, Key tossed a laugh and a knife into the air. "Let's see how much treason I can commit in twelve seconds."

The blade embedded in Octavian's cloak. The glow from the ravine painted the room. The graceful arc of Key's leap was a single dark comma across a scene red as blood and white as snow. As the king begged Key for mercy, more red followed.

Three guards died within seconds, but the fourth fled. He brought back reinforcements. Armed, uniformed men flooded in, the walls crowded edge to edge with armour and weapons. Key was still laughing, dancing with his blades. He was a whirlwind of death.

Two guards got behind Key and clubbed him in the head, belabouring his whipped shoulders. Rahela lunged, seizing the arm that held the club and biting into the meat of it like a fox gone rabid, before the guard knocked Rahela to the ground. Battle fury thick as red mist in Emer's head, she raised her embroidery and slashed the other guard's neck open with her needle. Blood was pouring down Key's face. He should be blinded, but he killed the man who struck Rahela.

One guard stabbed at his unprotected side, then yelped in startled anguish. Rahela's pet snake had darted across the floor and sunk its fangs into the guard's ankle.

A beautifully polished boot crushed the snake's domed head.

Octavian commanded, "Put an end to these vipers."

In the end, it took half the king's men to bring Key down. Two guards caught Emer between them. Her head rang and the chaos of the room grew remote. The guard she'd slashed had used his club.

Dimly, Emer heard her lady pleading, left behind in the sea of soldiers. Nobody cared what the Harlot of the Tower had to say, as they dragged her people away.

King Octavian pulled together the shreds of his cloak and his royal dignity. "Take these insolent servants to the Room of Dread and Anticipation and thrash them. Do it right this time. I want him whipped until he is dead."

Emer had never seen the Room of Dread and Anticipation before. She'd heard about it in hushed whispers. This was the darkest place in the palace, where you went when you were bad past redemption.

Choose evil. Let's do it together , Rahela's eager voice echoed in Emer's memory. She had been such a fool.

Two stark lines of wood and steel loomed into view. For a bewildered terrified instant Emer believed she saw a gallows. Then she realized it was a whipping post.

An explosion of violence turned Emer's head. Key struggled against his captors' hold, lunging and biting like a vicious trapped animal. She didn't know how he was conscious. Considering how badly the guards had already beaten him, she didn't know how he was alive.

A guard holding Emer left to help his fellows with Key. Key's eyes slid towards her, sly and calculating. She wondered if she was meant to seize the moment and escape. If so, Key overestimated her. The heavy steel door had already slammed shut.

Fighting the guards every step, Key was dragged towards the whipping post. Black shackles were attached to each of the two upright beams. They closed the shackles around Key's legs and arms, holding him splayed in place. Emer winced. She'd seen village boys torture a dog once, measuring how long the dog would take to die.

The enchanted lash sang through the air. The crash of the whip echoed against the stone walls like thunder. It landed, then arced again, a giant snake spitting shreds of cloth and skin. Blood spattered the walls.

King Octavian laughed, as delighted as the boyish torturers from long ago. "Don't rush. I want him to die slow."

The guard pulled Emer to another set of shackles. He moved slowly, eyes on the real spectacle. Lashes didn't rain on Key. They came down in a hard black hail.

Key's face turned towards Emer. "Don't worry. It won't be long."

When the next blow came, Key's fist clenched hard on the ruby gleam of Rahela's earring.

Only then did it dawn on Emer how naive he really was. He wore a mask of blood, and his exalted expression. He intended to spare Emer a few lashes, before Rahela came to save them.

"You can't believe in her. How can you be so stupid?" Emer hated him almost as much as herself. "We are to her what she is to the king. You're not a real person to her. They want you to be useful, so they tell you whatever you want to hear."

Once she spoke, the guards remembered she existed. When Emer spoke disrespectfully of the king, the whip landed on her back.

Better to die fast than slow. She'd meant them to whip her, but she hadn't known how much it would hurt. A magical lash burned as well as cut. As the orichal steel teeth of the whip tore into her back, her flesh sizzled like bacon tossed into a pan. A hot waterfall of blood rushed down her back to her waist. She howled like an animal.

Drifting through a haze of pain, Emer heard Key arguing in the troubled voice of someone also arguing with himself. "You're wrong. We shared real secrets. I told her how my father died, and she told me how she was sick as a child."

Gasping, Emer laughed. Key had thrown his life away for a delusion, bowed his head in worship of a hollow thing.

"Rahela was never sick a day in her life."

King Octavian laughed too.

His laugh was interrupted by the heavy door creaking. Emer blinked to clear her sight. There, in the cold slant of light provided by the door she'd opened, stood the Beauty Dipped In Blood. Her shimmering gown made her seem wrapped in a moonbeam, but on the skirt heartsblood-red leaped in the shape of flames. She was dressed as the hungry ravine.

Emer felt she wasn't seeing the new Rahela or the old, but another person entirely. The heartless siren, the ice-hearted beauty from the songs and stories. Someone who had never been entirely real, because nobody was the way they were in a legend. This was the woman of snow and flame, too evil to be true.

"Have you been telling stories, my darling viper?" asked the king.

Rahela's red mouth curled, wicked as the blood-wet whip. "I do love stories."