Chapter Thirty The Cobra in New York

CHAPTER THIRTY

The Cobra in New York

Everything was a reminder. He could not walk down a corridor without recalling the Cobra dragging him down that same corridor, chattering about building a grand theatre. Marius believed he was a grown man then, believed the Cobra was a man too, long lost to villainy. Looking back, they were boys. There must have been a way for that joyful youth to turn back from evil.

Marius had never truly believed all that brightness could be put out.

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

M arius rode hard towards the truth, to find out the Cobra's secrets at any cost.

He had no gift for sneaking or spying, but in Eyam there was a straight and narrow path towards truth. If you were willing to pay.

The Cave of the Oracle was high in the mountains, at the foot of fertile arable land. The farmers who worked the rich earth knew the goddess blessed them for harbouring her voice. They brought the Oracle tribute every day of the year.

Past the Mountains of Truth were the Valerius lands, the Lake of Sorrows and the Red Fields.

At temple, his mother had told him stories of the Oracle. Their goddess was lost, but too kind to desert her people entirely. She gave them an Oracle, and the Oracle would give each of the goddess's children one truth for a price. Marius had once found it reassuring to know the Oracle was near.

He'd lost that comfort when he was seventeen. This was the closest he'd been to home since then.

The mountain pass was high, the climb steep. Marius swung down at intervals to spare his horse and ignored the signs he was being followed. The guardians of the Oracle were skilful. Most petitioners wouldn't even know they were there.

Marius rode on, ducking under overhangs of granite, the horse's hooves crunching under loose shale until the end of the winding path.

The sun was losing its battle with shadows, but its rays still burned strong. One direct beam, bright yellow as a painted sign, stopped at the threshold of the cave. The Oracle's cave was a deep gash cut into the grey mountainside, bleeding darkness.

Two guardians waited before the cave. Marius stood, arms stretched wide, letting them search for weapons he didn't have. He pressed reins into one guardian's hand, and passed out of the hot sun into enclosing shadows. Marius's sight was swift to adjust, but the change was so abrupt for a moment he was lost and stumbling.

A hoarse voice issued from the dark. "Beware, Marius Valerius."

He took a knee. "My Oracle."

In the depths was a stirring, like a great bird stretching its wings. Marius bowed his head and waited. His senses expanded, slow and calm, listening to the lap of water, feeling the particular change in the atmosphere of air cooling when water was near. The birdlike rustling continued, followed by shuffling footsteps.

"Prophecies are hungry. They will eat you to be fulfilled. Do you know who you remind me of?"

"Everyone says I resemble my father," Marius answered dully.

"When everyone says something, doubt them. Your father resembles his father, and his father's father. The same face with slight variations, to imprint the memory of danger through generations. A Valerius is like a plant with colours warning it is poison. You are no vague shadow, Marius Valerius. You look more like the First Duke than his first son. The First Duke was a marvel and a monster. Do you wish to be like him?"

The first duke, the general of the first king. Centuries had passed since they lived. Years had eroded history into stories. The tales said the fields of poppies around the Valerius manor grew because the First Duke stood his ground there, one man against an army, and won. They said the First Duke had eyes redder than the poppies. Children in Eyam were told to behave, or the First Duke would get them.

The Oracle was older than the mountains. She had seen the First Duke and knew the truth of him.

It was no surprise to hear Marius was a monster.

"Red eyes would make me conspicuous at court, my lady Oracle."

The Oracle's laugh was wind through rotten boughs. "You have your mother's eyes. Don't thank her for them. Clear eyes are no gift in the kingdom of the blind. The First Duke was a beautiful monster, at least."

She laid a hand on Marius's head, heavy and curled as a claw. Her hand wasn't ice cold. Ice could be melted. She was cold with the deep permeating chill of stone under the mountain.

The Valerius manor was made from the stone of these mountains. Cold was his birthright.

Tomb-chill fingers toyed with the white strands in his hair. "The First Duke's hair changed after his first and worst kill. Who did you fight to win the ice in your hair, throwback?"

Marius lifted his head. The Oracle was pale as the belly of an eyeless fish that would never be touched by the faintest shimmer of light on the surface of the water where it lived. She wore tattered veils as clothing, variegated layers in white and grey and black, like petals curling up within a dying flower. Her tangled white hair had black ends, as if dipped in fresh ink. When she raised a finger to her lips, the bony digit was coated in darkness. Every finger was blackened, as though she'd dabbled in an inky sea.

"As if I didn't know. It takes a long time to get over, doesn't it? All your life."

In the silence, Marius heard the splintering of a door seven years ago. He heard a little girl scream.

"Get over what?" he asked thickly.

"All your life." The Oracle sniffed the air like a bloodhound. Her eyes, caves in her haggard face, didn't appear to see well. "Where is your servant?"

In the darkness, in the cavern of her mouth, Marius couldn't be sure if her tongue was tipped with black.

"I will use my own blood for the sacrifice."

His heart set a galloping beat in his ears. He understood if his own blood was an unworthy sacrifice, but he wouldn't order someone else to bleed for him.

The Oracle smiled with pointed teeth. "Usually people spill an ocean's worth of strangers' blood before sacrificing a drop of their own. A substitute buys substandard magic. If you give me your best, I will give you mine. Give me your hands, Marius Valerius, and I will give you my truth."

He offered his hands, palms up and cupped. The Oracle's dark-coated nails bit into the centre of his palms. He knelt with hands full of his own blood. Between his fingers, blood slipped and dripped. He saw the murk of the pool in which the Oracle stood change. His blood swirled in the clouded waters. Darkness turned water into a mirror.

The Oracle's voice filled the cave. "I count the grains of sand on every beach and measure the sea. I hear the voiceless and know the necessity of evil. In your whole life, you only get one question. Ask for the truth you want most."

The years-old riddle he couldn't solve. The key to every strange happening in the palace.

"Eric Mitchell. The Golden Cobra. I want the truth of him."

The blood in the water twisted as if his words had created a current in that still pool. The water in the Cave of the Oracle was suddenly illuminated by lights burning with the force of stars, shining in all the colours of the rainbow.

The blood framed a window to impossible sights.

Violently burning lamps lit a strange street. Earth and grass were lost beneath a disturbingly smooth grey surface, like a river turned to stone. Eerie carriages with no horses attached rushed over the stone river. Black wheels spun through scum-slick puddles, stopping before a spindly tree of lights that flashed emerald, amber, and fiend's-eye-red.

Along the stone river were stone riverbanks, grey and flat as the river itself. People in bizarre clothes jostled each other, a crowd thick as a flood of salmon. The dizzying blur of lights and faces became a whirlpool of bewilderment.

The waters stilled and centred on a face. A boy. He wasn't Eric. Marius opened his mouth to protest, then hesitated.

The boy was young, no more than fourteen. Some children altered greatly as they developed into adults, but surely the very bones were wrong. There was a slight resemblance suggesting a distant relation, but Marius could see no path of change from this boy's face to the one he knew.

The child was a stranger in a strange land, his hair shaved at the sides with fronds falling in his face like a plant. His clothes were worn and grubby as a peasant's but richly coloured as a lord's, his tunic emblazoned with crude letters reading ‘SEIZE THE MEANS OF STAGE PRODUCTION!' He wore an insectile contraption over his ears, carried a canvas bag dangling from a strap over one shoulder, and was bathed in glaring pink light emanating from a storefront selling unthinkable devices. He was a bizarre figure in a grotesque landscape that could have no possible relevance to Marius.

And yet.

The boy moved as if to silent music, hands shaping the air, and Marius knew those gestures. Those clever hands always mapped the progress of that overly clever tongue, illustrating Lord Popenjoy's point or his punchline.

Somehow, this was Eric. It was in the way he looked at people sidelong, constructing careful attention out of a hundred careless glances.

That look alerted Marius to danger. The roving flash of Eric's attention fixed. Marius followed Eric's gaze to what not another soul on that busy street saw.

The child was tiny, with fat dark braids and hands small enough to slip out of a harried mother's hold. She tottered off the grey riverbank into the river of lights and vehicles. One vehicle wailed like a dying animal and avoided her. The next would not.

Eric dashed into the river of chaos and knocked the child clear to the bank.

Marius witnessed the shattering impact of the metal hulk, catching Eric's side, Eric's temple. Eric was thrown into the air like a big fish twisting on an invisible line, caught by an invisible hook. He landed on all fours, sprawled awkwardly with none of his usual grace, set his child's jaw and staggered back to the stone riverbank. The little girl stood crying, unhurt but venting her shock at an unexpectedly cruel world.

More vehicles lined the side of the stone bank, stationary and lifeless. Eric leaned against one, very like the hurtling metal creature that had hit him but not powered by the same malicious energy. He didn't seem worried it would wake to life.

He winked down at the crying girl. "Hey." It was a child's voice, but steady and gentle. "It's all right."

The world was cruel, but never Eric.

A woman pushed through the crowds. She wore an understandably frantic expression, and trousers for which Marius could find no explanation.

"Aera, there you are!" She snatched the little girl's hand from his. Her eyes flicked to Eric. "I can't thank you enough," she added.

It seemed she could thank him enough. She didn't thank him again.

Eric nodded, braced against the car as if getting his breath back. He should have it back by now.

"You were hit pretty hard," the woman continued reluctantly. "Maybe you should call an ambulance."

Eric's head was still hanging, but he made his airy dismissive gesture.

"Ambulances scare me." He laughed. "My… sister's husband lost his job. We don't have insurance. I'll take the subway."

There was a wet, serious undertone to his laughter. The woman didn't hear it. She didn't want to.

"I should go." The woman's voice was already putting distance in between them.

She shouldn't go.

No surprise showed in Eric's face as she turned away, child in tow, and no resentment. Eric usually took people as they were.

The waters of the Oracle's blood pool ruffled, as if with a slight breeze. In that faraway land, dark grey afternoon shaded rapidly into night. The sky over the alien city was bristling with towers and almost devoid of stars.

"Don't look at that man," a stranger with a striped noose around his neck instructed his daughter. "He looks like trouble."

Marius wondered what was wrong with his eyes. Eric was clearly not a man, but a child in trouble.

As time passed, Eric slipped down. At the grey edge of that turbulent street, he sat huddled against one of the machines that had hit him. The Golden Cobra, the glittering centre of every whirlwind in court. The loudest, brightest soul Marius knew, enduring a quiet, wretched death.

He held a little glass-fronted box attached to his insectile headgear. Eric was laboriously tapping on it. Behind the glass was a word and a picture – ‘Sis' with a drawing of a heart. Eric's tapping slowly produced another word, which was ‘ sorry '. Seized by a tremor, the box tumbled to the street. A crack struck clear across the glass.

Eric's hands, sure enough to steal from the king, fumbled with pitiful clumsiness on his bag's metal fastenings. He paused to cough something dark and solid into his hand, but finally got the bag open. Fingers stained with clotted blood curled around the battered shape of a book. Eric clung to the book like a small child to a favourite toy.

Marius made a sound, too broken to be a laugh. That was the Cobra, with his love for art and beauty.

"Should have called that ambulance, kid." A strange woman with her hair in girlish tails sat beside Eric, gold-skinned and serene, her eyes kind as Eric's but distant as skies. "Too late now."

"I gathered that," Eric mumbled, words slurring, and coughed again.

The shining woman offered, "There is an alternative."

Her every word seemed to weigh more than the words of others, as if theirs were tin and hers steel. She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

The dying child who was Eric tipped onto his back, eyes going dull as he gazed up at the strange sky. His hand reached up as though to catch one of the few remaining stars. Or grasp the handle of a door nobody else could see.

Before the boy's hand fell, the pool shimmered. Marius was lost in the dark of the cave.

He had to get through, it couldn't be too late—

The dark came as windows shuttering. The magic of the blood pool re-formed, shutters opening onto a familiar world. A familiar street. Cuff Street, perpendicular to the Cauldron. A large building with diamond-paned windows, its fa?ade painted black and white, ran down one whole side of the street. The glassblowers' guild had been prosperous before it tragically burned down.

Carts rattled by, not metal monsters. Street vendors hawked fruit, pastries, children's toys and combs. Women haggled at carts. Merchants passed in and out of the guildhall doors, keys jingling and pouches bouncing. There were ladies in finery escorted by servants, and couples promenading.

There was Eric.

No guesswork was needed this time. This was obviously Eric, not much younger than when he and Marius first met. It was more shocking than a strange boy in a strange land, to see a familiar face in surroundings where he didn't belong. Eric, fastidiously clean and frequently advising the book club about scented soaps, was dirty not in the fleeting fashion anyone might be if they took a tumble off a horse into mud, but in a way ingrained over weeks or months. His clothes were rags the lowest of Marius's servants wouldn't have torn up to scrub an outhouse. Eric's lean intelligent face had none of the lingering roundness of childhood. His eyes and cheeks were sunken as graves not properly filled in.

Eric brushed by a couple walking out together. The lady, the type who fluttered her lashes at the Cobra during play intermissions, squeaked with dismay lest his filthy clothes stain her gown. The gentleman made a grand display, sweeping her around in a circle away from the riff-raff.

When Eric was new to court, a few nobles snubbed him. Until Marius gave them the Valerius look.

If Marius had the times correct, right now Marius was at the Tower of Ivory. Perhaps he was kneeling under the lash on the ice cliffs, while Eric starved in the streets of the capital.

The lady giggled. Eric smiled his private smile, strolling on. He'd neatly picked the gentleman's pocket while the man swept his lady aside. Eric snapped open the brocade purse, rolled his eyes to find it empty, tucked it away, and began to sing softly under his breath. One of his awful songs with lyrics that made no sense.

Eric hadn't stopped smiling, but Marius wasn't fooled.

He remembered Eric scribbling energetically over loose pages by candlelight, recalled, under the glaring eyes of a lost city, a dying child's hands scrabbling for a book. Art is the final consolation . This song was Eric's attempt to comfort himself.

A middle-aged woman with a laden basket, trundling down the street, turned at the sound of his song. She had wispy fair hair, a timid air, and a dun-coloured gown with a lilac token on the sleeve indicating she was a lesser guildswoman.

"You, boy."

"Ma'am? Got an errand I can help you with?"

She pitched her voice at the level of a guilty secret. "Where are you from?"

"Oh, here and there."

"Did you get here through a…"

The woman's shoulders caved in as she lost courage. Eric, automatically reaching out to uncertainty, murmured encouragement.

The woman ventured a whisper. "My late husband used to sing that song. He said he was from Berlin."

The name was meaningless to Marius, but Eric's hand closed on the woman's arm as though she were a floating spar in a shipwreck.

Smile finally reaching his eyes, Eric said, "Sounds like we have a lot to talk about."

The pool flickered with a briefer darkness, a curtain whisked across rather than a shutter closed. The blood window looked inside a small single room with curving wooden walls, as if Eric and the woman lived in a nutshell. Frankly, it was a hovel. Someone had fashioned colourful paper decorations to hang around the hovel, and wind chimes made of metal fragments. Marius knew who.

"I can't believe your man never tried for the Flower, moms." Eric made a meatless mess in a pan over a low fire. "Why not smuggle his way into the palace via a laundry cart? That's a classic for a reason!"

The woman from the street sat at a shabby table smiling at his nonsense, as he tipped more than half the dubious food onto her plate. The sunken shadow of death had vanished from Eric's face. When she brushed the back of her hand against his filled-out cheek, Eric leaned into the touch. Eric habitually reached out to people, but he didn't easily accept overtures. My mother , he had called her.

"You don't need the Flower. You have money now, thanks to your investments. You can live a good life."

"It's half your money. You provided the capital." Eric's tone was soft until it turned to steel. "And I intend to."

"There's no way to the palace," the woman warned.

It was no use telling Eric facts. He took them as a challenge set by the universe.

Alarm crept over the woman's face when Eric went quiet. Marius deeply sympathized. Silence on Eric was always alarming. His eyes fixed with determination on the single window in that small house. The window looked across the city to the palace, gold in the setting sun.

In the voice he used when quoting, Eric murmured, "I lead the way when there is no way."

There was the faintest flutter of a shadow on water. Marius's veins tugged, protesting the flow of blood. How much longer could he bleed for this? But he needed to see. When the Oracle retreated he followed, keeping her sharp nails in his palms. In the pool Marius saw morning sun through the leaves of a hawthorn tree, Eric standing underneath.

The guard at the palace gates asked what Eric was doing.

"Climbing high," Eric laughed. "Let's see how far I can go."

He swung into the branches. Boughs swayed and leaves danced with a long-ago wind. The Oracle's pool rippled and cleared. Marius, gasping for breath and certainty, stared up into her haunted face.

"Enough truth now, Marius Valerius. Nobody can bear too much. I drowned in it long ago. What an enterprising young fellow you have there. He causes ripples in more pools than mine."

The Cobra was from another world. That was his truth. What was Marius's? He remembered his allegiances.

"Is he a danger to my country?" Marius demanded. "Is he a danger to my king?"

The Oracle swayed like a tree with shadows for leaves, her veils stained with dried scum from old water as though she'd climbed from a well long ago. "You have a thousand questions, but you are only permitted one answer. You have the truth you wanted. Now decide what to do with that truth."

"What if disaster comes?"

"Disaster will come," the Oracle promised. "Disaster always does. You, however, must go."

Her voice filled the cave with echoes. Her guardians appeared to take him away. Marius could have fought them, could have killed them, but he had made vows.

Marius rode through the mountain pass, headed for the city like wind across the earth. His final desperate bid for clarity had only led to more confusion. His mind was in fragments, every notion a leaf on a tree shaken by strange winds. Rational thought was dashed to the ground and swept away across the hills.

This must have some bearing on the conspiracy with Lady Rahela, but Marius couldn't see how.

He rode through the palace gates to the Cobra's door. Sinad the maidservant tried to stop him entering. She didn't succeed.

At the foot of the stairs, in the grandest court dwelling apart from the palace itself, Marius remembered his sister's only visit to the capital two years ago. The last time he'd seen Caracalla before that, she was nine. At fourteen, she was tall as Valerius men were tall with no idea what to do with her height, all coltish limbs and awkwardness. She was brown-haired and sallow like their mother, visibly terrified at every society gathering, and the dearest and most beautiful girl in Eyam. She cried at the idea of another tea party, begging for different amusements. So Marius brought her and his lady mother to the man everyone said was the most amusing creature in the palace.

Marius's sister clung to his arm as the Golden Cobra descended the curving stairs to receive them. Elaborate golden combs shone in his hair, the designs on the combs hooded cobra heads, the teeth of the combs snake fangs. His face blazed with the same warm welcome as on the first day with Marius, as if he could know someone well, yet be excited to meet them.

Sing-song and soft with delight, he called: "My lady Caracalla."

Caracalla's legs went out from under her. Marius held her up, but couldn't stop his heart sinking to the Cobra's marble floor.

They spent an evening at the theatre. Caracalla stared in silent rapture, and not at the stage. When they were home and Caracalla in bed, Marius's mother suggested Lord Popenjoy might be an excellent match.

Dread overwhelmed Marius for the second time in one evening. "His title is suspect. Nobody knows where he came from."

His mother dropped a sugar cube in her tea with finality. "Does that matter, darling? He moves in the highest society with ease. If his origins are questionable, he's likely to overlook the issue of Valerius heritage. He doesn't seem afraid of you."

In the midst of horror, Marius almost laughed. "He's not."

His lady mother smiled, which was so rare Marius couldn't refuse her. "Since he's your friend, he must be a good man. That's what I want for Caracalla. Someone kind."

Before his mother left, she presented the Cobra with an heirloom orichal dagger, enchantment only shared among family. The whole court recognized the betrothal was official.

Nobody knows where he came from .

Marius did now.

He ascended to the Cobra's receiving room. When the parlour doors opened the Cobra's band started up a jaunty tune. Two women pranced out front and began a dance with shoes that tapped on the floor.

Marius aimed a silver disc at a cymbal with enough force that it spun from under the stunned musician's hands, sending several instruments crashing down before driving its edge into a wall. When a dancer stumbled, Marius caught her in his arms.

"Madam, please take a seat." He dropped her on the conversation sofa.

The dancers exchanged panicked looks. The doors to the Cobra's private chambers burst open with a cascade of gold foil snakes, which the man himself absently shook off his shoulders.

"I'm not in the mood— Marius ?"

Today's herigaut was thick with bronze as well as gold thread, cinched tight with an elaborate bronze belt. It was a far cry from rags or emblazoned shirts on strange streets. Eric held his head high at all times, but today his jaw was clenched and his dark eyes dangerous as a poorly banked fire. Marius wondered if something had happened.

Eric's face didn't invite inquiry.

Marius folded his arms and made himself look immovable. "I must talk to you."

"I don't have anything to say."

"There's a first."

Eric's lip curled. "I don't think you'll have anything interesting to say."

"So you're from another world," said Marius.

The roving glimmer of Eric's gaze froze for an incredibly satisfying moment.

"Guys." His voice went carefully casual. "Lord Marius has had too much to drink. Give us a moment."

The band sidled out, giving Marius wary glances. One singer stopped to tell him he was very strong, which Marius knew already. The Cobra strode to the door to check nobody was listening. Once the spymaster was assured he wasn't being spied on, he turned back to give Marius a nasty look. Then the nasty look was abruptly diverted.

" Jesus ," said the Cobra. "What did you do to your hands?"

He clicked his fingers, peremptory, but when Marius surrendered his hands Eric took them gently. He gave a soft exclamation as he saw the wounds from the Oracle's nails.

As always, Eric's priorities were strange. No wonder, from an otherworldly stranger.

"My hands would be healed by now if I hadn't been holding reins."

Eric dropped his hands, turning away. "Sure. Let's pretend that's cool and normal."

Warriors were built to heal fast. Marius shoved away the Oracle's voice saying throwback .

"What do you think the Oracle told me about you?"

Eric had been tense since the mention of the other world. Now his shoulders slumped.

"Does it matter if I'm dying in New York by the side of a road or waking up in the gutters of the Cauldron out of my mind with hunger and fear? Either experience would be equally alien to you, Lord Marius . As far as you're concerned, I've always been from another world. You were born in a manor. You could heal from being hit by a car. I've never been the main character in any story."

"This isn't a story. This is our lives!"

Eric offered a lopsided, humourless smile. "Maybe it's both."

"In that other world, you were dying. Are you dead?"

Was he a charlatan? Or was he a malicious ghost, puppeting what should be a corpse? There were so many nightmares the Cobra could be.

"I can't be dead," Eric answered. "My mother died trying to get me the Flower of Life or Death. So I have to live, as hard as I can."

"Is that why you did all this?"

The Cobra lifted his chin, eyes glittering defiantly. He'd been glittering defiantly for as long as Marius knew him.

"I did what I must to survive. Then I did many other things because I thought they would be funny, and make me look cool."

Whenever Marius was at his lowest, he went to the Cobra's. Eric always let him in. Once Marius had leaned his head back against the ridiculous sofa and listened to a lullaby-soft song on the gilded piano, pretending to sleep. The Cobra touched his hair, and said, ‘Hush.'

If Marius was comforted by lies, what did that make him? A frightened child, a fool, or a traitor?

Trying to work it out, he said slowly, "You were good once. You saved a little girl."

"Look where that got me," Eric retorted. "Now I save myself. What can you do when the story says you don't matter? I have to matter to myself."

"What about Lady Rahela?"

Eric hesitated. "She matters to me too."

Why should she? Marius said sharply, "I've known her for years. She isn't from another world. She's no innocent."

Eric wheeled from the window.

"Do only innocents deserve to be saved? Then put me down for the long list of the damned." To Marius's amazement, Eric's voice broke. He covered his face with his arm. "God, I cannot do this tonight. I searched across the palace for you while you were hunting down my secrets."

It was always Marius going to him. He'd never looked for Marius before. Marius's gaze trained on a flying sleeve, seeing a stain on the gold.

"Is that blood?" His own ran cold. Who did he have to kill?

"It isn't my blood," Eric said in a raw, muffled voice. "Somebody died. I had to watch his body get thrown in the ravine."

"Who died?"

"A gutter brat," spat Eric.

Marius was relieved before he remembered the vision of Eric starving in the Cauldron. It had always seemed tragic that beggars died of cold and hunger in the streets. Eric said tragedies were sorrow given distance.

Now that distance was wrenched away.

In a room that seemed an opulent stage set for a character who never doubted or grieved, Eric might be crying.

"Eric." Marius's voice went rough as he failed to sound gentle. "What can I do?"

The shining curtain of the sleeve fell to reveal not tears but fury.

The Golden Cobra snarled, "Kill the king!"

It was the realization of every dark fear that visited Marius at night, waking in cold grey before dawn to the knowledge the Cobra had power over him, and might ask him to do anything.

The Cobra's lip curled. "I know you won't. You'd rather kill me and my friends. Some lives are worth more than others. So kill me, or leave me alone."

Eric had shown kindness and ended up huddled on a street corner with clotted blood coming from his nose and mouth. He'd lied and lied, constructed an elaborate fantasy of a person and become his own creation. Marius didn't know what he deserved and didn't understand him and didn't understand his own uneasy heart.

If the Cobra had never turned him away, Marius could have killed him. And then, every gathering with no voice calling him over, every night silent. Not because the Cobra was angry, but because the Cobra was dead.

He could have killed him.

Marius picked up an abandoned lute, smashing the glass on the Cobra's display case for the Valerius blade.

"Oh, here we go," Eric muttered beneath the sound of glass breaking.

Marius grasped a golden rope cinching a curtain and wrenched it loose so the curtain fell as if signalling the end of a play. He tied a loop in it, and aimed the rope at the broken case. The rope snagged the blade, bringing it in a wide silver arc across the golden chamber. The dagger landed in the Cobra's hands.

"Come here," Marius commanded, imploring.

When Eric started furiously forward, Marius caught Eric's wrist, holding it in place so the blade rested against his own throat.

"There. You're safe. Talk to me."

Blade between them, Eric stared as if Marius was deranged. "Statistically, how many productive conversations are held at knifepoint?"

"Maybe this will be the first."

He could fix the moment, precise as an arrow in a heart, when Eric lost patience. The Golden Cobra shoved Marius up against the wall with an enchanted knife to his throat.

"You said once that I torment you. Do you want to be tormented?" Eric demanded.

The blade was sharp and cold against his skin. Marius was fast and strong, but he might not be fast or strong enough. The Cobra might actually be able to kill him.

It was a novel feeling. Marius tilted his head back against the wall, and smiled. "Try me."

Eric threatened, "Let me tell you something dangerous and true. I'm your worst nightmare. I've read every secret of your heart. I know what happened, that last night in the manor when you were seventeen. I know why you ran to the Ivory Tower. I've always known."

Marius had come home unexpectedly, and found his father in a berserker frenzy. The door to the east wing, the only protection for his mother and small sister, was broken down by his father's men. His father's loyal followers had loyally left a woman and a child to face the duke's murderous fury.

He could still hear his father whispering, over seven years.

"This is divine wrath." Firelight had made the duke's face a twisted golden mask. "You feel it too, boy. I know you do."

None could stand against a Valerius. Nobody else could stop his father. Marius had to do it.

So he picked up a sword, and did it. And he swore to never touch another blade again.

"If you'd ever told me that before," Marius murmured, "that's when I would have killed you."

The blade stung, cold edge and hot blood. If Eric was certain Marius would kill him, here was Eric's chance to kill him first.

The Cobra's eyes gleamed, mocking and cruel. "So eager for my truth, but you can't face yours. Want to know another secret, Marius? I could strip you bare."

He laughed.

"Here's the truth. The blackmail never mattered. I trade in knowledge, so you hate me worse than poison. You don't know me. You don't know Octavian. You don't know Lia. You don't know yourself. You're afraid to know. I'm not the coward of the court, Marius. You are."

It was the worst insult Marius could imagine, and the worst part was he could do nothing but listen, dry-mouthed, pulse a tempest. He was able neither to move nor speak, because he was afraid.

"Time to end this," Eric said gently. "I will not be the blade hanging over your head or the blackthorn branch you lash yourself with. I cannot be either your fated doom or your lost gods."

He stepped back and hurled the knife away with enough force to shatter a stained glass window.

Marius stared into the jagged vacancy where beauty and illumination had been. "What do you want me to do?"

"The right thing!"

What a request from a villain.

"The right thing," Marius shouted back, "is to kill you ."

Every secret he had learned, every drop of what his father called divine wrath, called him to that end.

They stood breathless, with no defence between them.

Defiant to the end, Eric said, "Then don't come back here unless you're ready to kill. Believe me, Marius Valerius. I was never meant to be part of your story, but I always thought you should be the hero. You have to be one now. Or there are no heroes left."