Chapter Five The Lady and the Tiger

CHAPTER FIVE

The Lady and the Tiger

"I never had a friend before," whispered Lady Lia. "Did you have many friends?"

Only one. Emer had been cast off as a child, picked up on a whim, and placed in Rahela's crib. They had been together ever since. Betraying Rahela would be betraying herself.

"No," murmured Emer, the wicked servant of a wicked mistress. The vile lie felt true and clean in her mouth. "I never had anyone, until you."

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

H er wicked mistress and the guard from the gutters were both alive. Emer wasn't relieved. She wasn't disappointed. She was too stunned to be either.

When Emer fetched the hot water for her lady's late-night bath, she heard a guard with a broken nose saying Lady Rahela had passed herself off as a prophet. He claimed Key had carried Lady Rahela into the throne room before His Majesty's very eyes. That couldn't be true, but the mere fact it was believed belowstairs showed how unbelievable the spectacle had been.

When Emer returned with her last vase of lemon water she found Rahela singing a bizarre song as she splashed in her bath. She seemed delighted to have plunged the court into chaos.

Once emerged from the bath, Rahela's shoulders relaxed as Emer drew a silver-heavy brush through her wet hair, though in this position Emer could have cut her throat easily as buttering bread. Oblivious, Emer's lady leaned her chin in her hand. The viper crept across the dressing table and wrapped itself around her forearm.

Key leaned in the doorway, watching Emer's lady wet from the bath and in her wrap. In a miniscule mercy, while he certainly noted Rahela's outrageous state of undress, his gaze wasn't licentious. He didn't seem to know that in permitting this, Lady Rahela was hurling her virtue to the wind.

Of course, her lady claimed to have amnesia. Perhaps she didn't know either. Perhaps, faced with death, the mind of Emer's lady had irreparably broken. Perhaps she'd been cruel to Emer because she was crazed.

Tell me you didn't mean it. Tell me you wouldn't have thrown me away.

If Rahela was telling the truth about her amnesia, she didn't even remember what she'd said.

No, Emer wouldn't be tricked again.

A cynical, low-bred voice broke in on her thoughts. Key addressed her mistress. "How did you know the messenger was coming?"

A servant should not question their master, but Emer wanted the answer too.

"I can't reveal my sources," Rahela answered, with a mysterious and faraway air.

Emer lost patience. "What sources? Why are you referencing rivers? Did a message come for you by boat?"

"Uh. No."

"You are talking gibberish, my lady!"

Rahela appeared to have a spasm. "Does it matter? What you care about is the money. We'll all be villainous, vile and mercenary, and get away with it, too. Deal?"

Key shrugged. "I already swore your oath."

Emer pressed her lips together and fell silent, braiding Rahela's hair. She hadn't sworn any oath. Rahela, that arrogant fool, hadn't even noticed.

"What trouble will we get into tomorrow, my lady?" asked Key.

Her lady was lying to the whole court as she'd lied to Emer. Unlike Emer, the king had the power to punish her. All Emer must do was keep quiet, and let her lady construct an elaborate plot that would become her pyre.

Rahela stretched, indolent and self-satisfied as a cat. "I'm glad you asked, my minion. Have you heard of the Golden Cobra?"

"Sure," Key said casually. "He's famous."

Emer dropped the hairbrush and all her lady's ribbons on the floor. "He's infamous! He owns the most expensive den of sin in the city. He pays spies. He hires actresses . Decent women shouldn't even speak to him. A moment in his company is ruin. He's a filthy, debauched and irredeemable villain."

"I know!" Rahela beamed. "We've got to have him on our team."

The wicked Marquis of Popenjoy, the spymaster and libertine also known as the Golden Cobra. The richest and most sinful man in the kingdom.

Her lady's madness was more serious than Emer had supposed.

"Don't look at me like that," Rahela chided Emer. "I may be in a temporary break-up with reality, but I'm rocking this fantasy. Once we assemble our band of well-dressed villains, our evil adventure can truly begin."

Emer heard a soft patter off to one side, on the roof of the spiral staircase wrapping around the tower. It must be raining hard. A storm was coming.

Key's head tilted. "Sweet nightmares, my lady. I hope you never see reason." He headed, not to his station in the hall but out the door.

Emer's eyes wanted to narrow. She kept them wide and calm as she urged her lady to lie abed, easing the silk wrapper off her shoulders.

"Serve your country by getting your beauty sleep, as your lady mother always said," Emer soothed, from habit not gentleness. "Tomorrow will be more peaceful than today."

Rahela turned her face against her pillow, yawning into the red tracery of flowers and thorns. "I'm here to fight," she mumbled, tumbling to sleep in a tangle of silk.

Once Emer heard her lady's breathing even out, she checked on the gutter guard. Key stood at the top of the stairwell, lounging against the curve of the rough stone wall and filing his nails with his knife. It wasn't one of the regulation weapons issued to palace guards. This wicked weapon's blade was made up of twenty small horizontal blades with barbs on the end, a knife with teeth. Key's gaze rested on the window atop the cupola, a delicate tracery of wrought iron on glass with a four-petalled iron flower in the centre. The circular window splashed a cupful of moonlight down on his face, turning it white and black and grey, a picture done in charcoal and ashes. He was always grinning, but that didn't fool Emer. Skulls were always grinning. Nobody thought skulls looked kind.

"I'm not interested." Emer should get that out of the way.

Guards and maids frequently paired off to produce a new generation of servants, and men expected Emer to be grateful for their attention. Every man who accosted her believed they were the only one who would overlook the mark on her face. Emer wished they were right. If there was only one man in the world willing to have her, she could kill him.

Key laughed. "Understood. You'd rather die than surrender your virtue."

"I'd rather you die. Try anything, I'll cut your throat. I heard what you did in the Cauldron, villain. I'm sure you could overpower me, but you have to sleep some time."

The gutter brat threw back his head and laughed. "Let's be friends."

"Because I talked about cutting throats?"

"Makes me think we have common interests," said Key. "Besides our lady."

The edges of Key's sparkling smiles wavered, a shallow gleam on waters dark and deep.

A lady's maid must see if even a fold of a garment or a strand of hair fell out of place. Emer's eye was trained to notice when things went wrong, and Key of the Cauldron had gone wrong long ago.

"Let me ask you a question, friend," said Emer. "That knife's too fine for any Cauldron guttersnipe. Where did you get it?"

Key mimicked Emer's low voice, modulated to please aristocratic ears. "I acquired it from a charming blacksmith."

"Shall I tell my lady you're a thief?"

"Do. I wish her to know I have many talents." Key glanced at the closed door to Rahela's chambers. His smile grew a fraction less chilling. "She isn't like people say."

The court must seem another world to him. He definitely didn't fit in. Emer suspected he hadn't fit in the Cauldron either. The capital held many different types, but she hadn't seen anything like the cut of his features before. He looked as if he was from everywhere and nowhere at all. No doubt his mother was a woman of the night, and his father a filthy sailor.

"She isn't behaving normally. Must be the shock of being thrown over by the king."

"Oh, him." Key paused. "She seems fond of him. Did he… hurt her?"

Something in the way Key spoke signified more serious harm than heartbreak. "Why do you ask?"

No emotion showed in those bitter-ash eyes. "Isn't that how love works? You open your heart for the knife." Key shrugged. "If you ask me, she's too good for him."

"He's the supreme monarch of our land, and she's a treacherous witch whose sins scream to the sky for the gods to strike her down."

Key nodded approval. "I do like her. Is the amnesia an act?"

"Everything nobles do is an act. The longer you survive at the palace, the more clearly you'll see that. If you survive in the palace. I doubt you will."

The window above broke silently, glass falling like rain. Key shoved Emer into the doorway with the hand not holding his knife. When the first assassin leaped like a descending shadow, Key gutted him before his feet touched stone. Innards spilled out, a thick red tangle on the floor. Key tossed a bloodied knife in the air, and a wink at Emer.

"Maybe I'll surprise you."

He knew, Emer realized. He heard what she mistook for rain on the roof, and he knew.

Two more men dropped on either side of Key, blades bared. Key crouched and spun, his knife kissing one blade and his sword forcing up the other. He disarmed one assassin, then threw himself to the ground, striking like a snake. Emer heard a stifled gasp of anguish. Key hamstrung a man casually as he rose to meet the other assassin's blade. The clash of swords at close quarters was intense, abrupt, and over soon. Key fought dirty, sword training combined with street tactics.

No, not street tactics. These were gutter tricks.

Key stepped over the corpse to stab the remaining assassin, still whimpering and crawling on the floor, in the back. Three dead men, in as many seconds.

When the fourth assassin dropped, Key grabbed him casually by the throat and held him against the wall. "Who hired you?"

The man turned his face away and whimpered into the stone. Whoever it was, they scared the assassin more than death.

Key sighed. "Tell them not to send less than ten men at me ever again. This is boring."

He let the man drop and stagger down the stairwell. Then Key gave a thoughtful hum, leaned over the man's shoulder in a parody of affection, and cut his throat.

"On second thoughts, a murder is worth a thousand words. This sends the message."

The easy way he slaughtered made Emer think of the legends of warriors long ago, whose hands were magical as if they wore gauntlets beneath their skin. Human beings made for murder. But the berserkers of old had died out. This scum was a talented killer, nothing more.

Emer held her dress up. Real blood didn't stay a pretty scarlet like the dye on her lady's skirts. Real blood dried ugly, and stained.

"Cutting a throat is the surest kill, but it gets messy. Ring the bell for the chambermaids," Key drawled. "My lady doesn't like blood."

Emer didn't move. "You knew assassins were coming."

Key shrugged. "I saw the ministers in the throne room. They want her dead."

That made sense. "If the king believes his advisor can prophesy the future, it changes the balance of power."

Even if Rahela was truly the voice of the gods, nobody would care. The gods were already lost. Power was not.

"This place isn't called the Palace on the Edge just because it's built on the edge of a ravine crawling with the undead," Key mused. "Though no doubt that's also a factor."

Key seemed pacified as though bloodshed was his lullaby. The dark around them was edged with silver, night itself held captive in gleaming chains.

Emer's sense of crawling dread intensified. "Who knows how well you fight?"

"Hundreds of people." Key almost sang his answer. "They're dead."

"Who living?"

"Only me."

His meaning was clear. Not you. What Emer had seen was nothing. He was capable of far worse.

"You took a sacred oath to serve my lady."

Blood dampened Key's wild hair, red droplets dripping from choppy locks to slide down his face like tears. "Nothing is sacred to me."

"Then you won't protect her for a year?"

He paused as if sincerely considering the idea, then shook his head. "Seems unlikely."

"How long will you keep your oath?"

His smile revealed teeth stained crimson. Not the cat who got the cream, but the tiger who got the child. "Until the lady stops paying, or starts boring me. Fun and gold. What else is there to live for?"

Cynical amusement shielded against the terror threatening to overwhelm Emer. Key was just another traitor. The world was full of them. She was one herself.

"I thought you liked my lady."

Key's laugh was a gleeful peal in the bloodstained dark. "As much as someone like me can like anyone."

His laugh was the final horror that chased Emer from the stairwell. She ran from him into the clean white marble hall, pressing back against the door as if she could keep the young monster out.

Her mistress was doomed. The stay of execution wouldn't last. Half the palace was trying to kill her. The king was tired of Rahela's beauty and sick of her schemes. The king's new favourite had reason to hate Rahela worse than poison.

Thinking of Lia was like touching a hot stove. Emer's mind wrenched itself away without her own permission.

Emer had been wise not to take the blood oath. She must be ready to save herself when disaster came.

Lady Rahela had struck a deal with villains, and failed to consider villains did not keep their bargains. Emer had tricked her. Rahela's untrustworthy guard might gut her for laughs. And there was no hope for fools who tangled with the vicious, notorious Golden Cobra.