Chapter Seven The Villainess, the Spymaster and the Secret

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Villainess, the Spymaster and the Secret

"Everything has a price," said the Golden Cobra. "Show me your worth."

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

S he didn't have to open her eyes to know she was in another world. Rolling over usually woke Rae with a jolt of sick pain. Here, miracles like monsters, magic, and a good night's sleep were possible.

In the real world, she wasn't waking. Alice would worry, but she'd be so happy when Rae did wake and was well.

Sunlight slanted through the marble arch, making the blue mosaics gleam with life. Emer walked in with a silver tray holding a cup of hot chocolate and a buffet breakfast for one.

"Luxurious," sighed Rae, sipping the chocolate. She hadn't had an appetite for a long time. Savouring food felt like wild indulgence.

One dish seemed to be a sweet omelette with currants. It was delicious, but Rae felt suspicious about the meat covered in fragrant fruits and spices. "What is this?"

"You have breakfast amnesia?"

Emer sounded tired. Rae wasn't a morning person either. Which confirmed it was right Rae had been cast as a villain. Villains were never morning people. They had to stay sharp for midnight plotting.

With a rich spread like treasure in breakfast form before her, Rae could afford to be choosy. She pushed away dishes she didn't recognize as fundamentally unsafe.

"If you're not going to eat the roast hedgehog…" said Emer.

"Be my guest."

Rae proceeded to fall on the hot buttered toast, pheasants' eggs and grapes glowing in the bowl like jewels. Eating toast used to make her lips and gums bleed as though toasted bread was more resilient than flesh.

Now Rae made the toast her bitch. As she munched, she schemed.

Six years ago, the Golden Cobra appeared from nowhere to dazzle the court as a leader in fashion and a patron of the arts. He possessed a wide network of spies and thieves, and a wealth of information. He also had a wealth of actual wealth, and owned a golden brothel. Some people loved bling. And ladies of the night.

The Cobra was Rae's key to getting the Flower of Life and Death. The trick was making Lord Popenjoy believe she'd be useful.

Being plunged in warm water eased the wracking pains, so Rae was used to frequent baths. She wasn't used to baths in Eyam, where jasmine water, orange water, lemon water and rose water were sprinkled over her head and breasts from silver vases. There was no hot and cold running water, so Rae bathed in sadly lukewarm bathwater while plotting her costume. The Cobra believed in presentation, so Rae had Emer put on her best day dress. The difference between day dresses and evening gowns was evening gowns showed even more bosom. Her best day dress still showed plenty. It was stiff white satin, scarlet threads trailing up the skirt in blooming roses, thorny briars and vines that circled Rae's waist.

Rae felt evil and cute as she stepped out of her chambers. Key waited in the stairwell. His face lit when he saw Rae, oddly sharp canines glinting. Her first friend in Eyam.

Rae purred, "Let's catch a cobra."

Emer led them into a courtyard with a huge marble fountain. A statue stood in the centre, a woman with her face in her hands and water circling her head like silver hair. Someone was brutally killed in this fountain, Rae recalled, a bloodstain left on the white marble that never washed away.

Except the marble beneath the rippling water was clear as a stretch of new snow. The murder must not have happened yet. Rae wished she could remember who died.

They climbed a flight of steps to reach the walkway wrapping around the palace walls. Rae plucked excitedly at Key's sleeve and craned her neck to drink in Themesvar, capital of Eyam. City of many colours, set between the abyss of despair and the mountains of truth. A city that was wonderful all the time as every city could be occasionally. When you visited the city, and saw a flash of how you'd imagined it proved true. Or when you lived in the city, and a rare sense of wonder visited you.

The walled palace lay within a walled city like two rings of a tree trunk. The palace wall was warm sandstone and the city wall and barbican beyond were tall grey limestone. Beyond grey walls and city gates was the deep green horseshoe of the Waiting Elms forest and the snow-capped curve of the mountain range. This land was a matryoshka of circles: rings within rings, wheels within wheels, and plots within plots. Sunlight gleamed through Eyam's smoky, shrouding clouds onto copper domes gone minty green, laid by sloping roofs of rust red, slate grey and bronze. A broad paved path stretched from the palace gates to the barbican. Lined by guild houses, the Chain of Commerce was interrupted by squares like jewels in a necklace. The Tears of the Dead River cut knife bright and the Trespasser river snaked a silvery path through the city's colours. In that riot of colour, a single sprawling gold building stretched out like a lion among cats.

"Wow, the Golden Brothel is hard to look at without sunglasses," remarked Rae. "Was it necessary to build a massive gold building for ladies of the night?"

"Actual ladies don't mention those words," Emer said in a chilling voice.

"Why are words more important than reality?" Key sounded genuinely curious.

"Words change reality," snapped Emer. "Anyone who hears her won't think she's a lady, and she doesn't know how to be anything else."

Key nodded thoughtfully. Maybe Emer being older and wiser than Rae was why getting along with Key was easier. Or maybe it was that Rahela had never betrayed Key.

Wait. Emer wasn't older than Lady Rahela.

"Hey, how old am I?" Rae demanded.

"You're twenty-four."

Emer's announcement was funereal. Rahela was the same age as Lord Marius and the king, young for a man but too old for a woman to marry.

Great news for Rae. She hadn't expected to live to be twenty-four.

"I'm nineteen," contributed Key. "Counting by the Death Day."

The Death Day was the date legend said the dread ravine was created. Amid gratification she'd guessed Key's age right, Rae had a realization about his easy familiarity with her. Key thought Rae was in her mid-twenties, so he probably looked up to her. She'd been good at leading a team once, before her team discarded her. Prophet, vixen, traitor: this world was forcing her into a bewildering array of roles, but Rae knew how to take care of her friends.

"An abyss foundling!" muttered Emer, as if her darkest suspicions were confirmed.

Only Rae knew what her scorn masked. Emer was an abyss foundling too, an unwanted child abandoned on the edge of the dread ravine. Most of those children fell. A few were saved. None were loved.

People in Eyam said, the sparks fly upward . On the edge, children breathed in fire and darkness that stained them forever.

Real life didn't work like that, but this world went by different rules. Emer would be the axe-murdering Iron Maid one day. Key was a various-implements murderer already.

Emer walked demurely behind Rae, but gave the impression of stalking. Emer was a towering cliff with a warning sign, and Key should wear a nametag reading ‘Volatile and Unreliable'. Rae could handle this. Carefully.

"A little help, minions. I can't remember what my relationship with the Golden Cobra might be."

She and Key both looked expectantly at Emer, who sighed.

"You hardly have one. The Cobra didn't favour you, and you have no use for those who aren't admirers."

"All that's about to change," Rae told her. "Evil wins again!"

"When did evil win last time?"

Key had a point. Evil didn't win often in stories. Usually good triumphed, but that meant the forces of darkness were statistically due a win.

Rae made an expansive gesture to Themesvar, snake bracelet catching the light. "Let's take the city. Evil wins at last."

The cynicism in Key's voice relaxed, as if he didn't believe her but might like to. "Lead the way, my lady."

The Cobra's house was shaped from the same cliff stone as the rest of the palace. New buildings in the palace weren't allowed, but the established aristocracy all owned townhouses within the palace walls. The Cobra must have acquired the dwelling from an impoverished courtier.

The maid who answered their knock wore the palace uniform and a cobra symbol on her breast. The court objected to the Cobra giving his servants valuables, but the Cobra insisted his people required large golden identification pins in addition to lavish salaries. Among nobles, Lord Popenjoy had many friends and many enemies, but he was universally popular with his staff.

The maid tried to shut the door in their faces. "My lord does not rise before noon."

Rae gave her a winning smile, and the maid's eyes widened. It seemed ‘winning' read as ‘sultry' on Rahela.

"I am Lady Rahela Domitia, and I am burdened with glorious prophecy! Also a glorious bosom, but that's not relevant. I should have been executed today, yet I stand before you as the king's prophet. Ask Lord Popenjoy if he wants to know how I did it."

The maid nodded slowly. Rae let her close the door.

For a time nothing happened except Key prowling back and forth in front of the manor. Apparently, Key got restless if ten minutes went by without an act of violence. Rae wondered if he might have ADHD like Alison in junior high who had a hard time staying in her seat. Though Alison wouldn't dream of breaking anybody's nose.

Rae sat for hours in chemotherapy, only rising to drag her IV into a bathroom. The first time you went to the bathroom during chemo you pissed red, the colour of horror-movie blood. Waiting outside a door was no problem.

Eventually, the doors opened. "Lord Popenjoy will receive you."

The maid led the way up a flight of stairs, past a large frame empty save for scrawled graffiti reading ‘IMAGINE AN ANCESTRAL PORTRAIT'.

Glass was everywhere in the Cobra's house. Glass broke more easily in Eyam and – if Rae had the timeline right – the glassblowers' guild had recently been destroyed in an incident with the undead, so the Cobra's windows were more expensive and ostentatious than gold. All the great houses in Themesvar had grand balconies from which to contemplate the dread ravine. The Cobra's balcony was decorated with stained glass in a blaze of orange, lemon and strawberry shades, turning even a dim morning into a sunrise. The maid led them down the radiant passage towards a pair of double doors. The door handles were in the sinuous shapes of snakes. Torches with winding scarlet tongues burned on either side of the doors. The flames leaped, and both doors opened without a touch.

"Dark magic," muttered Emer.

"Hydraulics?" whispered Rae, under the sound of music surging.

These books weren't set in any actual historical time period, given the enchanted weapons and the restless dead. Still, Rae hadn't expected club music.

Nobody had electronic instruments or computers, but a band was attempting to create the same effect on a piano that looked almost like a keyboard, plus bass guitars and vigorously beaten drums. Two women in slinky mermaid gowns sang through artfully muffling veils, with a lavishly embroidered tapestry as their backdrop. The whole room was rich fabrics and a profusion of light. Except for what lay in the elaborately carved display case. The long orichal steel knife didn't quite fit.

Across the room, another set of doors burst open. The singers crooned, " Wooh ." The beat picked up.

A young man entered, glittering from head to toe. He wore a herigaut, a costume Alice had looked up when they read about it and Rae was interested to see in person. It was a full-length robe of amber silk with hanging sleeves. The scalloped edges of the curtainlike sleeves were thick with gold thread. More gold thread twined through his rope braids, piled high on his head and falling in jet-black twists to a belt of shining gold links. Ornaments were thick as summer wildflowers in the black crest of his hair, star-bright trinkets suspended at intervals in his braids and jingling like wind chimes as he moved. Gold paint traced delicate shapes around his eyes, shimmering against his dark brown skin and inscribed along the angle of his jaw. He swayed to the beat of the music, arms an unselfconscious curve over his head. His hanging sleeves became a glittering waterfall pouring back from those arms, where gold bracelets circled the muscle around both forearms and biceps. Jewellery on men was illegal in Eyam, so the Cobra was a rebel with his hidden bracelets. He kicked up his feet as he danced through the room, shoes soled with crimson.

Directly beneath a chandelier coruscating with light, crystals set like rattles on the ends of golden snakes' tails, was a red velvet conversation sofa. The man in gold threw himself down onto the red velvet, crossed one long leg over another, and gave Rae a little wave.

"Welcome to the House of the Cobra."

"Uh," said Rae. "Hey. Do you always greet your guests in such style?"

The Golden Cobra's richly amused drawl wrapped around her like a velvet blanket embroidered with glittering thread. "If you want to make an entrance, make the whole scene."

Rae nodded. "So, I hear you have a lot of spies."

There was a hitch in the music as the musicians' playing faltered. Lord Popenjoy didn't flicker a gold-tipped eyelash. "I'm modestly well-endowed with spies. Not to brag."

"Sure," said Rae. "Like Key, right?"

The Cobra's lounge became less sprawling.

Key's smile jolted briefly out of place. "How did you know?"

Rae shrugged. "You want money, the Cobra's the richest guy in town. I ain't saying you're a gold digger, but—that is in fact what I'm saying."

"I was electrified to hear Key say that when distressed, you call on the names of your lovers," drawled the Cobra. "Jesus and Batman?"

Holy sacrilegious misunderstanding.

"I do not have a romantic relationship with those individuals!"

"Are you angry with me?" Key sounded guilty, and rather delighted to be so.

Rae winked. "Nah. You're my evil minion, vile treachery is part of the deal." She turned back to the Cobra. "You heard what happened last night?"

The Cobra yawned. "I hear about what happened last night every morning. So you're a holy prophet? Congratulations. Are you here to tell my fortune? Please say I'll be swept off my feet by a tall dark stranger. Tell me she's a pirate."

Lady Rahela sashayed forward with purpose. Swagger was the first step to being confident. She knew the rules of a villainous stalk. Head high, neck long, think murder .

"I have important information. In return, I want something from you. Are you willing to trade?"

"Could be. I hear you told His Majesty tales of a glorious future. What have you got for me?"

Lines of gold paint forked around the Cobra's eyes. He was more of an eye smiler than a mouth smiler, but it was a nice eye smile.

This was going to be a hard sell. Rae had to deliver it convincingly. "If someone read your story in the book of fate and it had a sad ending, would you want to hear the tale?"

"What a very interesting question," murmured the Cobra.

"Someone's going to kill you," proclaimed Rae. "Wanna know who?"

The books contained much discussion of the Cobra's cowardice. He refused to fight duels, and lived in fear of the Emperor. Rae expected a big reaction.

The Cobra tugged idly on a braid. "Let's continue this conversation in private."

Emer snarled as she sprang forward. "Any lady left alone with the Cobra would be ruined!"

The Cobra turned to Rae's minions. "I must insist. No offence, but you both terrify me. If made nervous, I come over all shy and quiet."

He batted shimmering lashes in Emer's direction. She stood unmoved as an oak tree.

The Cobra sighed. "How about a compromise? Everybody exits the room, except me and Lady Rahela. I leave the door cracked open. I whisper a secret. Lady Rahela decides if she wants to shut the door."

Over the dozen hours she'd spent in Eyam, many had made insinuations about Rahela's past. The Cobra, with whom no one's virtue was safe, hadn't mentioned it. When Emer brought up the matter, he hadn't sneered at the idea Rahela had any reputation left to protect.

Rae decided. "All right."

"You heard the lady. Take five," the Cobra told his band. "You guys sound great."

The band dispersed. A singer in a purple mermaid gown trailed a hand down the Cobra's bright sleeve before she left. Their boss shutting himself up to conspire with strange women appeared to be business as usual.

The singer also dropped a wink at Key as she swanned by. Key and Emer didn't depart until Rae nodded to them. Even then, Emer left the door conspicuously ajar.

The Cobra motioned for Rae to join him on the sofa.

A conversation sofa was two attached seats facing in opposite directions so you could whisper in someone's ear. The winding spine of this sofa was serpent shaped, the wood carved with a pattern of scales. The Cobra rested on his elbows, one hand loosely clasped over the sofa snake's mahogany head. Its forked tongue peeked between his fingers. The Cobra watched as Rae joined him. He was all glittering brightness, except those dark, steady eyes.

Rae waited to hear salacious gossip about the court, or the king.

Instead he murmured, "Girl, where are you from?"

Rae gestured vaguely. "The palace?"

The Golden Cobra leaned forward. This close, Rae saw tiny painted dragons spreading gold wings on his cheekbones, dragons' tails curling in the slight hollows beneath.

"That's not what I'm asking. Where did you live, before you walked into the story?" The wicked Marquis of Popenjoy dropped his voice even lower. "I'm a New York City boy myself."

Rae got up and shut the door.