Chapter Five The Villainess Calls Gods from the Machine
CHAPTER FIVE
The Villainess Calls Gods from the Machine
“The Oracle sends a message from your mother,” intoned Lord Marius, hands clasped behind his back. As Head of the Divine Order, it was his duty to tell the Emperor. Even if personally he did not wish to.
The Emperor leaned back in his throne. If the man was a soldier under his command, Marius would have him whipped for that look. “Does she, now?”
“The Oracle requests you visit her cave, so your mother may see you through the Oracle’s pool.”
Marius was a devotee of the Great Goddess, like his own mother and sister. Golden and calm, wise and merciful, the Great Goddess loved her worshippers as her children, and her own child above all else. The Great Goddess could guide even this wayward son.
“I’m taking over the world,” claimed the Emperor. “I wish I could make time, but I am so busy.”
If the Emperor were under his command, Marius would also have him whipped for his disgraceful posture.
He swallowed his ire. “The Great Goddess wishes you to know she loves you.”
From the way the Emperor’s face softened slightly around his queen, Marius thought that would matter.
The Emperor sneered. “Touching.”
Apparently not.
“The Oracle sent her own message. If you do not come now, you will bitterly regret it.”
What sharp teeth the Once and Forever Emperor – the Corrupt and Divine, the Lost and Found Prince, Master of the Dread Ravine, Commander of the Living and the Dead – had.
The Emperor bared them in a humourless grin.
“If she thinks I know fear, she does not know me. Tell the goddess and her lackey I will not be threatened. I will not be commanded. And I have no need of their assistance.”
That was the Emperor’s mistake. Sooner or later, everybody needs help.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
Rae didn’t go down to the lowest chamber in the tower, which would be too lonely with none of the vipers there. She’d called it their lair, the place she and Key and Emer schemed, with the Cobra and Lia likely to pop in for a little wickedness.
Nor did Rae wish to inhabit the room at the centre, the chamber of the royal favourite. Instead she kept climbing the tower, higher and higher, until she reached the turreted room at the very top.
She fled to Lia’s room, with its gauzy white maiden’s bed, blue curtains and a wide window looking out upon the troubled skies of Eyam.
Near the window stood Lia’s little dressing table, where the true heroine sat and humbly combed her golden hair without a maid.
Lia had Rae’s maid, so Rae could have Lia’s chamber.
Rae’s ivory and red skirts dragged across the threshold, smeared with the blood and dust of this long night.
A heroine was always tidy, or had woodland creatures clearing up after her. Villainously, Rae stripped down to her white linen shift, hurled her soiled, bloodstained rags on the pearl and silver mosaics, and dropped onto the stool in front of the dressing table.
The first thing Rae glimpsed in the mirror was the Abandon All Hope Diamond necklace, its reflection dark, glittering treasure lost in a bronze sea.
The real necklace weighed on Rae, bringing back the memory of ghouls’ hands holding her down, fastening diamonds about her neck as the Emperor faced her and the realization sank in of who he was, of what she’d done.
She had been so desperate to get the Flower of Life and Death, and so convinced the characters of the book weren’t real, she let Key be whipped without a murmur to accomplish her goals.
She drew Key into her plans, and he attacked the king to defend her.
Rae had talked the king out of executing her maid Emer, but not her guard Key. Her wiles and schemes had doomed him.
Rae remembered telling her new guard the history of this necklace, the first day she arrived in Eyam. A king gives this diamond to his queen to display she is beloved above crown and kingdom, worth a hundred lives and a thousand sins.
She told him the necklace was cursed, that the great jewel at its centre had been discovered in the abyss at the cost of many lives. The beloved queen the necklace was made for had died young.
If Rae recalled correctly, many of the beloved queens who wore the Abandon All Hope Diamond died young.
She didn’t know if, by giving her the cursed necklace, the Emperor meant to tell her she was beloved or damned.
More precious than a kingdom or more guilty than a thousand sins.
Or if the Abandon All Hope was simply a part of the Emperor’s grand plan for revenge, meant to trick Rae into believing she was beloved, and they would be married.
Until the moment he ripped her heart out.
Rae fumbled for the clasp of the necklace, fashioned in the shape of two serpents each trying to eat the other. She couldn’t bear the weight for another second.
She found she could not undo the clasp, any more than she could undo what she’d done to Key. The two golden serpents seemed locked together, devouring each other.
No matter how much Rae clawed and strained, twisted to see the clasp in the mirror, scrabbled at gems and gold until her fingertips were raw, she could not remove the Abandon All Hope Diamond.
Desperate after all other efforts failed, she tried to physically tear off the cursed necklace.
Its intricate chains stayed fastened in a cold cage for her throat.
The great black and red jewel known as the God’s Eye hung heavily over her heart.
Rae felt tears burn her eyes. She got a grip by sinking her teeth into her lip until she tasted blood, and telling herself off for being spoiled.
Rae had become so accustomed to Lady Rahela’s lifestyle that she headed automatically to a mirror, expecting her maid to come and brush her hair.
She missed Emer. Emer was great with hair and better at judging Rae’s every move.
Emer didn’t know all Rae’s secrets, but she knew enough that Emer was the only person in this world who called her Rae.
Emer was dour, loyal and destined to hack her way into the aristocracy through many axe murders.
Though Rae had probably messed that up too.
From the window at the top of the tower, Rae could see the city beyond the palace – the ruined walls, the ruin of the story.
The stretch of land between the city walls and the Waiting Elms woods was known as the Waiting Waste because it had been whispering woods up to the city walls until the trees were felled.
On all other nights, the Waiting Waste was a dark, quiet space.
Today the shadows teemed with movement Rae knew must be the raiders.
The dead army was holding them back, but for how long?
To the other side of the Palace on the Edge lay the abyss, from which the Emperor had risen.
Rae stared at the mirror, at her own distress. She focused hard so she wouldn’t cry.
Glass was rare in Eyam, breaking as easily as the broken moon overhead.
Blood magic seemed to work through metal or jewels or flesh, but could only shatter a reflection.
The mirror before Rae was bronze, showing a woman with long, dark hair, a figure not just full but spilling over, and an evil smile beneath a beauty mark.
The hair and curves were Lady Rahela’s. Rae didn’t have hair or curves back home. The evil smile was all her own.
She expected to be waited on. She had got Key killed. Anyone reading this must think she was an entitled bitch.
In the mirror, an evil queen lifted her chin.
Fine. So her only chance to get out was lost? Rae refused to accept that. She wanted another.
Before she came to this world, Rae was told by a mystery woman visiting her in hospital that she only had one chance at the Flower of Life and Death.
If Rae didn’t get it, she wouldn’t wake up.
But it was important to examine the statements of enigmatic strangers.
In all stories, enigmatic strangers loved to make misleading statements.
The woman hadn’t actually said Rae would die.
If Rae still slept at the hospital in her own world, there was hope. Rae hadn’t needed a Flower to enter this world. The door of her hospital room had transformed into a portal here, solely because of the mystery woman’s will.
She remembered that poor guard Conn, making the gesture that signified he followed the Great Goddess.
Rae had read about characters making the religious gesture before, but never seen them do it.
He performed the action of opening a door.
The golden mosaics of the throne room showed the last action of the goddess on this earth: the Great Goddess, opening a door in the sun to leave the Great God, who murdered their child.
She went somewhere else, out of the god’s reach.
Where exactly, Rae had to ask herself, did the goddess go?
The goddess must have opened a portal into another world.
That must be an unusual skill. The mystery woman’s identity was starting to seem a whole lot less mysterious.
Rae had always known gods existed in Time of Iron, and never considered what that meant.
In early Greek plays, gods were always rushing to interfere with mortals.
Playwrights stopped writing that, because everyone thought it was terrible storytelling to have a power from above conveniently show up to fix everything.
There was even a phrase for it: deus ex machina.
The god from the machine. Rae’s father, an English teacher, used to say, “It all goes to hell when the gods show up.”
“Hello!” Rae knocked loudly on the mirror. “I have complaints I wish to bring to the proprietor of this establishment. I demand to see a god about this!”
Convenience sounded good to Rae. She was putting in an order for one god from the machine.