Chapter Fourteen The Cobra Sends and Receives a Message
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Cobra Sends and Receives a Message
“You don’t seem frightened of me,” said the Emperor.
“I have no idea how I gave you that impression,” the Golden Cobra snapped.
“Because I am terrified of you. Due to your many, many murders. There are other reasons, but it’s mainly the piles of bodies you leave in your wake.
They upset me, who can say why, and on that note, I must leave immediately.
I can’t stay in your presence, sire, on account of being so frightened. ”
Lord Marius made a bow. “The marquis is well known to be the coward of the court.”
The Cobra cast a sparkling amused glance over his shoulder. “I can’t deny it. I am a coward.”
Little did the Cobra know it was not the Emperor he should fear.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
Marius woke on the cold ground from a dream of tall towers on fire, saw red, and grasped the hilt of Starving for Blood. The sky had burned crimson when the Emperor rose. Eric commented people could learn to tolerate even a sky on fire, but Marius had no intention of tolerating anything.
The red glint coalesced into red hair. “Oh, Lord Marius,” purred Amelia. “Are you pleased to see me, or is that your enormous sword?”
Marius only looked at her.
She went pale. “Very well, it’s always your enormous sword and you’re never pleased to see anyone.”
He moved her aside, in as gentlemanly a fashion as possible. “I am not pleased to see you flitting wildly about the camp at night. What if you were killed by ghouls and rose before we ever knew you were missing?”
Amelia huffed. “I was only talking with Captain Diarmat. I’m certain the valiant captain would protect me from ghouls.” She winked a glittery eyelid. “Wouldn’t you, soldier?”
Diarmat cleared his throat. “I’d do my best.”
“Trust me to be clever and survive, Lord Marius. I’m good at that.”
Tomorrow they would reach the manor. Marius would see his family again. The Cobra had insisted he try to sleep. Marius reluctantly agreed, on the condition Eric let Diarmat guard his tent.
Then this woman chose to occupy Diarmat’s attention and wander past Marius’s sleeping place. He could have killed her.
Clawing dread made him rude. “I don’t trust you. I don’t even know your real name.”
He knew it was not Amelia. That was a name of the higher aristocracy. Even a lady of the newer noble families would not be permitted such a name. Each strata of society had their own naming conventions, the lowest of the low being named for objects. Like Key.
Amelia was the Cobra’s friend, who ran the business side of the Golden Brothel.
His friends Octavian and Lucius had visited brothels when they were alive.
Marius never had, but he heard his friends speak of how they worked.
Often in the brothels you pretended to be other than you were.
Octavian and Lucius said the women who worked there frequently acted the part of aristocratic maidens.
Amelia lifted her chin. “Do you know what happens to ladies who lose their virtue before marriage, and whose loss of virtue becomes publicly known?”
Marius blinked. “They throw themselves in the Tears of the Dead river.”
Everyone knew that. A gentleman should never endanger a lady’s virtue, because she would suffer so much if it were discovered.
“Very good, Lord Marius, but use your imagination if you have one, and picture something wild,” snapped Amelia.
“What if a lady were to lose her virtue, yet still for some reason wish to live? Even if family and friends turned her from their door and wanted her in the river. Where could she go, except somewhere they enjoy women who can act like a real lady? My name is Amelia.”
A crackle upon the forest floor broke the silence. Neither Amelia nor Diarmat seemed to hear. Marius suspected it was a ghoul, but the sound was still far away, and before he went for the kill Marius had to do something else.
He bowed his head. “I beg your pardon.”
Amelia sighed. “No need. It’s good to expand your view of the world. Life is more complicated and less rigid than a lord can know, but transformations happen. Take it from a real lady who became…” She trailed a hand down her garish, revealing gown. “What you see before you.”
Captain Diarmat said, in his steady voice, “A real lady?”
Shockingly, Amelia blushed.
Cold realization, like morning dew through a blanket, seeped into Marius’s mind. Amelia didn’t usually purr scandalous nothings. She had only behaved so once before. When the Cobra wanted her to distract Marius.
Marius stood, sword in hand, towering over them both.
“What is Eric doing that he doesn’t want me to know about?”
“Oh, I wasn’t sent to distract you,” said Amelia brightly. “I was sent to distract the captain here so the Cobra could slip away. Then you woke, and I had to distract two men at once. Fortunately, I’m very talented, and it’s not my first time with two men.”
Marius strode forward. Brave though she was, Amelia flinched back, grasping at Diarmat’s arm. Marius lifted the flap of the Cobra’s tent and found the bedroll empty.
He charged into the shadows of the trees, towards the sound of the dead.
Marius reached his destination with breath tearing in his throat and the sting of raked branches on his face, and found his suspicions correct.
A ghoul stood in a woodland clearing, a man who must have been strong in life.
The ghoul was still relatively fresh, the stain from a sword through the chest still a little red around the tear.
Those were the worst kind, the dead whose bodies still moved smoothly: the newly risen and hungry.
Naturally, Eric was advancing on the ghoul with his hand outstretched.
“Here, undead monster,” cooed the Cobra. “Nice undead monster. Who’s a good undead monster? Is it you?”
Marius had sworn his life and soul away to a maniac.
“Eric.” Marius kept his voice desperately low. “Get back here.”
Eric returned, voice equally low, “I’m trying something out.”
“Are you trying to be consumed by the undead? Bandits are one thing, but this—”
Bright as sparks from a fire in the moonlight sifting through a tree’s leaves, Eric’s beringed fingers gently brushed the dead face. Rage choked Marius. If he had Eric in his hands, he would have strangled Eric himself.
The ghoul’s eyes were boiling pits of hunger, but though satisfaction was inches away, it did not turn its face to bite.
“Did you think I didn’t notice the ghouls were after me?” Eric’s voice stayed maddeningly calm. “Don’t underestimate me, my lord. I noticed, and I waited my chance to slip away and find out why. The ghouls aren’t trying to kill me. The ghouls are trying to take me back to the Emperor.”
And what did the Emperor, who had torn Octavian and countless others apart, want with Eric?
Before Marius could ask, Eric drew back his hand – which was a great relief – only to slide his hand in his pocket and produce a note. He waved the note in front of the glazed dead eyes.
“Bring this message back to the palace,” the Cobra instructed the ghoul.
On the folded piece of parchment was the name Lady Rahela Domitia in Eric’s exuberant scrawl, and a little sketch of a woman with an hourglass shape and a skirt trailing red as blood.
“I fear you’ve mistaken the undead for an errand boy,” observed Marius. “Do you imagine this ghoul will deliver a letter to Lady Rahela?”
The Cobra shook his head. “I’m sure it will go back to its master.”
Eric’s braids spilled loose over his shoulders. He should be sleeping, not attracting the attention of hungry ghouls and their terrible commander. If Marius were a ghoul, Marius would have bitten him.
Marius crushed down the senseless, furious thought, and kept his voice level. “And is the message safe for the Emperor to read?”
“Safe enough,” said the Cobra. “Key can’t read.”
Few of the lower classes knew their letters. Marius was already aware Cauldron folk couldn’t read. It took his breath away just the same, to know an uneducated brute sat on the throne a prince had once been trained to ascend.
“And who could Key trust to read to him?” The Cobra’s face softened with sympathy for the Emperor, who had hacked Marius’s king to pieces. “I want to see what he does. Whether he decides to trust Rahela with the letter, or not.”
There seemed no reason why he should.
The Cobra kept holding out the message. When the ghoul moved, Marius tensed to spring, but the dead thing only cupped its dead hands. The paper fluttered in the air like a falling bird as Eric dropped his note into the ghoul’s keeping.
Even then, the Cobra didn’t back away. He looked into the ghoul’s milky eyes as if trying to make out someone’s silhouette in a dirty window. “If you can hear through the dead, Key, listen. I cannot come. I have something else to do.”
“Hear through them? Can he?”
Eric and Prime Minister Pio referred to spies as their eyes and ears, but they did not mean that literally. What nightmarish lives would people lead, if everywhere in the kingdom the Emperor’s eyes might be watching?
“I don’t know if he can yet,” Eric answered, gaze still on the ghoul, hand outstretched as though he could reach out to somebody who wasn’t there. “One day, he will have complete control over them.”
A tiny shiver passed over the ghoul’s cold skin, as infinitesimal as a single ripple on the surface of a lake when the wind changed direction. Marius dived through the shadows of the whispering wood, caught Eric’s shoulders and pulled him back.
Just in time. The ghoul’s teeth snapped shut a fraction from Eric’s fingers. If those teeth had found their mark, they would have gone down to the bone.
Marius gritted out, “I don’t think he has complete control over them yet.”
The ghoul’s eyes devoured them, jaws churning. Marius shoved Eric back and spun Starving for Blood. Reflected moonshine on the blade sent the woodland shadows flying in a cascade of red and blue refracted light. Marius beckoned the dead forward.