Chapter Thirty-One He Who Came Before the Cobra
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
He Who Came Before the Cobra
The other squires avoided Marius on the training grounds. Even the prince. Everyone except Lord Lucius, proficient in battle, though not Marius’s match. Lucius laughed when they fought, and when Marius won Lucius never showed either resentment or fear.
Sometimes he thought Lucius was his only true friend.
Sometimes, years after Lucius’s death, Marius still thought so.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
The First Duke built Ancilley Manor as a fortress.
The manor itself was a solid quadrangle with high, grey walls on both sides.
At the centre lay the training grounds and stable yards.
Each wing joined with the main house but jutted out, each corner defended by ramparts and a square tower.
The east wing was for the duke and the ducal military forces, with the training grounds lying directly outside the duke’s door.
The west for Valerius women, as far from the east wing and the underground brides’ chamber as they could get. The north for servants.
The south wing was intended for guests. Given the Valerius family’s murderous reputation, they had few visitors. Even the Cobra and Marius’s considerable retinue had chosen to be crowded in the warmer, cleaner chambers of the west and north wings. The south wing had been shut up for years.
Until the dead came to call. The servants had aired out a room, but Lucius must be sleeping in mildewed sheets and cobwebs. If the dead slept.
Marius had posted twice the usual amount of sentries, half to watch without the walls and half to watch within. Childhood friend or not, Lucius must be monitored near Eric, Marius’s family, and their people.
Eric had not spoken to Marius since Lucius’s arrival. A few times it seemed he might speak, only to turn away instead. Marius was beginning to wonder if he had offended Eric in some way.
Marius often said the wrong thing, but Eric could usually interpret it right.
For years at court Marius had been suspicious and hostile when it came to the Cobra. It shouldn’t bother Marius to be on bad terms with him now.
Even Captain Diarmat couldn’t keep up during spars with Marius in his current mood. Marius sent everyone off the training grounds when he almost broke the young bandit Sparrow’s arm.
Wielding a sword was a comfort he had been denied too long. Marius stayed out on the training grounds alone, cutting at air and shadow and starlight.
Until a blade met his, the ring a welcome bell inside his head.
Marius glanced up, startled, to catch the gleam of Lucius’s smile. “Been a long time,” Lucius murmured.
Since they were boys. Since they were squires together, who would be great knights one day. Marius had never been knighted. Lucius had died after being a knight less than a year.
“I will still win,” said Marius.
Marius disengaged. When Lucius lunged, Marius parried, putting Valerius strength behind the blow.
It should have knocked Lucius off his feet into the dust, made his blade drop from his nerveless fingers.
Instead, it knocked Lucius back half a step, and Lucius was quick to step in again.
Their blades fell into ringing rhythm like the march of an army, or rain on armour.
Lucius didn’t pant from exertion as the living did. “I’m stronger and faster now.”
Marius repeated, “I will still win.”
He had no doubt of that. But it was a relief, to be less careful.
“You always did,” Lucius admitted easily. “I never minded, did I?”
Marius made an admission in turn. “No. I believed the thinking and talking dead were no longer the people they had been, but you seem like—” Not the same, not that. “The same person.”
His friend was changed, but not lost. Marius had never understood until now why people opened doors when ghouls called their name, even though they knew better. They wanted it to be possible. They wanted the dead they loved, and the old days they loved, to come back.
They wanted a miracle.
“I am the same person,” said Lucius. “It pleased me to come to you, and tell you that the Great God is coming to you. To you, not the Emperor, and the Divine Order will be yours and the Great God’s. Only say the words. Let the Great God into your heart.”
Marius let himself be curious. “What is the Great God like?”
“Very handsome.” Lucius smiled. “He looks like you.”
Marius scoffed as Lucius went in low, trying to get a blow in past his guard. Lucius always teased like that when Marius refused to go to brothels or flirt.
With his easy warmth and charm, the Cobra used to remind Marius of Lucius.
But Lucius was a knight, honourable and true.
Marius never doubted Lucius. He had known Lucius before Lady Katalin pretended she was sweet to learn secrets from Marius, before the Cobra introduced himself to Marius by blackmailing him.
When you were young, the world seemed cleaner.
It was easier for Marius to trust, back then.
“I visited the manor once, when I was alive,” Lucius said, offhand. “So I could understand you better.”
“And did you?”
Marius would have been terrified if he’d known, back then. Terrified his friend would see the bridal chamber with the chains, and never see Marius the same way again.
“I didn’t meet your father. Though I would be happy to do so now.”
“I think not.”
Thanks to Marius, his father would be easy prey.
Lucius shrugged and inclined his head towards the tower where Caracalla would spin.
“I met your sweet sister when she was a little child and not the lovely young lady she is now. I saw the doors she and your lady mother lock against every threat. Do they still lock their doors against you? It must feel like your own family sees you as a wild beast to be caged.”
“That is what I am,” Marius answered coldly.
He remembered leaving his father to crawl and bleed upon the ground.
Marius was ashamed to think how long he had waited, begging his mother and Caracalla to come out, to show him they were safe.
Listening to the scared whimpers behind the door, until he understood they would not venture out until he was gone.
Nobody was safe with a Valerius. Not even a Valerius.
For a time they fought in silence. Lucius might have more strength than a mortal man, but though the sword he wielded was orichal steel, it was no match against Starving for Blood.
Against the black curtain of night, Marius’s blade notched the other a dozen times.
Even though orichal steel burned red, silvery-blue sparks flew as though Marius chipped at a block of ice.
“Lady Caracalla seems terribly fond of the marquis,” remarked Lucius.
“They are betrothed,” Marius informed him stiffly.
Moonlight turned Lucius’s pale gaze opaque. “So I gathered from watching your sister. I would not have known from watching him.”
Eric did not act like an engaged man, but he had accepted the betrothal dagger when the duchess offered it. Affairs of the heart mattered little to the Cobra, that was plain.
Once, Marius resented Eric’s cavalier attitude towards the betrothal, but now he had no right.
When Caracalla flew out of the manor to greet them, Marius realized that from the instant he heard Eric was in danger, after he killed for Eric and swore to him and journeyed through the wild woods with him, in all that time…
Marius had not given his sister’s betrothal a moment’s thought.
Whenever she saw Marius, Caracalla ran to his arms. For Marius’s sake, she pretended she had never cowered from him behind a locked door, that she had never feared him. She deserved to live under the steady, certain warmth of kindness.
Of course Caracalla wanted the Cobra. Of course she must have him.
She deserved everything. If his sister wished to carve out Marius’s insides, he would hand her the blade.
“Your sister as a bride, and the oath of blood and gold,” Lucius murmured. “The Golden Cobra has received all the great treasures of the Valerius line.”
“He didn’t ask for any of them.”
“No,” said Lucius. “I saw that. He would not even command you, would he?”
Unlike Eric, Lucius was of Marius’s world. Lucius understood what swearing the oath had meant to Marius.
“Your Lord Popenjoy sleeps with men, too,” Lucius said brightly. “Did you know that?”
Marius’s mind reeled.
Instead of demanding, Which men? Marius answered, “Why should that concern me? I don’t sleep with anyone.”
“I remember,” Lucius’s voice was mocking. “You always try your best to be good.”
When Eric asked to hang new curtains in the manor, Marius had not realized they would let in so much light.
The old, heavy hangings blocked out the world at their windows, cut the manor off and shielded it in the same way as their stone walls and enchanted weapons.
That was the way it had always been, the way it should be.
The world needed to be protected from what a Valerius could do.
As Marius looked to the window, he saw through the gauzy curtains lights burning and shadows dancing.
Faintly, through the thick stone walls, he heard the sound of Eric’s awful music.
Little wonder that Eric, who changed every room he walked in, thought he could alter the past and the future, wash bloody history clean and promise golden joy.
What do you want? Eric had asked. A sweet question said in the sweetest voice, understanding nothing at all. Marius was born in the cold stone manor, with its chamber of chains. Marius had struck down his father and heard his sister whimper in terror of him.
Marius couldn’t want anything. He couldn’t want anyone.
In silence, Marius turned from the light to battle in the dark. The oblivion of violence was the only relief possible, blade against blade, the ache of muscles easier than any other ache. But even the relentless dead could not win against him.
As their swords met Lucius spoke, and Marius believed his words. “No matter how much you try, you will never belong anywhere. The saints hate and fear you. The sinners have no use for you at all. The mortal world doesn’t want you, but we do.”
Marius struck the blade from Lucius’s hands. He could have struck Starving for Blood through the dead man’s heart, but he did not.
Lucius circled him, as though they were still fighting. “The abyss calls, Marius. We know what you were made for. No more futile struggles, no more impossible choices. Only surrender. The abyss wants you for its own.”