Chapter Thirty-Five The Maiden to the Manor Burn
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Maiden to the Manor Burn
“I live to serve,” swore Lord Lucius.
“Myself,” he added, once his master had departed.
Time of Lies, ANONYMOUS
Ancilley Manor was grey by day, but silver in the moonlight.
Caracalla met with her undead conspirator in the shadow of the walkway over the practice grounds. Everyone fled training as soon as dusk fell and Marius let them escape. As night deepened, sentries would be posted. This moment between twilight and full dark was their chance.
Not even the stars seemed to dare shine, and the wind held its breath, as Caracalla crept with Lucius across the practice grounds towards the east wing. “So all I must do is persuade Father to invite you in?”
“Exactly.”
Caracalla tapped gently upon the door, and whispered, “Father never does anything I want. My plan is this. If I run in scared, and beg Father not to say something, he will say it. He will think it’s funny to scare me. So tell me, exactly what do you want me to say?”
“Was it ‘Open your heart to the Great God’?” inquired the Cobra.
Caracalla jumped and looked wildly across the pale dust of the practice grounds, then up at the orichal silver doorknocker on her father’s door. She couldn’t see the Cobra anywhere.
“Don’t look for him. Don’t listen to him. He’s not part of our plan.” A note of panic crept into Lucius’s voice. “Don’t say anything about the Great God, Caracalla. I’m the only one who needs to be invited in.”
The Cobra called out, “Shall we talk about your plan, Lucius?”
She saw him at last.
The wicked marquis was strolling down the covered walkway.
Earrings wrought in a string of golden crescent moons chimed gently as he moved.
Caracalla and Lucius both spun guiltily to face him.
He spun a painted fan from one hand to the other as he sauntered over to the duke’s door, to face the dead.
“I worked it out, you treacherous weasel,” he said lazily.
“I worked out why the god had another child to start the Valerius line. I worked out why the god needed you for a messenger. Gods must appear in water, in mirrors, in the wind, because they can’t walk upon the earth.
The god retired to the abyss because his mortal form had worn out, and he became more shadow and flame than flesh.
In order to be reunited with his son in the mortal world, the god needs a mortal body.
He started the line of Valerius because he was preparing a vessel.
He didn’t send you to Marius to invite Marius to be the commander of his armies.
He sent you so Marius would invite him in. So he could use Marius as a puppet.”
Disgust iced the pit of Caracalla’s stomach, and burned in the Cobra’s challenging gaze. The dead young lord visibly measured his chances, then shrugged.
“Aren’t we all the god’s puppets, in the end? The Great God gave me an instant of clarity in death, and I begged to help him. What was the alternative? Become one of those hungry, mindless things? Rot?” Lucius shuddered. “Take pity on me, my lady Caracalla. Get me inside.”
Caracalla stared up into those death-clouded eyes and felt no pity. “You would hurt Marius?”
“If I had no alternative,” Lucius admitted, “but I do have an alternative. Your father yet lives. Let me into the east wing.”
The Cobra’s lip curled. “So you can make the duke into the god’s puppet? After you sweet-talked your friend’s little sister into helping, you creep. Evil’s one thing, but have some class.”
Caracalla blinked. “Were you sweet-talking me?”
Lucius rolled his eyes as if inviting the Cobra to join in on a joke at Caracalla’s expense. “Well, I’m glad someone noticed. You really are as dense as your brother, Lady Caracalla.”
She was painfully reminded of her one visit to the Palace on the Edge, how the courtiers would snicker and whisper behind her back. Lord Lucius, the darling of the court. He was just like them.
Except dead. And the dead moved fast. Before Caracalla or the Cobra could react, Lucius was upon her. He seized her hand, lifting it to his mouth so he could rest his lips on the inside of her wrist in a cruel parody of a kiss.
Caracalla sneered. “I’m Valerius. You think I can’t break your hold?”
She felt Lucius’s lips curve in a smile against her throbbing veins. “Not before I bite you, my lady. And you know what happens then.”
A ghoul’s bite meant you withered away, fever and rot eating you slowly from the inside out if the ghoul did not devour you swiftly first. A ghoul’s bite meant certain death.
For a moment in the stables, by starlight, Lucius had seemed almost a friend.
“I hate you,” Caracalla whispered.
“So hate me,” Lucius responded. “But let me in to your father’s house. Quickly. I swear, you and your brother will both be glad you did.”
Behind them, in the darkness waiting over the threshold to the east wing, a window shattered. Even in the grip of the dead, Caracalla winced. She knew the sound of her father’s fury.
She didn’t recognize her father’s voice in the desperate howl that followed. “Great God, I summon you! Great God, I am your servant. Great God, I invite you in!”
“Oh no,” murmured Lucius.
His tight, dead grasp on her wrist faltered. Caracalla used that split second of weakness to break Lucius’s hold. And his stupid dead hand. She wrenched, stumbled, and tumbled into the Cobra’s waiting arms.
Lightning slashed its bright knife across the livid face of the sky, so for a moment it was as broken as their moon. Lightning struck the manor, answering the duke’s cry.
Clearly, across the manor, they heard the crack of ice, as though the Heart of Ice on their threshold had been struck a blow.
Caracalla stood frozen in horror in the dust of the training ground and watched sparks cascade down the grey roof of the east wing, as though someone had emptied a cup of stars over Ancilley Manor.
Lucius nursed his hand and spat at the Cobra, “The duke heard you talking. Look what you’ve done now!”
The Cobra exclaimed, “What I’ve done? This is your doing!”
“Is it? You and your precious book were right. I am a treacherous weasel,” snarled Lucius. “So why do you imagine I would serve a god any better than I served my king?”
The Cobra and Caracalla exchanged uncertain glances. They knew better than to trust a word Lucius said, but… when Marius had asked, You serve a god? Lucius had responded, I serve myself first.
Don’t say anything about the Great God, Caracalla. I’m the only one who needs to be invited in, Lucius had warned just now. When her father called on the Great God, Lucius had said, Oh no.
Lucius’s frustration was extremely convincing.
“I was betraying the Great God! You guessed the god’s plan, not mine.
I was simply going to eat the duke, in order to gain enough of the divine spark to live and think without the god’s blessing.
The Great God would have lost an opportunity.
Marius and Caracalla would have been safe.
I would have solved everybody’s problems. Now everything is ruined.
Because of you. Truly, you are the wicked marquis.
You thought you were saving someone, but you doomed us all. ”
A whisper turned to a roar over their heads. The fire was spreading, racing, turning the walkways to chains of living flame. As they watched, the roof of the west wing caught fire.
The Cobra tightened his arm around Caracalla. “Oh shit.”
Thunder didn’t roll. Thunder tolled like a bell, to signal that one time was over, and a new age had begun.
Lucius’s face turned paler than death. “The god is coming. Run!”