Chapter Thirty-Six The Cobra and the Last Duchess
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Cobra and the Last Duchess
“I am so sorry to tell you this, young master,” said Caracalla’s old nurse. “But your sister perished in the fire.”
It was as if that faraway fire burned Marius’s throat, distant smoke choking him so he could scarcely breathe. At last he said, “And my lady mother?”
“I fear she died before the fire,” the old woman whispered. “At your father’s hands.”
“Isn’t that the worst thing you ever heard?” Eric asked his sister. “Lord Marius has suffered more than Jesus. Somebody help this sad, beautiful man!”
Excerpt from a dramatic reading of the now-revised Once and Forever Emperor series by ERIC MITCHELL, the future Golden Cobra, aged fourteen
When Marius saw the sparks, for an instant he thought they were sparks flying from the abyss past the palace windows. Then he remembered he had returned to the manor, and fire was the manor’s doom.
As soon as he heard the whisper which would become a roar of flame, Marius did something he had never done before in his life.
He caught his mother up in his arms, though the duchess turned as stiff and cold as a statue wrought in ice at his touch, and he carried her down the stairs and over the threshold.
There was a crack clear across the Heart of Ice, as though the stone had become the surface of the moon, but the Heart was still shining.
He roared louder than the fire for his soldiers and found Captain Diarmat beside him at once, that highly competent soldier already organizing former bandits and city folk into lines with buckets from the wells and the horse troughs.
As soon as Marius put her down, his lady mother came to life again and started terrorizing the servants into another line.
The soldiers were going back into the manor, in pairs and spread out, to get out anyone who might be trapped inside.
Marius must find Eric and Caracalla. The urge burned in him stronger than fire through the manor.
There was a woman hanging from a window, shouting something to the night wind, and it was Marius’s duty to protect her, and he didn’t want to.
The lady Amelia jumped from the window into Captain Diarmat’s waiting arms. Then she shoved Marius.
“Go!” she shouted. “That idiot was headed for the east wing. He said he would save your sister himself.”
Marius ran to them as if on a path of gold and flame and words.
He found Eric and Caracalla escaping the east wing – and Lucius. Every window raged with crimson. It was clear where the fire had begun. On some level, Marius had always known that was where the fire would begin.
Marius permitted himself the shameful indulgence of grasping Eric’s arm, pressing his lips against Caracalla’s hair. Then he pulled himself back to duty.
“You must stand clear. Amelia and my mother are organizing buckets at the well. Go aid them in their efforts to put the fire out. I have to go in and get my father.”
“Marius,” said Eric. “Your father’s gone. He’s with the Great God now. Shit, that sounds like a metaphor. I mean it literally. He called and invited the Great God in, and that’s who will walk out of the manor. This is the moment the manor burns. We didn’t stop it. I made it worse.”
Ancilley Manor, second in grandeur only to the Palace on the Edge. The home of his ancestors for centuries. Marius would not have expected to feel loss.
“There is a way forward,” said Lucius, his pleasant voice the answer to a prayer.
“These flames are the flames of the abyss. Gods are reborn in fires like this. He walks in your father’s flesh now, and you could walk by his side and lead his armies.
The Great God will reward you for loyal service.
He can keep your mother and sister safe.
He can make this manor perfect again. Gods are born in fire. You were born for this.”
It might be so. The promise tasted sweet to him, buying security for those he loved with blood. His friend Lucius always did have all the answers.
Marius looked to the Cobra.
No sweet promises there. “Do what you want,” said the Cobra, harsh and unyielding.
Except doing what Marius wanted was dangerous. Doing what Marius wanted would mean doing something wrong. What Marius wanted was to be told what to do, and Lucius would do that. Despite receiving Marius’s oath, it seemed the Cobra would not.
Furious resentment coursed through Marius like blood, hot as the fire raging through the manor.
“You see what he is,” Lucius said rapidly. “He’s the wicked marquis. Even the stable girl knew he once blackmailed you for an entry into court. He’s lied to you. He’s sending letters to the court and the ice raiders.”
“I know about the letters!” Marius snapped, even as he thought – to the ice raiders? Eric had never mentioned anything about letters to ice raiders.
“Do you know what the letters say?” Lucius asked.
“Do you know he was talking to your sister, about a choice he would make? About a scene of disaster, and how one person could take another’s place, but the marquis wasn’t sure who he would sacrifice.
The Cobra was plotting, Marius – to stop you from saving your sister, as he stopped you from saving your king. ”
Disbelief tore Marius’s gaze away from the fire, away from the raging ghoul, to Eric.
“He is no knight. He has no knowledge of honour as we know it. Can he understand you as well as I can?”
“I think not,” said Marius hoarsely. “He seems not to understand me at all.”
Lucius continued, “Marius, I can save you. I know how to break the oath of blood and gold.”
That seemed to surprise everybody, even Eric.
“I have one question,” said Marius.
Lucius nodded eagerly.
Marius addressed the Cobra. “Let me ask once again. You do not have to command me. I want only the truth.”
The wicked marquis waited warily. Only a faint chime of the absurd golden beads in his hair showed he was not entirely unmoved.
Marius asked, “Is Lucius bothering you, Eric?”
The Cobra swallowed. “Yes.”
Marius swung Starving for Blood, and carved Lucius’s head from his shoulders. The bright head Marius used to look for in the palace training grounds rolled into the dust outside the manor. The clever hands were suddenly outflung, fumbling, in a last protest.
There was very little blood, in the end. Lucius had been dead for years.
“Now he won’t bother you any more.”
Caracalla let go of the Cobra’s arm to give a little clap of support.
“That was all you ever had to say,” Marius added.
The Cobra said, as faintly as the chime of gold, “And how could I know that?”
Because it was obvious. Marius couldn’t work out how to make it any more obvious.
“Doesn’t your book of prophecy tell you what will happen?” his sister asked the Cobra, though she wasn’t looking at him. She was watching Lucius’s body stretched upon the dust, pale hands still trying to claw his way back to life.
Seemingly at a loss, the Cobra shook his head.
“I thought I could stop the story from happening, but I can’t.
The manor is burning like it always burns.
And I should have told you before, Caracalla.
You burn with the manor.” The Cobra cleared his throat as if he found an obstruction there. “Every time.”
Horror robbed Marius of speech. She needed to be protected! From all things, including knowledge.
His small sister said, in a faltering voice, “Why?”
“Because there is always something to fight in the manor,” the Cobra answered. “Because you want to give those outside the manor a chance. I know two versions of the story. Both times, you barricade yourself in with the threat. Both times, you die bravely.”
His voice was kind, offering what comfort he could, and knowing it was so little.
“And this time I need to fight a god? Or – or Father?” Caracalla’s voice broke on “father” as it had not on “a god”, but then her pointed chin came up. “You said I was brave in your book. I – I can be brave again.”
“No,” Marius snarled at her. “I am your brother. I will fight every battle for you.”
There was no kindness in him. Battle was the only way he knew how to love someone.
The great stone house groaned as though giving birth. Shadows flickered in the windows. It was like looking at the abyss, trapped within stone walls. Marius began to see the Cobra was right. Someone would have to stay behind, to make sure the others got clear away.
A tall shadow formed in one window, as tall as Marius’s father in his nightmares.
Then the shadow vanished like smoke. He heard the sounds of destruction inside, and he told himself it was fire sending rafters crashing down and burning ancestral portraits from the walls, but it sounded like the duke hurling weapons and roaring for Marius to obey.
The story was coming true. Someone would need to shut themselves in with the monster.
It must be a Valerius, someone who could use the Heart of Ice to seal what raged in the manor inside. Someone who could hold off a monster. But not Caracalla. Never his Caracalla.
“No.” Pain shone in Eric’s golden eyes, gentler than the glow of fire. Terrible to see. But Eric had a kind heart: he would suffer for anyone.
Though it was another sin, Marius let himself reach out, and touch Eric’s face with the side of his hand. He was punished for it: some of Lucius’s dead blood remained on Eric’s cheek when Marius’s hand fell. Marius shouldn’t touch anyone, least of all him: it would always leave a stain.
“Once, you asked me what I want,” said Marius. “I have an answer now.”
Eric nodded, eyes wide open.
“A warrior’s death on the battlefield,” Marius told him.
To die accomplishing a worthy task, saving someone, slaying something evil. To die knowing he would never lose himself to Valerius rage and hurt those he loved, and that he died clean.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” muttered Eric.
“And once the mortal wound was taken, battle over and calm fallen on the field, I would like to die in your arms.”
He wanted Eric to know.