by Ian Irvine
She felt her way along to the main gates, but they were locked and barred at night. A small gate beside the guard post, only wide enough to admit one person at a time, was also closed and she could not open it without being seen.
The gate was her only chance, so she had to distract the guard. If she’d had command of her gift it would have been easy, but even after Rannilt’s intervention Tali could raise no more than a trickle of magery.
She crept closer until she could see the guard in his little wooden guard box. An elderly, sad-eyed fellow with sagging jowls and pouched eyes, he looked as though he had seen more than enough of the misery of the world. Did he have a soft heart, though? If his troubles had hardened him, her plan would fail.
The great fortress gates were made from six-inch-thick slabs of timber reinforced with vertical lengths of the same timber, though here and there she could feel cracks between the slabs. She slid along the gate until she was behind the reinforcing slab nearest the guard box, praying that it was enough to conceal her. It might do, as long as he didn’t shine his lantern along the gate.
In Cython, Tali had been the best of all the slave-kids at hiding, and Nurse Bet had taught her to throw her voice so as to send pursuers the wrong way. Could she still do it?
She put her lips to a crack between two slabs, cupped her hands around her mouth, then threw her voice so it would seem to come from outside. She had to use a trickle of her precious magery to make sure, and it still did not sound very convincing, so she picked up a small piece of rock from the road and tossed it over the gate. It clattered away, outside.
“Help,” she moaned in her highest, most child-like voice. “Help, help!”
“Who’s there?” said the guard, coming to the door of his box.
“Lost my mummy. Help me.”
The guard opened the viewing flap and shone the lantern around outside. “Come to the gate.”
“Broke my ankle,” Tali whimpered. “Please help me.”
“Not allowed to open the gate without seeing who’s outside.”
Tali let out a groan.
“You’ve got to come to the gate, girlie,” said the guard. “If I break the rules, I’ll get a flogging.”
Tali let out another moan, then said no more. The guard swore, checked back towards the fortress, then opened the side gate and looked out.
“Where the blazes are you, girl?”
Tali crept towards the guard box. The old guard, muttering to himself, went through and she heard his boots crunching on the gravel outside. Now!
“Where are you, girlie?”
She slipped through the gate behind him. He walked a few paces, swinging the lantern back and forth, trying to penetrate the shadows down the slope to the right side of the road. He stopped. It did not look as if he was going to go any further, and the moment he turned back he would see her and shout the alarm.
Tali picked up a chunk of rock, stepped up behind him and, as the lantern swung back in his hand, slammed the rock into the glass. The lantern went out and darkness descended. She ducked aside and crouched down.
“What the bloody hell happened?” said the old man. “Girlie, I’ve got to go back.”
A klaxon sounded from the fortress and someone bellowed, “Seal the gates. Let no one in or out. Guards, be on alert for a small, blonde woman.”
“Oh, gawd!” cried the old man. “Oh gawd, oh gawd, I’m for it now.”
Almost sobbing, he groped his way back to his box. Tali felt a spasm of pity for the kindly old man. She had used him ill, and now he would get a flogging. She began to run off, hesitated, then turned back. Could she make it appear that it wasn’t his fault? And could she still get away if she took the time to help him?
She followed the old man back. In his distress he had neglected to bolt the side gate, and she slipped through. He had a burning taper and was trying to light his lantern, wheezing, “Oh gawd, oh gawd,” but his hand was shaking so badly that the wick would not catch.
She took the lantern from his hand and shook the oil out all over the walls of the guard box. “Run,” said Tali. “Yell for help. Tell them I set your box on fire.”
He stared at her as though she were an apparition. Tali took the taper from his hand and touched it to the furthest wall. Flames licked up.
“Go!” she hissed.
He stumbled away, croaking, “Help! Fire!”
Tali tossed the taper at the other wall, went through the side gate, pushed it shut and looked around her. The road from the gate ran up into the mountains, she knew, though without clothing and proper gear she had no hope of surviving there. To her right, a steep track wound down the cliff towards the town of Rutherin. After they searched the immediate surrounds of the fortress, Rutherin was the first place they would look, but she had no alternative.
Tali headed down the road at a trot, though before she had gone a hundred yards she knew she would be lucky to reach the bottom. She was already exhausted. Could she do this? Would her strength last?
She stumbled on. Behind her, the fortress was lit with a hundred lights and flames from the blazing guard box could be seen above the gates. The side gate was blocked by fire but it would only take a minute to swing the main gates open, and then they would come after her.
Where could she hide? The steep ground beside the track was bare rock save for a few miserable bushes that would not conceal her for a minute. She had no choice but to follow the track, though every breath was burning in her throat and a pain in her side was getting worse with every step. She had never run down such a steep slope before. Her knees were already wobbly.
Tali looked over her shoulder, stumbled and crashed to the rocky ground on her knees and outstretched hands. Pain pierced her right palm; she staggered to her feet and lurched on. Both palms were bleeding and so was her left knee. She could feel the blood trickling down her leg.
“She must have gone down!” a man roared. “Get horses and go after her!”
The searchers were at the top, waving lanterns. They would have to ride carefully down the steep track but they would be faster than her.
She reached the base of the cliff, caught her breath for a second, then plodded on. Houses sprouted on both sides of the track, mostly shanties and lean-tos, though in this miserable weather the doors were all closed and the streets empty. Alleys meandered between the shanties. In the distance she could see taller buildings. She headed in that direction.
The streets of Rutherin were poorly lit, only a lamp every fifty yards or so, and the alleys were dark, stinking tunnels through a maze of filth. Tali followed a random path through them, stumbling on broken cobbles, slipping on greasy clay and, more than once, on human waste dumped in the street. She moved into the middle of the alley and sank to mid-shin in a pot-hole filled with muck that oozed into her boots, squelching with every step.
She struggled out again, her heart racing; each step was like climbing a mountain now. Several streets away she heard horses galloping, men and women shouting, and someone roaring at the townsfolk.
“Light the lanterns. An escaped prisoner. A small, blonde girl. Big reward. Huge reward!”
Lights blossomed behind Tali. She headed away down another series of mean alleys, each fouler and darker than the one before. As she turned a corner, someone caught her arm and a blast of grog breath made her reel.
“Bin waitin’ all night for you, dearie. Right here’ll do.”
She reacted without thinking, using Nurse Bet’s favourite defence, and this time it worked. A knee to the groin doubled the man over onto her fist, which she drove hard into his throat. He fell backwards against a shanty wall, the impact rattling the flimsy boards, and swayed there, gasping for breath. From inside, a high voice cursed him. Tali ran.
She zigged and zagged through the alleys, following an instinct that told her to go towards the sea, but could not shake her pursuers. There must have been dozens of them, all mounted. It felt as though they were driving her into a corner, trapping h
er – but against what?
The old docks, where for centuries uncounted the fishing fleet and the merchant vessels had moored to unload their cargoes. The timbers loomed above her and along the old shoreline in either direction as far as she could see, but the docks were derelict now, and rotting. It took a while to remember why. As the ice had spread, the level of the sea had dropped, and now it was a mile offshore.
Tali assumed that the odd tingling in her nose, a combination of salt and rotting weed, was the smell of the sea. She could also smell the tarred wharves and decaying wood.
Not that way, not that way! It was Rannilt, screaming into Tali’s mind.
Tali stopped. “Rannilt?” she whispered. She had no idea how to speak back to her, one mind to another. She could not comprehend how the child had done it in the first place.
I’m sorry, Rannilt wept. I’m sorry, Tali. I didn’t mean it.
Tali tried to reach her but the connection was gone.
She crouched in the shadows and looked back for her pursuers. They were making no effort to conceal themselves; she could see riders to the left, riders to the right, and more ahead, coming out of the alleys with their bright lanterns held high.
They seemed to know which way she had gone and they weren’t hurrying any more. They were methodically searching every street, every alley, making sure she could not slip through their line. In five minutes, ten at the most, they would know she wasn’t in that quarter of Rutherin, and equally well that she had not escaped them. Only one place would remain to be searched.
The docks.
There was nowhere else to go. Tali clambered up onto the empty docks, praying for a miracle. The effort took the last of her strength; she had to lie on the icy boards with her pulse pounding in her ears and little bright flashes going off in her eyes for several minutes before she could raise her head.
A broad boardwalk ran off the seaward side of the docks, out across mudflats and marshland in the direction of the distant sea, but on it she would be visible for a hundred yards. She might take to the marshlands, she supposed, though they looked treacherous. No, she was bound to be trapped there.
The first of the riders were approaching. It was hopeless but she could not give in. She was never giving in. Unable to stand up, she crawled in among the myriad crumbling storerooms and little warehouses. Wherever she hid, they would find her and drag her back to the fortress and the bloodstained cell, and the cannula that would take her blood until there was nothing left of her but a dried-up husk that would blow away in the wind.
Someone was walking along the docks, a slow, careful tread. She crouched down, heart crashing and breath burning in her throat. She could not run any further; she had nothing left.
He approached, looking left then right. She tried to shrink into a tighter ball but it was no use. She could smell her sweat, her terror. He must be able to smell her too.
He turned, walked past, then back. She prepared to defend herself, though she could barely lift her arms. Past he went, came back, then lunged, caught her by the shoulder and dragged her out into the light. He looked like an old man of sixty, with that grey hair and beard, though he had such strong fingers that he might not be as old as he appeared. Fingers crisscrossed with little white scars.
“Kroni,” she whispered. “All along I knew you were a spy.”
He blinked at her for a few seconds, frowning. He had not seen her true face clearly on her way out. He knew her as the older woman the chief magian’s glamour had made her into.
“Then all along you knew wrong.”
CHAPTER 20
“What are you doing?” said Tali. “Where are you taking me?”
Kroni did not answer. She tried to dredge up her magery, anything at all, but exhaustion would not allow her to focus.
He dragged her into the shadows between two storerooms, then out onto the seaward side of the docks, down twenty steps and onto the boardwalk that led to the distant boats and the sea. Before they had gone a hundred yards the riders clattered onto the docks, shining their lanterns about and roaring at one another.
“Don’t move.” Kroni pulled her down onto the boards and cast a grey cloak over them both. “Don’t look towards the lanterns.”
From the corner of an eye she saw a tall fellow come to the top of the steps and shine his lantern along the boardwalk. It cast a bright light and she was sure it would pick them out. He waved it back and forth, evidently watching for moving shadows, then turned away.
Tali was about to stand up when Kroni crushed her shoulder. His fingers were hard as brass. “I said, don’t move!”
The tall man turned suddenly and shone his lantern down the boardwalk again. Tali’s heart slammed into her ribs. He would have seen her. He studied the boardwalk, the mudflats on the left and the marshlands to the right, then turned back to the search of the docks.
“Now,” said Kroni.
He heaved her to her feet and led her down towards the sea. She stumbled; his arm went around her shoulders and held her up.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Lost too much blood,” she said limply. “Hardly stand up.”
His arm curled around her waist, taking most of her weight, and he hurried on.
“Where you taking me?” she panted.
“Depends on the answers you give me.”
“What answers?”
“Good ones.”
“You – a spy for Lyf?” gasped Tali. “You – working for Lyf?”
He gave a derisory snort.
“Who then?”
When he did not reply, a cold fist clenched around her heart. Kroni must be a privateer, and she was worth a fortune. He had been watching her for ages, and now he was planning to carry her away and sell her to the highest bidder. How much would Lyf pay to be delivered the host of the master pearl? What would the chancellor give? Enough to corrupt almost any man.
She tried to pull free. Even if she fell off into the marsh and drowned it would be better than having her head hacked open while she was still alive. If she drowned, she would thwart them all. The pearl had to be harvested from a live host.
“Don’t!” said Kroni, holding her easily.
In another five minutes she heard water lapping and the boardwalk ended in a T shape, running to left and right beside ragged lines of piles driven into the mud. Several boats were moored there and the reek of fishy water in the bilges took her breath away.
He hauled her to the left, then along a series of slimy, algae-covered planks to three pairs of piles where a number of smaller boats were tied up. He thrust her down in the shadows between two boats. It was exposed here, and an icy wind was blowing across the water, stirring her short hair.
He glanced back towards the main boardwalk. “They’re coming, and I need answers, fast. What’s your name? Your real name?”
Could she trust him? Could she trust anyone? She didn’t know anything about Kroni – he might be a privateer, or he might, possibly, be genuine. On the other hand, she knew what the chancellor would do if he got her back.
“There’s no time left,” said Kroni, and she could hear the urgency in his voice.
If she went with him, it would buy her time, at least. “It’s Tali,” she burst out. “Thalalie vi Torgrist.”
He whistled. “You’re the escaped Pale?”
“Yes.”
“But what are you – patriot or traitor?”
“I love my country,” said Tali.
“Which one?” he said roughly. “Hightspall or Cython?”
“Hightspall, of course. What do you take me for?”
“I haven’t decided, though the chancellor did imprison you, and the word in Fortress Rutherin names you a traitor.”
“He spread that lie to conceal me from my enemies. You saw how Lizue tried to kill me.”
“Kill you?” said Kroni. “The way I read the evidence, she tried to save you from the sour fellow in the other cell.”
“No; Lizue�
�s Cythonian. She burned through the bars and tried to kill me. The Sullen Man is – was – the chancellor’s spy. He tried to save my life, and died for it.”
“She didn’t look Cythonian,” said Kroni.
“She does now. The glamour on her broke at the same time as the one the chief magian put on me.”
“The Cythonians don’t use magery.”
“But Lyf does.”
“How would you know that?”
“Because I’ve met him. Fought him.”
“Now I know you’re lying. You’re just a slip of a girl —”
Tali’s fury gave her strength. “I’m the first Pale to escape Cython in a thousand years,” she snapped. “I’ve been to the wrythen’s caverns under Precipitous Crag, I’ve jousted verbally with the chancellor himself and given as good as I got. And he rewarded me, too —”
She was getting into dangerous waters. Old Kroni had a remarkably keen mind for a clock mechanic, and there were certain questions she didn’t want raised at any price.
“Really?” said Kroni. “What for?”
“Mind your own business.”
He glanced along the boardwalk. “You’ve got one minute to satisfy me that you’re on our side. If you can’t, I’ll give you up to the chancellor.”
“And pocket a fat reward,” she said bitterly.
“Should I not be rewarded for capturing such a valuable and elusive spy and traitor?” he said mildly. “Why did the chancellor reward you, incidentally?”
She did not think Kroni was much better than her pursuers, but he was the only hope she had. And the searchers were getting closer; she could see their lights clearly now.
“I told him that Lady and Lord Ricinus were planning his assassination.”
He let out a low whistle. She’d surprised him.
“I understood that Rix Ricinus informed on his mother for high treason,” said Kroni, “and that’s why the chancellor refused to have him.”
“He forced it out of Rix; but the chancellor already knew, because I’d told him the day before. But he’s a vengeful man; that’s why he hacked Rix’s hand off with his own sword. And because Rix is Herovian.”
