Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2

by Ian Irvine

  He laughed, and so did she.

  “You didn’t stir all night, or all day. How’s your head?”

  “Almost normal. Normally the headache goes, but I suppose I’m too close to heatstone.”

  He reinserted his slab into the stove and made a pot of tea. Holm drank at least six pots a day. She wondered how he fitted it all in.

  “What’s going to become of us?” she asked.

  “Depends where the iceberg goes,” he said, slurping his tea.

  “Where’s it likely to go?”

  “Depends on the winds and currents.”

  “You’ve been sailing these waters for twenty years. You must have a fair idea.”

  “Everything’s different now.”

  “How so?”

  “When the sea level dropped, it exposed the sea bed out for miles. Tens of miles in some places. That changed the currents. And the ice sheet creates its own wind.”

  Tali sighed. Getting anything out of Holm was like prising open a barnacle. “If you had to guess, just to humour me, where would you guess this berg would drift?”

  “More or less east.”

  “And that will take us where?”

  “If it goes a bit north of east, it’ll run aground in the shallows of Hightspall and stay there until enough ice melts that it can float away again in spring. If it drifts south of east, it’ll jam into the ice packs around the edge of the Suden ice sheet and freeze there until the spring. And we’ll starve when we run out of food.”

  “What if it drifts due east?”

  “Out of the straits into the ocean?” he said grimly.

  “Yes.”

  “We die.”

  “Just like that? No chance?”

  “Nope.”

  He went back to his work, carrying his mug of tea. He kept checking the ice behind and above him, uneasily.

  “Something the matter?” said Tali.

  “Just wouldn’t want to be trapped in here, is all.”

  “Looks pretty solid to me,” she smirked. “Old Holm doesn’t have a phobia, does he?”

  “Mind your own business.”

  Tali had some more fish-head stew, walked around the iceberg several times in the clinging fog and returned to the cave. Holm came out of the entrance, carrying a bucket of ice chippings which he put on the stove to melt for water.

  Tali inspected his work. It ran for another six feet around the corner.

  “That’s probably enough, don’t you think?”

  “Depends how long we’re stuck here.” He thrust the heatstone slab in as far as it would go, ssssss.

  “If we are stuck here, we can worry about it then.”

  “I like to keep busy.”

  “Have a break. Why don’t you tell me about your life?”

  “I’ve told you all that’s worth hearing about.”

  Her eye fell on the locked black bag. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Two deaths on my conscience,” he said curtly, then picked up the bag, checked the lock and carried it around the corner to where he was working.

  It did not help her state of mind.

  Tali did not use heatstone again, and kept as far away from it as possible, and gradually the headache went away.

  The day passed, then the next, and the one after. Holm was increasingly taciturn. He spent his time either fishing, sleeping, or enlarging the cave with heatstone. After creating two rooms around the corner, he had chipped a number of shards off one of the heatstones to make carving tools, and was carving intricate patterns into the ice around the doorways. The work seemed pointless to Tali, but if it kept him happy, what did it matter?

  The fog did not lift, so there was no way of knowing where the iceberg was taking them. They took it in turns climbing to the top of the peak, which they were using as a lookout, but the only thing they could see was the fuzzy disc of the sun, rising and setting. There was little wind now, and no sense of movement. They might have been trapped in an endless sea and the rest of the world vanished.

  It rained heavily that night, and after it stopped, everything froze. In the morning Tali climbed up to the lookout and, in a few steps, broke out of thick fog into clear air. It was a bright sunny day and she could see over the roiling fog banks to the horizon – north to the green landscape and snowy mountains of Hightspall, south to ice-capped Suden, east —

  The dome of the sky tilted, her throat closed over in panic and terror overwhelmed her. Her world had been closed in for so long that she had forgotten her own phobia. And she had no hat; she had nothing to cut off the terrifying, rocking sky.

  Tali choked and stumbled backwards, desperately trying to reach the shelter of the fog, only a few feet down. She stepped onto a frozen rainwater puddle, moving too quickly, for the surface was as slippery as oiled glass.

  Her feet went from under her, she fell forwards and struck a jagged edge of ice where part of the berg had broken away. The edge sliced deep into her left shoulder and she felt the blood flooding out.

  “Holm?” she called weakly. “Holm?”

  If he was working in the back of the cave, tapping away with hammer and chisel, he would never hear her. She yelled a couple more times, then began to make her way down backwards, terrified of falling again and rolling all the way down, into the sea.

  But then she lost sight completely, and a blackness was growing inside her, a horribly familiar dark. She tried to fight it but did not have the strength.

  CHAPTER 32

  Someone had picked her up and was carrying her down a steep slope, then into a room out of the wind. It was warmer here, but she did not like it. A disgusting reek was growing with every step.

  “Tali?” a man’s voice said. He sounded worried. “Tali, wake up.”

  She could not wake up, and she had never heard of Tali.

  “I’m Zenda!” she wailed. “I told you already; I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

  “Sweet Zenda,” a man said silkily. “Gentle, stupid Zenda, trapped like a mouse. You’ve got no idea what to do, have you? Come here, Zenda.”

  “Don’t want to,” she moaned. “Please don’t make me.”

  “You don’t want to,” said the woman, “but you’re going to. You’re not a fighter like Mimula, nor a thinker like Sulien. You’re apathetic, Zenda; the perfect slave. Come here!”

  Zenda knew what they were going to do, because they had told her what they had done to her mother twenty years ago. They had exulted in the savage tale, feasted on her terror, fed on the blood.

  But they were right about her. Sweet little Zenda was the perfect slave. She had no idea what to do and did not even think about fighting for her life.

  She stumbled forwards, whimpering, “No, no, no,” and put herself in their hands.

  They cut the pearl out savagely, as though they blamed her for her fate. As only her agony could assuage their guilt.

  Tali woke screaming, and it took ages to come down from the nightmare. No, the reliving.

  The best part of an hour passed before she came back to who she was and where she was. Before the pain where the top of Zenda’s head had been gouged away shifted and blurred into the pain in Tali’s shoulder.

  “It’s all right,” someone was saying, over and again. “You’re safe now. No one can hurt you.”

  She forced her eyes open. Outside, the wind was howling again, but in the back of the cave, with Holm’s carved ice door closed and the heatstone stove open, it was almost warm.

  Holm’s own eyes were closed. He was holding her in his arms, rocking her back and forth. Tali lay still, and gradually the nightmare of her reliving was replaced by a new fear – that she could have revealed her deepest secret to Holm, whom, after all this time, she knew little about.

  “Stupid nightmares,” she said with a false laugh. “I’ve been having them for ages.”

  “Right now, I’m more concerned about what happened up on the peak,” said Holm, setting her down on the floor. The ice was carpeted with thei
r oilskins.

  As she sat upright, pain speared through her left shoulder. He made her a cup of spiced tea. She clamped her cold hands around it.

  “On the peak?” she said, struggling to dredge up the memory.

  “You fell and gashed your shoulder badly. I had to sew the wound back together.”

  Tali felt her shoulder, winced. Scraps of the moment came back.

  “I reached the top and the fog lifted.” She frowned. “No, I broke through it. The top was a few yards below me. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was glorious; I could see in all directions for a hundred miles…”

  “And then?”

  She did not want to tell him. Why should she reveal her secrets when Holm kept his from her? Besides, it would make her seem weak.

  “How come you fell?” he persisted. “You’re usually so sure-footed.”

  She was being silly. He needed to know. And if she opened up, perhaps he would too.

  “I had a panic attack. I’ve been having them ever since I got out of Cython. The world is too big, and sometimes, on bright clear days, it feels as though the sky is overturning on me. I need a hat,” she said plaintively. “Have you got a hat?”

  “You can have my hat any time you want. And because of the panic attack, you fell.”

  “The ice was like greasy glass. I just slipped, that’s all.”

  “No harm done, then. It’s a nice clean wound. It’ll heal quickly.”

  “I do heal quickly,” said Tali. On the outside, anyway.

  “Lunch?” said Holm.

  “As long as it’s not fish-head stew.”

  “I caught some fresh fish last night, while you were asleep. You can have them grilled if you like.”

  “I would like.” Anything to distract him from asking about the reliving, though she thought she had got away with it by passing it off as a recurring nightmare.

  He grilled the fish in a pan on top of the heatstone stove, which only took a few minutes, and served it with pepper and salt. It was the best meal she had ever eaten.

  She started to get up to clean the plates.

  “I’ll do it,” said Holm. “I don’t want you moving that shoulder for a while.”

  He returned, made more tea then lay back on his covers.

  Tali closed her eyes and was drifting to sleep when he said suddenly, “What was all that about Zenda?”

  She jumped, fighting to calm herself. She hadn’t got away with it at all. “Just a nightmare.”

  “Like the other one you had a while back, about a woman called Sulien?”

  “How did you hear about that?”

  “The healer in Rutherin told me. She was worried.”

  “Why did she tell you?” Tali said hotly. “She had no right. What’s it got to do with you?”

  “I’ve picked up a bit about healing in my travels,” he said airily. “Unusual things. She thought I might be able to advise her. Who’s Sulien?”

  “No one you’d know.”

  “You mentioned a great-grandmother. Was that Sulien?”

  His questions were like arrows, striking all around the target, perhaps deliberately. He was a clever man. Would he put the next one in the bull’s eye?

  “Or was Zenda your great-grandmother? And Sulien the one before that?”

  Her only refuge was silence. She felt too weak to spar with him, or evade his probing questions.

  After a couple of minutes of silence, he said, “Hold your tongue all you like. I think I can answer for you.”

  She started but did not speak.

  “You keep having nightmares about murders,” said Holm, sipping his tea. “Hardly surprising since you saw your mother murdered for an ebony pearl ten years ago, when you were the tender age of eight.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but he held up a callused, square hand. “There’s no point denying it.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Just as well. Since the scandalous revelations at the late Lord Ricinus’s Honouring, any denial on your part would only heighten my suspicions.”

  Her attempt at an indifferent shrug sent pain spearing through her shoulder.

  He continued. “Everyone with an interest in ebony pearls knows that four have been harvested, from four young Pale women. But no one knows who the other hosts were. They could have been any four out of a hundred thousand young women born in Cython over the past hundred years.”

  “Or more,” said Tali desperately. “There are eighty-five thousand Pale, and if there were five generations, say, and half of them women —”

  The number reminded her of her unbreakable blood oath, and her impossible duty to save her people. Every new victory by Lyf brought the fatal day closer – the day when he would have to move against the Pale, the threat at the heart of his empire.

  “Something the matter?” said Holm.

  “No,” she lied.

  “Good. The number of Pale isn’t relevant,” said Holm, “because there’s another possibility – equally plausible. That those women belonged to a single, extraordinary family.”

  Her blood ran as cold as the ice the room was carved from. He knew! He knew everything.

  “Your great-great-grandmother, Sulien; then your great-grandmother, Zenda. And your grandmother…” Holm looked at her expectantly.

  Tali could not fight him any longer. There was no point. “Nusee,” she whispered.

  “And finally your own mother, whose death you witnessed.”

  “Iusia.”

  “One thing puzzles me, though,” said Holm. “Who was Mimula?”

  “Mimoy. She was my thrice-grandmother, Sulien’s mother. She had a gift of magery and she was a tough, cranky old cow.”

  “You knew her? Your thrice-grandmother?”

  “She lived to be a hundred and nineteen. Though not naturally, Mimoy said.”

  “I wonder if she could have been the first intended victim, but she got away?”

  “It never occurred to me… though she did have an old scar on the top of her head.”

  She looked across from him, sick with dread. “Well, you know my secret, and what I’m worth. What are you going to do with it?”

  “Why would I want to do anything with it?” Holm said mildly.

  “Everyone wants something from me.”

  “You should learn to trust more.”

  “That’s not easy to do when you’re the one, and bear a pearl in your head that’s worth a province.”

  “Makes no difference to me. I have all the possessions I want.”

  “You just lost your beautiful boat because of me. With the pearl you could buy another one tomorrow.”

  “My boat was precious because I built it with my own hands, and because of the memories – of the places we voyaged together over twenty years. Neither can be replaced with any amount of money.”

  “All right. If you’re a patriot, the master pearl could win the war for whoever you give it to.”

  “I am a patriot. Doesn’t mean I’ll do anything to save my country.”

  “Why did you hunt me down to the docks, if not for the pearl?”

  “I didn’t know you had it. Didn’t even suspect it.”

  “Why did you risk your life helping me, then?”

  “When I took you aboard, I didn’t expect to be risking my life. If not for the ice, we would have escaped north and no one would have known where we were.”

  “You’re a liar!” she yelled. “You were stealing the chancellor’s most valuable prisoner, and in wartime that’s treason. You didn’t do that on a whim. What patriot would? What do you want?”

  He buried his head in his hands.

  “Well?” said Tali. “I’ve told you my deepest secrets. You could at least tell me something.”

  After a long interval, he said, “You can call it atonement, if it helps.”

  “It doesn’t. Why atonement? Whose?”

  “Let’s just say that I did a terrible wrong once. Not deliberately, nor by accident,
but through my own negligent arrogance. Others paid dearly for my wrong, and I took a vow, long ago, to try and make up for what I’d done.”

  “Oh!” she said, and knew by the way he spoke that he was telling the truth. At least, a small part of the truth. Two deaths on my conscience, he had said the other day. “What wrong did you do?”

  “I don’t see that it’s any of your business.” He rose, looking old and haggard, and went to the entrance. “The best thing you can do for your shoulder is to get a good night’s sleep.”

  “I might say the same thing about your own ailment.”

  “I dare say you’re right. But there’ll be no sleep tonight for me, so I might as well go fishing.”

  He wrapped himself in his oilskins, put on fur-lined sea boots and stomped down to the water.

  CHAPTER 32

  Someone had picked her up and was carrying her down a steep slope, then into a room out of the wind. It was warmer here, but she did not like it. A disgusting reek was growing with every step.

  “Tali?” a man’s voice said. He sounded worried. “Tali, wake up.”

  She could not wake up, and she had never heard of Tali.

  “I’m Zenda!” she wailed. “I told you already; I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

  “Sweet Zenda,” a man said silkily. “Gentle, stupid Zenda, trapped like a mouse. You’ve got no idea what to do, have you? Come here, Zenda.”

  “Don’t want to,” she moaned. “Please don’t make me.”

  “You don’t want to,” said the woman, “but you’re going to. You’re not a fighter like Mimula, nor a thinker like Sulien. You’re apathetic, Zenda; the perfect slave. Come here!”

  Zenda knew what they were going to do, because they had told her what they had done to her mother twenty years ago. They had exulted in the savage tale, feasted on her terror, fed on the blood.

  But they were right about her. Sweet little Zenda was the perfect slave. She had no idea what to do and did not even think about fighting for her life.

  She stumbled forwards, whimpering, “No, no, no,” and put herself in their hands.

  They cut the pearl out savagely, as though they blamed her for her fate. As only her agony could assuage their guilt.