by Ian Irvine
‘Lost everything,’ choked Mia. ‘Want to die.’
‘You’ll get over it. Soon — ’
Mia slapped Tali across the face. ‘Don’t want to get over my baby. Go away! I hate you!’
The overseer was approaching the archway and the best option for both of them was for Tali to disappear. If no other slave had seen the grey baby, Banj might not punish Mia too severely. Tali kissed her damp cheek then ducked below the benches as he came down the central path. It was the only thing to do, so why did she feel like a faithless friend?
She reached the archway, rinsed her bloody hands under a spring and slipped into the next grotto. Suba had gone and the half dozen slaves were moving away, heads down.
Tali scuttled to the exit and out into the broad passageway, which was sculpted and painted to resemble a resin-pine forest under snow. Water gurgled by in one of the siphons, its stone sides carved to resemble a rivulet with reed beds cut in relief. Where to go? Idle slaves attracted attention; she could not wait here.
She headed for the squattery, then stopped. Further on, the passage was blocked by a Cythonian teacher, a buxom brunette with single, bright blue spot-tattoos on each cheekbone, who was instructing a dozen chattering children in the art of wall sculpting.
‘First we take a measure of solu,’ the teacher said, pouring a cupful of palest green liquid from an orange-ringed carboy into a bucket. ‘Be careful with it. The waste alk-’ She broke off, colouring. ‘Forget I said that.’
‘Yes, teacher,’ chorused the children.
‘Solu is a thrice-diluted waste from the segregators, made for us by the master chymister, but it can still burn.’ She held out her forearm, where a long red scar cut across her smooth grey skin.
The children stared at the scar, big-eyed. Tali did, too. She had often wondered what solu was made from, that even thrice-diluted waste could do such damage. She stopped to watch, for she had never seen stone carving done up close before.
Every wall in Cython was carved into dioramas of forest or meadow, glade or stream, mountain or pool or wild seashore. Inlaid pieces of glow-stone fostered the illusion of distance, as if the cramped caverns extended out into their lost homeland, while water gurgling in the siphons, and air sighing through wind-pipes brought each scene back to human scale.
No people, buildings or roads featured in these dioramas, which depicted a natural paradise empty of humanity. Could they not bear to think of Hightspallers occupying the land that had once been theirs, or was there a darker reason?
‘We paint the solu on a small patch of wall, thus.’ The teacher dipped a broad Pale-hair brush in the bucket and swept it back and forth across a square yard of stone until the surface began to swell. ‘We wait one minute.’ She consulted the greenstone chrono around her neck, tapping her right sandal as she waited for the toothed wheels to mesh. ‘Then,’ she took up a small mallet and a chisel with a curved edge, ‘we carve away the unwanted stone like curd.’
Within another minute she had cut a hollow elbow-deep into the softened stone and, at its centre, shaped a noble tree with spreading branches. A lump on one branch became a predatory wildcat, its long tail hanging down. It was staring out of the forest and, as the teacher shaped its eyes with a stone pick, it seemed to wake and the children gave a massed sigh.
‘That’s boring,’ said a round-faced boy. ‘Can I carve a crocodile eating a slave-girl?’
The teacher smacked his face. ‘No, you impertinent lout.’
‘Why not?’ said the boy.
‘Only those scenes set down in the fourth book of the Solaces are permitted.’
She turned back to the wall. ‘Now, children, we roughen the fur with four-times-diluted etchu.’ She painted liquid from a yellow-ringed carboy onto the cat, then washed it off at once. ‘And finally, to make smooth areas we use sheenu — ’
‘Why do we have to live in this horrible place?’ said the troublesome boy.
‘Because the enemy stole Cythe from us.’
‘Who were we before we came here?’
‘We don’t ask that question.’
‘We’re not allowed to ask any questions,’ the boy muttered.
‘You don’t need to. The matriarchs follow the Solaces, and the Solaces know best.’
‘I don’t think we ever lived in Cythe,’ said the boy. ‘I think the matriarchs made it all up.’
The teacher’s face went purple, then she pulled a black wafer from her bag and said furiously, ‘Take this to your father.’
The boy’s grey skin went as pale as Tali’s. ‘Sorry, teacher.’
The teacher thrust the black wafer in his face. ‘Go! You have no place here.’
The boy took the wafer and stumbled away, wailing. No one else in the class said a word and, after a minute or two, the teacher resumed her carving, though now her hand was shaking. It was rare for the enemy to reveal any dissension.
Tali headed back past the air wafters, praying that Mia had hidden the baby and she was all right. Here the only sound was the whisper of the wafter blades and the soft panting of the slaves who drove them, walking their treadmills hour after hour, year after year, life after life.
The gentle air current cooled her sweat-drenched skin. One of the treadmill runners made a faint squeal-squeak. It needed greasing but the best grease in Cython came from the fat of dead slaves and there was never enough — ‘Slave!’ roared Banj, from inside.
Tali jumped. Cythonians never called the Pale by their names but she knew he meant her. The treadmill walkers did not look up — if she was in trouble, they wanted to know nothing about it.
What was she to say? Tali was better than most slaves at putting on an act and telling convincing lies. A heap of spilled compost lay against the wall, so she dirtied her feet in it and headed into the grottoes, holding her belly.
Banj, a compact, handsome man built like a bag of boulders, held up the dead baby. ‘Slave, what do you know about this?’
His tattooed face softened as he looked at Tali and he tugged on his lower lip. Banj didn’t like scourging slaves. Could they get away with it? Then she glanced at the baby and it took all her self-control to stifle a gasp, to compose her face.
‘N-nothing, Overseer.’ Tali clutched her belly, grimaced and looked down at her muck-covered feet. ‘Got a flux of the bowels.’ She heaved, as if she were going to throw up. ‘Been at the squattery.’
Her stomach muscles tightened. She really did feel ill. Mia must have been out of her mind with grief — in trying to save herself a scourging, she had earned the Living Blade for them both.
Mia had lied. She did have the gift, but far better she’d not used it at all than in such a feeble way. She had turned the baby’s grey skin pink, like a Pale child, but the night-black eyes and the sturdy little Cythonian frame proved otherwise. The faint aura surrounding the baby was an amateur’s mistake, proof that she’d done it with forbidden magery.
Mia caught Tali’s eye and a stricken look crossed her face at being caught out in the lie. Sorry, she mouthed. With Banj watching, Tali wasn’t game to reply.
He studied Tali’s hot face and her dirty feet, staring into her eyes as if trying to read her thoughts. It was hard to breathe; the sodden air stuck in her throat like glue.
Finally Banj grunted. ‘You’re lucky today is Lyf’s Day, slave.’
The most sacred day in the Cythonian calendar. Tali choked. They were safe! It was unbelievable, but it had happened. She bowed to the floor. ‘Thank you, Overseer. Thank — ’
‘You’re on a warning. Offend again and it’s the acidulatory for you.’
Then Banj drew Mia to her feet and, still holding her hand, bowed until his broad forehead touched the backs of her fingers.
Shivers scalloped tracks all the way up Tali’s spine, because only one circumstance ever led the Cythonians to bow to their slaves. She sought for her gift, sought it recklessly, suicidally, but it failed her again.
‘Alas,’ said Banj, and Tali knew his r
egret was genuine, ‘not even today can I forgive a Pale cursed with the abomination of magery. That art is forbidden to all except our long-lost kings, and you know the penalty.’
From the broad sheath on his back he drew a long hilt which terminated in a plate-sized annulus of transparent metal, wickedly bladed all around. It sang as it moved through the air and the colours of the spectrum flickered across it before settling to red.
Mia’s eyes widened, as if she finally understood what was happening. Her lips moved, Tali, help!
There was nothing Tali could do. One second Mia was warm, alive and real. The next, after a precise and poetic sweep of the overseer’s Living Blade, she became a human fountain, painting the low ceiling crimson.
And for an hour afterwards the drunken blade kept singing.
CHAPTER 7
The ice leviathan rolled over the shanty town beyond the eastern palace wall, pulverising it and squeezing its miserable occupants dry. Their blood foamed into the leviathan’s transparent tanks, the flattened husks were ejected at the rear. The tanks were already half full and one pass through the hive that was Palace Ricinus would fill them completely.
This is your fault, but you can stop it.
Go away, Rix gasped, but the split-ice voice kept echoing inside his head.
Two nights from now, at midnight, you will go down.
I won’t!
You will cut it out and bring it to me.
White worms were crawling all over Rix’s face. Go away!
It belongs to me.
Please leave me alone.
This is the only way for you to atone.
But I’ve done nothing wrong.
The voice became low, cunning. Remember the cellar, and the blood on your hands?
No, no, no!
Obeying me is the only way you can gain peace.
I’m not doing it. Get out of my head.
If you refuse, this is what will happen …
The leviathan crushed the outer walls of the palace, then the inner, before toppling a dozen towers and smashing the Great Hall, the wonder and the glory of Hightspall, to powder. Finally, as it loomed outside Rix’s tower, destroying everything that House Ricinus had achieved over four generations, coming directly for him because of what he’d done and what he refused to do, he screamed.
‘What’s the matter with you now?’
He roused, thrashing. A lovely young woman was shaking him, her breasts quivering in the golden light of his bedchamber. She was enchanting, all bosom and bottom and a waist that could be circled with a headband, yet he could not remember her name.
‘Blood,’ he whispered. ‘It squeezed the blood right out of them, into tanks.’
She thrust Rix back onto the pillows. ‘You’re sick! Sick as dog vomit.’
She marched out the door, across the hall and into Tobry’s bedchamber. There was a mutter of feminine complaint, then Rix heard Tobry’s amused drawl.
‘Sorry, Liana. There isn’t room.’
‘I’m not staying with him!’ cried Rix’s lover. ‘He’s off his head.’
Tobry sighed theatrically, then said, ‘Oh, all right. Squeeze up, girls.’
Laughter tinkled. Rix slumped against the headboard of his bed, shuddering.
‘I’m slipping out for a minute,’ said Tobry. ‘Don’t do anything I can’t do better.’
He came through, wrapping a robe around his lean, duel-scarred form. Tobry was only of middle height, wiry and not handsome, but there was a look in his grey eyes that every girl wanted more of and no mother could ever trust. He drew up a dainty chair and sat by Rix’s bed.
‘You’re dripping sweat. Another bad dream?’
‘Ugh!’ Rix rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the images away. It was both his strength and his weakness that he could imagine the violence as clearly as if it had been painted. Two words kept ringing through his head and he could not rid himself of them. It’s time. IT’S TIME.
‘Worse?’
‘Much worse …and more urgent. I dreamed I was in my salon, in a trance … then moving pictures appeared on the heatstone … as if someone had sent them to me. Do you think that’s possible?’
‘Dreams come from inside, not out,’ said Tobry. ‘Wait here.’
He went out, then returned with a thick, square bottle and a vase-shaped goblet into which he poured a half measure of grey fluid.
Rix’s nostrils tingled. ‘What’s that?’
‘A traditional remedy — best to take it in a gulp.’
Rix did so, and wished he hadn’t. It seared up his nose, leaving him breathless and his eyes watering, then burnt all the way down. And it stank.
‘What the hell’s in it? Smells like stink-damp.’
‘Sulphur water plus various volatiles and mercapts.’ Tobry clapped Rix’s cheeks, grinning. ‘Rosy! It’s already doing you good.’
The nightmare was fading, though not the fear behind it. ‘They’re getting worse. I’ve got to get away, Tobe, I can’t take any more.’
‘Any more what?’
Rix told him about the ice leviathan. He did not mention the crackly voice like breaking ice, for he never remembered what it had said after he woke, but thought of the night after tomorrow made him feel so rotten that he wanted to run and never come back. ‘My nightmares are full of blood and butchery, and the fall of our house.’
‘After what happened to my family, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,’ said Tobry.
‘The other night I dreamed someone was rubbing blood into my wounds. That’s got to be an omen, hasn’t it?’
‘Dreams don’t mean anything. Have a drink and go to sleep.’ Yawning, Tobry looked towards his bedchamber.
Rix felt the tension ease, the horrors fade. Nothing shocked Tobry, nor could anything faze him and, though he took few things seriously, he was as solid as the foundations of Palace Ricinus.
‘It seemed so real. Could Cython be building an ice leviathan to attack us?’
‘They’d hardly use something that’d melt when the sun came out.’
‘And I keep having these feelings …’
‘Of impending doom?’ said Tobry helpfully.
‘As if the world is about to collapse around me.’ Rix glanced around the magnificent bedchamber, the walls of which were lined with yellow painted silk. The steepled cedar ceiling was inlaid with ivory and ebony, and touched with gilt. ‘Me, of all people. I mean …’
‘Unlike me,’ said Tobry with a wry grin, ‘you’re tall, handsome and heir to the biggest fortune in Hightspall. You turn twenty in a few weeks, and then you can spend as if there’s no — ’ He broke off. ‘Sorry.’
‘No tomorrow,’ Rix intoned darkly. ‘You might as well say it.’
‘Stop fretting over nothing. You may be a conservative, dim-witted, irresponsible layabout — ’ Tobry laughed. ‘In fact, you are.’
‘Thanks!’
‘But again, unlike me, you’ve never done anything truly bad. Or have you?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Rix muttered. So why did he feel so festering inside, as though Hightspall’s troubles ran right down the aeons to him?
‘Don’t take everything so seriously,’ said Tobry. ‘What can you possibly have to worry about?’
‘Apart from Father? And Mother’s crazy plan?’
‘I’m sure she’s thought it through,’ Tobry said carefully. ‘Lady Ricinus — ’
‘Oh yes. Mother calculates everything to a nicety.’ Rix bit the tip of his tongue at the disloyalty. ‘Forget I said that. I know she has our best interests at heart.’
‘She thinks of nothing save how to raise House Ricinus higher,’ said Tobry ambiguously. ‘And with plague and grandgaw bringing down the ancient families wholesale, there’s never been a finer time to better one’s own.’
‘House Ricinus hasn’t been touched by plague or pox in a hundred years,’ said Rix.
‘Something else to be thankful for.’ Tobry went across to the heatstone and put his back to it. ‘
Why don’t you try a new painting? That’s cheered you up before.’
Rix was a gifted artist, the best of the new generation, the chancellor said, but now he felt goose pimples rising on his arms. ‘One or two of my paintings have been divinations. I’m afraid …’
‘That what you paint might come true?’
‘Or I might paint something I don’t want to see.’ Rix’s art was everything to him. It was truth in a land of lies, an island of beauty in a corrupt, ugly world, and the one thing that House Ricinus’s wealth had not bought.
He picked up a glass sphere from the bedside table and rotated it in his hands. Inside, a master craftsman had built a perfect model of Palace Ricinus in silver and gold — all eighty-eight towers, every dome and turret and buttress, even the fountains, pools and gardens. The chief magian himself had enchanted the sphere so it would mimic the weather outside, but lately it had only shown one season — wind-blasted winter.
‘Don’t drop it, whatever you do,’ said Tobry.
Rix had never liked it, priceless and perfect though it was, for magery unnerved him. He considered hurling the miniature into the fireplace. ‘Why not?’
‘Considering your nightmare, it would be a bad omen.’
Rix set the model back where it had come from, moodily watching the driving snow plastering the walls of the tiny palace, then sprang out of bed. He swung on a red and gold kilt and went down the hall to his salon, a six-sided chamber with a tented ceiling, dimly lit by an enormous heatstone. He looked at it askance, afraid of what he would see, for there was a wrongness about it, something brooding and baleful. But the heat-stone displayed only its normal enigmatic shimmer.
‘I could understand it if you were having the nightmares,’ said Rix over his shoulder.
He turned on the stopcock and caught a whiff of stink-damp. Using a flint snapper on a long pole, he ignited the gaslights in a series of small explosions and the rotten-egg stench was replaced by the cleansing odour of burnt sulphur.
‘Because I’m a gentleman fallen so low I have to live on my wits?’
‘You’re not a gentleman.’
