by Ian Irvine
‘It’s solid rock,’ Rix said derisively.
‘Is it?’
Rix swallowed.
‘You didn’t see anything?’ said Tobry.
‘Of course not.’
Tobry muttered something that might have been, ‘Bonehead,’ and crept up the rubble for about eighty feet. He crouched there, looking down at the cliff. ‘There’s a spot of blood, right against the face.’
‘So what?’
‘The caitsthe is too big to squat there.’ Tobry swung an arm and it disappeared into rock to the elbow.
‘Tobe?’ said Rix, not liking this at all.
‘There’s a concealed cave. Come up.’
‘Concealed by what?’ Rix’s stomach spasmed; his bruised cheek pulsed.
‘What do you think?’
‘Entering a caitsthe’s lair is a really bad idea.’
Tobry was beyond making a joke about it, which confirmed Rix’s dismal conclusion. But if the shifter wasn’t destroyed, dozens of people would die before it slaked the blood-hunger etched into its psyche. Previously, he had given little thought to the thousands of serfs on his family estates, but once he was lord they would be his people and it was his duty to protect them.
Rix reached the top. ‘Incidentally,’ he said, referring to their earlier conversation, ‘why was trying to save your grandfather from a shifter bite a mistake?’
Tobry shook his head. ‘The bite of a shifter is the one thing I truly fear.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Don’t tell my enemies.’
CHAPTER 14
Lifka’s principal recreation was chewing her dinner and she spent several open-mouthed minutes churning each morsel to a slimy pulp. Eyes averted from the repulsive sight, Tali handed over three shrivelled Purple Pixies, keeping another two. She felt stronger now. She had a plan and she was going to escape.
Most of the slaves had left the subsistery, but she hurled her defiance at those who remained, and they looked away — no doubt they considered her doomed. Damn you! she thought. I’m going to escape. I’m going home.
While Lifka vacantly gnawed a bone, Tali surreptitiously poked a red and yellow girr-grub deep into the orange flesh of her poulter leg. At the thought of what the grub would do, her cheeks grew hot. Though surely one grub would not cause lasting harm.
Lifka pushed back her chair and Tali rose hastily, tucking a small piece of yam into the inside pocket of her loincloth for her pet mouse, Poon.
‘Left yer poulter leg,’ said Lifka tonelessly.
Any other slave, including Tali, would have stolen it. ‘Not hungry,’ she lied, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. ‘You can have it.’
‘Goody.’ Lifka pulled off shreds of crisp skin as she headed towards her cell, slipped them into her mouth and yawned. ‘Think I like ya after all.’
The grudging admission did not make Tali feel any better. And what if Lifka was blamed for the crimes Tali was planning to commit, or punished as her collaborator? Surely no Cythonian would imagine Lifka to be part of a conspiracy? But if Tali did escape they would have to blame someone.
Her cheeks burnt, but Iusia and Mia cried out for justice and Tali had no other hope of getting it. No slave would help her. Anyone who learned her plans would betray her, and Tinyhead was coming in a few hours. If Lifka had to suffer for a day or two, that was too bad.
‘Goin’ ta bed,’ said Lifka.
Tali walked with her past the ever-guarded gates of the Cythonians’ living area, whose name translated as Away from Home, then around a bend and through the carved entry hall of the Pale’s Empound, where the wall dioramas changed dramatically.
No gentle, domestic-scale scenery here. Rather, a series of savage landscapes — cataracts in roaring flood, catastrophic eruptions, a forest torn apart by a hurricane, monster waves eating away at empty shores — and everywhere among the devastation, hungry eyes smouldered, warning the Pale of the consequences of trying to escape. Tali could not look at them. Even if she did get away, how would she cross such alien places to civilisation?
The enemy was paranoid about insurrection and every adult slave had her own tiny stone cell, these being clustered in tiers around each assembly area like chunks of curved honeycomb around an oval plate.
‘If you don’t eat that drumstick,’ said Tali as they approached Lifka’s cell, ‘someone will steal it.’
‘Mind yer business.’ Lifka went into her cell and closed the door.
Anyone else would have gobbled the poulter leg at once. It had not occurred to Tali that Lifka would keep it for later. Now what was she supposed to do? Tinyhead might have lied. He could be coming now. She turned and kept turning, afraid that he would appear behind her with his blowfly tongue hanging out.
No, taking Tali out of Cython and selling her to the enemy was an act of treachery punishable by execution. Tinyhead would abduct her when there were no guards around to ask uncomfortable questions. He would come late at night.
The logic was sound, but Tinyhead also hated her and nothing he’d said could be trusted. She paced around the assembly area, which was empty, listening each time she passed Lifka’s door, but heard nothing to indicate that she had swallowed the girr-grub.
A shadow hobbled past the entry to the Empound, fifty or sixty yards away. Tali’s heart stopped, thinking it was Tinyhead, but the figure was too small and skinny. In the dim light it could have been Mad Wil. What had he meant by ‘You the one’?
She told herself that he wasn’t called Mad Wil for nothing. But he was also known for his morrow-sight, and he had seemed to recognise her. Tali checked again. The figure was too short for Wil. It must be a slave going to the squattery.
She squinted through the triangular peephole in Lifka’s door. The slave girl was on her bunk, apparently asleep. Tali pushed on the door, then hesitated. To attack another Pale, to injure someone who had done her no harm, went against everything her mother had brought her up to believe in.
If you can’t do it, you die.
She rolled three prickly girr-grubs in the palm of her hand. Should she use them all, to make sure? No, it might be a fatal dose. Tali put two back and kept the smallest, a squirming, blind-eyed creature whose brilliant red and yellow zigzags shrieked danger.
As she put her hand to the painted door, another of her mother’s sayings came to mind — harm no innocent. Lifka wasn’t exactly innocent, and she certainly wasn’t nice, but she hadn’t harmed Tali either. Yet Tali had sworn justice on her mother’s body, on Mia’s blood. She had to keep those promises and there was no other way.
Heart pounding, throat choked down to a thread, she eased Lifka’s door open and slipped into the gloomy cell. The walls were unpainted, the floor waxy smooth from a thousand years of pacing slaves, and the solitary decoration was Lifka’s red-brown loincloth hanging from a peg jammed into a crack. She lay on the stone bed-shelf, eyes closed and slack mouth wide, asleep.
Her legs and arms were hard with muscle from years of lugging heavy sunstones, and Tali dared not risk a fight she was bound to lose. She had to do it while Lifka was asleep.
Squeezing the girr-grub until its green innards oozed out, Tali reached towards Lifka’s mouth, then hesitated. Could a whole girr-grub seriously harm the girl, even kill her?
Lifka’s eyes shot open and before Tali could move a hard fist slammed into her jaw, lifting her off her feet. She hit the floor, head ringing, then Lifka was on her, slapping her face and clawing at her eyes in a frenzy.
Tali tried to push her off but Lifka jerked her up by the shoulders and shook her violently. Her small teeth were bared and her eyes had the sick gleam Tali had seen when Tinyhead had come into the subsistery — Lifka wanted blood. She lifted Tali higher. What was she doing? She was planning to slam her head against the floor, smash it open like a melon, and Tali was not strong enough to stop her.
She thrust the squashed girr-grub deep into Lifka’s open mouth and jammed the heel of her hand against it. In an instant the girl’s hands fell away, she began to jerk
and shudder, then went rigid.
Tali scrabbled backwards out of reach. Lifka’s eyes were starting from their sockets, green-tinged mucus flooding from her nose and mouth. She heaved, made a gagging sound, her face went scarlet and her open hands trembled as if on springs.
Was she choking? Having a fit? Fatally poisoned? Tali was bending over the girl when she jack-knifed upright and a torrent of vomit roared over Tali’s left shoulder, onto the wall. Yellow, fizzing streaks oozed down, the stone bubbling from Lifka’s stomach acids. Flecks of vomit stung Tali’s neck and ear as Lifka fell back.
The smell made her belly heave. She fought it down and turned Lifka onto her side so she would not choke. Blood-tinged mucus dribbled from her swollen mouth. Her lips and tongue were blistered, her fingers opened and closed. She moaned.
Tali wiped her face, tilted her head then gave her a drink from the clay jug beside the bed. The water came straight up.
‘Sorry,’ Tali whispered. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’
Tali was lifting her onto the bed-shelf, as gently as she could, when Lifka’s fist struck her under the chin. The back of Tali’s head hit the floor and the cell went out of focus.
She roused slowly, pain splitting her head in two, lying on the floor with no memory of what she was doing there. She had been doing something urgent. What? The memory would not come, though she knew that a long time had passed and she should not be here.
Tali rolled over and forced herself to her knees. The back of her head had a lump and her whole jaw ached …
Someone groaned nearby and she smelled vomit. The cell reeked of it — Lifka’s cell. The memories flooded back. How long had she been unconscious? Tali scrambled up.
Lifka was breathing shallowly. Yellow blisters clustered around her mouth and vomit had dried on her left cheek. What if she was seriously ill? It was too late to back out now. Tali put her hands on the girl’s belly, then on her raw mouth, and worked the best healing charm she knew.
There was nothing more she could do. Every passing minute increased the probability of Tinyhead coming. She had to go now.
Tali studied the girl’s spasming figure. Was the deception possible? Tali’s own lack of shoulder calluses was an obvious difference, one that only a deception or concealment spell could fix, and getting that spell was her next task.
She could emulate the protruding lip, the low, colourless voice, the slow movements. What else? Tali’s green loincloth marked her as a slave from the grotto gardens, so she swapped it for the red-brown rag the sunstone carriers wore.
A series of little dot-like scars ran around Lifka’s left ankle, though Tali could not imagine what had caused them. Lifka’s feet were broader, lightly tanned, and her arches were flattened from carrying the heavy sunstones, but who looked at a slave’s feet? As long as slaves were hard-working and obedient, they were invisible, weren’t they?
No, best be sure. Once Tali reached the sunstone station she would use a glamour to disguise her feet — assuming someone could release her gift. And if not, she would die.
‘Why?’ groaned Lifka. A tsunami rolled up her belly and she fountained masticated vegetables onto her own face.
Tali wiped the muck out of the girl’s eyes and rinsed her off. ‘Tinyhead will kill me if I don’t escape.’
‘Tell guards — cut everythin’ off,’ Lifka slurred. ‘Glad. Hate you!’ She turned her face to the wall.
Tali squirmed. ‘I’m really sorry. I had no choice.’
‘Won’t escape. Die, horribly, ha, ha — blurrggghh.’ Up it came again, streaked with green bile now.
Tali washed the vomit off with the last of the water. ‘I’m going to get away,’ she said firmly, though she was beginning to doubt that she’d get as far as the sunstone shaft. If such a simple plan could go so wrong so quickly, how could she pull off the difficult parts?
‘Didn’t tell ya everythin’, did I?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Not sayin’.’ Lifka bared slime-coated teeth, puked onto the wall beside her bed-shelf and lay still, breath rasping in her raw throat.
After tossing a ragweed blanket over the girl, Tali took back the poulter leg, then hurried down the painted tunnels to her own cell, ten minutes away, picking the girr-grub out of the poulter flesh as she walked. She felt self-conscious in the sunstone carrier’s red-brown loincloth and, if she encountered anyone who knew Lifka, she was lost.
This time she saw no one. In her cell, Tali was washing her hands when she realised how easily she could have saved Mia. If she’d only thought to shove a mucky finger into Mia’s mouth, girr-grub slime would have made her violently ill. Tali could have cleaned up the birth mess, hidden the dead baby until Banj had gone and the healers had taken Mia away, then buried it in the composter. By the time Mia recovered from the girr-grub she might have come to terms with her loss, and no one need ever have known about the grey baby.
Tali stared at the wall, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. Why hadn’t that occurred to her? No matter how hopeless things were, there was always a way out. She just had to find it.
Her pet mouse squeaked. Poon had grey fur, small feet and big ears, and Tali loved her. She poked the piece of yam into the ramshackle cage she had fashioned from poulter bones and gum. Poon took the yam in her front paws, ate it with delicate nibbles and looked up for more.
‘Sorry,’ said Tali. ‘Had greater need of it.’ She swallowed. ‘Poon, I’ve got to set you free.’
She unlatched the cage, stroked the mouse’s ears and set her on the floor. ‘Go,’ she whispered. ‘Run and hide.’
Poon stood up on her back legs, reaching for the swinging cage.
‘I’m scared to leave my cage, too,’ said Tali.
CHAPTER 15
‘I’ve got to fly, Poon. Tinyhead’s after me.’ Tali, her eyes prickling, urged the mouse away with the back of her hand. ‘Off you go.’
Poon ran inside and scrabbled against the side of her bed.
Tali sighed, gave her a shred of poulter leg, wrapped the rest in a length torn from her ragweed blanket and slipped it into her pocket. She gathered her only possessions: a swirling silver ornament on a chain — the seal of her ancient house — and her father’s letter, which she fixed into the hem of her loincloth with a purloined brass pin. Finally, a pretty blue gown made of the finest silk cloth. Her ancestor Eulala vi Torgrist had worn it proudly as she left her home a thousand years ago, one of a hundred and forty-four noble children sent into exile.
They had been told that they were going on a grand adventure to serve their country, but had been given over to the Cythonians as hostages and never ransomed. Why not? If Hightspall was prepared to trade with the enemy, why couldn’t they ransom their own children? Tali could only see it as a betrayal.
Eulala had been just twelve but the gown was a good fit on Tali and she would wear it when — if — she escaped. She could not go home wearing a loincloth.
The silver seal had burned the slave’s mark into her left shoulder. She pocketed it and went out, carrying Poon. Now came her biggest challenge — finding someone to release her hidden gift.
‘What if Bet won’t tell me?’ Talking to Poon created the illusion that Tali was not alone. ‘What do I do then?’
Poon’s brown eyes peered at Tali from the cave of her coiled fingers. The mouse was trembling. You and me both, Tali thought. I’ve only a few hours to find a slave who knows magery, convince her to release my gift, assuming she can, and practise the glamour. Not long at all. And what if no one will help?
‘Would I,’ she said to Poon, ‘if a madwoman burst into my cell in the middle of the night, demanding I tell her about forbidden magery?’
Poon’s flanks heaved, then she ducked out of sight. You can’t do it, the lifetime slave jeered. No slave has ever escaped.
But Tali had to succeed, whatever it took. She had sworn a blood oath.
She fingered the Purple Pixies in her pocket. After one taste, I’ll tell ya
anythin’, Lifka had said. If there was no other way to get Bet to talk, Tali would feed her a Pixie. It would be a wicked betrayal of the old lady, but without magery the quest would fail. Without magery she could never defeat her enemy. Without magery, Tinyhead would carry her to the cellar and the killers would cut her head open.
Once her gift had been released Tali would squeeze through the hole she had noticed this afternoon, run for the sunstone loading station and practise her glamour. When the carrier slaves came at dawn, she would use the glamour on herself and take her place in the line as Lifka.
It wasn’t much of a plan, but at least she had one.
But what if Lifka recovered and gave the alarm? What if she died of girr-grub poisoning and someone found the body? No, Lifka was tough; she’d be all right. Wouldn’t she?
The painted tunnels of the Pale’s Empound were empty. The other slaves were asleep in their cells, since the going-to-work gongs sounded at dawn and any slave more than three minutes late went without breakfast. The luminous plates in the assembly areas had been turned to the wall to dim their glow; the slaves walking the air wafter treadmills had slowed to a lulling thump-thump. Their eyes were closed, their arms hung limp. Some, Tali knew, were able to doze as they walked.
It was not forbidden to be out of one’s cell in the middle of the night, but it would attract the attention of any guard she encountered. Tali slipped into the shadows and was on her way to Nurse Bet’s cell when heavy footsteps sounded behind her. Since slaves went barefoot, it had to be a Cythonian.
The huge shoulders and little head gave him away. Tinyhead was heading towards her cell. Another few minutes and he would have caught her there. What would he do when he discovered she was gone? Check the squattery, then search the cells of her associates, like Bet. Then he would come hunting.
She dared not go to Bet’s cell now, but where else could she go? Tali ran the curving corridor on tiptoes, out of the Pale’s Empound, past the subsistery, the composters and the toadstool grottoes, then darted down the tunnel where the miners had been working, praying that they had not come back and blocked the collapsed hole. If they had, it was over. No, it was still open, though the gap was tiny.
