Vengeance ttr-1

by Ian Irvine

  She dived on it and tried to wrench it free, but the Living Blade sent such a shock through her fingers that she could not hold it.

  Whoomph! Alkoyl must have eaten through the upper layer of sulphur and melted that which lay below, for a yellow geyser erupted upwards from the centre of the flame, a fountain of molten sulphur burning bright as the sun and blasting up for fifty feet. Fire crept in a blocking line from pond to pond and Tali saw her chance … though if it went wrong she would be cooked.

  She hobbled towards the lowest part of the line of fire, praying that she could get there before it erupted. Then she ran, held her breath and dived through the belching smoke, and made it. Wisps of white smoke clung to her face and hair, stinging her eyes, nose and mouth, and when she took her first breath it carved a searing track down to her lungs. Coughing out stinging saliva, she darted away.

  ‘After her,’ gasped the captain. ‘For your families’ lives.’

  The guards hesitated on the other side of the line of fire, afraid to follow. A beaky-nosed fellow gathered his courage and ran, but as he soared above the fire it erupted in a molten sulphur geyser which lifted him high and tumbled him about, blazing like a moth in a flame. He was dead before he thudded to the ground and the other guards drew back. The fire was now yards high and extended from one mud pool to the next, blocking the track and cutting them off from Tali.

  Wil was standing by himself, his arms stretched out towards her and his mouth working, though she could not make out what he was saying over the roaring of the fires. And Orlyk’s squad was not far away.

  As she turned to go, Wil came flying out of the flames, his mouth gaping and his remaining hair shrivelled, to land sprawling on the crusted ground. He had skinned both knees and blood was running down his shins, but he did not appear to have noticed.

  He swivelled his head from side to side as if using some otherworldly sense, then his empty eye sockets fixed on her. The brilliant light threw his face into high contrast. His cheeks and chin were dotted with faded scars, his single nostril was bleeding again and clusters of brown nodules were growing in his eye sockets.

  ‘Take Wil with you,’ he said, craning his head and upper body forwards, raptly. ‘Wil special.’

  ‘I don’t think — ’

  ‘Wil saved you twice now.’

  ‘Twice?’ said Tali. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘All put to death in your place. You owe Wil.’

  His words chilled her. The first time she met him he had mentioned people being put to death, but what did in her place mean?

  There was no time to ask, and the last thing she wanted was the company of a blind madman who had visions, yet without Wil’s swift action the captain would be packing her head in a bag and taking it back to Cython. How could she refuse him?

  ‘This way,’ she said, turning in the direction of Caulderon.

  Wil reached out to her like a shy youth. She took his cracked hand, uncomfortably.

  ‘Where you going?’ he said in a childlike, breathy voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she lied.

  ‘Wil the Sump, they call me. Not respectful, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Tali said absently, checking for lanterns. The enemy could not track her without light, though to conceal themselves they would open their lantern shutters as seldom as possible. Unless she kept watch every minute, she could miss them.

  ‘First to see the new book, Wil was,’ said Wil. ‘First to read it, too.’

  ‘What book was that?’ said Tali. Books were rare in Cython — at least, in the Pale Empound — though it was said the enemy had huge libraries containing hundreds of volumes.

  His face took on a closed expression. It was remarkably mobile, considering he had no eyes.

  ‘Can’t tell you about the Solaces. You Pale, you our enemy.’

  ‘What are the Solaces?’ She had never heard the term before.

  ‘Secret books. They tell the stories of our past and our future.’

  ‘Who wrote them?’

  He did not reply.

  ‘Why do you want to go with an enemy, Wil?’

  He looked around as if afraid someone would overhear. ‘Touched the iron book, Wil did,’ said Wil in an awed whisper. ‘Saw you change the future.’

  ‘What iron book?’ She reminded herself that he was mad, and that, no matter how clever he had been in leading the enemy to her, his words might not mean anything.

  ‘Can’t speak of it. Contest still going. Have to see the ending.’

  Tali shivered. ‘Did you see what was going to happen?’

  He hugged himself around the chest. ‘Change the story, change the truth. Mustn’t touch it.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘Saw it first.’ He let out a high-pitched laugh. ‘They can’t take that away. Earned his tattoo, Wil did. Wil is special.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Tali, pitying the unfortunate man for a life so lowly that even the slaves had mocked him as they trudged by.

  ‘Not Wil’s fault,’ said Wil, his face crumpling. ‘Wil didn’t put them down.’

  The chill was back. ‘Who, Wil?’

  ‘Matriarchs made Wil tell. Wil just protecting the ending. All those children, all those children.’

  The fine hairs stood up on Tali’s arms. ‘Are you saying that children were killed instead of me?’

  He crumpled to the ground, rolling over and over, his face covered by his forearms. ‘How was Wil to know? It wasn’t in shillilar.’

  She could not stop here; the pursuit was too close. She lifted him and led him by the hand. ‘What have you done, Wil?’

  ‘Couldn’t let matriarchs find you.’ Wil moaned like an animal in a trap. ‘They kill you, it ruin the story. But ah, the children, the little children.’

  She checked around her, saw no lights, then shook him. ‘When was this? Tell me!’

  He could barely get the words out. ‘Twelve years ago. Lied to matriarchs. Had to protect the one. They must not change her story.’

  ‘What did you tell the matriarchs?’

  ‘That the one had black hair — olive skin — mother cleaned effluxors. Wil didn’t know,’ he said shrilly.

  The hair stirred on Tali’s head as a childhood memory surfaced — screaming mothers, uproar among the effluxor slaves and a rebellion bloodily put down. Her own mother would never talk about it.

  ‘The matriarchs took other children in my place. How many?’

  ‘All the ones that fitted. Thirty-nine black-haired little girls. Put to death to prevent shillilar.’

  It was dreadful, but she had to know why it had happened. ‘What is the shillilar?’

  ‘Not Wil’s fault. Why they make Wil watch? Horrible, horrible.’

  ‘All those little girls killed instead of me,’ Tali whispered. ‘Why, Wil? What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Why not?’ she snapped, shaking him again.

  ‘Change the contest. Ruin the ending,’ said Wil. ‘Anyway, can’t remember.’

  Obviously a lie. Perhaps Wil did that filthy work cleaning sumps as a penance for what he had done, but it could never be enough. How could anyone atone for thirty-nine black-haired girls killed in the place of one who was blonde?

  Yet despite his protests, Wil still feasted on his discovery of her. Tali did not like him at all.

  It prompted her to question everything she had done, though. What was it about her that created havoc wherever she went? Why did those innocent children have to die, that she should live? She’d had nothing to do with it, yet she felt an obligation to make up for the waste of their young lives. And her mother’s. And Mia’s. It strengthened the blood oath. She had to find a way.

  They might have travelled a mile since the escape, but there was still a long way to go and in the dark she could not be sure she was going in the right direction.

  ‘Wil?’ she said. ‘How do you find your way around?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just see, bette
r than Wil could with eyes.’

  ‘Which way is Caulderon?’

  He pointed to the left of her heading.

  ‘How far?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘What about my enemies? The captain, and Orlyk? And Tinyhead?’

  ‘Can’t see own people.’

  Damn! ‘Well, we’d better hurry if we’re to get to Caulderon before the sun comes up.’

  ‘Not going to Caulderon,’ said Wil.

  It solved her problem. ‘I am. You can go wherever you want.’

  She was turning away when he grabbed her with those hands that seemed too big for him.

  ‘Saved your life.’ Wil held her arms behind her back in a grip she could not break. ‘You Wil’s now.’

  He had only hauled her a hundred yards when there was a soggy thud behind her and his grip relaxed. Tali turned to run but Orlyk dealt her an even harder blow. By the time she swam back to consciousness she was bound so tightly that there was no hope of escape.

  ‘I’m putting Mijl the pothecky in charge of you,’ said Orlyk, shining a glowstone lantern in Tali’s eyes. ‘She’s an expert in chymical pain: one whiff of her distillates sets the nerves ablaze, her congelas can etch the skin from living flesh, her refracts set living innards solid as stone. And unlike me,’ Orlyk bared her teeth in a sickening smile, ‘Mijl has good reason to hate Pale.’

  Mijl, a small, sinewy woman with nostrils like mine tunnels and stubby, spatulate fingers, touched Tali on the temple with a yard-long glass tube as thick as a magian’s staff. Its rounded tip was thickly smeared with a brown substance.

  Bright pain sparkled at the touch and slowly spread across Tali’s temples like a flame consuming a sheet of paper. She tried to brush the gunk off her forehead but a similar pain seared through her hand, which stiffened until she could not bend her fingers.

  ‘What was that for?’ gasped Tali.

  ‘Advance payment, slave,’ said the pothecky. ‘After interrogation in Cython, you will serve as a terrible warning to the other Pale. With congela, I will take the skin off and lay bare the living flesh. For every one of us who suffered in the shaft, and all those who died in the mud mire, and even for the traitor Sconts, you will feel every minute of their pain.’

  The pothecky paused.

  ‘Then I will extract the cost of the destroyed sunstone from your living flesh with the distillate called red noddy. Then, for impersonating the slave, Lifka, I will bath you in a tincture reduced from a thousand girr-grubs. You will find it … exquisite.’

  CHAPTER 44

  ‘What if they’ve blasted the city gates?’ said Rix. ‘They could be rampaging through Caulderon right now.’

  Fear tightened his throat. A contagious pox could cripple Caulderon in a few days, then the enemy could march into the undefended city. Could Hightspall, after standing unchallenged for seventeen hundred years, be toppled that easily?

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tobry. ‘These attacks are just a warning, intended to spread as much fear as possible.’

  ‘I should be there. Who else can protect my family? Not Father.’

  They had ridden along the edge of the Seethings for an hour, searching for any light or sound that might indicate Tali was nearby, but had seen nothing. Rix was so tired he could barely stay in the saddle and even Leather was reduced to a plod.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ said Tobry. ‘Now we’re at war, they’re bound to postpone your father’s Honouring.’

  ‘They won’t,’ Rix said dully.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘All right.’ Rix took a sharp breath. ‘We need the Honouring, desperately.’

  ‘I don’t see why. House Ricinus has everything.’

  ‘Including more enemies than the rest of the great families put together — people who envy our wealth and despise us for rising so high. They can’t bear our successes, Tobe. There are moves afoot to have Father stripped of his title, lands, monopolies …’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Behaviour unbecoming to the chief of a noble house.’

  ‘The chiefs of the noble houses invented bad behaviour,’ said Tobry. ‘It’s their art form.’

  ‘But in his drunkenness Father has insulted all the senior Houses, as well as their wives and daughters, households, dogs and chickens. And Mother — well …’ Rix could not say it aloud.

  ‘Lady Ricinus is not universally loved,’ Tobry said helpfully.

  ‘They bow and smile as they take her bribes and douceurs, then stab her from behind. House Ricinus is teetering under their malice.’

  ‘How’s the Honouring going to help? What’s your father done to deserve it?’

  ‘He’s personally paid for a new force of five thousand men, to be Hightspall’s Third Army. Wages, uniforms, weapons, training and supplies for up to a hundred days in the field — the lot.’

  Tobry whistled. ‘That’s a generous act, even for one of the richest families in Hightspall.’

  ‘It was Mother’s idea, so generosity doesn’t come into it — she would have weighed the costs and calculated the benefits to the last penny. Without it, House Ricinus might have been toppled. But after he’s been publicly Honoured by the chancellor … and if Mother’s other surprises come off — ’

  ‘There’s more?’ said Tobry.

  ‘A couple of things she’s been scheming and plotting and bribing for, for years.’

  ‘I’m intrigued. Tell on.’

  ‘Only Mother knows what they are. But if they come to pass — ’

  ‘House Ricinus will be untouchable.’

  ‘We’d better be — the Third Army has almost bankrupted us. That’s why everything has to be perfect, including my portrait of Father.’

  ‘No offence to your artistic genius, but I don’t understand why the damn portrait is so important.’

  ‘Mother has been boasting about how her brilliant son has captured the perfect likeness of her noble husband. She’s built it up to be the greatest painting of the age, and if it’s not finished it’ll be a public humiliation. It’ll be as though I’ve spat in my father’s face.’

  ‘No matter how much we loathe each other behind closed doors,’ said Tobry, ‘in public the family must kiss each other’s bottoms.’

  Rix looked out across the Seethings. Tali could be anywhere within that treacherous labyrinth, which stretched east all the way to Lake Fumerous and the Brown Vomit, and south for fifteen miles almost to the Crowbung Range.

  ‘Even in daylight it could take a week to find her,’ he said. ‘In darkness, there’s no hope. I’ve got to get home, while I still can. If they besiege the city …’

  ‘We might not be able to get in,’ said Tobry. ‘I know.’

  Rix turned down the Caulderon Road, heading for Palace Ricinus and his crucifixion at Lady Ricinus’s hands. She might have already sent her seneschal out to drag him back. His cheeks flamed at the thought.

  ‘It’s for the best,’ said Tobry after they had gone a mile or two in silence. ‘Tali’s nothing special.’

  Rix restrained the urge to punch his friend into next Tuesday.

  ‘I’ve always felt chivalry to be overrated,’ Tobry went on. ‘I mean, why should a woman be treated different from a man just because she’s small and curvy and vaguely decent on the eye?’

  ‘If you don’t shut it, Tobe, you’ll be excreting teeth for a fortnight.’

  ‘Actually, I found Tali to be rather plain. I mean, her skin is fine enough, if you like it the colour of paper, but those horrible blue eyes and golden hair. Uggh!’

  ‘You’re a dead man, Tobe.’

  Tobry grinned. ‘We’re doing the right thing, the sensible thing — ’

  ‘Since when did you ever do the sensible thing?’ Rix snapped. ‘You don’t believe in anything, you mock all that I hold dear and you think life is a joke at our expense.’

  ‘I’ve changed,’ Tobry said loftily. ‘I’v
e achieved maturity and I’m closing in on wisdom.’

  ‘Well, change back. I only keep you on because you amuse me, and I’ve had precious few laughs out of you lately …’

  Tobry had stopped. ‘What was that?’ he said, standing up in the stirrups.

  ‘Didn’t hear anything,’ said Rix dully.

  ‘Thought I saw a light.’

  ‘Probably another enemy attack.’

  ‘No, it was out in the Seethings.’

  ‘Bog gas catching fire, then.’

  ‘Bog gas burns blue. This light was pure gold.’

  ‘Lord Tobry, Lord Tobry?’ a child’s voice piped from the darkness.

  ‘Who the hell is that?’ said Rix.

  ‘At a guess,’ said Tobry complacently, ‘the slave girl, Rannilt.’

  ‘You don’t have to sound so pleased about it.’

  ‘You might turn Tali away, but you won’t abandon a child to certain death.’

  ‘Why would you even think I would?’ Rix snarled. ‘I may be a fool but I’m not a brute.’

  ‘Did I say you were?’ Tobry said innocently. He raised his elbrot and conjured light. ‘Come forward, child. We won’t harm you.’

  Rannilt edged across the gravel road towards Tobry, keeping as much distance between Rix and herself as possible. She was an unprepossessing little urchin, thin and bruised and grubby, her skin tinged pink from sunburn and a dozen shiny streaks up her right forearm where she had wiped her nose.

  Yet despite the late hour she moved lightly, bouncing on the balls of her feet, and there was a light in her eye and a set to her small, pointed jaw that spoke of considerable determination. It made Rix uneasy. Kids her age should be safely in bed, not lost in the middle of a war, begging aid from strangers.

  ‘Well, child,’ he said. ‘You called and we’re here. What do you want?’

  ‘It’s Tali,’ said Rannilt, speaking to Tobry. ‘They got her.’

  Rix bit off the curse as it was bursting forth. He was not so far gone as to swear in front of a child.

  ‘Who’s got her?’