by Ian Irvine
“What kind of a key? To a lock? Or a puzzle?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’ve known this for how long?”
“A week or so.”
Purple flooded his face. He was angrier than she had ever seen him. “Yet you kept it from me.”
“You’ve treated me and my friends like enemies.”
“I’m trying to win the war.”
“Not hard enough!”
“If I’d known this a week ago I might have been able to do something. Find out!”
“What?” she said, shivering.
“Do whatever it takes. I’ve got to know what the key is.”
“I–I’ll do my best, but — ”
“I don’t want your best,” he said savagely. “I want the answer, now!”
“It’s dangerous. Lyf — ”
“Not as dangerous as I am when people fail me. We’ll start with another blood-letting. Right now!”
CHAPTER 11
Glynnie’s knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the floating door. She was staring back towards the lake shore as if expecting to hear someone cry out that they had found a body. Benn’s.
In the other direction the edge of the wheel of flotsam, thirty or forty yards away, stretched further than Rix could see. Mist was rising everywhere now, banners streaming up into the icy air to be drifted into fog banks by the breeze. It would soon be dark.
He had lost sight of the dinghies, though he could hear the searchers talking and the gunwales knocking together. They must have anchored above the outlet to the drainpipe, sending divers down to see if any of the escapees had drowned there. The search would not take long.
“We’d better abandon the door,” said Rix. “It’s too easily spotted.”
“Don’t think I can last much longer.” Glynnie’s teeth chattered. She clenched her jaw.
Rix didn’t have much left either. Between the cold, the pain in his wrist, the lack of sleep and the battering his body had taken in recent days, his strength was fading.
But he wasn’t beaten yet. “Come here. Put your arms around me.”
“Lord?”
“It’ll keep the cold away.”
She bit her lip. Was she afraid of him? No, Glynnie was still in awe of House Ricinus, and the mighty lord that Rix was in her eyes, rather than the dishonoured man he was in his own. He pulled her against his chest with his free arm and held her tightly, and after a while she put her arms around him and clasped her hands behind his back. The pain in his wrist faded a little.
“You’re warm!” she said in amazement.
“I was swimming hard.”
As warmth spread between them, Rix found himself clinging to her for comfort. All his life he had known where he belonged — the heir to a noble house — and where everyone around him fitted into the vast entity that had been House Ricinus. Now he had no house, no family, no place, and in this savage land a man who belonged nowhere was prey to all.
They pulled apart at the same moment. Pain lanced into Rix’s wrist bones.
“Can you swim out to the flotsam, Glynnie? You’ve got to be able to do it by yourself…”
If I’m killed, lay unspoken between them.
She looked that way and her small shoulders hunched. “I–I’ll try.”
It was little more than a dog paddle at first, but as she swam Glynnie’s stroke changed to imitate his. She was painfully slow; he could have towed her there in half the time, but she was a good learner. Her courage and determination were an inspiration.
They limped thirty yards before they reached the edge of the slowly wheeling gyre of debris. Glynnie was tiring, starting to thrash.
“Can’t go — any — ” She was gasping, making no progress.
Rix pushed a floating plank to her. She clung to it the way she had clung to him earlier.
He surveyed the gyre. There were scores of uprooted trees, a timber yard’s worth of lumber, hundreds of pieces of furniture — some broken, others unmarked — empty bottles of many sizes, shapes and colours, an inflated wine skin that might have been used as an emergency float, a white china teapot with a red rose painted on the side, bobbing its handle and spout. The water seemed thicker here and had an unpleasant red-brown tinge. And a smell Rix did not want to dwell on.
Dead seabirds, white wings spread upon the water, eyes pecked out. A drowned goat with bloated belly and four legs standing vertical. And bodies, some broken by the force of the tidal wave, some apparently unharmed, but all dead and eyeless, as if they could not bear to look upon the horror that had befallen them.
The gyre might have been a hundred yards across, or thrice that far. He could not see the further edge through the mist. It was the best hiding place they had, though only a miracle could save them from a determined search by three boats.
Rix looked over his shoulder but the mist had closed in along the shore as well; he could not see anything there. He could hear the faintest rasping though, the rhythm unmistakeable to one who had spent his youth in boats.
Glynnie caught the direction of his gaze. “What’s that funny noise?”
“Rowing. They’ve packed sacking into the rowlocks to muffle the oars.”
“They’re coming after us?”
“Yes.”
Rix caught the drifting wine skin. “Put this under your shirt. It’ll hold you up…”
She held onto it to support herself. “If the cold gets me, a float isn’t going to help.”
They headed towards the centre of the gyre, passing more broken timber, more dead animals, more bodies. One was a boy, floating face down with his arms and legs rigidly outstretched. And he had red hair -
“Benn?” said Glynnie in a cracked voice.
She sagged on the wine skin, her weight pressing it beneath the surface, then let go and it shot out of the water. She began to thrash towards the boy, making little progress and far too much noise. Rix caught her by the shoulder. She swung around and punched him in the nose, then flailed off. He caught her by the hair, holding her until she exhausted herself.
“It’s not him, Glynnie.”
“How would you know?” she sobbed. “I got to be sure.”
He didn’t want to look at any more bodies, and definitely didn’t want to see what time and predators had done to an innocent child, but there was no help for it. He swam with her to the body and turned it over.
She gave a muffled shriek, then turned away and clung to him, desperately. “That poor little boy.”
Rix turned the lad face down again. It seemed more respectful. He swam away, carrying her with him, to a pine table floating on its side.
“How did you know it wasn’t Benn?” said Glynnie, hanging onto the edge of the table.
“This gyre must have been here since the tidal wave, and the wind isn’t strong enough to mix it up. Any body in the middle of the gyre must have been here for days.”
She seemed to take comfort from that. It allowed her to keep hoping. Rix rubbed his nose, which was throbbing from the blow, and found a smear of blood on his hand.
“Lord, I’m sorry,” said Glynnie, hanging her head. “You must think — ”
“I dare say I deserved it.” He stiffened. The muffled sound of rowing was louder than before and coming from several places at once.
“Have I given us away?” she whispered.
“They know we escaped, and since they haven’t found us in their drag nets, or ashore, there’s only one place we can be.”
“What are we going to do?”
Die, he thought, and that will put an end to all pain.
“Keep going. There could be a storm… or we might find a boat in the rubbish. You never know.”
They were in an impossible situation and she knew it. He was about to swim on when a dinghy emerged from a mist bank, barely thirty yards away. A man at the bow held a lantern up on the end of a pole; a yellow halo surrounded it.
Rix pulled her down until only their eyes we
re above the water. “Don’t look at the light,” he whispered. “They’ll see it reflected in your eyes. Look down.”
He did the same, one arm around her chest. He could feel the thumping of her heart, her chest rising and falling with each breath. The lantern man swung his light from one side to the other, scanning the debris-littered water. The boat passed through a banner of low-hanging mist. The light made a brighter halo, then disappeared.
“Another boat behind us,” breathed Glynnie. “They’re searching in a pattern.”
Rix rotated. The second boat was mere shadow and rainbow-ringed light, moving steadily through the mist, then gone.
“The next pass will come right through here. And that close, nothing can hide us. Come on.”
He set off towards the line the first boat had followed. Glynnie followed for a while, then stopped, and when he turned to check she was going under. He raced back, hauled her up. Her face and hands were mottled blue and purple from the cold and she was shuddering fitfully.
“Leave me,” she said dully. “Can’t go — any further.”
“I’m not leaving you. Shh! You’re breathing like a walrus.”
He towed her across, taking advantage of the cover of a drifting sideboard here, a dead donkey there. Rix was very cold now and an icy lethargy was creeping through him too. If they stayed in the water much longer Glynnie would collapse from exposure. He pulled her against his chest but this time no warmth grew between them, not a trace. He was numb from cold, save for his right wrist, which burned with fire.
“We’re going to die, Lord,” she whispered. “Right here.”
Better we do than the enemy take us, he thought. “Not yet, Glynnie. You’ve got to hang on. We’ll beat them yet.”
He played hide-and-seek with the three boats for another few minutes as they crisscrossed the gyre. It was almost dark now but the fog was lifting and Rix was losing hope; he could feel Glynnie slipping away. The water was taking her body heat faster than she could generate it.
They were in the meagre shelter of an almost submerged log when the three dinghies came together in an open space forty yards away. The leader of the searchers stood up in the dinghy and swept his arm out in a circle that seemed to indicate the circumference of the gyre.
“I don’t like this,” Rix muttered in Glynnie’s ear. “What Cythonian devilry have they got in mind now?”
Glynnie’s head lolled onto his shoulder. She was fading fast, and if he couldn’t warm her she would die. He pulled his shirt up, and hers, pressed his bare chest against her and crushed them together. A faint warmth grew there.
After a minute or two, Glynnie roused. Her head wobbled, steadied. Her eyes drifted open, unfocused, then suddenly widened.
“Lord!” she croaked, trying to pull away. “What are you doing?”
He held her. “Saving our lives. Shh!”
Clots of mist drifted by, momentarily obscuring the three dinghies, then cleared. They separated and were rowed out in widening spirals, each lantern man now supporting a barrel on the transom. From the bung holes, an oily liquid gurgled into the water.
The enemy were masters of the alchymical arts and had developed all manner of terrifying new weapons. Rix had seen more than enough of their effects in the first days of the war and did not want to experience them here. He went backwards, using just his feet.
“Is it poison?” said Glynnie.
Every possibility Rix could think of was horrifying. “I don’t know.”
“They’re trying to kill you.”
Glynnie would have been safer if he’d left her behind. Being with him was a death warrant. “We’ve got to get out of the gyre. Hold tight!”
The dinghies were rowing quickly now, as if they did not want to be anywhere near the gyre when their mission was completed. They would reach the outside before he and Glynnie were a quarter of the way, and he could not swim any faster without alerting the enemy. His wrist was so painful that he could scarcely think. It felt as though acid was eating through the bones.
The stuff from the barrels gave off fumes that burned his nose, and Glynnie’s eyes were watering. The dinghies reached the outside of the gyre, equally spaced around it. The last of the fluid was emptied out. The oarsmen rowed another ten yards, then stopped and the lantern men returned to the bow and stood there, watching the gyre.
Glynnie threw her hands up, clutching the sides of her head.
“Head feels like it’s bursting.”
“Try not to breathe the fumes.”
They had gone another thirty yards when the captain swung a brawny arm, hurling a glowing object hard and high. It wheeled over three times before smacking into the water. Nothing happened for one, two, three seconds.
Then flames exploded up and raced across the gyre from one side to the other.
CHAPTER 12
Glynnie screamed.
The captain bellowed, “There they are. They’re mine!”
Fire was racing towards Rix and Glynnie. It wasn’t orange like normal fire, but an ominous, chymical crimson. He could not see the other boats through the flames, but he had no choice. He had to take the fastest way out of the gyre even though it led directly to the captain’s dinghy. If it was the last thing Rix ever did, he was going to save her.
He hissed, “Deepest breath you can, now!”
Glynnie was used to obeying without question. He pulled her under, fixed the position of the dinghy in his mind and dived deep. Flames rushed across the water above them. The light turned an unpleasant red, tinged with black.
Rix kept going down; it would make it easier to stay under. He had to do the swim of his life this time. He pushed on past the first pain barrier, then the second. Past the moment when his lungs began to heave and the only urge he had left was the desperate need to breathe in. Another five seconds, he told himself, and when that was up, just another five seconds.
He was out of the zone of flames now, and praying that the enemy didn’t guess what he was up to. They would hardly think he could swim so far with such desperate purpose. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t.
Glynnie couldn’t last much longer and neither could he. Where was the dinghy? Ah, he saw its shadow not far ahead. He swam beneath. Just five more seconds. Just four. Just three.
He curved up to the surface. The men in the dinghy were standing up with their backs to him, staring into the gyre, which was a roaring vision of Hades. There was no time to tell Glynnie his plan. He pushed her away, swam to the dinghy, put his hands on the gunwale and heaved with all his strength, as if to haul himself aboard.
As he had hoped, his great weight was too much for the craft. It rocked wildly, throwing the standing men into the water, then slowly overturned on top of him. But he had snatched a breath and was already diving away as everything inside the boat fell into the lake.
The lantern landed on the water, bobbed there and remained alight. The men were not so fortunate. Few Cythonians knew how to swim and these three had not learned. One of the rowers drifted past, his mouth wide open, his arms thrashing uselessly. Rix slammed his left fist into the man’s belly, driving all the air out of him. He doubled up and sank.
The second rower was clinging to the keel of the upturned boat. Rix tore his hands free and, when the man began to thrash, used both feet to send him head-first against the transom. His forehead cracked into it and he went under.
“Rix!” Glynnie cried.
Rix whirled. The captain was clinging to her, and he was so stocky and heavy-boned that he was pulling them both under. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Rix approaching, then shifted his big hands from Glynnie’s shoulders to her throat. He was going to take her down with him.
No time to think. Rix picked up a floating oar, balanced it on his right forearm, then drove the end of the blade against the back of the captain’s neck. His head snapped backwards and he sank, his hands still locked around Glynnie’s throat.
Rix was diving after them when Glynnie doubled up, slid
her hands up inside the captain’s hands to break his grip, then straightened her legs and forced him away. He went down, she was propelled up and reached the surface at the same time as Rix got to her.
“Well done,” he said. “Now, if we can just — ”
“Hoy?” someone called across the gyre to the other boats. “You fellows all right?”
The chymical flames on the water were dying out, though objects still burned in a hundred places — floating furniture, pieces of timber, bodies… Through the smoke and mist, it was impossible to tell where the other two dinghies were.
“It’s worrying — we can’t see — their lights,” panted Glynnie.
Rix was thinking the same thing. “They can’t know I overturned the boat. I don’t think they’re too concerned.”
“Of course they are.”
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you’re the great Lord Rixium, who attacked Lyf in his own lair and hurt him badly — with Maloch. The same Rixium who rescued Tali from a band of Cythonians, then helped her defeat the magian, Deroe — and almost Lyf himself.”
“We almost died a dozen times.”
“Maybe that’s what the enemy are afraid of — that you have the good luck, and they have the bad.”
Rix was about to remind her of the downfall of his house when a signal rocket soared high above the mist and burst in a yellow star.
“They know something’s wrong,” he whispered. “They’re calling for reinforcements. To the boat, quick!”
They swam to the dinghy, which was floating face down.
“Don’t see how it can be turned over,” said Glynnie.
“I do, but it won’t be easy one-handed. Go up near the bow, lie across the keel and take hold of the gunwale on the other side. I’ll do the same amidships, where it’s heaviest.”
“What’s the gunwale?”
“The raised side, where the oars are attached.”
She did so. He stretched his frame across the middle and took hold of the gunwale with his left hand.
“I can hear them,” said Glynnie. “They’re coming fast.”
“Then we’d better be faster. When I give the word, throw your weight backwards and we’ll try to heave it over. One, two, three… heave.”
