Vengeance

Tali’s heart leapt up her throat and the nail ground into her hipbone. She was almost screaming from the pain but she did not move. She was going to win this contest, for Mama.

With savage hacks of the knife, the man began to tear down the crates to her left, smash, crash. He was going to find her. How could she stop him? She eased off the nail, took hold of the lowest crate and heaved. It did not budge; the weight of all the crates above it was too great.

More crates crashed down. It would not be long now. She could not go further backwards; the gap was too narrow. And she dared not wait. Once he saw her, he would jam the knife through her guts.

Tali crouched, took hold of the lowest crate and heaved, using her legs this time. Even little girl slaves were strong, and she forced upwards, slowly straightening her legs, until her back ached and her knees trembled. But she wasn’t going to give in, ever.

The moving crates scraped and squealed. He swung around, trying to work out where the sound had come from. She gave an almighty heave, the ten-high stack swayed, then with a roar the lot fell down on him.

Tali scurried sideways into a new gap and hid in the darkness. The man groaned. The woman appeared, taking her time, and heaved the crates aside. The man’s face was covered in blood. Ha! thought Tali. Take that! But it could never make up for what they had done to Mama.

‘What happened?’ he moaned.

‘Stop whining,’ said the woman disgustedly. ‘You pulled them down on yourself. Did you find anything?’

Fifty heartbeats passed, then the man lurched away. ‘Must have been rats. Come on. I need another drink.’

‘I’ll pour it down your throat until you choke.’

Tali pressed a fingertip against the nail wound, trying to heal it the way Nurse Bet had taught her, but the hole went too deep. The beads of blood on her fingers were as bright as jewels, as bright as Mama’s blood. Mama! Her eyes flooded.

The woman pulled on a dangling rope and, with a screech, an iron staircase corkscrewed down. Tali felt sure the point at the bottom was going to twist right through Mama, but it brushed by her tiny waist before grounding on the black bench. The man shot up the steps, a rat running away from a ferret. The staircase was a coiled spring quivering under his weight.

But then — then the woman picked up the tin of blood, climbed onto the bench and stepped onto Mama’s chest as though she was rubbish. One of Mama’s ribs snapped like the wishbone of a poulter and a scorching fury surged through Tali, an urge to smash the woman down. She fought it; Mama had told her to not make a sound.

The woman rocked back and forth as she scanned the cellar, crack-crack, standing on Tali’s beautiful mama as if she were a piece of firewood, then followed the man.

Once they were gone, Tali darted across and touched the crimson beads on her fingers to her mama’s head, as if her own blood could heal her. There was blood everywhere, but none left in Mama. Taking hold of her hand, Tali squeezed it tightly, trying to will Mama back to life, but the spirit had left her forever.

She had taught Tali not to fight back, to always bow her head and say, ‘Yes, Master,’ and it had killed her. Tali wasn’t going to make that mistake. Mama said it was wrong to hate people, but Tali’s rage had redhot teeth and talons as sharp as spikes. How dare they treat her beautiful mama that way?

‘When I’m grown up I’ll find them out,’ she whispered, hand upon her mother’s heart. ‘Once I get my gift I’ll hunt them down and make them pay.’

Someone took a heavy breath, close by. The murderers! Coming back to kill her! Tali scuttled into the shadows between two of the stone bins, grabbed a grey stick protruding from its broken top and prepared to defend herself.

But it was a handsome, black-haired boy, a few years older than herself, who stumbled out from behind a heap of empty barrels. He wasn’t a slave, though, nor a tattooed Cythonian. He must have been rich, for he wore a plum-coloured velvet coat with gold buttons, an emerald kilt and shoes with shiny buckles. His face was white, his eyes a rich, purply brown, his yellow vest was covered in vomit and his teeth were chattering.

That wasn’t the only odd thing about him. The faintest misty aura, pale pink as the gills of a mushroom, clung to his head and hands. The aura of magery — though not his. Tali could tell that he had no more gift than a log.

The boy reached out towards Mama then drew back sharply, staring at his hands. Tali’s hair stood up. His hands were covered in blood, yet he hadn’t touched Mama.

He doubled over, sicked onto his shoes and let out the moan of an animal in pain. Tali must have made a sound for his head shot around and he stared at her, then bolted up the stairs, yanking on the rope as he went. The iron staircase howled as it rose with him out of sight.

Tali could hold back no longer. ‘I’m going to get you!’ she screeched, brandishing the stick. A trapdoor clanged shut and the greenish light began to fade.

What if Tinyhead was waiting outside? Tali shivered. What if he came after her? No, he had betrayed Mama and he had to pay. Rage swelled until her heart felt as if it was going to explode, then she pointed the stick at the stone door, willing Tinyhead’s head to burst like a melon. With a sudden gush, the pressure was gone and her rage as well.

She was holding the stick so tightly that her knuckles hurt, and for the first time Tali saw it clearly. It wasn’t a stick, it was a human thigh bone. There was nothing horrible about it, though. Oddly, it felt like a friend.

Tali put it back where she had found it. Now so exhausted that she could barely stand up, she stumbled to the door, trying not to think about the man with the knife or the woman and her golden tongs, trying to wipe out the memories forever. When she slipped into the painted tunnel that led back to Cython, there was no sign of Tinyhead.

Learn to lower your eyes and say, ‘Yes, Master’.

‘All right!’ Tali said savagely. ‘But once I come of age, once I find my gift, look out!’

How could she find her gift when she couldn’t trust anyone? How could she beat her enemy when no one knew who he was? Blinded by scalding tears, she crept home to Cython, and slavery.

At least she would be safe there.

CHAPTER 4

It takes an unnatural cold to touch a wrythen: cold bitter as bile and empty as a dead man’s eyes. Cold so bleak that he felt his frostbitten plasm congealing and it took precious strength to maintain his uncanny, neither-live-nor-dead state. Strength he could not afford to waste.

Not when vengeance was so achingly near.

The wrythen suppressed his rage at the loss of a third nuclix. He had a plan to get all three back and avenge himself on the thief. It would not take long — not as he counted time.

He cleaned the hollow needle of a graver and filled it with diluted alkoyl, the last of his hoarded store. The wrythen had to be exquisitely careful using it, for alkoyl was inimical both to his plasm and to most things he had created here in his five-fold caverns. The graver was made of purest platina, yet alkoyl would eat through it before he finished the iron book. No other substance could contain it at all.

He had to complete the book, if the alkoyl lasted, and transmit the completed pages to the Chamber of the Solaces as soon as he could find the strength for such challenging magery. The Consolation of Vengeance had to be finished soon. His people must be ready when the call came.

As the wrythen set his graver to the page, he was summoned. He did not have to go; nothing and no one had any hold on him. But in life he had been a decent and an honourable man, so he rose to the top of his home cavern.

Spaced around his lovingly imagined ancestor gallery, looking out from spectre sculptures as perfect as mind and memory could create, a hundred and seven pairs of regal eyes measured him. Their collective reign had lasted three thousand, six hundred and forty-two years; their wisdom could not be measured by any set of numbers. He had shaped them from his own plasm, had long relied on them for company, advice and support, had