Vengeance

so. Rix felt sick every time he worked on the sketch, as though he was glorifying a crime. Or wondering whether he’d been complicit in it.

Who could tell him? Certainly not Lady Ricinus, who had passed Rix into the care of Nurse Luzia and a succession of tutors when he had been a toddler — ah!

He opened the door and said to one of the guards, a sallow, crook-nosed fellow he had never seen before, ‘Would you inform Lady Ricinus that I wish to visit my old nurse, Luzia, down in Tumbrel shanty town?’

‘Of course, Lord Rixium. Er, Lady Ricinus will want to know why.’

‘Surely I don’t need a reason to visit Nurse Luzia?’

‘I’m afraid so, Lord Rixium. Lady Ricinus was most adamant.’

‘Then tell her I wish to talk to Luzia about the good old days — when I was happy.’

The guard bowed and withdrew, shortly to return. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Rixium,’ he said, deeply embarrassed. ‘Lady Ricinus requires the portrait to be completed first.’

‘Bitch!’ cried Rix.

The word escaped him before he realised that he was talking to a servant but, good servant that he was, the guard pretended he had not heard. No doubt he would tell Lady Ricinus, though. Keeping anything from her ladyship would earn the guards a place in the monthly flogging tithe. He went into Tobry’s room.

‘Tobry.’ Rix shook him awake.

‘Yes?’

Rix lowered his voice. ‘Come up. I need you to do something for me.’

Tobry pulled on a kilt and followed. ‘Why can’t we talk down here?’

Rix did not answer until they were upstairs in the tower. He opened the window so the wind howled past and, even if someone had been standing two yards away, they would not have heard a quiet conversation.

‘I’m not entirely sure that mother doesn’t have some kind of spying device set up down there.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Find me a way out so I can talk to Luzia. I need to ask her about when I was ill.’

‘I’ll see what I can come up with,’ said Tobry. ‘I’ll need a bit for expenses.’

Rix tossed him a coin bag.

‘What are you doing today?’ said Tobry, pocketing it.

‘What the hell do you think? The cursed portrait — there are only five days left.’

Tobry returned that night, after dark, whistling.

‘What are you so happy about?’ snapped Rix.

‘Bad day?’

‘I hate Father! I hate Mother even more, and I curse this stinking portrait to the Pits of Perdition.’

Tobry inspected it. ‘It’s going well, all things considered. Though the subject seems even darker than before. Grimmer. Bleaker.’

‘I can only paint what I paint.’ He put his mouth close to Tobry’s ear. ‘Any luck?’

‘Yes. Come upstairs.’

Tobry had smuggled in a long length of woven strapping with hooks on either end. ‘We’ll go out the far window and over the wall into Tumbrel Town. It’ll be easier that way.’

‘And we won’t be seen?’

‘I’ve spread a few coins around. The shanty kids were glad to have them. Come on.’

Outside the window it was overcast, freezing and black as a caitsthe’s livers. Rix could not see a thing save for the enemy’s blazing arrows arcing over the distant city wall.

‘Don’t they ever stop?’

‘Only to come back with a new weapon,’ said Tobry. ‘It was fire ribbon this morning — horrible stuff that sticks to the skin and burns all the way down to the bone.’

‘Don’t tell me any more. I want to enjoy the next hour.’

‘It’ll be nice to see Rannilt again,’ said Tobry.

‘It will,’ said Rix. He did not mention Tali, and neither did Tobry, though Rix knew he was still trying to find her.

As they went down, a strong wind kept banging Rix against the side of his tower, grating the skin off his knuckles, but it was worth it.

‘This is just like old times,’ he said when they touched down at the bottom and crept across the grounds. ‘You and me, sneaking out after we’d been confined to our quarters.’

‘Save that there’s a war on and we’re losing.’

‘Cheerful sod, aren’t you?’

‘Sorry. I’ve got a bad feeling about tonight.’

‘Anything in particular?’

‘Everything.’

They climbed over an unguarded section of wall and down into an alley. Two small boys came scampering up. Tobry gave them a silver coin each.

‘Wow!’ Rix heard the smaller boy say. ‘Thanks, Lord Tobry.’

‘Guard our climbing irons and keep a sharp lookout for my enemies,’ Tobry said in a melodramatic whisper, ‘and there’ll be another one each when we get back.’

‘What enemies?’ said Rix. ‘You could stagger from one side of Tumbrel Town to the other in a drunken stupor and the meanest footpad wouldn’t touch you.’

‘It makes the lads feel that they matter. They don’t have much in their lives.’

‘Speaking of which, I wonder how Rannilt is getting on with Luzia?’

‘Like a chick with a mother hen, last I saw,’ said Tobry. ‘Rannilt only stops talking to draw breath. It’s done my cynical old heart a power of good to see her cared for; and see her looking after Luzia, too.’

They made their way through the alleys to a slightly better part of Tumbrel Town, where Rix stopped at a small, single-roomed hut and rapped at the door. There was no answer.

‘It’s late,’ said Tobry. ‘Luzia’s probably asleep.’

‘She never goes to bed before two,’ said Rix.

‘She’s always up, a’doing.’ ‘She’s old now. Rannilt’s probably tired her out.’

Rix knocked again, and a third time. ‘I hope she’s not ill.’

‘I told Rannilt what to do if Luzia took a turn, and left coin for a healer. Though with those healing hands of hers, Rannilt would hardly need one.’

‘It’s a mighty healer that can heal old age,’ said Rix.

He lifted the latch, put his head through the door and shivers crept across his scalp again. ‘Something’s not right, Tobe. What’s that smell?’ He knew, though. It was the smell that haunted his nightmares.

‘Blood,’ said Tobry, pushing past and creating a fist of light in the dark room. ‘Don’t come in.’

Too late. Dear old Luzia, Luzia who had made Rix’s childhood bearable, was dead in her red-drenched bed. Her throat had been savagely cut, only the vertebrae holding her head in place. And it had been done recently, for she was still warm.

Rix had seen plenty of violence in his time and would have said he was inured to it, but this was like one of his nightmares brought to life. His head was whirlpooling and if Tobry had not helped him to a three-legged stool he would have fallen down. Waves of hot and cold passed through his middle; he felt like throwing up. He looked away, praying that he had imagined it, looked back and gagged.

‘Who?’ he gasped. ‘Not the girl, surely?’

Tobry did not dignify that with an answer. He was walking around the little hut, touching the plank table, water jug, the ends of the bloody bed and the door latch, as if reading their stories through his fingertips.

‘Where’s Rannilt?’ said Rix, clutching the sides of his stool, which seemed to be rocking like a dinghy in a heavy sea. ‘Have they killed her too?’

‘Shut up, I’m trying to think.’

Tobry waved his elbrot around the room. People-shaped shadows rose and fell, though if they had a story to tell Rix could not read it.

Abruptly, Tobry bent over Luzia, holding the elbrot to the hideous gash across her throat. ‘Incredible!’ he