Vengeance

hissed.

‘What?’ said Rix. The sickness was getting worse; it was all he could do to remain in the hut.

‘The ends of the gash are healed,’ said Tobry.

Rix could not look. Not at the ruin of poor, kindly Luzia. ‘Ugh,’ he said, hand over his mouth.

‘It’s healed in for a good inch on either side. I wouldn’t have thought that possible.’ He looked around at Rix. ‘Luzia didn’t heal, did she?’

‘No.’

‘Rannilt must have tried to save her. She must have a mighty gift.’

‘But not good enough to replace all that blood.’

‘Where’s she run to?’ said Tobry. ‘Wait here. I’ll take a look outside.’

Rix lurched to the door. Nothing could keep him in this slaughterhouse by himself. Why Luzia? She’d never hurt anyone. Why, why?

Tobry found no sign of Rannilt.

‘Poor child,’ he said. ‘After finding Luzia like that, and trying to save her, she must be out of her mind.’

Rix did not reply. The nightmare was taking over and he had no idea how Tobry got him back over the wall and up into his tower. He vaguely remembered the reeking alley, and his friend taking care to pay the lookout boys the two silvers he had promised them. For a man who professed to believe in nothing, Tobry was meticulous in discharging his obligations.

After that, all was as much a blur as the fevered month when Rix had been ten. It was impossible that Tobry’s wiry frame could have hauled Rix’s bulk three levels up to the window of his tower. Utterly impossible, yet when Rix awoke in his bed at dawn the following morning, the scrape marks down his chest and arms could only be explained by his being dragged up over raw-cut stone.

He snapped upright and all he could see was blood. Blood and the gaping mouth and staring eyes of an old woman who had never had a bad word for anyone. A woman he had loved as he could never have loved his own mother.

‘How could anyone do that to her?’ Rix said, and wept until his dry eyelids rasped like grit rubbed on a plate. ‘In her whole life, Luzia never hurt a soul.’

‘We live in troubled times,’ said Tobry, holding Rix in his arms. ‘There’s violence everywhere. People will rob an old lady for the contents of her pantry — ’

Something rang false in his tone, and Rix thrust him away. ‘Never lie to me, Tobe. You don’t believe that for a minute.’

After a pause, Tobry said, ‘No, I don’t.’

‘Why did she die?’

‘To stop her talking to you about the time of your fever, I expect.’

‘Are you saying — ?’

‘I point no fingers. Anyone inside the palace might have murdered Luzia. Or anyone outside.’

‘How would they know I wanted to talk to her?’

‘You know what the palace is like.’

‘I don’t, actually.’

‘The servants gossip, and so do all the noble hangers-on.’

Rix had no discrimination left. ‘People like you, you mean?’

There was a longer pause before Tobry replied, in tones carefully neutral, though not neutral enough to disguise his feelings from someone who knew him as well as Rix did. Rix had hurt him.

‘If someone knows a piece of gossip or scandal,’ said Tobry, ‘everyone in the palace knows. Plus their families, and everyone who visits the palace or trades with it.’

‘Why did she have to die, Tobe? Why Luzia?’ It came out as a howl.

‘I don’t know.’

Rix staggered out of bed. ‘Get me a drink.’

Tobry had brought a flask with him, circumventing Lady Ricinus’s prohibition on more than one bottle a day, and this was a good one. Rix lurched up to his studio and emptied a quarter of it down his throat in one swallow.

‘That’s spirits,’ said Tobry, taking the flask, ‘and if you drink the lot it’s liable to kill you.’

‘Father drinks three bottles of spirits a day,’ Rix snarled, making a grab for the flask.

Tobry held it out of reach. ‘Then he must have a liver the size of a whale. What are you doing?’

Rix had gone to his storeroom door. ‘I have no idea.’

He dragged out the whited-out sketch, filled his brushes with scum-brown and miasma-green, and swiftly recaptured the essence of the dark chamber. Stroking another brush through luminous white pigment, he carved out the woman on the table. He did not know what he was painting; the strokes appeared on the canvas without conscious thought and, once they were there, he had no idea what they meant.

‘What about her face?’ said Tobry.

Rix blinked drunkenly at the sketch. The woman on the black bench — it was definitely a woman now, wearing only a rag around her hips — was small and slender, with pale skin and hair, though her face was a blank oval. The shadows at her head were hardly more defined than before, though he could tell that they signified a man and a woman.

He looked for the child away to the side, but she was not there. This time his unconscious mind had not conjured her at all.

‘Rix?’ said Tobry.

‘Yes?’

‘Do you really need to know what happened, all that time ago? If it killed Luzia — ’

‘Don’t say it.’ Her death had struck Rix as few others could have. It was as though his real mother had been murdered. ‘Why did Luzia have to die, Tobe? Explain that to me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘ It’s not fair.’

‘The world isn’t fair,’ said Tobry. He paused, then said, ‘That’s what Tali was trying to tell you.’

CHAPTER 62

Tali huddled in the thorn bush as Tobry and Rannilt galloped away. Half a minute later she heard one of the riders follow. The other did not.

He must be watching, waiting for any movement that would give her away. It was freezing here, the bush was prickling her, the sky was rocking wildly and she needed to pee, but Tali did not move. She was an old hand at hiding, the best in Cython, and she had the patience of a slave.

She needed it. A small, wrinkled man with the hooded eyes of a hawk climbed onto the wall and paced along it, bobbing and ducking his head. He went up the overgrown carriage drive, around the back and reappeared from the other side. He went out and she heard the horse walking down the street.

The temptation to move was overwhelming, her need to pee desperate. Tali clenched down and waited, and ten minutes later she saw him again, head bobbing, hawk eyes scanning the grounds from an inconspicuous corner of the wall.

Only after another hour did she dare to wriggle out, turn the other way and gaze upon her ancestral home. Torgrist Manor was small and plain and very old. But it was hers. Her eyes misted.

Part of the left-hand wall had collapsed, the front door had rotted away and most of the roof was gone. And yet, as Tali looked down a broad hall floored in black flagstones caked with dust, she felt such a powerful sense of rightness that she could hardly breathe. This is my place, she thought. I’m home.

But the searchers would come back. She could not stay here. Besides, Rix was her best clue and she had to get into the palace. She felt sure there had to be a tunnel from Torgrist Manor to Palace Ricinus. Days ago, Tobry had said that the last Lady Torgrist had tried to escape underground with her children to the palace down the hill.