Vengeance

gobble like a starving slave and steal the rest for later.

‘Why can’t you reach my magery?’ she said with her mouth full.

‘It’s not like any other magery I’ve come across.’

‘My great-great-great grandmother, Mimoy, said that too.’

‘Then she was a wise woman.’

‘She was a rude, cranky cow who never thought about anyone but herself.’ Tali was still annoyed at how she had been manipulated, and about Mimoy dying without telling her anything.

‘How else could she have lived so long in Cython?’

Tali wasn’t listening. ‘If my enemy can only be beaten by magery, and I can’t reach mine — ’

‘I dare say the chief magian could help you, though …’

‘He’d have to give me up to the chancellor, wouldn’t he?’

‘Unfortunately.’

‘What about that ancient device you mentioned the other day? A spy-probe, was it?’

He started, then put his hands on his cheeks, staring fixedly at the wall.

‘What’s the matter?’ said Tali.

‘I’ve just realised where Rannilt must be. In the chancellor’s palace.’

‘Why would he want her?’ But the answer was obvious.

‘She also knows enough of Cython’s secrets to be valuable, and he’s got agents all through Tumbrel Town. They would have picked her up within minutes of her fleeing Luzia’s murder.’

‘Where is the chancellor’s palace?’

‘Next door.’ Tobry pointed left, out the window.

She lurched to the pane. ‘Next door’ clearly had a different definition to the fabulously wealthy — she could just make out the ice sheathed spires of another palace further along the slope of the hill. It was smaller than Palace Ricinus, a fierce, spiky building, black stone edged with red. She did not like the look of it.

‘It’s the most heavily guarded place in Caulderon,’ said Tobry. ‘Don’t even think about going after Rannilt.’

‘I wasn’t,’ she lied. Of course she was going after her. Will you be my mother? Little Rannilt had no one else, she must be desperate, and she had done her all for Tali. ‘He — he won’t hurt her, will he?’

‘The chancellor does nothing unnecessarily. Besides, he’ll want her fit for questioning, for making maps of Cython and telling all she knows.’

That made sense. Tali lay down. Heal, heal! But her small gift of healing seemed to have gone the way of her magery. ‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s an ugly little runt … and they say he has depraved tastes …’

‘But?’

‘He’s a cunning and brilliant man who thinks of everything.’

‘Everything except the possibility of war,’ said Tali sourly.

‘Just weeks ago, he convinced Lord Ricinus to pay for the Third Army,’ Tobry pointed out.

She pressed her thigh. Heal, heal, Rannilt needs us. ‘What were you telling me? Oh yes, the pry-probe.’

‘I talked to some people about it,’ said Tobry. ‘It’s called a spectible, and it’s in the chancellor’s collection, but I don’t think it works any more.’

‘ Nothing works,’ she muttered. ‘Every avenue is blocked.’

It occurred to her that, since Tobry had known Rix all his life, he might know something about the time of the murder. But she would have to put it carefully.

‘Did you know Rix well, when he was a kid?’

‘Until he was five or six. I’m five years older but we spent a lot of time together. I suppose he was a substitute for Nimry, the little brother I lost …’

‘What happened to him?’

It took Tobry a long time to answer. He was rubbing his eyes. ‘He was such a bright little boy; sweet tempered, too. He was killed by a jackal shifter when he was four. Killed and eaten,’ he said savagely. ‘He — it — got into the nursery and killed all the little cousins … I found them … I was only nine …’

‘That must have been terrible,’ Tali said softly.

‘It was the beginning of the end of my house.’

‘So you didn’t see Rix much after he was six?’

He looked away, eyes unfocused, jaw knotted. ‘The noble House of Lagger was in its death throes at that time, and they were so drawn-out and horrible that I don’t remember much else. Anyway, I wasn’t allowed to visit House Ricinus then. I didn’t see Rix again until he was twelve. He insisted that I be invited to his birthday week and we’ve been friends ever since.’

She knew he was telling the truth, which meant he hadn’t been around when Rix was ten. Another blockage. What else could she do?

‘Why are you gritting your teeth like that?’ said Tobry.

‘My thigh is a little painful.’

‘I’m not surprised, after walking all that way underground. And no one saw you in the halls?’

‘I’m good at hiding and looking ordinary — ’

‘You could never look ordinary,’ he said so passionately that her chest shivered. ‘Here, allow me.’

He put a hand on her thigh, over the wound, and murmured a healing charm. ‘You were saying?’

Under his warm hand, something stirred in Tali, causing her to lose her train of thought. She yearned towards him, confused by the unfamiliar feelings. She wanted to know him better, and perhaps she wanted what her mother and father had found in each other, too, but she could not allow anything to distract her from her quest.

‘And then, if I really need to hide, I press my fingers against my slave mark — that’s what the Cythonians call it, but to me it’s always signified the noble House of vi Torgrist — and it helps. Most of the time.’

‘I see it as noble, too.’

The hidden hurt burst out of her. ‘But not Rix! He threw up when he saw it. I’ll never forget that. Never!’

‘He’s a better man than you think. And I’m a worse one. You can’t go wrong by putting your trust in him, but you can with me.’

‘I trust both of you.’ But you more …

He waved a hand, as if to say that he had lost interest. ‘Show me your thigh.’

Tali pulled the pantaloons up as far as they would go, unwrapped the bandage and pressed the area. She winced.

‘It’s hot,’ said Tobry. ‘Let me feel your armpit.’ She raised her arm and he pressed his fingers in. ‘The wound is hot, but you’re not.’ He studied her thigh as though he had not seen one before. ‘It’s healing, though it would have healed a lot quicker if you’d kept off it.’

‘If I’d kept off it, you’d be possessed by the wrythen and I’d have been taken by the facinore.’

He chuckled. ‘No need to get snarky. You must have a strong constitution.’

‘In Cython — ’

‘Only the strong survive,’ he said, sighing. ‘And those who can survive, those who flourish there, are strong beyond us normal folk.’

Tobry decanted the wine from the black bottle, took a healthy swig and poured the red crust thrown by the wine into a saucer. He spooned half onto the entry wound, soaked the middle of a clean bandage in the rest and bound it up.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to make arrangements and you need to sleep.’

He lifted her legs onto the couch, tossed a blanket over her and bent to blow out the lantern.

‘Leave it,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be in the dark just yet.’ Tali knew she would not sleep.

He turned the lantern down and went.

Rix did not come back. What if she had killed his father? Tali tried to tell herself that it was an accident but