Vengeance

knew any court would see it differently. She had knocked down the Lord of the House, on whom everything rested, and the whole house would see her punished for it.

She limped to the window, stood in the darkness beside it where she could not be seen from below, and looked down. The wall of the tower fell away sheer and, even without an injured leg, she could not have climbed down without a rope. How was Tobry going to get her down that?

From this angle there was no evidence that Hightspall was fighting a desperate war that was likely to end in its destruction, or that Tali’s enemies were closing in. The beautiful grounds were threaded with lights all the way down to the lake and the lawn was dusted with snow. It looked like a fairy kingdom, but Palace Ricinus was an enchanting trap. And Rannilt had to be rescued.

As she was returning to the couch, she noticed a large painting on an easel on the far side of the room, though only the back of the canvas could be seen from here. It must be the portrait Rix was doing for the Honouring.

She turned the lantern up, carried it around the other side and stopped, staring in wonder and alarm. He had a marvellous gift — the portrait was almost alive. The enormous winged creature draped across the bloody ground should have been dead, for a sword had been thrust through its heart, but the look in its eyes told otherwise. It was like some mythical beast playing dead, waiting to tear its attacker apart as he roared his vain triumph.

Her eyes drifted to the scalded landscape, which was not unlike the barren, boiling Seethings, and the rearing volcanic peaks in the background. They too were savage, tortured and uncontrollable. What had Rix said about Hightspall — the very land is rising up against us. The mountains looked as though they stood ready to blast Hightspall apart and bury the ruins in a hundred feet of red-hot ash.

And then to the man.

At first glance Lord Ricinus stood tall and proud, the heroic victor standing over the vanquished beast. But only until she looked at his face. Rix had not painted his father as a young man who might have slain such a magnificent creature, but as the raddled sot he was now.

There was something terrible in Lord Ricinus’s eyes — a shrinking away from the world, a refusal to see. The mouth was a ragged twist, the cheeks mottled the colour of bruises, and the nose was a monstrosity, a ruin, a bulging blob of red writhing with distended purple veins. A nose covering up the failed man behind it.

She shuddered and looked away. The portrait was mesmerising, yet horrible. And it was also an omen. A metaphor for the struggle now taking place between rising Cython and crumbling Hightspall, and for the fall of houses and nations. Why would Rix paint something so opposed to everything he believed in? Or had he not yet realised what he had done?

Tali looked back, for there was something familiar about the style of it — no, the savagery of the scene it depicted. Yet how could there be? The only art she was familiar with was Cythonian, and it belied their cruel nature. Their murals and wall dioramas were reflective scenes of mountains, lakes, rivers and meadows, yearning back to the distant time when their world had been at peace. Sometimes animals were depicted — deer, rabbits, birds on branches — but always alive and unharmed. Their art neither glorified the brutality of nature or the dominance of humankind.

So why was the violent realism of this portrait so familiar? She could not think.

As she was returning to the couch, Tali remembered Tobry taking a smaller canvas into the storeroom, as if he had not wanted her to see it. Why not? Had Rix been painting her? She crept to the top of the steps but saw no light below, heard no sound. She opened the storeroom door.

It was full of canvases though, as far as she could tell, all were blank. The storeroom smelled of oil paint and her nose led her to a small canvas at the back, stretched tightly on a wooden frame. She lifted it out, leaned it against the front of the stack and held up the lantern.

Her heart began to gallop.

She was eight again, a terrified slave girl cowering in the skull-shaped cellar with all those terrible paintings on the walls — that’s where she had seen them — and the stink of poisoned rats clotting in her nostrils. Tali looked closer, and choked.

There, on her back on the black bench, lay her beautiful mama. She had been sketched without a face, and the two people standing behind her head were also unidentifiable, but it was undoubtedly Iusia — and those were her murderers.

Tali shuttered the lantern and sat in the dark, rocking back and forth. Her legs had gone so weak that she could not have stood up again. Rix must know who the murderers were.

She shone a glimmer on the sketch again, shuddered and hastily closed the door, but could not stop the cascading memories: the tall man with the round pot of a belly hunting her with that enormous knife; the nail digging into her hip; the wee running down her legs from sheer terror.

Tali blew out the lantern and stood at the window, watching the snow-flakes settle on the lovely grounds but not seeing a thing.

Was Rix protecting the killers? Had he lured her here? No, he had done everything possible to prevent her from coming to the palace …

And yet, could it be a coincidence that he and Tobry had found her so soon after she had escaped? Tobry, whom she would have trusted — had trusted — with her life, had hastily hidden the sketch. What did he know that he wasn’t telling her?

CHAPTER 66

It was close to dawn when Rix staggered into his bedchamber, dropped his robe and fell onto the bed.

‘How is he?’ said Tobry from the armchair on the other side of the room.

Rix jumped. ‘Alive but delirious.’ His lip curled. ‘Though, judging by the litter of bottles, the delirium has nothing to do with his injuries. I’ve never seen Father this drunk before.’

‘What happened?’

‘He raved about being attacked by a ghost, but — ’

‘I didn’t think Lady Ricinus allowed anything so untidy in the palace.’

Rix managed a wintry smile. ‘She doesn’t. Besides, the bloody mark on the corner matches the gash across the back of his skull. There was wine everywhere, two broken bottles and an empty. He just fell over and whacked his head.’ He looked away, grimacing.

‘And?’ said Tobry.

‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but half the palace will know by breakfast time …’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything.’

‘Father had relieved himself on the wall, the disgusting old bastard! If I had any respect left for him, it’s gone now.’

‘But you do respect him,’ said Tobry.

‘I owe him respect as a dutiful son — he’s my father! But as a man, he sickens me.’

‘And you feel guilty about that.’

‘I feel guilty because I feel nothing. For my own father!’

Tobry stood up. ‘He’ll live, then? If he’s not in danger, I need my sleep and so do you.’

‘I’ll never sleep now. I’m going to work on the portrait.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea, right now?’

‘No, but it’s like a wall across my mind.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘I should be working out tactics to combat the enemy’s new weapons … but how can I concentrate with the bloody portrait hanging over me like an executioner’s axe?’

He climbed the stairs to the studio, donned a paint-spattered smock and directed his lanterns onto the portrait. And started.