Vengeance

No, no, no!

Obeying me is the only way you can gain peace.

I’m not doing it. Get out of my head.

If you refuse, this is what will happen …

The leviathan crushed the outer walls of the palace, then the inner, before toppling a dozen towers and smashing the Great Hall, the wonder and the glory of Hightspall, to powder. Finally, as it loomed outside Rix’s tower, destroying everything that House Ricinus had achieved over four generations, coming directly for him because of what he’d done and what he refused to do, he screamed.

‘What’s the matter with you now?’

He roused, thrashing. A lovely young woman was shaking him, her breasts quivering in the golden light of his bedchamber. She was enchanting, all bosom and bottom and a waist that could be circled with a headband, yet he could not remember her name.

‘Blood,’ he whispered. ‘It squeezed the blood right out of them, into tanks.’

She thrust Rix back onto the pillows. ‘You’re sick! Sick as dog vomit.’

She marched out the door, across the hall and into Tobry’s bedchamber. There was a mutter of feminine complaint, then Rix heard Tobry’s amused drawl.

‘Sorry, Liana. There isn’t room.’

‘I’m not staying with him!’ cried Rix’s lover. ‘He’s off his head.’

Tobry sighed theatrically, then said, ‘Oh, all right. Squeeze up, girls.’

Laughter tinkled. Rix slumped against the headboard of his bed, shuddering.

‘I’m slipping out for a minute,’ said Tobry. ‘Don’t do anything I can’t do better.’

He came through, wrapping a robe around his lean, duel-scarred form. Tobry was only of middle height, wiry and not handsome, but there was a look in his grey eyes that every girl wanted more of and no mother could ever trust. He drew up a dainty chair and sat by Rix’s bed.

‘You’re dripping sweat. Another bad dream?’

‘Ugh!’ Rix rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the images away. It was both his strength and his weakness that he could imagine the violence as clearly as if it had been painted. Two words kept ringing through his head and he could not rid himself of them. It’s time. IT’S TIME.

‘Worse?’

‘Much worse …and more urgent. I dreamed I was in my salon, in a trance … then moving pictures appeared on the heatstone … as if someone had sent them to me. Do you think that’s possible?’

‘Dreams come from inside, not out,’ said Tobry. ‘Wait here.’

He went out, then returned with a thick, square bottle and a vase-shaped goblet into which he poured a half measure of grey fluid.

Rix’s nostrils tingled. ‘What’s that?’

‘A traditional remedy — best to take it in a gulp.’

Rix did so, and wished he hadn’t. It seared up his nose, leaving him breathless and his eyes watering, then burnt all the way down. And it stank.

‘What the hell’s in it? Smells like stink-damp.’

‘Sulphur water plus various volatiles and mercapts.’ Tobry clapped Rix’s cheeks, grinning. ‘Rosy! It’s already doing you good.’

The nightmare was fading, though not the fear behind it. ‘They’re getting worse. I’ve got to get away, Tobe, I can’t take any more.’

‘Any more what?’

Rix told him about the ice leviathan. He did not mention the crackly voice like breaking ice, for he never remembered what it had said after he woke, but thought of the night after tomorrow made him feel so rotten that he wanted to run and never come back. ‘My nightmares are full of blood and butchery, and the fall of our house.’

‘After what happened to my family, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone,’ said Tobry.

‘The other night I dreamed someone was rubbing blood into my wounds. That’s got to be an omen, hasn’t it?’

‘Dreams don’t mean anything. Have a drink and go to sleep.’ Yawning, Tobry looked towards his bedchamber.

Rix felt the tension ease, the horrors fade. Nothing shocked Tobry, nor could anything faze him and, though he took few things seriously, he was as solid as the foundations of Palace Ricinus.

‘It seemed so real. Could Cython be building an ice leviathan to attack us?’

‘They’d hardly use something that’d melt when the sun came out.’

‘And I keep having these feelings …’

‘Of impending doom?’ said Tobry helpfully.

‘As if the world is about to collapse around me.’ Rix glanced around the magnificent bedchamber, the walls of which were lined with yellow painted silk. The steepled cedar ceiling was inlaid with ivory and ebony, and touched with gilt. ‘Me, of all people. I mean …’

‘Unlike me,’ said Tobry with a wry grin, ‘you’re tall, handsome and heir to the biggest fortune in Hightspall. You turn twenty in a few weeks, and then you can spend as if there’s no — ’ He broke off. ‘Sorry.’

‘No tomorrow,’ Rix intoned darkly. ‘You might as well say it.’

‘Stop fretting over nothing. You may be a conservative, dim-witted, irresponsible layabout — ’ Tobry laughed. ‘In fact, you are.’

‘Thanks!’

‘But again, unlike me, you’ve never done anything truly bad. Or have you?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Rix muttered. So why did he feel so festering inside, as though Hightspall’s troubles ran right down the aeons to him?

‘Don’t take everything so seriously,’ said Tobry. ‘What can you possibly have to worry about?’

‘Apart from Father? And Mother’s crazy plan?’

‘I’m sure she’s thought it through,’ Tobry said carefully. ‘Lady Ricinus — ’

‘Oh yes. Mother calculates everything to a nicety.’ Rix bit the tip of his tongue at the disloyalty. ‘Forget I said that. I know she has our best interests at heart.’

‘She thinks of nothing save how to raise House Ricinus higher,’ said Tobry ambiguously. ‘And with plague and grandgaw bringing down the ancient families wholesale, there’s never been a finer time to better one’s own.’

‘House Ricinus hasn’t been touched by plague or pox in a hundred years,’ said Rix.

‘Something else to be thankful for.’ Tobry went across to the heatstone and put his back to it. ‘Why don’t you try a new painting? That’s cheered you up before.’

Rix was a gifted artist, the best of the new generation, the chancellor said, but now he felt goose pimples rising on his arms. ‘One or two of my paintings have been divinations. I’m afraid …’

‘That what you paint might come true?’

‘Or I might paint something I don’t want to see.’ Rix’s art was everything to him. It was truth in a land of lies, an island of beauty in a corrupt, ugly world, and the one thing that House Ricinus’s wealth had not bought.

He picked up a glass sphere from the bedside table and rotated it in his hands. Inside, a master craftsman had built a perfect model of Palace Ricinus in silver and gold — all eighty-eight towers, every dome and turret and buttress, even the fountains, pools and gardens. The chief magian himself had enchanted the sphere so it would mimic the weather outside, but lately it had only shown one season — wind-blasted winter.

‘Don’t drop it, whatever you do,’ said Tobry.

Rix had never liked it, priceless and perfect though it was, for magery unnerved him. He considered hurling the miniature into the fireplace. ‘Why not?’

‘Considering your nightmare, it would be a bad omen.’

Rix set the model back where it had come from, moodily watching the driving snow plastering the walls of