The axeman swung. Tali let out an involuntary scream. Rix moved like a flash of silver, then the axe came clattering across the flagstones towards her and she had to leap out of the way.
The axeman was clutching his belly but could not hold his entrails in; he had been slashed across and back. They squelched out of him, splatting on the top step and oozing down while he stood there, his wet mouth slack. Rix’s sword was back in its sheath and she had not seen that, either.
Rix spun the axeman by the shoulder, put a foot in the middle of his back and sent him flying into the group halfway up the steps, knocking several of them over. He landed face down, making sickening gurgling sounds while his red fingernails raked at the treads and blood poured out of him to stain the white stone. The other thugs stared at the steaming entrails.
‘Reckon I can disembowel twenty of you before you kill me,’ said Rix. ‘Who wants to be next?’
They longed to see him die. Tali could read it in their eyes. They wanted to tear Rix to pieces and feed him to the dogs, then pillage Palace Ricinus of its treasures, defile it in every way and smash it to pieces the way life had smashed them. And if they attacked at once, not even Rix could stop them.
The axeman thrashed and screamed, his cries strangled for want of air, and muck dripped from his middle. His entrails slid down the next step and came to rest beside his cheek.
The thugs eyed each other and gave a collective shudder.
‘No?’ said Rix, after another minute. ‘Then take your meat and go.’
Two of them took the dying axeman’s legs and began to drag him away, his head thumping on the ground. The blood on the steps was already icing over.
‘All of him,’ said Rix with frosty menace.
A man wearing a leather butcher’s apron took it off, scowling, scraped the entrails into it and slung the dripping mess over his shoulder.
‘What sort of a man betrays his own parents?’ he said savagely. ‘Cut your own guts out and make Hightspall a better place.’
Rix choked, and even after they were out of sight he stood there, staring sightlessly across the grounds.
‘Come on, old friend.’ Tobry took him by the arm.
Back in Rix’s chambers, Tali checked on Rannilt, who lay in Tobry’s big bed, breathing shallowly. Though she was twice wrapped in blankets and had his thick quilt over her, her hands were cold.
‘Nothing can warm her,’ Tali said to Tobry. ‘I think her end must be near.’
‘All our ends are near,’ Rix said harshly. ‘At least she goes peacefully.’
‘Rix!’ Tobry said sharply.
Rix’s eyes, which had looked ever to the horizon since Lord and Lady Ricinus were condemned, focused on Tali.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘No truer friend have any of us ever had, and Rannilt is an innocent child. Tobe, see what’s happening outside.’
Tobry went out. Rix picked Rannilt up in her covers and carried her to the salon.
‘Bring the blankets,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll make a bed for her in front of the heatstone. If anything can warm her in this dreadful winter, it can. We’ll sleep here tonight — if we’re allowed sleep. Should she rouse, she’ll know she’s among friends.’
He laid her on the couch close by the heatstone. It did seem a little warmer there.
Tali heard a faint rustle, like someone creeping down steps.
Rix drew his blade, wrenched the door open and was about to strike into the darkness when a boy cried, ‘Lord Rixium!’
Rix hauled a stocky, red-haired lad, no older than Rannilt, down into the light. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Nowhere else to go, Lord.’
‘You’re Benn,’ said Rix.
‘Yes, Lord.’ Benn bowed and called up the stairs. ‘It’s all right, Glynnie, it’s the lord. He’ll look after us.’
A slender girl crept down, her emerald eyes as round as plums. Her hair was redder than the boy’s and her nose and forearms were freckled. At most she was sixteen, Tali thought, and she was shaking.
‘The High Chancellor forbade any servant to return to the palace, Glynnie,’ said Rix sternly.
‘S-sorry, Lord,’ she said.
‘Then why are you here?’
‘After the hangin’s, and all the killin’s, we wus too scared to go out the gates. We been hidin’ up in the passages. We didn’t take anythin’ though. Not even a crust of the pigs’ bread.’
The boy’s stomach rumbled. Glynnie tried to shush him. ‘Besides,’ she added softly, ‘you saved Benn from a floggin’. We owe you — ’
‘You owe me nothing, and you’re welcome to whatever you can find in the pantries,’ Rix said wearily. ‘But you’ll have to go.’
‘Please, Lord.’ Glynnie reached out to him with both hands. ‘We’ll slave for you night and day.’
‘I don’t want anyone to slave for me.’
‘But the shanty people hate us.’ She clutched at his arm. ‘They won’t have us, Lord. Benn will have to steal to survive, and when he’s caught they’ll cut his hands off. And … you know what will happen to me.’
Rix flushed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. Damn the chancellor. You can stay.’
‘Thank you, Lord, thank you.’ She bowed three times, mechanically straightened the blankets and tidied the table. ‘Don’t stand there idle, Benn. Get to work.’
‘You don’t have to wait on us,’ said Rix,
‘How else will we earn our crusts?’ said Glynnie, scanning the room. ‘But you haven’t anything to eat.’
‘Can you cook?’
‘I can do
Shortly they came back with hot fish soup. Tali spooned half a cup into Rannilt, though there was no change in her condition afterwards.
Rix sent Benn to keep watch then sat on the couch. Tali lay beside Rannilt, holding her cold hands. When Tobry returned, ice in his eyebrows and on the stubble of his beard, they were sitting in the malign twilight of the heatstone.
‘Are we to live the night?’ said Rix.
‘The chancellor has hanged three hundred of the rioters, flogged another thousand and locked up the alehouses. There’ll be no more trouble tonight.’
‘And tomorrow?’ said Rix.
The floor shook so violently that the table jumped a foot across the salon and the empty bowls fell and smashed. Tobry threw open the door to the tower stairs. Brilliant red light flooded in.
‘Fire!’ Tali gathered Rannilt in her arms.
‘Benn!’ wailed Glynnie, racing the other way.
Tobry ran up the steps, then called down. ‘It’s not the palace. It’s far off.’
Rix followed him to the studio. The light grew until it was bright as sunlight, though not in written history had such a baleful crimson sun illuminated this land.
‘Chymical fire!’ Tali clutched Rannilt to her chest and struggled up the steps. But how could anyone create such a vast and terrible conflagration, so quickly? ‘It’s as though the whole world is burning.’
Another shudder shook her off the step. Rix steadied her and helped her up. At the top, the glare streaming through the tower windows made her flinch.
‘It’s the Vomits,’ said Tobry. ‘In full eruption.’
‘Is it always like this?’ Tali set Rannilt on the settee and peered through slitted fingers at the distant fountains of fire and the red lava clots spinning through the sky.
‘It’s never like this,’ said Rix. ‘All three Vomits are erupting at once.’
‘And that last happened after the First Fleet landed,’ said Tobry. ‘It’s held to be a sign of the fall of nations.’
‘Ours, or theirs?’ said Tali.
