Vengeance

come in behind him and take the pearls.’

Thump-thump.

Tobry went out into the very pitch of darkness. Tali turned down the lantern and waited. The greenish mist hung in curtains, the foul air was thick in her nostrils and her terror was rising. She was in the murder cellar and if this went wrong she would suffer the fate that all her life she had dreaded. The fate that Rix’s sketch had divined for her. That Rix himself would do to her, if the compulsion on him could not be broken. But how could it be broken when no one knew how Lyf had put it on him?

Thump-thump. The call-clamour faded.

An old man materialised two feet above the floor, right in front of her, and grabbed her wrist before she could dart away. He landed unsteadily, thump-thump, made a thread-like mesh of light with his fingers and she saw a darting head on a wrinkled, tortoise neck. The grey eyes were rimmed with black; a spreading cloudiness partly obscured the pupils. Cracked, flaking skin ran up his arms into the cavernous sleeves.

His grip was an old man’s grip, feeble and shaky and no match for hers, save that a sweaty numbness had spread out along her arm from his touch. She fought the terror — where were the pearls? Tobry could not attack until he knew Deroe had them. The magian’s hands were empty and his grey robes had no pockets she could see, though they could be on the inside.

He scratched the crusted skin on his left wrist and grey flakes, brown with old blood, stuck under his long nails. Raising his hand, Deroe stared at the flakes and the blood. His mouth hung open and he was breathing noisily, as though it was a struggle to draw in enough air. His breath wasn’t so much foul as dead, and it fogged her mind.

‘What do you want?’ Tali croaked.

She had to stick to the plan — get him to hold Lyf back, then deal with Deroe. Only with his pearls would she have a chance of fighting Lyf.

He scratched at his wrist again, breaking the papery skin. Muddy, grey-brown blood ebbed out.

‘Lyf’s coming,’ said Tali, eyeing the stone head on the end wall. She had seen Lyf’s eyes there as a girl. ‘And he has a body now, a better one than yours.’

‘But I have his pearls,’ Deroe crowed. The high pitch, like a boy whose voice had not yet broken, jarred with the decrepit old man’s body.

‘Wards!’ he said. A series of fist-sized globes appeared, studding the edges of the oval ceiling. They were pretty things, patterned in grey and white swirls like polished agate, and each had a moving glow as though a perpetual flame flickered inside.

‘He won’t get through now,’ Deroe piped. ‘Barrier!’

A grey, transparent sheet blocked the doorway. Tobry hit it with his shoulder from the other side but bounced off.

Tali’s numbness faded a little. ‘You paid House Ricinus to cut out the ebony pearls. You had my mother killed, and my grandmothers back for three generations. Why?’

‘Wasn’t my fault,’ he whined, staring at the top of her head as if figuring out where to cut. ‘I didn’t grow the ebony pearls in them.’

‘You ordered their deaths.’

‘They should have stayed away. They made me kill them.’

‘You contemptible little worm!’ She struck him in the face.

He fell to his knees and it surged out of him like the draining of a blocked privy. ‘You can’t know what it’s like, being possessed. What did I do to him? I was just a lad, exploring in the ruins, collecting things no one wanted. I didn’t mean any harm. Then he slithered intomy head and squatted there like a toad, sneering at my terror and pouring his venom into me. He has such hate for us … such hate …’

His fingernails tore the skin of his wrist again, three long, ebbing cuts. It would have been the time to strike, had she known where the pearls were.

‘He forced me to take the first pearl for him,’ said Deroe. ‘She was such a pretty little thing, your great- great-grandmother, and he made me gouge the pearl out of her head. Ah, the pain! I feel it to this day. I had no choice; I could not resist him. Not then.’

His whining self-justification sickened her. How could his suffering compare to the victims’? But she forced herself to say, ‘That must have been agony for you.’

‘It was,’ he wailed, as if this was his first confession. ‘It was. And none my fault. He made me do it.’

‘Tell me about my great-grandmother,’ said Tali. ‘How did it go with her?’

‘Lyf thought he still controlled me,’ said Deroe with a wink and a leer, as though she ought to admire his murderous cunning, ‘but the touch of the first pearl had woken a gift I never knew existed. A tiny gift, no match for his, yet with it I drew magery from him whenever he possessed me. And when he did not, which was most of the time, I made my plans to outwit him and take the second pearl for myself.’

‘With the aid of House Ricinus.’

‘They were greedy for gold, and with the magery I’d learned from Lyf I could find cartloads of gold. The old Lady of Ricinus extracted the pearl for me, held it in the host’s life’s blood until Lyf was so weak that the possession broke and he was drawn back to his caverns, then I gave her gold for it.’

You stinking mongrel, how dare you boast about killing my ancestors? If Tali’s magery had come then, she would have splattered the walls with him. He didn’t seem like a man at all; rather, a selfish, immature but incredibly powerful boy trapped in an old man’s decaying body. She could not predict what he would do next.

‘Clever,’ she said, nearly choking on her words. ‘But Lyf must have been furious.’

‘He was bound to his caverns, he could not come after it.’

‘But when he repossessed you — ’

‘I’d already put the pearl out of reach. You have no idea of the agony I endured, but he could neither find the pearl nor force me to give it up.’

‘And the same for the third and fourth pearls, when they were mature?’

‘Lyf dared not send his own people after the pearls, and could not take them himself, yet he could not possess anyone but me. He had no choice but to use me. Each time he tried harder to outwit me; each time I beat him, ha, ha. I have three, and he only has one.’

His voice had a sing-song quality now. From the look in his eyes, he expected her to applaud his cleverness. ‘Once I have the master pearl I’ll be able to command his pearl, too. And then,’ he said viciously, ‘I’ll stamp him to pieces like a toad in the garden.’

Tali fought the urge to smash his yellow teeth in. ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll use the master pearl to control your three? I too have a gift, magian.’

His face lit and Tali realised, uncomfortably, that he had been hoping she would ask.

‘I worked that out as a boy,’ he chortled, ‘after he made me take the first pearl. Your thrice-grandmother had the gift stronger than you, and she tried to fight me, the stupid bitch! But the pearls aren’t meant to be used within the host and she fell into a swoon, bleeding from the eyes and ears.’ He shuddered. ‘The emotional connections are too dangerous; the host can never control it.’

No wonder Tali’s every attempt to take control of her gift had failed, and would always fail. It could not be done.

‘How is the pearl made safe, then?’ she said dully.

He came closer. ‘It must be cut from the living host, severing all connection with her, then healed for three days in her healing blood.’

As Lady Ricinus had done, putting the pearl inside that green-metal glove filled with Iusia’s blood. ‘And killing the host,’ Tali said.

Closer. ‘The trauma is great, but it’s separation from the pearl that kills.’

If I can’t rely on the master pearl, Tali thought, I’ll have to outwit him of his three. And then, deliver him to my own justice, since there’s none to be had in Caulderon.

Oh, how he would pay.

Reaching out with his free hand, he stroked the top of her head, though not in any sensuous way. Deroe cared nothing for the human flesh, only what had been cultured within.

Tali’s scalp crept and her mother’s cries echoed within her skull, then the splintery gouging sound she had