After a pause, Rix said, ‘I’m going on. If it’s too much for you, go home.’ It was a low thing to say, for no man was braver than Tobry, but a fire was burning in Rix’s veins and he did not take it back.
Tobry forced a smile. ‘I’ll not run out on you. Though,’ he persisted, ‘surely it’s the job of your house magians to deal with shifters and other uncanny creatures?’
‘What sort of lord orders hirelings out to do the dangerous work?’
Tobry’s look said,
They rode up a steep track where little snow had settled and the ground to either side was ankle-deep in purple moss. The blood-barks had given way to tall pines whose branches were crusted with cinnamon-scented resin. Between the hanging needles, the sky was as grey as the zinc roof sheeting on Rix’s tower.
‘There’s enough snow in those clouds to bury this valley thigh-deep,’ said Tobry. ‘If we don’t turn back soon, we won’t be going home for a week.’
Rix could imagine Lady Ricinus’s fury when she’d heard that he had sneaked out of the palace in the middle of the night. She would curse him for giving his word about the portrait then breaking it, for letting down his father on his Honouring Day, for jeopardising her plans for House Ricinus …
In a numbing flash of insight, he understood that his mother had never loved him. He was just the means to raise House Ricinus to the most exalted heights, and if she were thwarted she would turn on him, as he had often seen her savage his father.
‘Are you all right?’ said Tobry.
Rix realised that he had cried out. ‘It’s nothing.’ But the realisation that he was just a tool to Lady Ricinus was everything,
Even so, until he came of age he owed his mother obedience, and Rix did not neglect his responsibilities. Well, apart from the portrait, he thought uncomfortably.
‘We’ll just go to the bluff, then turn back.’
He did not want to go home today. Once he returned to the palace the nightmares would come again, and the voice he could never remember, ordering him to do something dreadful …
The resin pines terminated in a crescent of open ground littered with fallen boulders. Beyond, a vine thicket was so closely intergrown that no one could have pushed through it, though paths made by small animals wove beneath the tangled vegetation.
‘And there she is,’ said Tobry.
The wall of indurated rock that was Precipitous Crag reared another mile above them, black, cold and forbidding.
‘There are caves here somewhere,’ said Rix. ‘But I’d want a hundred men at my back before going inside one. Keep an eye out for tracks.’
The vine thicket ran parallel to the curving base of the crag. As they rode towards it, Rix’s stomach clenched — the boulder-strewn crescent was perfect for predators waiting in ambush.
‘What did happen to your grandfather, Tobe?’
The muscles knotted along his friend’s jawline. ‘Bitten by a shifter. Stupidly, our house magians tried to save him.’
‘Why was that a mistake?’
Tobry swung down off Beetle and pointed at something with his spear. ‘Fresh tracks.’
The backs of Rix’s hands prickled; he could not escape the feeling that they had been lured into this confined space. ‘Made by what?’
Tobry crouched in the snow. ‘These paw prints are as big across as my hand.’
As Rix was dismounting, Tobry dropped his spear, drew his sword and cried, ‘Stay there!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘No claw marks.’
‘Retractable claws? So it’s not a wolf or any other kind of dog — ’
Leather whinnied and went up on her back legs. Rix clung on with his knees, realising he should not have looked around, but
Tobry was sprinting for his horse when a red-and-black cat the size of a lion streaked down from an overhanging branch. Its whiptail extended behind it straight as a broom handle, its claws were extended, its small ears flattened against its head.
‘Go left!’ Rix bellowed. If the cat struck, it would bite through Tobry’s spine — or tear his throat out.
Tobry threw himself sideways and the cat missed, though two claws ripped through the back of his left shoulder. The sword flew from his hand and he landed hard, rolling over through the snow and leaving red smudges behind him.
‘Caitsthe!’ he gasped, eyes bulging from his sockets. ‘Rix, run! You can’t save me.’
The most dangerous shifter of all. And Tobry was terrified of shifters.
The caitsthe’s leonine head swung towards Rix, as if it had recognised his name. To his knowledge, nobody had ever killed a caitsthe in single combat. He hurled his spear, but Leather dropped to four hooves and it missed by the length of the shifter’s black whiskers.
Rix’s free hand was already raising his massive, wyverin-rib bow. As he nocked an arrow to the string, the caitsthe sprang onto Tobry’s back, crushing him into the snow, which spurted up all around him like a trodden-on puffball. The shifter opened its jaws wide enough to bite off Tobry’s head, then turned to Rix as if taunting him.
Tobry twisted sideways and there was a paralysed terror in his eyes that Rix had never seen before. It was not the fear of being maimed or dying, but something deeper, more primal. Then, with an effort Rix could only admire, Tobry pulled himself out of the paralysis.
‘Fly!’ he gasped. ‘You can’t kill it with a hundred arrows.’
Injuring the caitsthe could only make things worse, but if Rix didn’t fire his dearest friend was dead.
CHAPTER 12
Tali didn’t have years left. She didn’t even have days. Only hours, and not many of them.
‘He wants to kill ya dead,’ said Lifka. There was no malice in her tone, nor even dislike. Only indifference.
Tinyhead blocked the entrance, there was no other way out and no Pale would defend her against a Cythonian. No matter what he did to her, they would see nothing, admit to nothing. The self-defence arts Nurse Bet had taught Tali could not save her, either; Tinyhead was big enough to snap her backbone over his knee.
Her headache was like a ball hammer whacking the same bruised spot inside the top of her skull. She couldn’t think. She would be lucky to stand up.
‘He’s comin’ in,’ said Lifka. ‘Hope he doesn’t ruin our special dinner.’
She did not say it maliciously — Lifka appeared to be quite unfeeling. Tali felt an urge to punch her in the throat.
Tinyhead was weaving between the tables, heading this way. He looked from Lifka to Tali, frowning, perhaps struggling to tell them apart, then focused on Tali. His bloodshot eyes bulged and fury rose from him like steam — he loathed her. She clenched her thighs under the table in a vain attempt to stop her knees from trembling. What had she ever done to him?
Close up, his little head was covered in grotesque bulges, as if it had been pumped up with blood to bursting point. His ears were quivering purple monstrosities, engorged like overfed leeches, his eyes so crimson they appeared to be bleeding. The nose, once small and neat, protruded from his face like a segment of red cauliflower, while ragged scars radiated out from his mouth.
‘How did you find me?’ Tali whispered.
‘Asked the overseers.’
Not only had this morning’s fit of rage led to Mia’s death, it had betrayed Tali to an enemy who otherwise might not have found her for months.
‘Why do you hate my family?’ She had to know.
