‘We’ll never track it across all this rubble — ’
‘Something the matter?’ said Rix, when Tobry did not go on.
‘For a second, I thought the cliff face wavered up there.’
‘It’s solid rock,’ Rix said derisively.
‘Is it?’
Rix swallowed.
‘You didn’t see
‘Of course not.’
Tobry muttered something that might have been, ‘Bonehead,’ and crept up the rubble for about eighty feet. He crouched there, looking down at the cliff. ‘There’s a spot of blood, right against the face.’
‘So what?’
‘The caitsthe is too big to squat there.’ Tobry swung an arm and it disappeared into rock to the elbow.
‘Tobe?’ said Rix, not liking this at all.
‘There’s a concealed cave. Come up.’
‘Concealed by what?’ Rix’s stomach spasmed; his bruised cheek pulsed.
‘What do you think?’
‘Entering a caitsthe’s lair is a really bad idea.’
Tobry was beyond making a joke about it, which confirmed Rix’s dismal conclusion. But if the shifter wasn’t destroyed, dozens of people would die before it slaked the blood-hunger etched into its psyche. Previously, he had given little thought to the thousands of serfs on his family estates, but once he was lord they would be his people and it was his duty to protect them.
Rix reached the top. ‘Incidentally,’ he said, referring to their earlier conversation, ‘why was trying to save your grandfather from a shifter bite a mistake?’
Tobry shook his head. ‘The bite of a shifter is the one thing I truly fear.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Don’t tell my enemies.’
CHAPTER 14
Lifka’s principal recreation was chewing her dinner and she spent several open-mouthed minutes churning each morsel to a slimy pulp. Eyes averted from the repulsive sight, Tali handed over three shrivelled Purple Pixies, keeping another two. She felt stronger now. She had a plan and she was going to escape.
Most of the slaves had left the subsistery, but she hurled her defiance at those who remained, and they looked away — no doubt they considered her doomed. Damn you! she thought. I’m going to escape.
While Lifka vacantly gnawed a bone, Tali surreptitiously poked a red and yellow girr-grub deep into the orange flesh of her poulter leg. At the thought of what the grub would do, her cheeks grew hot. Though surely one grub would not cause lasting harm.
Lifka pushed back her chair and Tali rose hastily, tucking a small piece of yam into the inside pocket of her loincloth for her pet mouse, Poon.
‘Left yer poulter leg,’ said Lifka tonelessly.
Any other slave, including Tali, would have stolen it. ‘Not hungry,’ she lied, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. ‘You can have it.’
‘Goody.’ Lifka pulled off shreds of crisp skin as she headed towards her cell, slipped them into her mouth and yawned. ‘Think I like ya after all.’
The grudging admission did not make Tali feel any better. And what if Lifka was blamed for the crimes Tali was planning to commit, or punished as her collaborator? Surely no Cythonian would imagine Lifka to be part of a conspiracy? But if Tali did escape they would have to blame someone.
Her cheeks burnt, but Iusia and Mia cried out for justice and Tali had no other hope of getting it. No slave would help her. Anyone who learned her plans would betray her, and Tinyhead was coming in a few hours. If Lifka had to suffer for a day or two, that was too bad.
‘Goin’ ta bed,’ said Lifka.
Tali walked with her past the ever-guarded gates of the Cythonians’ living area, whose name translated as
No gentle, domestic-scale scenery here. Rather, a series of savage landscapes — cataracts in roaring flood, catastrophic eruptions, a forest torn apart by a hurricane, monster waves eating away at empty shores — and everywhere among the devastation, hungry eyes smouldered, warning the Pale of the consequences of trying to escape. Tali could not look at them. Even if she did get away, how would she cross such alien places to civilisation?
The enemy was paranoid about insurrection and every adult slave had her own tiny stone cell, these being clustered in tiers around each assembly area like chunks of curved honeycomb around an oval plate.
‘If you don’t eat that drumstick,’ said Tali as they approached Lifka’s cell, ‘someone will steal it.’
‘Mind yer business.’ Lifka went into her cell and closed the door.
Anyone else would have gobbled the poulter leg at once. It had not occurred to Tali that Lifka would keep it for later. Now what was she supposed to do? Tinyhead might have lied. He could be coming now. She turned and kept turning, afraid that he would appear behind her with his blowfly tongue hanging out.
No, taking Tali out of Cython and selling her to the enemy was an act of treachery punishable by execution. Tinyhead would abduct her when there were no guards around to ask uncomfortable questions. He would come late at night.
The logic was sound, but Tinyhead also hated her and nothing he’d said could be trusted. She paced around the assembly area, which was empty, listening each time she passed Lifka’s door, but heard nothing to indicate that she had swallowed the girr-grub.
A shadow hobbled past the entry to the Empound, fifty or sixty yards away. Tali’s heart stopped, thinking it was Tinyhead, but the figure was too small and skinny. In the dim light it could have been Mad Wil. What had he meant by ‘You
She told herself that he wasn’t called Mad Wil for nothing. But he was also known for his morrow-sight, and he had seemed to recognise her. Tali checked again. The figure was too short for Wil. It must be a slave going to the squattery.
She squinted through the triangular peephole in Lifka’s door. The slave girl was on her bunk, apparently asleep. Tali pushed on the door, then hesitated. To attack another Pale, to injure someone who had done her no harm, went against everything her mother had brought her up to believe in.
If you can’t do it, you die.
She rolled three prickly girr-grubs in the palm of her hand. Should she use them all, to make sure? No, it might be a fatal dose. Tali put two back and kept the smallest, a squirming, blind-eyed creature whose brilliant red and yellow zigzags shrieked danger.
As she put her hand to the painted door, another of her mother’s sayings came to mind —
Heart pounding, throat choked down to a thread, she eased Lifka’s door open and slipped into the gloomy cell. The walls were unpainted, the floor waxy smooth from a thousand years of pacing slaves, and the solitary decoration was Lifka’s red-brown loincloth hanging from a peg jammed into a crack. She lay on the stone bed- shelf, eyes closed and slack mouth wide, asleep.
Her legs and arms were hard with muscle from years of lugging heavy sunstones, and Tali dared not risk a fight she was bound to lose. She had to do it while Lifka was asleep.
Squeezing the girr-grub until its green innards oozed out, Tali reached towards Lifka’s mouth, then hesitated. Could a whole girr-grub seriously harm the girl, even kill her?
