Lifka’s eyes shot open and before Tali could move a hard fist slammed into her jaw, lifting her off her feet. She hit the floor, head ringing, then Lifka was on her, slapping her face and clawing at her eyes in a frenzy.
Tali tried to push her off but Lifka jerked her up by the shoulders and shook her violently. Her small teeth were bared and her eyes had the sick gleam Tali had seen when Tinyhead had come into the subsistery — Lifka wanted blood. She lifted Tali higher. What was she doing? She was planning to slam her head against the floor, smash it open like a melon, and Tali was not strong enough to stop her.
She thrust the squashed girr-grub deep into Lifka’s open mouth and jammed the heel of her hand against it. In an instant the girl’s hands fell away, she began to jerk and shudder, then went rigid.
Tali scrabbled backwards out of reach. Lifka’s eyes were starting from their sockets, green-tinged mucus flooding from her nose and mouth. She heaved, made a gagging sound, her face went scarlet and her open hands trembled as if on springs.
Was she choking? Having a fit? Fatally poisoned? Tali was bending over the girl when she jack-knifed upright and a torrent of vomit roared over Tali’s left shoulder, onto the wall. Yellow, fizzing streaks oozed down, the stone bubbling from Lifka’s stomach acids. Flecks of vomit stung Tali’s neck and ear as Lifka fell back.
The smell made her belly heave. She fought it down and turned Lifka onto her side so she would not choke. Blood-tinged mucus dribbled from her swollen mouth. Her lips and tongue were blistered, her fingers opened and closed. She moaned.
Tali wiped her face, tilted her head then gave her a drink from the clay jug beside the bed. The water came straight up.
‘Sorry,’ Tali whispered. ‘I’m really, really sorry.’
Tali was lifting her onto the bed-shelf, as gently as she could, when Lifka’s fist struck her under the chin. The back of Tali’s head hit the floor and the cell went out of focus.
She roused slowly, pain splitting her head in two, lying on the floor with no memory of what she was doing there. She had been doing something urgent. What? The memory would not come, though she knew that a long time had passed and she should not be here.
Tali rolled over and forced herself to her knees. The back of her head had a lump and her whole jaw ached …
Someone groaned nearby and she smelled vomit. The cell reeked of it — Lifka’s cell. The memories flooded back. How long had she been unconscious? Tali scrambled up.
Lifka was breathing shallowly. Yellow blisters clustered around her mouth and vomit had dried on her left cheek. What if she was seriously ill? It was too late to back out now. Tali put her hands on the girl’s belly, then on her raw mouth, and worked the best healing charm she knew.
There was nothing more she could do. Every passing minute increased the probability of Tinyhead coming. She had to go now.
Tali studied the girl’s spasming figure. Was the deception possible? Tali’s own lack of shoulder calluses was an obvious difference, one that only a deception or concealment spell could fix, and getting that spell was her next task.
She could emulate the protruding lip, the low, colourless voice, the slow movements. What else? Tali’s green loincloth marked her as a slave from the grotto gardens, so she swapped it for the red-brown rag the sunstone carriers wore.
A series of little dot-like scars ran around Lifka’s left ankle, though Tali could not imagine what had caused them. Lifka’s feet were broader, lightly tanned, and her arches were flattened from carrying the heavy sunstones, but who looked at a slave’s feet? As long as slaves were hard-working and obedient, they were invisible, weren’t they?
No, best be sure. Once Tali reached the sunstone station she would use a glamour to disguise her feet — assuming someone could release her gift. And if not, she would die.
‘Why?’ groaned Lifka. A tsunami rolled up her belly and she fountained masticated vegetables onto her own face.
Tali wiped the muck out of the girl’s eyes and rinsed her off. ‘Tinyhead will kill me if I don’t escape.’
‘Tell guards — cut everythin’ off,’ Lifka slurred. ‘Glad. Hate you!’ She turned her face to the wall.
Tali squirmed. ‘I’m really sorry. I had no choice.’
‘Won’t escape. Die, horribly, ha, ha —
Tali washed the vomit off with the last of the water. ‘I’m going to get away,’ she said firmly, though she was beginning to doubt that she’d get as far as the sunstone shaft. If such a simple plan could go so wrong so quickly, how could she pull off the difficult parts?
‘Didn’t tell ya everythin’, did I?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Not sayin’.’ Lifka bared slime-coated teeth, puked onto the wall beside her bed-shelf and lay still, breath rasping in her raw throat.
After tossing a ragweed blanket over the girl, Tali took back the poulter leg, then hurried down the painted tunnels to her own cell, ten minutes away, picking the girr-grub out of the poulter flesh as she walked. She felt self-conscious in the sunstone carrier’s red-brown loincloth and, if she encountered anyone who knew Lifka, she was lost.
This time she saw no one. In her cell, Tali was washing her hands when she realised how easily she could have saved Mia. If she’d only thought to shove a mucky finger into Mia’s mouth, girr-grub slime would have made her violently ill. Tali could have cleaned up the birth mess, hidden the dead baby until Banj had gone and the healers had taken Mia away, then buried it in the composter. By the time Mia recovered from the girr-grub she might have come to terms with her loss, and no one need ever have known about the grey baby.
Tali stared at the wall, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. Why hadn’t that occurred to her? No matter how hopeless things were, there was always a way out. She just had to find it.
Her pet mouse squeaked. Poon had grey fur, small feet and big ears, and Tali loved her. She poked the piece of yam into the ramshackle cage she had fashioned from poulter bones and gum. Poon took the yam in her front paws, ate it with delicate nibbles and looked up for more.
‘Sorry,’ said Tali. ‘Had greater need of it.’ She swallowed. ‘Poon, I’ve got to set you free.’
She unlatched the cage, stroked the mouse’s ears and set her on the floor. ‘Go,’ she whispered. ‘Run and hide.’
Poon stood up on her back legs, reaching for the swinging cage.
‘I’m scared to leave my cage, too,’ said Tali.
CHAPTER 15
‘I’ve got to fly, Poon. Tinyhead’s after me.’ Tali, her eyes prickling, urged the mouse away with the back of her hand. ‘Off you go.’
Poon ran inside and scrabbled against the side of her bed.
Tali sighed, gave her a shred of poulter leg, wrapped the rest in a length torn from her ragweed blanket and slipped it into her pocket. She gathered her only possessions: a swirling silver ornament on a chain — the seal of her ancient house — and her father’s letter, which she fixed into the hem of her loincloth with a purloined brass pin. Finally, a pretty blue gown made of the finest silk cloth. Her ancestor Eulala vi Torgrist had worn it proudly as she left her home a thousand years ago, one of a hundred and forty-four noble children sent into exile.
They had been told that they were going on a grand adventure to serve their country, but had been given over to the Cythonians as hostages and never ransomed. Why not? If Hightspall was prepared to trade with the enemy, why couldn’t they ransom their own children? Tali could only see it as a betrayal.
Eulala had been just twelve but the gown was a good fit on Tali and she would wear it when — if — she escaped. She could not go home wearing a loincloth.
The silver seal had burned the slave’s mark into her left shoulder. She pocketed it and went out, carrying Poon. Now came her biggest challenge — finding someone to release her hidden gift.
