Vengeance

girl they failed to kill as a child. The girl they have to see dead, immediately and secretly. You.’

Tali choked. ‘They want me dead. Why?’

‘Because of a shillilar. A foretelling.’

‘Then why didn’t Tinyhead kill me in the subsistery?’

‘He serves another master.’

Tali was struggling to process this. ‘So I have two separate enemies. The matriarchs want to kill me here, and our family’s enemy wants to hack my head open in the cellar.’

‘Your snail’s intellect has finally grasped the danger.’ Mimoy looked down at her tiny, twisted feet. ‘I suppose you’ll have to do.’ She turned away.

‘Why do the matriarchs want to kill me?’ said Tali, more confused than ever.

‘To prevent the shillilar coming true, of course.’

‘What did it say?’

‘How would I know? It’s a secret.’ Mimoy hobbled towards the door.

‘Wait. What about my gift? I’ve got to practise the spell.’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘I can’t escape without it.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘What are you saying?’ cried Tali, but Mimoy, who was wincing with every step, did not answer. ‘When will we next meet?’

‘Before dawn,’ said Mimoy.

‘Where are you taking me, anyway?’

‘I’m not taking you anywhere. You’re taking me.’

‘Where?’

Mimoy cracked her knuckles and the finger light vanished. In the sudden darkness Tali heard the latch being raised.

‘Home to Hightspall, to die,’ came the old woman’s voice, moving away, and the naked longing in her voice brought tears to Tali’s eyes.

‘But I can’t find my magery — ’

Mimoy was gone.

CHAPTER 19

Wherever you run, wherever you hide, I’ll find you.

But how was Tinyhead following her down these tunnels floored with clean, hard stone? Magery was an insult to their lost kings and no Cythonian would think of doing it.

Turning aside, she fled down one random passage after another, running until her knees went wobbly, yet twenty minutes later he was behind her again. Without a weapon she could not hope to beat him, and their masters were careful to lock away anything that might be used as a weapon. That only left one thing.

Since Tali’s gift was not any of the three old kinds of magery, there must be a new magery, but where did it come from and why had it come to her? Was that why her family were targeted by killers from Hightspall? It did not make sense. How could outsiders know about magery in some insignificant slave trapped in Cython, and why would they care?

After passing down a broad passage, she slipped into an unlit cross-tunnel and waited on hands and knees. And soon he came, down on all-fours, sniffing the floor like a dog. He moved into a patch of light and she caught a flicker of white. Not sniffing — he was licking the floor with that repulsive tongue. Tracking her by her taste! She could hear him breathing, and a thick slurping as he licked, swallowed, licked again.

The soles of Tali’s feet crept. The horrible, disgusting brute.

After backing away down the tunnel, she slipped the front and back sections of her loincloth off its waist cord and bound them around her feet, hoping that Lifka’s stronger odour would confuse him. Tali hurried away, feeling tainted.

She had to concentrate on her plan though, without magery, how could she hope to impersonate Lifka? When she failed, she would be mutilated and beheaded. But there was no other way — or was there? Tali began to think the unthinkable.

Tinyhead knew a secret way out of Cython, and if anyone could elude the matriarchs, he could. If she allowed him to catch her, he would take her to the cellar. But what if she couldn’t find her gift on the way? No, the risk was too great. She had to keep going. If she failed, at least she would have done her best.

Then a shadow moved, a long way behind, and it was the wrong shape to be Tinyhead or Mimoy. It must be one of the matriarchs’ agents. Tali turned left and ran down a random passage, trying to work out why they wanted her dead.

They all died for you, Wil had said. Who had died?

Because of the shillilar about the one, the matriarchs had tried to kill her many years ago, but they had failed. How had they tried, and why had they failed? Because they hadn’t known her name? But now they did, and they planned to kill her immediately and secretly. Why? What had the shillilar said about her? It must be dramatic if they had been trying to identify her all this time. Who could she ask?

Wil had called her the one, and he had a seeing eye tattooed on his forehead — the mark of morrow-sight. It must have been Wil who’d had the shillilar, but he was the enemy and would never tell her.

Tali scented water, burst out into a broad cross-passage and skidded to a stop inches from the edge of the floatillery. She knew where she was now. The underground canal ran to the Merchantery on the southern shore of vast Lake Fumerous, though that exit was the most closely guarded of all.

The dim, bluish light of a roof-mounted glowstone revealed a line of barges tied up along the stone quay, low in the water, heavily laden. Tali’s hackles rose, and faint scintillations from within confirmed her unease. The barges were stacked high with rectangular slabs of heatstone, each as large as the bed of a wagon, all no doubt intended for the wicked trade with Hightspall.

There was something wrong about the twinkling slabs, as though the rock protested at the uncanny force trapped inside it, but Tali also saw an opportunity to shake her pursuers. Cythonians were superstitious about heatstones and would not touch them.

She clambered over the side of the nearest barge onto the stacked heatstones, shuddering at the sickly feeling on the soles of her feet and the moving colours it set off in her head. Within a minute her feet were burning hot. She ran down and leapt into the next barge, then the ones after that until she reached the end of the line. From there she sprang for the far side of the floatillery. Her pursuers would have to divert to the nearest bridge, which might gain her a respite.

Tali knew roughly where she was, though she had no idea how to get to the sunstone area from here and time was running out. She had to get there first — it would take a long time to prepare herself.

In Cython, people often found their way by the smell of a passage, and Tali’s nose was one of the keenest, though only after hours of searching and sniffing did she scent a tunnel heading in the right direction. She unbound her feet, put on the crumpled loincloth and, as she hurried on, tried to resolve the enigma of Mimoy. The old woman knew things about Tali that no one could know without magery. Clearly, she had been spying on her for years. Yet, since Mimoy had not made herself known before, she could hardly be on Tali’s side.

Trust no one.

Only Mimoy could show Tali how to release her gift. She had to go along with the old woman’s plan and be ready to break free if Mimoy betrayed her.

By the time Tali reached the maze behind the sunstone shaft, only half an hour before dawn, she was panicking. Time was running out and if Tinyhead or the matriarchs’ killers had arrived before her she would be