Vengeance

master. She tried to ignore them. Could she extract the name his master had blocked last time?

‘Who killed my mother?’ she said quietly.

He did not reply. In the darkness to their left, a geyser spurted, the water having a violet luminescence. It went up so far into the frigid night that the spray falling on them was icy.

Tali worked her chafed wrists back and forth, attempting to free her hands, but the ropes had been tied too cunningly. ‘Who’s your master, Tinyhead?’

He stopped. The ruined mouth stretched wide, though no one would have called it a smile, and he opened his free hand. On his palm lay the shrivelled Purple Pixie, complete but for the tip of its pointed hood.

‘Only ate enough to unblock. Not enough to lose control.’ He tossed it away.

He was recovering rapidly, physically and mentally, and would soon be back to the strength he’d had when she first met him. If she was to escape, she had better try soon.

Tali gave an experimental wriggle. His arm clamped so tightly around her chest that she could not draw a full breath.

‘Know what you’re about,’ said Tinyhead. ‘On guard.’

He began to trot, weaving between a myriad of pools and mires, quick-mud seethes and holes that, despite the phosphorescent water in them, appeared to have no bottom. Tali looked back and could no longer see the glowstone lanterns. It would take a miracle for Orlyk to catch them in this dark and deadly labyrinth.

Little consolation to her. She contemplated the possibility that Tinyhead would get her to the murder cellar after all. Caulderon could not be more than seven miles from here. Once out of the Seethings he could reach the city before dawn, even in the dark, and get inside, too. Tinyhead was a driven man. He would find a way.

An hour went by, and another, and Tali was counting down the miles. They must be close to the north- eastern edge of the Seethings. The ponds, mires and sunken lands were further apart now and she had not seen a geyser in ages. How far to Caulderon? Five miles? Four? She could see lights in the distance, probably the thickly clustered villages of Suthly County on the other side of the main road. Not long at all.

The land was lumpy here, covered in nodules and round mounds. She could hear bubbling to left and right, and a slow, oily gurgling issued up through crusted cracks. The air had the acrid smell of sulphur.

She rubbed the painful weal across her belly. Unarmed and exhausted as she was, what could she do to save herself? Tinyhead would avoid all forms of habitation, but in the densely populated land ahead a chance meeting was likely. She had to be ready to call for help.

He stopped abruptly. More lights appeared, brighter than before, revealing that the ground, the lumps and the nodules were solid yellow sulphur. But the lights were both ahead and to either side now. They weren’t village lights, they were glowstone lanterns, though not Orlyk’s.

‘She the one,’ came a familiar voice from the darkness, an awed, enraptured voice. ‘Found her. She the one.’

Wil the Sump was at the head of a second squad of Cythonians and he had led them straight to her.

CHAPTER 42

Tinyhead let out another of those shivery groans. ‘Master? I can’t turn on my own people. Not again.’

His master, if he had heard, gave no answer.

‘Put the slave down, Sconts, and get out of the way,’ said a voice from the darkness. A deep voice, confident in its authority.

Tinyhead tightened his grip around Tali’s chest. The white-coated tongue licked his ruined lips as he looked for a way of escape, but the lights blocked three sides now and distantly, on the fourth, Tali saw more glowstone lanterns. Orlyk was coming.

Tinyhead’s eyes fixed on a gap in the lights ahead. His muscles tensed and his bulging head swung from side to side as he assessed his chances. Tali’s right ear was squashed against his chest and she could hear the breath crackling in his lungs. Was he going to run?

‘She has to die,’ said the deep voice, and an annular blade shone as it was raised above the speaker’s head — a Living Blade. ‘Here and now.’

‘Wil saved her,’ moaned Wil. ‘She Wil’s now.’

‘She may not die at your hands,’ said Tinyhead, and bolted towards the gap.

Down a gentle slope he pounded, through a patch of shadow and straight into a concealed pit of mud, the reason for the gap. But there was no crust here and he let out a gasp as his feet sank deep. For a second she thought he was going to be trapped the way Orlyk’s troops had been, but his feet found the base of the shallow pit, his thighs bunched and drove him through the hot, knee-deep mud.

Steam gushed up from each footfall and pungent gases stung Tali’s nostrils, but Tinyhead was an automaton no wound or pain could stop. He reached solid ground, his mud-coated feet slipping and skidding as he climbed a gentle slope, and drove for the gap between the guards. He almost made it.

The man to the left hurled his sword, hilt forwards, its flat end striking Tinyhead above the ear. He let out an explosive grunt, dropped Tali and began to stagger around blindly. The blow had driven him back into the zombie state he’d been in after the hole had burnt through his head.

Tali landed on her shoulder, the impact numbing her whole arm, and was struggling to her feet when the guard dived on her, flattening her on the yellow ground. He put his knees in the middle of her back and held her down with all his weight. Two more guards stood to either side, their blades out-thrust, and the others ran in and held Tinyhead at bay. It was over.

He shook his head, then reeled off into the darkness, wailing, ‘Master, I failed you.’

The man giving the orders said, ‘Take a firm grip on the slave. Should she escape again, our families will suffer the fate set down for her.’

The guard took his weight off Tali, keeping hold of her arms. The captain was a strong, handsome fellow with a clear brown eye and a confident manner. Then he turned, and the other side of his face was a ruin of raised white scars and deep pock marks. The survivors of that explosion on the lower levels of Cython a few years ago had looked like this.

‘Raise her and hold her,’ he said.

He examined Tali’s face and slave mark, nodded and issued orders in a low voice. Ten guards formed a line to block Tinyhead in case he attacked from the darkness.

A thin, owl-eyed woman was studying the bobbing lanterns through a pair of night glasses. ‘Captain, it’s Orlyk’s squad. They’ll want to take her back to Cython.’

‘Orlyk has allowed the Pale to escape twice,’ said the captain. ‘We have our orders and we’re not giving her up.’

‘Said you wouldn’t hurt her,’ cried Wil the Sump, waving his skinny arms.

‘Nor will I,’ said the captain, rubbing his cheek with a callused thumb. ‘She won’t even feel it as I take her head off.’

This was it. She was going to die. Even if Rix and Tobry were to ride up with an army of a thousand, the captain would behead her before they could get close.

Tali shook off the despair. Never give up. Think, think!

Wil tried to pull the captain away from Tali. ‘But she the one.’

‘And the one has to die, Wil. The Living Blade gives a merciful death. It’s more than she deserves, considering her crimes.’

Could she work on Wil the way she had swayed Tinyhead? It was the faintest hope, because any of the guards would be his match in strength, and they were all around, all armed, all watchful.

Whatever Wil had seen in her, it mattered deeply to him. Could she manipulate him to create a chance of escape? How far would he go to protect her?

‘You’re right, Wil,’ said Tali. ‘I am the one and you’ve got to help me.’

‘See!’ cried Wil, and stretched out his thin arms imploringly. His gruesomely enlarged nostril was dripping blood, his hands and wrists were so scarred and cracked that fluid was weeping through the skin, and there was an odd, oval bulge across his belly. ‘Mustn’t touch her. You’ll ruin the ending.’