Rebellion

CHAPTER 32

Someone had picked her up and was carrying her down a steep slope, then into a room out of the wind. It was warmer here, but she did not like it. A disgusting reek was growing with every step.

“Tali?” a man’s voice said. He sounded worried. “Tali, wake up.”

She could not wake up, and she had never heard of Tali.

“I’m Zenda!” she wailed. “I told you already; I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

“Sweet Zenda,” a man said silkily. “Gentle, stupid Zenda, trapped like a mouse. You’ve got no idea what to do, have you? Come here, Zenda.”

“Don’t want to,” she moaned. “Please don’t make me.”

“You don’t want to,” said the woman, “but you’re going to. You’re not a fighter like Mimula, nor a thinker like Sulien. You’re apathetic, Zenda; the perfect slave. Come here!”

Zenda knew what they were going to do, because they had told her what they had done to her mother twenty years ago. They had exulted in the savage tale, feasted on her terror, fed on the blood.

But they were right about her. Sweet little Zenda was the perfect slave. She had no idea what to do and did not even think about fighting for her life.

She stumbled forwards, whimpering, “No, no, no,” and put herself in their hands.

They cut the pearl out savagely, as though they blamed her for her fate. As only her agony could assuage their guilt.

Tali woke screaming, and it took ages to come down from the nightmare. No, the reliving.

The best part of an hour passed before she came back to who she was and where she was. Before the pain where the top of Zenda’s head had been gouged away shifted and blurred into the pain in Tali’s shoulder.

“It’s all right,” someone was saying, over and again. “You’re safe now. No one can hurt you.”

She forced her eyes open. Outside, the wind was howling again, but in the back of the cave, with Holm’s carved ice door closed and the heatstone stove open, it was almost warm.

Holm’s own eyes were closed. He was holding her in his arms, rocking her back and forth. Tali lay still, and gradually the nightmare of her reliving was replaced by a new fear — that she could have revealed her deepest secret to Holm, whom, after all this time, she knew little about.

“Stupid nightmares,” she said with a false laugh. “I’ve been having them for ages.”

“Right now, I’m more concerned about what happened up on the peak,” said Holm, setting her down on the floor. The ice was carpeted with their oilskins.

As she sat upright, pain speared through her left shoulder. He made her a cup of spiced tea. She clamped her cold hands around it.

“On the peak?” she said, struggling to dredge up the memory.

“You fell and gashed your shoulder badly. I had to sew the wound back together.”

Tali felt her shoulder, winced. Scraps of the moment came back.

“I reached the top and the fog lifted.” She frowned. “No, I broke through it. The top was a few yards below me. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was glorious; I could see in all directions for a hundred miles…”

“And then?”

She did not want to tell him. Why should she reveal her secrets when Holm kept his from her? Besides, it would make her seem weak.

“How come you fell?” he persisted. “You’re usually so sure-footed.”

She was being silly. He needed to know. And if she opened up, perhaps he would too.

“I had a panic attack. I’ve been having them ever since I got out of Cython. The world is too big, and sometimes, on bright clear days, it feels as though the sky is overturning on me. I need a hat,” she said plaintively. “Have you got a hat?”

“You can have my hat any time you want. And because of the panic attack, you fell.”

“The ice was like greasy glass. I just slipped, that’s all.”

“No harm done, then. It’s a nice clean wound. It’ll heal quickly.”

“I do heal quickly,” said Tali. On the outside, anyway.

“Lunch?” said Holm.

“As long as it’s not fish-head stew.”

“I caught some fresh fish last night, while you were asleep. You can have them grilled if you like.”

“I would like.” Anything to distract him from asking about the reliving, though she thought she had got away with it by passing it off as a recurring nightmare.

He grilled the fish in a pan on top of the heatstone stove, which only took a few minutes, and served it with pepper and salt. It was the best meal she had ever eaten.

She started to get up to clean the plates.

“I’ll do it,” said Holm. “I don’t want you moving that shoulder for a while.”

He returned, made more tea then lay back on his covers.

Tali closed her eyes and was drifting to sleep when he said suddenly, “What was all that about Zenda?”

She jumped, fighting to calm herself. She hadn’t got away with it at all. “Just a nightmare.”

“Like the other one you had a while back, about a woman called Sulien?”

“How did you hear about that?”

“The healer in Rutherin told me. She was worried.”

“Why did she tell you?” Tali said hotly. “She had no right. What’s it got to do with you?”

“I’ve picked up a bit about healing in my travels,” he said airily. “Unusual things. She thought I might be able to advise her. Who’s Sulien?”

“No one you’d know.”

“You mentioned a great-grandmother. Was that Sulien?”

His questions were like arrows, striking all around the target, perhaps deliberately. He was a clever man. Would he put the next one in the bull’s eye?

“Or was Zenda your great-grandmother? And Sulien the one before that?”

Her only refuge was silence. She felt too weak to spar with him, or evade his probing questions.

After a couple of minutes of silence, he said, “Hold your tongue all you like. I think I can answer for you.”

She started but did not speak.

“You keep having nightmares about murders,” said Holm, sipping his tea. “Hardly surprising since you saw your mother murdered for an ebony pearl ten years ago, when you were the tender age of eight.”

She opened her mouth to speak but he held up a callused, square hand. “There’s no point denying it.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Just as well. Since the scandalous revelations at the late Lord Ricinus’s Honouring, any denial on your part would only heighten my suspicions.”

Her attempt at an indifferent shrug sent pain spearing through her shoulder.

He continued. “Everyone with an interest in ebony pearls knows that four have been harvested, from four young Pale women. But no one knows who the other hosts were. They could have been any four out of a hundred thousand young women born in Cython over the past hundred years.”

“Or more,” said Tali desperately. “There are eighty-five thousand Pale, and if there were five generations, say, and half of them women — ”

The number reminded her of her unbreakable blood oath, and her impossible duty to save her people. Every new victory by Lyf brought the fatal day closer — the day when he would have to move against the Pale, the threat at the heart of his empire.

“Something the matter?” said Holm.

“No,” she lied.

“Good. The number of Pale isn’t relevant,” said Holm, “because there’s another possibility — equally plausible. That those women belonged to a single, extraordinary family.”

Her blood ran as cold as the ice the room was carved from. He knew! He knew everything.

“Your great-great-grandmother, Sulien; then your great-grandmother, Zenda. And your grandmother…” Holm looked at her expectantly.

Tali could not fight him any longer. There was no point. “Nusee,” she whispered.

“And finally your own mother, whose death you witnessed.”

“Iusia.”

“One thing puzzles me, though,” said Holm. “Who was Mimula?”

“Mimoy. She was my thrice-grandmother, Sulien’s mother. She had a gift of magery and she was a tough, cranky old cow.”

“You knew her? Your thrice-grandmother?”

“She lived to be a hundred and nineteen. Though not naturally, Mimoy said.”

“I wonder if she could have been the first intended victim, but she got away?”

“It never occurred to me… though she did have an old scar on the top of her head.”

She looked across from him, sick with dread. “Well, you know my secret, and what I’m worth. What are you going to do with it?”

“Why would I want to do anything with it?” Holm said mildly.

“Everyone wants something from me.”

“You should learn to trust more.”

“That’s not easy to do when you’re the one, and bear a pearl in your head that’s worth a province.”

“Makes no difference to me. I have all the possessions I want.”

“You just lost your beautiful boat because of me. With the pearl you could buy another one tomorrow.”

“My boat was precious because I built it with my own hands, and because of the memories — of the places we voyaged together over twenty years. Neither can be replaced with any amount of money.”

“All right. If you’re a patriot, the master pearl could win the war for whoever you give it to.”

“I am a patriot. Doesn’t mean I’ll do anything to save my country.”

“Why did you hunt me down to the docks, if not for the pearl?”

“I didn’t know you had it. Didn’t even suspect it.”

“Why did you risk your life helping me, then?”

“When I took you aboard, I didn’t expect to be risking my life. If not for the ice, we would have escaped north and no one would have known where we were.”

“You’re a liar!” she yelled. “You were stealing the chancellor’s most valuable prisoner, and in wartime that’s treason. You didn’t do that on a whim. What patriot would? What do you want?”

He buried his head in his hands.

“Well?” said Tali. “I’ve told you my deepest secrets. You could at least tell me something.”

After a long interval, he said, “You can call it atonement, if it helps.”

“It doesn’t. Why atonement? Whose?”

“Let’s just say that I did a terrible wrong once. Not deliberately, nor by accident, but through my own negligent arrogance. Others paid dearly for my wrong, and I took a vow, long ago, to try and make up for what I’d done.”

“Oh!” she said, and knew by the way he spoke that he was telling the truth. At least, a small part of the truth. Two deaths on my conscience, he had said the other day. “What wrong did you do?”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your business.” He rose, looking old and haggard, and went to the entrance. “The best thing you can do for your shoulder is to get a good night’s sleep.”

“I might say the same thing about your own ailment.”

“I dare say you’re right. But there’ll be no sleep tonight for me, so I might as well go fishing.”

He wrapped himself in his oilskins, put on fur-lined sea boots and stomped down to the water.