Rebellion

CHAPTER 56

“Bitch,” said Blathy, every second time she passed Tali in the halls. Every other time she said, “Slut!”

Tali had not been to Tobry’s room again, nor had he come anywhere near hers, yet vile rumour had spread faster than the fire that had incinerated Tirnan Twil. By the time she entered the breakfast hall the following morning, everyone in Garramide save the lord himself knew that she slept with a filthy shifter. And she wasn’t taking the abuse any longer.

Tali spun around, thrusting her right arm out the way she’d done when she had killed Banj, directly up at Blathy’s throat. “What did you say?” she hissed.

“‘Slut!’ I said. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’ve got magery enough to tear your head from your shoulders,” Tali said recklessly.

“I know you have.” Blathy opened her blouse to bare her throat, and right down to her cleavage. “Go on, then.”

With her hair cascading down her back, her head tilted back and the arrogant smile that dared Tali to do it, Blathy had a barbaric grandeur that was mesmerising. She was prepared to wager her life on her assessment of Tali’s character, and take the consequences if her guess was wrong, and that made her a terrifying opponent.

One Tali could not beat. Even had the magery been at her fingertips, she could not kill Blathy in cold blood. Her threat had been empty and now her bluff had been called. She lowered her arm.

Blathy grinned savagely and turned away without a word. None were needed to reinforce her victory.

“It’s not true!” Tali cried, in a voice that rang from one end of the hall to the other. “But if it was, I’d be proud to have so brave and decent a man as Tobry Lagger as my mate.”

After that, the atmosphere wasn’t merely foul. It was poisonous.

“My chambers. Now!” said Rix, his face matching the gale raging outside.

Tali put down the potato she was peeling in the galley, washed her hands, then, avoiding all other eyes, headed upstairs.

“Did you see the lord’s face?” said a swarthy maid with an unfortunate figure. “He’s gunna give the slag what for. Put her out the door, I shouldn’t wonder. And serve the scrawny cow right.”

Tali was tempted to march back down the steps and punch the maid through the stone wall into the privies behind. She froze in mid-step, rotated on one foot to stare her down, before coming to her senses and turning away.

“She can’t get a real man,” the maid sneered. “She’ll be doing it in the pigsty next.”

As Tali whirled, a pair of steely fingers caught her elbow.

“It’s not about you,” Holm said in her ear. “Don’t make it worse.” He drew her upwards.

“I’ve been perfectly nice to them. Why do they have to be so horrible?”

He pretended to consider the question. “Apart from the fact that you’re beautiful, clever and famous?”

“I’m not famous.”

“Notorious, then. Apart from the fact that you’re on speaking terms with the chancellor, the lord of the manor, and Lyf himself, and you’ve had more adventures in a couple of months than they’ll have in ten lifetimes?”

“I wouldn’t call them adventures. More like nightmares.”

“They seem like adventures to maids who live lives of endless drudgery, and the best man they can hope for is a one-legged veteran with hair growing out of his ears. Of course they want to bring you down to their level.”

“Are you escorting me to Rix’s chambers, or making sure I don’t run away?” said Tali.

“You omitted the third possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“That I too have been summoned, like a naughty schoolboy.”

“You never do anything wrong.”

“I suspect the chancellor would have a different view on the matter.”

She managed a smile. “Oh yes.”

They reached Rix’s door. The hungry-looking guard allowed them in. “Lord Rixium will see you in a minute.”

They took seats by the fire.

A couple of minutes later, Tobry appeared. He did not appear to have slept in days. “Sorry,” he muttered, avoiding their eyes.

“You’ve got nothing to apologise for,” Tali said, more furiously than she had intended.

“Haven’t I?”

Rix kept them waiting for half an hour, then the lock clicked and he appeared behind them. For such a big man, he moved quietly.

“Well, Tali?” he said.

She could not think of anything to say. Rix had taken her in, and she had let him down.

“When you arrived,” said Rix, “my household was finally running smoothly. Morale was good and the handful of troublemakers had been contained. We’d had a notable victory, and we were united as we prepared ourselves for the greater battle to come — the battle of our lives…

“Now people are shouting abuse at each other in the halls and informing on their neighbours in the galleys and workshops, and apparently it’s down to you. Why?”

“It’s not due to Tali,” said Tobry. “I take — ”

“I’ll get to you in a minute,” Rix snarled. “And you’d better have a good explanation — though I can’t imagine what justification you can muster for such a betrayal.”

Tobry slumped back in his chair, his face in shadow.

“It may have escaped you, Tali,” Rix went on, biting each word off, “but we’re fighting a desperate battle. And you know, because I often talked about it in Palace Ricinus, that morale is vital to our survival. It wasn’t easy getting to Garramide, nor wresting it back. And the time after that, when the only thing people knew about me was the rotting carcass of House Ricinus about my neck, was dire.

“It took everything I had, and a bloody fight for our survival, to win them over. Now morale is in tatters again. Why, Tali?”

“People are spreading filthy lies about me,” Tali said defensively. “The whole fortress knew about me and Tobry before I left his room. Someone must have been spying on us. How else could they have known?”

“How could I have known, for that matter?” Rix said in a dangerous voice. “But wait, I didn’t know. I was deliberately kept in the dark.”

“I didn’t know myself…” Tali said feebly.

“Someone must have been spying on us,” he quoted in a whiny voice. “What do you expect when you go creeping down the stairs to Tobry’s room in the middle of the night? How could you think that someone wouldn’t try to find out what you were up to? There’s precious little privacy in a place like this, so why should you have any?”

“Don’t you believe in love?” she said stupidly.

“Bah!” he said. He turned to Tobry, regarding him for a minute or two in silence. “Why couldn’t you confide in me, Tobe?”

“I was going to tell you the moment I got here…” said Tobry.

“But?”

“I arrived in the middle of a battle, and when we fought together it was like the good old days before the war. When we sat down by the fire that night, old friends together, I couldn’t bear to ruin it.”

“Why would it have ruined it?”

“Not even you can be that dense.”

“Spell it out for me,” Rix grated.

“I thought I had, that first night.”

“Say it again.”

“Having lost everything in your previous life, you’ve taken up your Herovian heritage. The Herovians held strong beliefs about cripples, the mentally handicapped and people with ‘degenerate’ lifestyles, and I know exactly how they feel about shifters.”

“Enlighten me.”

“In the pantheon of the damned,” said Tobry, “nothing is lower or more degenerate than a shifter. Any true Herovian would have no choice but to condemn me.”

“And I’m condemned as a true Herovian, am I? Just like that.”

“Not that I don’t warrant it,” Tobry said bitterly. “I knew it would come out, and I’d be doomed when it did.” His voice dropped, almost to inaudibility. “But just for a few days, I wanted it to be like olden times.”

Rix’s face grew even colder. “I would have no choice but to condemn you, as though our longstanding friendship meant nothing? Do you truly think so little of me, that I would discard you for some petty ideology?”

“I don’t call Maloch petty. Nor the Immortal Text, nor the mural you painted up in the observatory.”

“I noticed the change within days of you coming here,” said Rix. “The day after the battle, the whole fortress was as one at dinner time. Two days after that they began to whisper in corners. I assumed it had to do with the enemy. It never occurred to me that they were talking about you.”

“Why the hell not?” said Tobry.

“You used to have friends everywhere — among the highest and among the lowest. Everyone liked you — ”

“Save the chancellor,” said Tobry. “And Lady Ricinus.”

“Their hatred counts in your favour. After your heroic deeds on the fortress wall I assumed you’d be accepted at once.”

Tobry made as if to speak, but choked it back.

“I was so busy,” Rix continued, “that it was almost a week before I realised people were wary of you. But I rationalised it. Country folk, from one of the oldest and most traditional houses in the land, were bound to take their time to accept a newcomer.”

“They could not have said what bothered them about me,” said Tobry, “but I knew — the psychic stink of the shifter. If I lived here for a thousand years they still would not accept me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We’ve been through that.”

“For the sake of Garramide then? You could have told me, then ridden away. I would have given you half my treasury, such as it is, to help you set up — ”

“Or a bribe to keep me from coming back,” said Tobry. “A sop to your conscience?”

“Stop it!” screamed Tali. “Both of you. Tobry, how can you say such things about Rix? You know he loves you like a brother. And Rix, can’t you see what Tobry has been going through?”

“I might have, had he bothered to tell me,” said Rix. “I can’t read minds.”

“If I might interject,” said Holm, “you must have called me here for a reason.”

Rix stared at Holm as if he were a stranger. “I suppose I must, though I’m damned if I know what it is.”

“Perhaps I can enlighten you. The foregoing discussion, fascinating though it has been, hasn’t got to the real point of the problem.”

“And that is?” said Tali.

“Until this got out, the people of Garramide didn’t know why they felt so badly about Rix’s oldest friend. Now they do, and they’re angry.”

“Angry doesn’t cover it,” said Rix.

“They’re asking why you’ve allowed a foul shifter to live among them in secret. Why you would so betray them. Their beloved great dame, who was as proud a Herovian as ever lived, would not have allowed a shifter within five miles of the gates.”

“Go on,” Rix said icily.

“Some of them are wondering if you’re a true son of Lord and Lady Ricinus, whose disembowelled corpses still dangle from the traitor’s gate of Palace Ricinus. Does the dark blood of House Ricinus run in your veins? Have you come here to betray them too?”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Tali.

“It’s what a good few of the people downstairs are thinking, and some are saying.”

“Whatever you’re working up to,” Rix said between his teeth, “spit it out.”

“To put it another way,” said Holm, “your enemies are starting to contemplate the unthinkable — mutiny.”