Rebellion

CHAPTER 63

“No one knows who tried to kill Tobry,” said Holm, late that night. “It could have been anyone. And they’ll try again.”

Tali, Rix, Tobry and Holm were in Holm’s small room. It had formerly been the sitting room of one of the great dame’s ladies and none of the decorations had been changed. The curtains and pillows were festooned with ribbons, the chair covers embroidered in intricate detail, while every surface was covered in crocheted doilies and little china animals. But at least it had a fire.

Tali’s stomach cramped. She went to the small window but found no solace there. Outside, the snowy dark was lit by red or white bombast blasts. The enemy had not yet attacked, but their bombasts and grenadoes had already smashed the gates in and were steadily eroding the basalt wall behind it. It was unlikely to last another day.

She turned back to the sombre group. “Can I see it?”

Holm removed a doily draped over an upturned glass resting on a saucer. Inside the glass, a small yellow scorpion struck at the inside wall with its stinger.

Tali shivered. “And it’s deadly, you say?”

“It’s got enough venom to kill ten people,” said Holm. “Slowly and agonisingly.”

“How do you know it was a murder attempt?”

“They don’t live round here. Too cold. Only place I’ve seen them is Bleddimire, and that’s four hundred miles away.”

“It was hidden under the seat of the jakes I use, down near the black hole,” said Tobry.

“It could have been intended for anyone,” said Tali, trying desperately to deny what was all too obvious. “Why do you think it was for you?”

“No one else has used that jakes since I came to Garramide,” Tobry said quietly. “They’d sooner die than do their business where a filthy shifter does his. I’m going up to practise my magery.”

“You’re always practising.”

“But I’m not getting any better.”

“Why not?”

“Because magery gets weaker every day.” He went out.

Tali sat in silence for a few minutes, staring into the fire, then said, “Holm?”, in what she imagined to be a cajoling tone.

“No, Tali.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”

“I’ve got a fair idea. I can read it in those innocent blue eyes of yours.”

“What, then?”

“If there is a way to heal Tobry, no one knows it.”

“I have to try.”

“He won’t allow it.”

“Stupid man!”

“He’s trying to protect you.”

“Did I ask him to?” she flashed. “I don’t need looking after.”

“I recall a helpless night or two on the iceberg,” Holm said mildly.

She ignored that. “I’m entitled to look after my friend, aren’t I?”

“Tobry said no to healing, very clearly, because it would endanger you.”

“If I could find a way to save him, it might also be the solution to the shifter problems, all the way across Hightspall,” she said cunningly.

“Self-justification now?” said Holm.

“Will you help me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have to justify myself.”

“Please, Holm. I’ll never ask you for anything else, ever again.”

“Of course you will. You’ll ask me every time you want something.”

“I don’t want it. Tobry needs it.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Do you realise how exceedingly annoying you are?” he said, looking fondly at her. “First you destroy my lovely boat — ”

“I didn’t destroy it.”

“And now you expect me to reveal my darkest and most desperate secret.”

From the look on his face, he wasn’t joking. “Forget about it. I don’t want — ”

“No, I’ve carried it too long. I’m going to tell you why I won’t help you with such a healing.”

He unlocked his bag, his jaw set.

“I don’t want to know,” said Tali.

“Then you shouldn’t have kept pushing and pushing.”

He opened the bag and, from a small, sealed box drew out a scalpel, tongs and other medical tools. They were covered with dry, flaking blood. He held them out on his open palms.

“See these?”

“You were a healer?” said Tali.

“A brilliant young healer — in fact, a surgeon, taught by the great Stophele himself. He said I was the best of all his students.” There was a dark tone to his voice that she had not heard before. “I was wealthy, important, and had everything I wanted. Yet I was proud — so very proud and arrogant that I couldn’t bear to take advice from anyone. I also had a demon riding my shoulder and he wouldn’t let up, and the only way I could get rid of him was by drinking. Manic drinking.”

“Oh,” said Tali. Something bad was coming and she did not want to hear it.

“You can imagine what happened.”

She shook her head. “Something terrible?”

“One morning I was doing a minor operation on my wife, against all advice. A healer should never treat his loved ones save in an emergency, and this was not.”

“What procedure?” she said quietly.

“Just cutting out a cyst. It wasn’t a danger to her, but it was exceedingly painful and needed to be removed. And I was so arrogant that I could not trust any other surgeon, not even with so commonplace a procedure.” Holm met her eyes, and his were so bleak that she had to look down.

“I was also drunk.”

Tali’s face must have shown her shock, for he slowly shook his head.

“I wasn’t drinking that morning — I wasn’t that far gone. But, though I denied it to myself and everyone else, I was still drunk from the previous night. And when I drank, I loved to take risks and succeed in spite of them.

“In my drunken stupidity the blade slipped, and an artery was cut, and my hands were trembling so badly I couldn’t stitch it. My beautiful wife bled to death in front of me, begging me to save our unborn son. She couldn’t understand how so brilliant a surgeon could not do this simple thing, but it was beyond me. I lost them both.”

“Oh, Holm,” said Tali, reaching out to him.

“Don’t try to comfort me. I don’t deserve it.”

“Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“My wife and son didn’t get one.”

“Neither did my mother,” said Tali. “I blame myself, too. If I’d only done something — ”

“You were a child in terrible danger beyond your capacity to deal with, yet you did your very best,” Holm said harshly. “I was an adult, in full control and working well within my capacities. No one forced me to do what I did. It was my decision to drink, my decision to operate, my decision to do so with reckless disregard for my wife and my unborn child. That night I swore neither to drink nor practise healing again, and I cannot break that vow.”

“Not even after, what, thirty years?”

“Thirty-six years; yet there are nights when I still can’t sleep for thinking about it. Times when I have to take a sleeping draught to save my sanity.”

His eyes went to a little potion bottle on the table, then he stood up wearily. “I’m going to take a turn along the wall before bed and see what the enemy are up to. Good night.” He went out.

Tali sat by the fire for a good while, imagining the horror of that fatal day, then his haunted vigil on the wall. She was turning to go when her eye fell upon the bottle containing his sleeping draught.

No! she thought. That would be a monstrous abuse of trust.

Almost as monstrous as what she was contemplating using it for. Holm was right; since Tobry had refused any further attempts to heal him, who was she to interfere?

But she was going to. He would be practising magery up at the dome for another hour, with any luck. She picked up the potion bottle. An eyedropper inside had a mark scored on it, halfway down. Simple enough.

She headed down to the black hole. Knowing that he took his cocktail of potions every night before bed, she dropped the measured amount of sleeping potion in the bottom of his mug, then the same again, to be sure. For her plan to have any chance of succeeding, Tobry must be deeply asleep. The draught did not cover the bottom, so it seemed improbable that he would notice. She went up, replaced the bottle on Holm’s table and returned to her room.

And paced, three steps and three, across and back, for hour after hour. What she had done was an abuse of her friendship with Holm and Tobry, but it was as nothing compared to what she planned to do next. It had to be done, but she wasn’t sure she had the courage for it. She would have to hurt Tobry, do violence to him, assault him.

How would she feel if he did to her what she was planning to do to him? Such feelings of outrage rose that she had to block them out. Tali covered her scalding face, for shame — she could not do it to him. It was too wicked to be borne. Tobry would have to die the way other shifters did: either insane, or put to death…

The next thing she knew, she was outside his door with the knife in her hand. She set her candle down, lifted the latch and eased the door open. He was asleep. She could tell by the way he was breathing.

She checked behind her, though she already knew there was no one in sight. Tali had learned her lesson last time. She crept in, holding her candle high, and watched him for a minute or two. When he did not react to the light, she put it down on the bedside table.

He was quite still. She drew the covers down to his waist and was briefly surprised that most of the scars he’d had when she’d first met him were gone. Of course they were. Shifting one’s flesh from caitsthe to man, or man to caitsthe, healed wounds and did away with all but the largest and deepest scars.

Tali sniffed the cup. She caught a faint whiff of his cocktail of potions, and the sleeping draught beneath that, almost imperceptible. He’d taken it, then. She banged the cup down, as a test. He did not move. He was deeply asleep.

The next part was hard. Having been robbed of so much blood by the chancellor’s healers, the sight of her own blood aroused strong emotions in her. She could not bear to spill it, or waste a drop. But she had to. For Tobry.

Tali had sharpened a small knife for the purpose. She held it to her wrist, breathing hard, afraid to cut in case she cut too deep and could not heal it. But that was stupid; of course she could heal it.

She opened her vein with the point of the knife and caught the pumping blood in the cup. Her mistake last time lay in not giving him enough, only a few spoonfuls. This time she would use the whole cup.

When it was full she sealed the vein with healing magery, then had to put the cup down smartly, before she dropped it. Her head was spinning; she was hot and cold, sweaty, faint. She sat on the bed, supporting herself with her arms, until the faintness passed.

Tali took up the knife again. She had to do it now. This was the part she had been dreading, the very worst. This time she would be using the blade, not the point.

Tobry’s chest was relatively smooth, which surprised her. She’d expected a coating of downy caitsthe fur, but perhaps his cocktail of potions prevented the fur growth. She reached out to touch his chest, to stroke it, then came to her senses. Do it now!

The blade opened a smooth cut from one side of his chest to the other with almost no resistance. A terrible, appalling cut. Blood followed the blade; far more than she had expected. Tali started to panic. Quickly now. She poured the whole cup of her blood onto his chest, along the deep, spreading cut, then began to rub it in.

She was so concerned to get the shameful business over as quickly as possible that she did not notice the sudden rigidity of Tobry’s muscles or the hooking of his fingers. He made a moaning noise deep in his throat. His eyes fluttered under his lids, as though in panic or terror. She sensed that he was trying to wake, but could not overcome the effects of the sleeping draught. Just as well; she still had most of her blood to rub into him.

His eyes shot open, and they were the golden colour of a caitsthe’s eyes. But he hadn’t shifted yet. The blood was still running out of him, mingling with her blood which now covered most of his chest. Then, in an instant, down was forming all over him, his fingertips curving and extending into claws, his teeth elongating into fangs.

She had to work faster. Tali ran her fingers along the gash, but now he was shifting too fast for her. He jackknifed up in the bed, blood spattering her clothes and her arms. A backhanded blow drove her three feet across the room, stumbling backwards, her arms windmilling as she struggled to stay on her feet.

He leapt up, now caitsthe-tall, towering over her. Then he went for her, snapping and snarling, and the shifter madness was terrifying. He was many times as strong as her. Too late she understood what he had been trying to tell her before; why he had kept her at bay.

When Tobry was in this state, she was just meat to him.

She scrambled away, trying to get to the door, but the shifter leapt past her and put his back to it. His claws extended; he growled low in his throat. Where was the knife? It must have fallen down; she could not see it anywhere.

She had no means of defence. He was going to tear her apart and feed on her, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. She ducked sideways, knowing it was hopeless. He came after her. He opened his maw to its fullest extent -

The door was thrust open violently, pushing Tobry forwards, then Holm leapt into the room, carrying a wooden mallet. As Tobry whirled, Holm struck him hard on the right temple. Tobry fell backwards and lay there, his claws scoring the flagstone floor. He was dazed, but not knocked out.

Tali stood there, gasping. It had happened so fast that she hadn’t taken it all in.

“Out of my way!” cried Holm.

He shoved Tali aside and ran to the potion bottles. He poured a dose from each into Tobry’s open mouth, one after another, then held his nose until he swallowed. Tobry’s eyes closed; he began to revert to his human form, though far more slowly than he had shifted to a caitsthe.

Holm turned to Tali, livid with fury. “You imbecile, you’ve got his blood all over you. Do you want to be turned as well — to suffer his fate?”

“No,” she whispered. Not at any price.

Holm dragged her down the hall into the bathhouse. “Strip! Be quick! Into the tub.”

She tore off her clothes, numbly, unable to think, then dragged herself over the side into the square wooden tub. Holm collected her bloody clothes, avoiding the stained areas, and tossed them onto the embers in the fire box under the great coppers used for heating water. He filled two buckets from the nearest copper and thumped them down beside the tub. “I’ll pour. You scrub.”

She took up a rough sea sponge and some hard yellow soap, and Holm poured the warm contents of the first bucket over her head. Tali scrubbed until all the blood on her front was gone.

“Again!” He poured the other bucket.

He fetched more water and she scrubbed herself again and again, until she stung all over and felt sure she had no skin left. He collected the sponges, tossed them onto the embers as well and washed his hands, three times.

Tali stood there, naked, trembling. He inspected her clinically, nodded, then took off his coat and wrapped it around her.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

“A good healer always knows how much is in his potion bottles.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not sorry enough! Now get out of my sight!”

“Please, let me explain.”

“Save your breath. You’re going to need it when you confess to Rix in the morning.”

“Do I have to…?”

“He’s the master of this fortress. Of course he has to know. No… more… secrets!”

She stumbled to her cold bed and lay there, replaying the terrible scene. Confessing her folly to Rix in the morning was going to be bad enough.

But how could she ever look Tobry in the eye again?