Rebellion

CHAPTER 91

Tali had only seconds to stop the Cythonian guard. She swung at her but the guard must have sensed the movement and turned at the same time. Tali’s blade struck the dangling chuck-lash and it went off in a series of violent red bursts, crack-crack-crack. The sword blade shattered six inches from the hilt, spraying shards of metal everywhere and wrenching Tali’s wrist so violently that she felt something tear.

A shard caught the guard in the right cheek. She reached up dazedly to pull it out, then stared at her hand in disbelief. All the fingers were gone, amputated in a second by the exploding chuck-lash. But she was well trained and determined to do her duty. She swung her lantern at Tali’s face.

She could not get out of the way in time and the base of the lantern caught her on the side of the head. The lantern went flying, hit the floor and rolled away though, being glowstone, it continued to shine. The guard went for her own sword, left-handed. Tali leapt forwards, thrusting at her middle with the shattered remnant of her blade, and the guard fell.

In the dim light, Tali could not tell where her thrust had gone. Was the guard dying, injured, or shamming? She lay on the floor, unmoving.

To Tali’s left, Tobry was struggling. He was normally cool under pressure, but his blade kept slipping in his sweat-drenched hand and his strokes were hasty, mis-timed. His tanned face had gone grey and he looked as though he were about to throw up.

His potion caused nausea and severe gut pain. Had the double dose, on top of the strain of working that powerful magery, been too much for him? And where was Holm? Why hadn’t he come to Tobry’s aid? Had he been killed already? Tali raised her broken blade to hurl it at his opponent’s throat, then lowered it. That would leave her weaponless.

Metal scraped on stone behind her. The female guard was still lying on the floor but she had raised her sword to the horizontal, and now she swung it awkwardly at Tali’s ankles.

Tali sprang high. The sword shaved leather off the heel of her left boot, slipped from the guard’s hand and went skidding across the floor. The male guard looked around, thinking he was under attack, and Tobry thrust his blade home.

Tali went for the female guard but the woman’s head thudded backwards into the stone floor. She was bleeding to death from her belly wound. Holm raced out of the passage, sword in hand.

“Where have you been?” whispered Tali.

“Guarding the clangours and watching the hall. We’d better get moving. When they don’t return, they’ll be missed. How long have we got?”

“Depends on their rounds. Two hours at most.” She turned, her voice rising. “Tobry?”

He was standing listlessly, the bloody sword dangling, and his eyes were glazed. He was going paler by the second.

“Are you hurt?” said Tali. She could see no mark on him.

“Just — overdose.”

“Maybe you’d better wait here.”

He grimaced. “I’ll cope. Which way?”

Tali struggled to remember; too much had happened too quickly. “Er… left. What time is it?”

“Must be after eleven,” said Holm.

“Then the slaves will be in their beds. We’ll head to the men’s quarters first.”

Tali knew quite a few Pale men by sight but had no friends among them. And the men were beaten down by exhausting labour in the mines and foundries. Why would they listen to her?

She put that problem aside and focused on the immediate one — getting there. The men’s quarters, which were past the heatstone mine, were about a mile away. She wasn’t looking forward to going that way — a whole mine full of heatstone was bound to cause her excruciating pain.

She took the guard’s sword in place of her own and they set off along the carved and painted tunnels. This time their luck held and they encountered no one on the way. It was just as well; Tobry was staggering and Tali’s wrenched wrist was so painful she could barely raise the sword.

As they approached the barred entrance to the heatstone mine, the wall art became ever more dark and threatening. It was always so in places where the Pale lived and worked. The art in the rest of Cython depicted gentle scenes from nature, seldom showing humans, but here the walls were sculpted into wild scenes of jungle, storm and moor, and there were eyes in the darkness. Hunters. Predators.

It was a warning to the Pale. Try to escape and this is what you will face.

Tali crept past the mine entrance, keeping to the outside wall of the tunnel and as far away as possible from any heatstone. The pain was like being stabbed through the skull but she could not stop.

“Heatstone?” said Holm.

“Help me past.”

He put an arm around her waist and heaved her along. Tobry lurched in their wake, twitching, sweating and still looking as though he was going to throw up. Once they had gone a couple of hundred yards past the mine, her headache began to ease.

“What a miserable crew we are,” she said.

“Speak for yourself,” said Holm, who had perked up since leaving the pondages.

“The men’s quarters are around the next corner and down a hundred yards. Tobry, I’ll need you to work a concealing magery to get me past the guard post.”

“What’s wrong with your magery?” Tobry said limply.

“It’s weakening. I’m saving it for an emergency.”

They struggled on. “Knock the guards down,” said Tali. “Stun them… or whatever… then deal with them while I rouse the men.”

Her biggest challenge. The only time she had addressed a multitude had been at Lady and Lord Ricinus’s trial. Her tutors had not given her instruction in rhetoric, which was forbidden in Cython and would have earned her a chuck-lashing. How was she to convince all those worn-out men that rebellion and probable death in Hightspall was preferable to their miserable existence in Cython?

They crept around the corner.

“I can see the guard post,” said Holm, “but there aren’t any guards.”

“What if we’re too late?” whispered Tali.

“Get going!” said Tobry. “Courier must be — through — Seethings by now.” He slumped against the wall, holding his belly. His lips were an ugly grey, his eyes dilated.

She bit her lip. There was nothing she could do for him. And he was right. Lyf’s courier would have reached the entrance to Cython by now. In half an hour he could be handing the death order to the matriarchs. All depended on how urgent it was, and how long they took to act on it. What if the enemy already had a plan and were just waiting for the order? There might not be much time at all.

The men’s Empound, which consisted of banks of tiny, individual cells arranged around a large assembly area, was as neat and well scrubbed as everywhere else in Cython.

But the place felt empty.

Tali eased open a cell door and peeped in. She saw an empty stone bunk, a neatly folded ragweed blanket, a full water jug and a peg in the wall where the slave would hang his loincloth at bedtime. Every slave’s home looked like that. Few had any other possessions.

She checked several other cells, randomly. They were all the same — like the women’s cells, only smaller. She tasted water from one of the jugs, and it was fresh. What could have happened to the men? The cells did not look abandoned — just empty.

She went back to Tobry and Holm. “They’re not here. What do I do now?”

“Where could they have gone?” said Holm.

When she thought about it, the answer was obvious. “Mating nights.”

“Which are?”

“The three nights a month when the mated men are allowed to visit their women folk, and the younger men and boys go home to their families. They’ll be in the women’s Empound.”

“Then your call to rebellion will have to be absolutely brilliant,” said Holm.

“Why so?”

“If you were seeing your partner for the first time in a month, would you go out to listen to some rabblerouser who was probably going to get you both killed?”