Vengeance

CHAPTER 15

‘I’ve got to fly, Poon. Tinyhead’s after me.’ Tali, her eyes prickling, urged the mouse away with the back of her hand. ‘Off you go.’

Poon ran inside and scrabbled against the side of her bed.

Tali sighed, gave her a shred of poulter leg, wrapped the rest in a length torn from her ragweed blanket and slipped it into her pocket. She gathered her only possessions: a swirling silver ornament on a chain — the seal of her ancient house — and her father’s letter, which she fixed into the hem of her loincloth with a purloined brass pin. Finally, a pretty blue gown made of the finest silk cloth. Her ancestor Eulala vi Torgrist had worn it proudly as she left her home a thousand years ago, one of a hundred and forty-four noble children sent into exile.

They had been told that they were going on a grand adventure to serve their country, but had been given over to the Cythonians as hostages and never ransomed. Why not? If Hightspall was prepared to trade with the enemy, why couldn’t they ransom their own children? Tali could only see it as a betrayal.

Eulala had been just twelve but the gown was a good fit on Tali and she would wear it when — if — she escaped. She could not go home wearing a loincloth.

The silver seal had burned the slave’s mark into her left shoulder. She pocketed it and went out, carrying Poon. Now came her biggest challenge — finding someone to release her hidden gift.

‘What if Bet won’t tell me?’ Talking to Poon created the illusion that Tali was not alone. ‘What do I do then?’

Poon’s brown eyes peered at Tali from the cave of her coiled fingers. The mouse was trembling. You and me both, Tali thought. I’ve only a few hours to find a slave who knows magery, convince her to release my gift, assuming she can, and practise the glamour. Not long at all. And what if no one will help?

‘Would I,’ she said to Poon, ‘if a madwoman burst into my cell in the middle of the night, demanding I tell her about forbidden magery?’

Poon’s flanks heaved, then she ducked out of sight. You can’t do it, the lifetime slave jeered. No slave has ever escaped.

But Tali had to succeed, whatever it took. She had sworn a blood oath.

She fingered the Purple Pixies in her pocket. After one taste, I’ll tell ya anythin’, Lifka had said. If there was no other way to get Bet to talk, Tali would feed her a Pixie. It would be a wicked betrayal of the old lady, but without magery the quest would fail. Without magery she could never defeat her enemy. Without magery, Tinyhead would carry her to the cellar and the killers would cut her head open.

Once her gift had been released Tali would squeeze through the hole she had noticed this afternoon, run for the sunstone loading station and practise her glamour. When the carrier slaves came at dawn, she would use the glamour on herself and take her place in the line as Lifka.

It wasn’t much of a plan, but at least she had one.

But what if Lifka recovered and gave the alarm? What if she died of girr-grub poisoning and someone found the body? No, Lifka was tough; she’d be all right. Wouldn’t she?

The painted tunnels of the Pale’s Empound were empty. The other slaves were asleep in their cells, since the going-to-work gongs sounded at dawn and any slave more than three minutes late went without breakfast. The luminous plates in the assembly areas had been turned to the wall to dim their glow; the slaves walking the air wafter treadmills had slowed to a lulling thump-thump. Their eyes were closed, their arms hung limp. Some, Tali knew, were able to doze as they walked.

It was not forbidden to be out of one’s cell in the middle of the night, but it would attract the attention of any guard she encountered. Tali slipped into the shadows and was on her way to Nurse Bet’s cell when heavy footsteps sounded behind her. Since slaves went barefoot, it had to be a Cythonian.

The huge shoulders and little head gave him away. Tinyhead was heading towards her cell. Another few minutes and he would have caught her there. What would he do when he discovered she was gone? Check the squattery, then search the cells of her associates, like Bet. Then he would come hunting.

She dared not go to Bet’s cell now, but where else could she go? Tali ran the curving corridor on tiptoes, out of the Pale’s Empound, past the subsistery, the composters and the toadstool grottoes, then darted down the tunnel where the miners had been working, praying that they had not come back and blocked the collapsed hole. If they had, it was over. No, it was still open, though the gap was tiny.

A clangour sounded down by the grottoes, a shrill, tearing sound that scraped her raw nerves. Dozens of other clangours answered it, then Cythonians were shouting, yelling and running. Had they discovered Lifka? Tali had to disappear.

She climbed the rubble pile, careful to make no noise. The hole was roughly triangular, though she wasn’t sure her small shoulders would fit. Tali put her head through into an oval passage where widely spaced luminous plates provided meagre pools of light. She put Poon down on a rock, hunched her shoulders, wriggled through with only a few scratches, then stuck at the hips.

If anyone went past the tunnel, they would see her waving legs and she would die. Tali put her hands flat against the wall and heaved, but did not budge. Wriggling backwards a couple of inches, she pulled her loincloth down over her hips and shoved. A sharp projection scored down her left hip then she toppled head-first into the passage.

She landed on her hands, recovered and looked back. Tinyhead was far too big to follow, though it would only gain her a minute or two. There would be other ways in.

Tali collected a quivering Poon, packed broken stone into the hole so it could not be seen from the main passage and was congratulating herself on her little victory when she realised that she could not reach Bet’s cell from here. Without Bet, Tali had no hope of magery, but she could not turn back.

She turned right, away from the guard post, passed a set of ticking box-fans driven by the flow of a siphon, walked a plank where a yellow pipe dribbled waste into a reeking effluxor sump and was trudging along when another clangour went off, above her head.

Tali was about to bolt when she realised that it wasn’t an alarm but the more melodious healer’s bell. Distantly, other bells repeated the signal and she heard a man’s voice, shouting frantically, and running feet, coming this way. And then the shredded scream of a woman in uttermost agony.

Tali’s hair stood up. Over the years she had seen many slaves injured by rock falls, accidents and cruel Cythonian punishments, but she had never heard such an awful cry. She slipped Poon into her pocket and backed away. The passage was broad here and there was nowhere to hide, though behind the effluxor sump she noted a recess in the left-hand wall. She squeezed into it and crouched in the shadows.

A vibration in her pocket was Poon nibbling at the poulter leg, but Tali didn’t begrudge her. The least she could do was to set her free with a full belly.

The screaming grew louder and shortly a group of hurrying figures appeared, all Cythonian: a tall man and a stocky one carrying someone on a stretcher, a bald man wearing a foreman’s sash and a thin, elderly fellow in the red gown of a master chymister. He was dreadfully scarred about the face, hands and arms, and carried a platina bucket. A heavy, green, slightly luminous fluid, dripping from the stretcher, smoked where it touched the stone floor. A drop fell on a clump of straw, which caught fire and burnt with a bright red flame.

From the other direction, a white-haired female healer, bearing the annular cheek tattoos of a master, came hurtling past Tali’s hiding place, robes flapping.

‘What happened?’ she panted. ‘Put her down.’

The bearers set the stretcher down in the light of a glowing fungi plate, thirty yards from Tali. The injured woman shrieked and writhed.

‘Hold her,’ yelled the healer, ‘or she’ll tear that leg right off.’

The bearers held the young woman down. The scarred chymister glanced at her leg and gagged. Tali rose to her feet, staring in awful fascination at the melon-sized hole in the woman’s thigh and the sickening brown fumes rising from it. Poon came creeping out of the pocket and poked her head above the waistband of the loincloth. Tali stroked her silky fur.

‘What took you so long?’ said the healer.

The foreman stared at the floor before him, wringing his meaty hands. ‘Took the miners all afternoon to dig ’er out.’

‘I don’t understand how this happened,’ the healer said furiously. ‘Alkoyl must be contained in capped platina ware at all times, yet it’s dripped all over her leg. Don’t you bother to follow the procedures?’

Tali had never heard the word alkoyl before, though everything done below was a secret.

‘We follow ’em to the letter.’ The foreman looked as though he wanted to sink through the floor. ‘Had urgent orders from the matriarchs, yesterday morning. All us foremen did — abluters, crystallisers, sublimaters, the lot! And down on the smything level, too.’

‘Matriarchs’ orders?’ the healer said sharply. ‘What orders?’

‘Get everything ready by month’s end, and no excuses.’

That’s only eleven days away, thought Tali. What are they up to?

‘Why wasn’t I informed?’ the healer said coldly.

‘I don’t know, Master Healer.’

‘Go on.’

The foreman glanced at the woman on the stretcher and his face crumpled. ‘We were workin’ double time. It had to be done at any cost.’

‘So you cut corners.’

‘Never! I check the alkoyl store every time we use it. You don’t muck around with that stuff. Twice I checked, last night. The dribblers were in and all the caps were double-tight.’

‘So what happened?’ said the healer, tapping one foot.

The white-faced foreman looked down at the victim. ‘She were up on the third elixerator, toppin’ up the alkoyl level, but someone had taken the dribbler out. The whole flask poured in.’ He groaned. ‘Blew the elixerator to pieces, and a whole flask of precious alkoyl lost — ’

‘And a woman dying in agony,’ the healer said caustically.

‘My little sister, Flix,’ said the foreman, burying his face in his hands and weeping so violently that his whole body heaved.

‘How could this happen? You must have made a mistake.’

The master chymister, shaking his head, drew the healer away from the others. ‘It’s not the first time a flask has been interfered with,’ he said quietly, ‘or a dribbler removed. Someone’s been stealing alkoyl for ages.’

‘But … that’s preposterous,’ said the healer. ‘No Pale is allowed down — ’

‘It’s not a Pale. It’s one of us, and we can never catch him.’

The healer goggled at him, then returned to the woman, who let out a chilling scream and fell silent. The healer, her face blanched, gingerly lifted away the severed, fuming leg and put it down against the wall. Poon squeaked and hid.

‘I’m sorry, Hyme,’ the healer said to the foreman, ‘there’s nothing anyone can do. Alkoyl is dissolving her flesh and bones, and it can’t be neutralised.’ She turned to the thin man dressed in red. ‘Master Chymister, you’d better fetch your stilling apparatus. You’ll want to recover as much as you can.’

‘Won’t be enough,’ he croaked, as if his throat was as scarred as his face. ‘And we can’t do without it. I’ll have to send down the Hellish Conduit for more, if I can get anyone to go.’ He shuddered. ‘After last time — ’

‘If no one else can take that path, you must do your duty,’ the healer said coldly.

‘I always do my duty. And look what it’s done to me.’

Once the chymister had headed back the way he had come, the healer gestured to the stretcher bearers. They picked up their burden and the grim cavalcade passed by Tali, out of sight. As it did, she smelled blood and seared flesh, and under that, very faint, an unnaturally sweet, oily odour with a hint of bitterness. A vaguely familiar odour. Where had she smelled it before?

She went towards the severed leg, which was still smoking against the wall. The green fluid had already eaten pits in the stone, each the depth of a knuckle, and the odour was strong enough to sting her nose from yards away.

Wil’s nose was eaten away on the inside. Could he be the thief? He had been sniffing something from a platina tube, she recalled. Tali backed away. Whatever it was, and whatever urgent chymical purpose the enemy needed it for, she wanted to know no more about it.

The incident had cost her another twenty precious minutes. Tinyhead could not be far behind. Her options were closing off one by one and all she could do was run.

She lifted Poon out, kissed her head and set her down beside the effluxor. ‘Off you go, little Poon. You’ll be a lot safer on your own.’

Poon looked up at Tali reproachfully then, when she gently urged her away, took off towards the darkened hole in the wall. She was outside it when a ginger cat sprang from the rubble and pounced.

Poon squeaked once, then went limp. The cat carried her away, grinning.

As Tali fled, so shocked she was unable to weep, she could not but see the parallel with her own fragile existence.