Vengeance

CHAPTER 19

Wherever you run, wherever you hide, I’ll find you.

But how was Tinyhead following her down these tunnels floored with clean, hard stone? Magery was an insult to their lost kings and no Cythonian would think of doing it.

Turning aside, she fled down one random passage after another, running until her knees went wobbly, yet twenty minutes later he was behind her again. Without a weapon she could not hope to beat him, and their masters were careful to lock away anything that might be used as a weapon. That only left one thing.

Since Tali’s gift was not any of the three old kinds of magery, there must be a new magery, but where did it come from and why had it come to her? Was that why her family were targeted by killers from Hightspall? It did not make sense. How could outsiders know about magery in some insignificant slave trapped in Cython, and why would they care?

After passing down a broad passage, she slipped into an unlit cross-tunnel and waited on hands and knees. And soon he came, down on all-fours, sniffing the floor like a dog. He moved into a patch of light and she caught a flicker of white. Not sniffing — he was licking the floor with that repulsive tongue. Tracking her by her taste! She could hear him breathing, and a thick slurping as he licked, swallowed, licked again.

The soles of Tali’s feet crept. The horrible, disgusting brute.

After backing away down the tunnel, she slipped the front and back sections of her loincloth off its waist cord and bound them around her feet, hoping that Lifka’s stronger odour would confuse him. Tali hurried away, feeling tainted.

She had to concentrate on her plan though, without magery, how could she hope to impersonate Lifka? When she failed, she would be mutilated and beheaded. But there was no other way — or was there? Tali began to think the unthinkable.

Tinyhead knew a secret way out of Cython, and if anyone could elude the matriarchs, he could. If she allowed him to catch her, he would take her to the cellar. But what if she couldn’t find her gift on the way? No, the risk was too great. She had to keep going. If she failed, at least she would have done her best.

Then a shadow moved, a long way behind, and it was the wrong shape to be Tinyhead or Mimoy. It must be one of the matriarchs’ agents. Tali turned left and ran down a random passage, trying to work out why they wanted her dead.

They all died for you, Wil had said. Who had died?

Because of the shillilar about the one, the matriarchs had tried to kill her many years ago, but they had failed. How had they tried, and why had they failed? Because they hadn’t known her name? But now they did, and they planned to kill her immediately and secretly. Why? What had the shillilar said about her? It must be dramatic if they had been trying to identify her all this time. Who could she ask?

Wil had called her the one, and he had a seeing eye tattooed on his forehead — the mark of morrow-sight. It must have been Wil who’d had the shillilar, but he was the enemy and would never tell her.

Tali scented water, burst out into a broad cross-passage and skidded to a stop inches from the edge of the floatillery. She knew where she was now. The underground canal ran to the Merchantery on the southern shore of vast Lake Fumerous, though that exit was the most closely guarded of all.

The dim, bluish light of a roof-mounted glowstone revealed a line of barges tied up along the stone quay, low in the water, heavily laden. Tali’s hackles rose, and faint scintillations from within confirmed her unease. The barges were stacked high with rectangular slabs of heatstone, each as large as the bed of a wagon, all no doubt intended for the wicked trade with Hightspall.

There was something wrong about the twinkling slabs, as though the rock protested at the uncanny force trapped inside it, but Tali also saw an opportunity to shake her pursuers. Cythonians were superstitious about heatstones and would not touch them.

She clambered over the side of the nearest barge onto the stacked heatstones, shuddering at the sickly feeling on the soles of her feet and the moving colours it set off in her head. Within a minute her feet were burning hot. She ran down and leapt into the next barge, then the ones after that until she reached the end of the line. From there she sprang for the far side of the floatillery. Her pursuers would have to divert to the nearest bridge, which might gain her a respite.

Tali knew roughly where she was, though she had no idea how to get to the sunstone area from here and time was running out. She had to get there first — it would take a long time to prepare herself.

In Cython, people often found their way by the smell of a passage, and Tali’s nose was one of the keenest, though only after hours of searching and sniffing did she scent a tunnel heading in the right direction. She unbound her feet, put on the crumpled loincloth and, as she hurried on, tried to resolve the enigma of Mimoy. The old woman knew things about Tali that no one could know without magery. Clearly, she had been spying on her for years. Yet, since Mimoy had not made herself known before, she could hardly be on Tali’s side.

Trust no one.

Only Mimoy could show Tali how to release her gift. She had to go along with the old woman’s plan and be ready to break free if Mimoy betrayed her.

By the time Tali reached the maze behind the sunstone shaft, only half an hour before dawn, she was panicking. Time was running out and if Tinyhead or the matriarchs’ killers had arrived before her she would be walking into a trap. Even if they were not, without magery escape seemed impossible.

She had planned to slip through into the loading station and practise putting on the leather harness, but the maze entrance was blocked by crisscrossing bars, and beyond them, guards were pacing. There was no sign of Mimoy.

It was almost time for the breakfast gong. If Mimoy didn’t appear soon, it would be too late. When Tali and Lifka did not join the lines outside their cells to march to work, the guards would go looking for them. Tali’s crime would be discovered and the hunt would be on.

Could she escape without magery? Fifty yards back she had passed a series of storerooms stacked with crates and boxes. She slipped inside the first storeroom and sat in the dark, wondering if she could impersonate Lifka without magery.

It could go wrong in so many ways: if the guards checked each slave before they donned the harness; if she could not get Lifka’s speech or mannerisms right; if Lifka had already been found; if the sunstone proved too heavy; if what Lifka hadn’t told Tali was vital …

Her burdens came down on her with the weight of a sunstone. If the guards caught her, they would cut everything off. If Tinyhead took her, her family’s enemy would hack her head open while she was still alive. If the matriarchs found her, she would be killed without ever knowing why the one was such a threat.

There was a reason why no Pale had ever escaped — it was impossible. Thus far, all she had done was run and hide, but there was nowhere else she could run to.

Yet she had sworn a binding oath and, no matter what else happened, the oath remained: unbreakable, unyielding, stiffening her spine no matter the burden. She would go on, to the bitterest end, or die in the attempt. She would not break her oath.

The breakfast gong sounded and her empty stomach rattled. Tali consumed the mouse-gnawed poulter leg shred by shred and, to a half-starved slave, it was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten.

If Mimoy did not turn up, Tali was going to put on the performance of her life. She wasn’t just going to look like Lifka, she would become her in every way. She was rehearsing how her double moved, the way she spoke, the drooping lower lip and the glazed look in the girl’s eyes, when her thumbs pricked.

Scutter-clack.

There was something in the storeroom with her, high up. Something guard ing the crates. One of the beasts rumoured to guard the secret levels of Cython? Tali rose to a crouch, arms up to protect her face. Could it see her? She strained for any sound that would tell her where it was, what it was. Was it on top of the crates to her left, or the ones on the right? She had to pass between them to reach the door, and it could go for her face or attack her throat.

She was creeping along, arms stretched out to either side so she did not blunder into the stacks, when a fingertip picked up the faintest vibration in the side of a crate. Was it inside?

Using the poulter bone, she felt for a gap between the boards of the crate and poked the bone in. It touched something hard, with a complicated, curved shape … and serrations. Scutter-clack-snap. The bone was torn from her fingers and crunched to splinters.

Tali scrambled away, fingertips stinging. It sounded like the skritter that had made that bloody assault on Sidon’s calf. Each crate must hold dozens of them, and there were dozens of crates. What were they for? Why were they stored here? What if they got out?

From the feebly lit passage, she watched the storeroom door until her heart stopped pounding. The skritters had to be for hunting and attacking, but the Pale did not need to be hunted …

An unpleasant suspicion arose. Why had their rations been cut when Cython was producing more food than ever? She peered into the next storeroom, which was full of boxes. More skritters?

A foreman’s coat hung from a peg on the wall. She wrapped it around her hands and eased up the lid of the nearest box, sweating. It contained spearheads, hundreds of them. The next box was the same, and the one after.

In recent days, several guards had talked about getting rid of the Pale, as if Cython would soon have no need for them. And the foremen below had been ordered to get everything ready by the end of the month at any cost.

Cython was going to war, a war they must have been planning for a very long time, and they now held the advantage. Hightspall occupied the Cythonians’ ancestral land of Cythe; their maps showed every inch of it and they could swarm out through secret tunnels anywhere, any time.

Hightspall, however, knew nothing about Cython, for no Hightspaller had ever been allowed inside the underground realm. Its few entrances were defended by a maze of traps, dead ends and killing rooms for any enemy who broke through.

Unless Hightspall was prepared for war in eleven days, it would not have a chance.