Vengeance

CHAPTER 57

Lord Ricinus slouched against a marble column, reeking of so many kinds of grog that he might have been swilling from the slops bucket in one of the lakefront taverns. He probably had been, Rix thought ruefully. The last vestiges of Father’s discernment had gone up against the wall long ago.

‘Well done, Son,’ he said, shaking Rix’s hand.

Rix was shocked to discover that his father’s grip, once so crushing, was now soft, almost pulpy. A mirror to the inside?

‘Father?’ said Rix, not sure what he was referring to.

‘For fighting through the encircling hordes. Killed a good few of them, I dare say?’

‘A good few.’ Rix took a deep breath. He knew what his mother was going to say, but if he were quick he might bamboozle Lord Ricinus into pre-empting her. ‘Father, now we’re at war I request leave from my duties to our house, to fight for my country.’

Lord Ricinus understood, at least, and he wanted to say yes, but Lady Ricinus had got to him first.

‘Your mother requires a word with you, and you’ll obey her as you would me. Family unity is all in these troubled times, Son.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Rix dismally, longing for a drink. Was he going to turn into his father? Were the seeds of his own destruction already sprouting in him?

‘Come within, Rixium,’ said Lady Ricinus. ‘There are matters we must discuss.’ Her iron-hard lips thinned to blades. She looked down. ‘Where’s the sword I gave you?’

‘I–I lent it to Tobry.’

‘Get. It. Back,’ she said through her teeth. ‘Keep it by you, always.’

It raised a question that increasingly bothered him. He looked to his father. ‘I can’t read the inscription. Where did the sword come from, anyway?’

Lord Ricinus made a face. ‘From her side of the family.’

‘Mother’s side?’ Rix cried. Her family were of no account and it diminished the sword, somehow. ‘Where did they get it?’

Lady Ricinus looked outraged but did not reply. A servant held the door open and Rix followed Lady Ricinus down the hall to her suite of offices. She had lost weight lately; her limbs were becoming stringy and it did not suit her.

Rix’s father was shambling into a side passage when she said, more sharply than she normally would have in public, ‘Lord Ricinus, if you please.’

He made a stumbling about-face.

Inside his mother’s offices, Rix waited for Lady Ricinus to seat herself at her tiny desk, and for Lord Ricinus to slump onto a settee close to the nearest decanter. He looked longingly at it and she waved an irritable hand. Rix perched on the edge of the other settee, which creaked under his weight. The immaculate chamber had a faint rotten egg smell from the stink-damp lamps, though only someone who had been out in the open would notice it. Rix smiled to himself.

His mother’s nostrils flared as she looked at him and he tensed, involuntarily. She was not half his weight yet she dominated him in every respect.

‘Did you set out to deliberately undermine all the work I have done for this house over the past three years, Rixium?’ she said quietly. She seldom raised her voice; she felt it to be vulgar. Her gaze filleted him. ‘Or are you so stupid that you don’t understand when I give you a simple instruction?’

‘I’ve been having the nightmares again,’ he said, knowing how lame he sounded. ‘I had to get away for a bit.’

‘To risk your life doing things any paid soldier of this house could do better?’

‘I didn’t start out — ’

‘Don’t lie. You went hunting jackal shifters.’

‘They’re harmless. Not much worse than wild dogs, really — ’

‘They’ve taken dozens of our peasants and plenty of our guards — and turned three of them. Three good men who had to be put down.’ She fixed him with a frosty eye. ‘I inspected the portrait in your absence …’

The damned portrait. Rix’s hands were trembling. He clenched them around his knees, fantasising about snatching the decanter from his astonished father and swigging the lot.

‘It’s nearly done,’ he lied. ‘It won’t take me long.’ The smile he put on felt like a death rictus.

‘Seven days remain until the Honouring, and if the portrait is not done it will be a slap across Lord Ricinus’s face. The powers will interpret it as disunity, and the survival of our house depends on absolute unity. You will not leave your quarters until the portrait is complete.’

‘But we’re at war,’ he cried, leaping from the settee. ‘Surely you’ve heard what the enemy did to Gullihoe, and half a dozen other towns?’

‘Craven surprise attacks. When they’re face to face with our mighty armies they’ll run like the rats they are.’

‘I don’t think so. They’ve been preparing for this for hundreds of years. They’ve got new weapons that we don’t know how to fight.’

‘What would you know about it?’ she said coldly.

‘I was in Gullihoe not long after they attacked. They destroyed the place without losing a single man.’

‘They’re all cowards in Gullihoe,’ she sneered. ‘I’ve spoken to the chancellor and he assured me that we have the enemy’s measure.’

‘I’ve got to see the chancellor; I have important news.’

‘It can wait.’

‘No, he’ll be expecting me. He might have a command for me.’ Rix knew he sounded desperate, but it was his only way out.

Her small eyes glowed and he knew the hope was going to be dashed. Lady Ricinus had anticipated this escape, and blocked it.

‘At your father’s request,’ she said, and her smile was so snake-like that he expected her to lick her lips with a forked tongue, ‘the chancellor has given you a special exemption — ’

This was too much. ‘I don’t want an exemption,’ Rix bellowed, leaping to his feet. ‘I want to do my duty.’

Two white spots appeared on her cheeks. ‘How dare you shout at me,’ she said, her voice even lower and more controlled. ‘Sit down, boy. You’re not of age and you have no heir. Perform that duty and we will allow you to risk your life, but only in the defence of Palace Ricinus.’

‘But …’ Rix looked imploringly towards his father. ‘Lord Ricinus … Father … you know I have to defend my country …’

Lord Ricinus buried his nose in his goblet. Rix wanted to smash it over his head. He steadied himself and made a last, desperate bid for freedom.

‘Everyone will call me coward, Father. They’ll say I’m hiding behind mother’s skirts because I’m too gutless to fight.’

Lord Ricinus looked up sharply at Lady Ricinus. ‘The boy has a point.’

‘No!’ said Lady Ricinus.

‘A coward and the son of a coward, that’s what they’ll say,’ Rix said bitterly.

Lady Ricinus rose deliberately to her feet, took six precise steps to Rix and struck him across the face. The blow rocked him, for all that he had been expecting it, but he controlled his face as rigidly as she did her own. She returned to her tiny desk.

‘House Ricinus takes no notice of barking curs,’ she said thinly. ‘The servants will not allow you out of your rooms without a note written in my hand — and not one borne by you.’

Damn. He had been planning on forging one — another of his less reputable skills.

‘I will allow you one bottle of wine a day,’ she went on, ‘since you take after your father and can’t produce anything worthwhile when sober.’ She studied her empty desk, her cruel mouth down-turned. ‘And one bed mate. I shall select one I deem suitable.’

‘Like hell!’ he cried. ‘I’ve had enough of you interfering in my life.’

‘Do you think I relish it?’

‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘I know you do.’

She studied him as if he were a recalcitrant child, her nostrils flaring. ‘Until you come of age, you will do as Lord Ricinus and I say. And then there’s Lagger. He’s always been a bad influence on you and I’m not sure you should associate — ’

Rix sprang up again. ‘If Tobry goes, I will renounce my inheritance, walk out the door and never return, war or no war,’ he said, grinding the words out. ‘I mean it.’

‘Oh, very well,’ she said after a minute. ‘Now, where was I?’

She knew very well where she was. Lady Ricinus had a mind like a gimlet.

‘Ah, yes,’ she went on. ‘Speaking of children — ’

‘No,’ he said mechanically, knowing he was beaten already. Her concession on Tobry made any other improbable. ‘I will not take a wife.’

‘In view of your risk-taking behaviour, the succession of House Ricinus must be provided for right away. Lord Ricinus and I are united in this. Aren’t we, my lord?’

‘United!’ said Rix’s father, his teeth rattling on glass as he swilled brandy from the decanter.

‘Rixium, you will marry in ten days.’

‘No!’

‘I will give you a choice of six suitable girls. You will have until the morning after the Honouring to choose one. I expect your wife to be pregnant by the end of three months. If she is not, I will come to your bedchamber each night to make sure you’re doing it right. Do I make myself understood?’

No greater horror could be imagined. None could possibly be borne. Tobry would not have stood such treatment for an instant, but Rix had been brought up to be a dutiful son. It was his mother’s right to choose a bride for him; he had always known that.

He bowed his head in defeat. ‘I will marry and produce an heir.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Get on with it.’

‘The choice?’ he said dazedly.

‘The portrait,’ she said between her teeth. ‘I will come each evening to inspect your progress and, if necessary, give you instruction in the art of portraiture.’

You arrogant bitch! As far as Rix knew, his mother had never taken up a paintbrush in anger and, for all her carefully schooled conversation about the masters, he doubted that she knew as much about art as a common flea. The paintings in House Ricinus were chosen by an expert.

‘That will not be necessary,’ he said, bowing. ‘And don’t bother to send any bed mates to my tower. I’ve taken a vow of celibacy until the war is over.’

‘You won’t last a week.’

Rix bowed, insultingly low. ‘Mother, Father.’