Vengeance

CHAPTER 62

Tali huddled in the thorn bush as Tobry and Rannilt galloped away. Half a minute later she heard one of the riders follow. The other did not.

He must be watching, waiting for any movement that would give her away. It was freezing here, the bush was prickling her, the sky was rocking wildly and she needed to pee, but Tali did not move. She was an old hand at hiding, the best in Cython, and she had the patience of a slave.

She needed it. A small, wrinkled man with the hooded eyes of a hawk climbed onto the wall and paced along it, bobbing and ducking his head. He went up the overgrown carriage drive, around the back and reappeared from the other side. He went out and she heard the horse walking down the street.

The temptation to move was overwhelming, her need to pee desperate. Tali clenched down and waited, and ten minutes later she saw him again, head bobbing, hawk eyes scanning the grounds from an inconspicuous corner of the wall.

Only after another hour did she dare to wriggle out, turn the other way and gaze upon her ancestral home. Torgrist Manor was small and plain and very old. But it was hers. Her eyes misted.

Part of the left-hand wall had collapsed, the front door had rotted away and most of the roof was gone. And yet, as Tali looked down a broad hall floored in black flagstones caked with dust, she felt such a powerful sense of rightness that she could hardly breathe. This is my place, she thought. I’m home.

But the searchers would come back. She could not stay here. Besides, Rix was her best clue and she had to get into the palace. She felt sure there had to be a tunnel from Torgrist Manor to Palace Ricinus. Days ago, Tobry had said that the last Lady Torgrist had tried to escape underground with her children to the palace down the hill.

Tali sat in each cobwebbed, roofless room until its smell was embedded in her memory, then crawled back and forth, searching for that distinctive subterranean odour.

Shortly, at the corner of a wall behind the stairs, she scented a tunnel, then located the sensitive stone that opened into it. Time had corroded the pins on which the stone rotated and she had to clean out all the joins. She levered it open with the head of a bronze shovel she found out the back, and she was in.

The sky stopped heaving. Going underground was like being home and she felt an inexplicable yearning for the familiar, orderly spaces of Cython. Safe at last, Tali curled up in a dry corner of the tunnel and did not wake for a day and a half.

Hunger roused her. She had nothing to eat and her thigh throbbed with every movement, though there were no signs of infection. She limped down the tunnel, which descended steeply for fifty yards before running on down a gentle decline.

After walking for twenty minutes or more, Tali caught a whiff of a faint, unpleasant odour — mould and muck, rotting wood and things long dead and decayed to nothing — and her hair stirred. The mother and children had either been walled up to die, or had been slaughtered in the tunnels, to keep the plague at bay. She fought the fear down. The spirits of her own family could not hurt her.

Besides, the smell was chillingly familiar. She sniffed again and her hackles rose: dry rot, mould, grime and the faint whiff of vermin poisoned a long time ago. What did that remind her of?

She held her lantern up. Was it coming from the roof? No; the seeps running down the passage walls were clear and odourless. She shrugged and moved on.

Having lived all her life in Cython, where there were no signposts, Tali was used to making maps in her head. From the direction and downward slope of the passage, and the number of steps she had walked, she had to be under the grounds of Palace Ricinus. Shortly she reached a dead end and smelled a fruity odour. Wine?

Tali sat down to rest her leg. She had wasted too many opportunities with Rix. She should have confronted him and demanded to know why he had been in the cellar at the time of the murder. If she put it to him bluntly, his reaction was bound to give something away.

She found a concealed door, tugged and centuries of dirt broke away, but as she put her head through, she heard the call again. She stood in the doorway, trembling, and after a few seconds she heard a new answer.

It was neither the distant, elegant note she had heard several times now, which she associated with the wrythen, nor the false mimicry of his depraved facinore. This answer was a discordant three-note sequence, di-DA- doh, strong and clear as though it came from somewhere close by, di-DA- doh, di-DA- doh, repeating over and over like an unanswered question. And there was something about it that put her nerves on edge — a ragged, self-pitying whimper. Definitely not the wrythen.

Someone else was looking for her, and who else could it be but her mother’s killers? Di-DA- doh?Di-DA- doh? Tali swayed and had to grab hold of the door jamb. From the clarity of the notes they had to be within Caulderon.

Her initial impulse was to run back to the manor, but the comfort it offered was an illusion. Nowhere was safe. Everyone wanted something from her, or wanted to do something to her, and no one except Rix and Tobry would help her. And with the wrythen trying to possess Tobry, could even he be trusted utterly?

Di-DA- doh?Di-DA- doh? A whining, boy-like voice spoke in her head. It wasn’t my fault. The stupid bitch made me kill her.

Tali froze. It wasn’t the voice of the big man who had come after her in the cellar. Was there another conspirator? The voice had a yammering tone she had never heard before and would never forget.

Fury, bright and burning, drove away her panic. These people had killed her mother; they had to pay. Momentarily, Tali indulged herself with thoughts of black and bloody revenge, of killing them the same way, but at the thought of doing such violence to another her stomach heaved and her cheeks burnt.

She reminded herself that she was an agent of justice, and justice had to be sure, even-handed and unemotional. With an effort, she closed the shell and the di-DA- doh sequence was gone.

Once her knees had steadied, Tali slipped through the doorway and found herself in a real cellar, rectangular with a low, flat ceiling. Barrels of beer, wine and mead stood in wooden racks. Across the way, racks of dusty bottles extended for a hundred feet. Beyond that, steps led up. She sat on one of the middle steps, wondering how to proceed.

Since she knew nothing about the palace, making any kind of plan was impossible. First, get in, then worry about finding Rix. But what if she could not? What if he would not see her? No, they were friends now. He would help her, and hide her. And she really wanted to see Tobry again.

She was heading up the steps when a door above her clicked. She blew out her lantern and hid behind the racked bottles, only to realise that the cellar reeked of burnt fish oil and the smell was bound to be noticed.

A big man came staggering down, the light of his lantern dazzling her. What was the matter with him? Belching like a drain, he swayed to the racks of bottles, took the first that came to hand and turned away. He was so drunk that he could barely stand up.

The man turned back, his flabby belly wobbling, and she smelled sour drink on his breath. He began to sniff the air; he knew someone had been here. What if he searched the cellar? She took hold of a bottle. If he came close she would have to attack an innocent man, as she had already attacked poor, stupid Lifka. Tali’s quest was leading her on paths her mother would have found hard to forgive.

He set down the lantern and, with a practised movement, uncorked the bottle, raised it to his mouth and drank from the crusted neck, draining half the contents with gurgles and gasps. After taking down another three bottles, he staggered up the steps, leaving the door open.

Taking off her sandals, she followed him in the semi-dark. He climbed three flights of steps, stopping several times to drink from the first bottle then, without warning, tossed it back over his head. The action was so unexpected that she watched it flying towards her before realising that it was going to hit her in the face.

She ducked and the bottle smashed further down the steps. The man kept going, drawing the cork of the second bottle, then followed a series of narrow corridors, evidently servants’ passages. Finally he turned into a broader corridor with a red-and-blue patterned carpet, lit by lamps at intervals.

Tali peered around the corner. A large door at the far end of the passage passed through a curving wall that was unplastered and built from yellow stone. It looked as though it could be a tower, and Tobry had pointed out Rix’s chambers, next to a corner tower. Two uniformed guards stood by the door, talking. Could they be guarding his rooms? How could she find out?

She ran back along the passages, planning to come out in front of the drunk. Her heart was racing. What she was about to do was incredibly risky, if he turned out to be more alert than she thought.

Tali put her head out, saw him ten yards away, and hissed, ‘Where’s Rix?’

The drunk lurched around, looking in the direction of the guarded door. That did not mean it was Rix’s, but it was worth the risk. Now she had to distract the guards, and the way was right in front of her. The drunk had turned and was shambling towards the door.

He stopped halfway along, where the next passage cut across the hall, set down his bottles and turned to the wall. What was he doing? The guards gave him disgusted looks and moved around the corner, out of sight.

Was he — ? He was! The filthy brute was urinating on the wall and all over the beautiful carpet.

Tali’s reservations vanished. Do it, now!