Vengeance

CHAPTER 90

Rix groaned, opened gummy eyes and saw nothing. Had he gone blind? Was he dead? His head felt as though an axe was embedded in it, his mouth was dry as a vulture’s armpit and the fur on his tongue had fur on it.

He rolled over and cried out. There was a lump on the back of his head the size of a half melon. He groped around him, felt a stone wall and pulled himself up on it, and saw the familiar outline of the palace roof beyond. What was he doing at the top of his tower? He hadn’t been up here in months. An icy wind whistled in between the low perimeter wall and the spiralling roof. It was a wonder he hadn’t frozen to death.

His mouth tasted of wine gone sour and stale vomit. He must have been royally drunk last night, though he could not remember anything after Lady Ricinus had left. Rix smelled painter’s oil on his hands and a glimmer of memory came back.

He’d been painting the murder scene in the cellar; painting and drinking.

So drunk he could barely focus on the canvas.

The staring, haunted girl.

The young woman’s head torn open.

The bloody ebony pearl …

Rix groaned. His head was bursting with the effort to remember.

Then another glimmer: two faces, finally emerging from his frozen memories, the killers on the canvas.

Lord and Lady Ricinus.

‘Why, why?’ he cried, but the howling wind drowned him out.

Rix was pounding his fists against a column when he remembered one final fragment. Utterly dishonoured and with no way out, he had staggered up here to throw himself off his tower. Evidently he had fallen and knocked himself out. He couldn’t even kill himself successfully.

It must have been many hours ago, otherwise his mouth would not be so dry. But why was it still dark? Had he lain unconscious all day? No wonder his tongue was like a leather strap hung over a fence. He was lucky to be alive.

Lucky to be the son of vicious killers?

Lucky to have betrayed his own mother for high treason? He remembered that.

Judging by the stars, it was around ten o’clock. The Honouring Ball would be nearly over. He had promised to be there, and he was not. He had broken his word, shamed his father and humiliated his mother. And, oddly, their crimes could not excuse his own behaviour. If a man’s word was not sacred, what kind of a man was he?

He must attend the Honouring. He would perform that last duty for his parents. And then? What came first, duty to them or obedience to the law? Was he supposed to turn them in for murder? That would, unquestionably, destroy House Ricinus. Did his duty to House and family outweigh the victim’s need for justice?

He did not know, but one thing was very clear. If he turned them in it would destroy him too, because he would know in the chambers of his heart that he had betrayed those whom he had vowed to honour.

Rix stumbled down to his studio. The cellar painting was gone. Tobry must have put it away and Rix thanked the Gods for that. He could not bear to look at it.

He smiled grimly as he put on the ceremonial garments Lady Ricinus’s maid had laid out for him, adjusted the angle of the lapis cravat and his scarlet, plumed hat, and wiped a speck of dust from his gleaming boots. After buckling on the titane sword, he checked himself in the scalderium mirror. He would perform this final service, put on this final show, as best the heir of House Ricinus could.

Not even Lady Ricinus could fault his presentation this time. Even if she had brought the chancellor down, Rix would see his unworthy father honoured, then walk away. Let House Ricinus rise, or all come crashing down behind him. He would never look back. He would go to the front lines and die there, defending his country and trying to assuage his blighted honour the only way he knew.

The halls were empty — every servant in the palace would be called to witness the Honouring. Outside, people were still partying in the streets. Fireworks climbed the sky near the city gates, though the celebrations rang falsely in his mind. If they thought the enemy had gone, they were as deluded as the priestesses who gathered on the sacred mountain and commanded the ice to withdraw from Hightspall, the magians who tried to melt ten thousand cubic miles of icecap with their pathetic spells.

And always, always in the back of his mind, was the unanswerable question — why had the ten-year-old Rix been there when Tali’s mother had been murdered?

He thrust open the doors of the Great Hall so hard that they slammed back against the wall to either side. He was not going to sneak into this hypocritical ceremony. The ball was over and the dance floor crowded with people, all looking up at the stage where the dignitaries were taking their places for Lord Ricinus’s Honouring.

Rix’s heart missed three or four beats before restarting with a lurch. The chancellor sat centre stage, smiling. Had Lady Ricinus’s plot failed, or were her assassins waiting for the end? Or would the executioners be the chancellor’s? Rix faltered.

The high constable took his place on the chancellor’s right, the lady justiciar to his left. The chief magian was there too, and Abbess Hildy. All the mighty of Hightspall were in attendance. Had they come to witness the rise of House Ricinus, or to gloat in its fall?

He reached the edge of the stage unnoticed. Rix’s head was throbbing and he felt a dire urge to scream at his parents, Why did you murder Tali’s mother?

The preliminaries must be going well; even Lady Ricinus was smiling. How could that be? The chancellor had threatened House Ricinus with ruin if she did not hand Tali over. Did Lady Ricinus’s smile mean that she had taken Tali and was ready to deliver her? Or, after events at the Crag, did the chancellor no longer care?

Abbess Hildy, a plump, soft-faced woman of indeterminate age, lumbered to her feet. ‘Lord Chancellor, Lady Justiciar, High Constable, Chief Magian, Dignitaries, ladies and lords, welcome to this Honouring.’

She paused to catch her breath.

‘Much has been written about the House of Ricinus, and much has been said. That they were thieves and brigands who made their gold in dirty trades.’

Someone in the audience tittered, and Lady Ricinus looked uneasy. Was this a set-up to lull House Ricinus into false hope, then bring it crashing down? The chancellor’s ironic smile suggested he had such a plan in mind.

Hildy continued, in a sneering tone. ‘That they were upstarts who bribed their way to the top. Scoundrels unworthy to sit among the noble houses of Hightspall, or to occupy this, the most magnificent palace in Caulderon, which was first built by the greatest of the Five Herovians, Axil Grandys himself, not long before his mysterious disappearance.

‘I too looked down on the upstarts. I knew that, generous though they were to all manner of causes, House Ricinus was beneath contempt. And I told the chancellor so, that he might find a way to topple this unworthy house.’

The whole room was buzzing now. Lady Ricinus’s red fingernails were gouging varnish from the arms of her chair. Was this the chancellor’s revenge — the Honouring to be a public humiliation? From the gleeful faces of the nobility, they hoped so.

Hildy paused, looked around the gathering and, after a dramatic pause, said, ‘But I was wrong.’

Heads turned. People whispered among themselves. The chancellor rose halfway from his chair, his famous composure lost for a few seconds, before settling back, tight-lipped. What was going on? Had Lady Ricinus won after all? Rix prayed that she had not. Any such victory would be a travesty. And yet, for the sake of his house …

Hildy opened a flat leather case, withdrew a ragged, dirty piece of parchment, and held it up.

‘For two thousand years it has been held that our founding hero, Axil Grandys, died without issue, despite that he was renowned as a vigorous and lusty man.’

She paused for a full minute, until the whispers died away.

‘This document proves otherwise. This parchment shows that Axil Grandys fathered a daughter, Mythilda, and acknowledged her before his disappearance. And Mythilda’s line, it has been proven to my satisfaction, runs unbroken all the way to the present time. To the father of Lord Ricinus, and therefore to his son, Rixium Ricinus.’

‘Bastards sprung from bastards, back to the beginning of time,’ sneered a red-faced nobleman on Rix’s left.

Rix was not inclined to disagree.

‘House Ricinus,’ said Abbess Hildy, taking a sheaf of documents from the case, ‘has always been seen as the lowliest, its lord and lady as greedy upstarts. But no more. Should these papers pass the final test, Ricinus will take its place among those houses who can trace their line all the way back to the founding fathers.’

She bowed to Lord and Lady Ricinus.

‘I present the documents for authentication,’ said Abbess Hildy, handing the stunned chancellor the parchment and the other papers.

And Rix knew, from the smile on his mother’s face, that the critical document was a forgery. It would be a masterful one, doubtless written on two thousand-year-old parchment in ink equally ancient. And the monumental bribes she had been paying for the past three years, that had almost emptied their treasury, had been to smooth its passage to authentication and her house’s rise to the top.

The chancellor rubbed the parchment between his fingers, held it up to the glow from a brazier behind them, then raised it to his horn-like nose.

‘It looks authentic,’ he said reluctantly, sourly, and handed it to the chief magian. ‘Though I can scarcely believe it is.’

The chief magian probed the parchment with the heel of his staff, and then with the tip, and passed an object like an ivory-rimmed spectible over it.

‘This parchment is ancient,’ said the chief magian, a tubby, balding little fellow with tiny feet and hands, after some minutes of increasingly frustrated magery. ‘So ancient that it was not made in this land. It came, no doubt about it, on the First Fleet from our lost homeland of Thanneron, now crushed beneath the ice that draws ever closer to our own fair isle.’

‘Damn the parchment!’ snarled the chancellor. ‘It’s the writing that matters. When was it written?’

The chief magian studied the parchment again. A tap of his staff made the writing glow leaf green, then flesh pink and finally indigo.

Rix held his breath. Part of him yearned for it to be authentic, and for the legitimacy that would bring his house. Another part prayed that Lady Ricinus would not get away with so monstrous a lie.

‘This ink flowed from the nib two thousand years ago,’ said the chief magian.

‘My Lady Ricinus,’ said the chancellor with a vulture’s smile. ‘We cannot fault the critical document, therefore House Ricinus’s claim can not be challenged. Welcome to the First Circle, House Ricinus.’

He extended his hand, though from the look on his face the chancellor would sooner have cut it off than shake hers, or Lord Ricinus’s.

Rix had to admire his mother’s cunning. She had neutralised the chancellor’s threat to bring down their house unless they delivered him Tali, for not even he had the power to topple a house of the First Circle for so minor a reason. But why hadn’t he acted on the treason? Because Lady Ricinus was far more use to him alive than dead? Or was this just the first move in a deadly game between them?

‘Lady Ricinus,’ the chancellor continued, ‘before we began the Honouring, you mentioned two matters of moment. What is the other?’

For a second, Lady Ricinus’s poise failed her, and her triumphant smile revealed her lack of breeding. Then the sickening false humility was back.

‘My beloved Lord, Ricinus, is unwell.’ She extended a hand to him. Lord Ricinus lurched across the stage and flopped his pulpy hand into her bony one.

‘He was savagely struck down by the escaped Pale slave just days ago,’ said Lady Ricinus, ‘and our healer fears my lord’s remaining days are few. Lord Ricinus regrets that he is unable to discharge his duties, either as a husband,’ several nobles tittered, ‘or as the head of House Ricinus. Therefore he begs to be released as lord, that he may spend — ’

‘It is customary for the lord of a noble house to be released from his duties only by death,’ said the chancellor.

‘An earlier release is not unheard of,’ said Lady Ricinus. ‘I can cite the precedents.’

‘I’m sure your notaries have documented every instance.’ The chancellor turned to Rix’s father. ‘Lord Ricinus, do you solemnly declare that you are no longer fit to discharge your duties as lord of your house?’

‘I declare it,’ said Rix’s father. ‘Where’s my drink?’

The nobles muttered in outrage. Lady Ricinus ground her heel into Lord Ricinus’s instep.

‘In these extraordinary circumstances,’ scowled the chancellor, ‘I will approve the abdication of the present Lord Ricinus.’ Then he smiled vengefully. ‘And installation of the new lord, Lord Rixium Ricinus.’

Rix nearly fell against the stage. Lady Ricinus staggered and clutched at her lord. Her mouth opened and closed, then she slipped a new mask over the old. Clearly, she had expected that the stewardship of House Ricinus would be given to her for her lifetime. It was a reasonable expectation, since a third of the noble houses were led by women, but her vulgar birth was a fatal flaw.

‘Thank you, Chancellor,’ she said with a cracked smile. ‘I will do my duty as steward until — ’

The chancellor looked down at Rix, who knew he had forgotten nor forgiven nothing. What game was he playing now?

‘Rixium will be installed as lord immediately,’ said the chancellor.

‘But he is not yet of age.’

‘He defeated a caitsthe with his bare hands, did he not?’

Several mature ladies, who must have heard the story, tittered. A trio of young eligibles eyed Rix boldly and inflated their assets.

‘He also took the war to the enemy,’ said the chancellor, ‘and rescued a Pale who has given us priceless intelligence about Cython.’

Lady Ricinus knew when she was defeated. ‘Rixium, Lord of Ricinus, come up.’ She extended her hand towards her son.

‘Not yet he isn’t,’ growled the chancellor. ‘First, we finish the Honouring.’

Rix took his place between his mother and father, barely able to keep his throbbing head upright, and afraid he was going to throw up again. This was monstrous, a travesty.

‘May I see your sword, Lord Rixium?’ said the chancellor politely, as though nothing had ever happened between them.

Rix handed it to him. The chancellor studied it for a moment, then passed it to the chief magian, who ran his little fingers along the worn inscription, causing multi-coloured auras to flicker around it. Momentarily the words stood out, black against the bluish metal — Heroes must fight to preserve the race. The chief magian started, then mimed several words.

The chancellor nodded and took the sword. ‘Search the archives,’ he said softly. ‘Find a test.’

The chief magian resumed his seat. The chancellor’s mouth hardened. He looked Rix up and down, then handed the sword back.

What was that all about? Rix’s restless gaze passed across the audience and he noticed Tobry at the back of the hall. And there, clutching his arm, as Pale as if she’d had the word painted on her forehead, was Tali. She was gazing up into Tobry’s eyes, quivering with suppressed emotion, and his eyes were locked on hers. What was she doing here?

Rix started, then realised that his mother had fixed on the small girl in the blue gown and the mouse mask.

‘Lord Rixium,’ she said softly. ‘You have no idea how sweet my revenge is going to be.’