Vengeance

CHAPTER 94

Di-DA-doh, di-DA-doh.

Tali had been hearing the triple call for hours and she now knew where it came from. Deroe was hunting her for the master pearl. He had ordered her mother killed for her pearl, and he had to pay, though Tali wasn’t sure she would get the chance.

The chancellor’s eyes had been on her at the end of the Honouring. For Hightspall, magery meant the difference between victory and defeat, and once he realised that she carried the master pearl, she would die for it.

Outside the palace gates, thousands of shanty dwellers had gathered to see the fall of House Ricinus, though few seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. How could the wealthiest house in Hightspall, one that had endured for generations, be toppled so quickly? And if Ricinus could fall, what hope was there for their miserable selves, with the enemy bound to return and no one to come to their aid?

It was not yet sunrise but Tali’s day felt week-long. Was Deroe watching her now? How would she recognise him? With the magery of three pearls, he could disguise himself as anyone.

Inside the gates, the guests from the Honouring watched silently, the men in their crumpled dress suits, the ladies bleary-eyed and bedraggled. They weren’t rejoicing either: the fall of a noble house that had, albeit briefly, inhabited the First Circle, reminded them of the fragility of their own positions.

Where was justice when the innocent were taken with the guilty? That kindly old man, the Master of the Palace, hung silent and still, as did the nine heads of his departments, four from the left side of the gate beside him, five from the right. They, at least, had been hanged with their clothes and their dignity. Lord and Lady Ricinus, naked, scratched and bruised after being dragged all the way from the palace, shuddered in the bitter cold. Tali’s toes were freezing in her ballroom slippers.

‘Hang Ricinus and his wife together,’ said the chancellor as the sun rose.

They were forced onto the scaffold below the great arch of the gate. Without her clothes, make-up, corsets and back brace, Lady Ricinus looked smaller and older, and walked with a stoop. It was impossible to see, in this pathetic baggage, how she had intimidated so many for so long. Tali avoided looking at Lord Ricinus’s drink-ruined body.

She could not bear to witness Rix’s agony, either. He was standing so still that he might have been turned to basalt, his fingers clawed over his heart as if tearing out his own falsity. Who would want to watch such a sight? But his parents were the last of House Ricinus, that had fallen and would never rise again, and he was required to see them on their final journey.

The barbed ropes were placed over their heads. No words were spoken for their souls; no priest or abbess was permitted to attend them. They were to die unshriven, cursed by the Five Heroes and forsaken by their Gods.

The chancellor gave the signal. Rix’s mother and father fell together. Lady Ricinus’s chicken neck snapped like the frail rib bones she had once stood on so contemptuously and she died at once. Lord Ricinus hung there, slowly choking, and though his death took five dreadful minutes, no mercy stroke was permitted.

A thousand klaxons howled, all over the city. Tali turned away as the ritual disembowellings were carried out. And we call the Cythonians barbaric. This was not justice; it was vengeance.

‘Who would have thought the execution of noble traitors could be so good for morale?’ Tobry said bleakly that afternoon. ‘I knew Lord and Lady Ricinus were hated, but …’ He trailed off.

‘I’m amazed there’s any fireworks left in Caulderon,’ said Tali.

It was still an hour until dark, but the rockets and the fiery wheels showed up clearly under the gloom created by a heavy brown overcast sky.

‘Or any grog. If the enemy were to attack now, they could walk in.

’ They were watching the celebrations from the tower inside the palace gates, wondering what, if anything, was left for them after such a disastrous night and day. The surrounding streets were clogged with drunken men and women, and even children, moving in colourful surges this way and that.

‘It’s not the enemy we have to worry about tonight,’ said Tobry.

Down the road, several dozen thugs were attacking the gates of a mansion with a ram. On the third strike the hinges tore out and they swarmed through, followed by hundreds of drunken shanty dwellers. The guards were torn to pieces, the rioters flooded into the mansion and shortly the leaders reappeared, dragging a plump man and a small grey-haired woman with them. The woman was struggling furiously, the man curiously listless.

‘Thissel and Teala of House Neger,’ said Tobry, shaking his head. ‘I knew them well, once.’

‘What have they done?’ said Tali.

‘Treated their servants too well. They’re good people — and that’s a fatal weakness now.’

‘They’re not going to kill them …’

‘It’s happening all over Caulderon. So glorious Hightspall rots and falls — from within.’

She looked where he was pointing. Smoke rose from half a dozen of the great houses and another was fully ablaze.

‘Why are they destroying those beautiful houses?’ said Tali, aching for her own, ruined manor.

‘What they can’t take with them, let no one have.’

‘But what does it gain anyone?’

‘Vengeance is power, the only kind the shanty dwellers have ever had, and how they glory in it.’

A huge man raised an axe. The heads came off, the bodies were strung from the broken gates, upside-down, and pelted with muck. The mob split, one part heading to the next manor, a smaller wedge heading up the hill towards Palace Ricinus. Only then did Tali realise the inevitable and remember that Rannilt was all alone.

She ran for the palace, pain spearing through her thigh with every step. Tobry matched her stride, but as they reached the front steps the horde came streaming towards them.

‘Lock the doors! Hurry.’ Tali took hold of the left-hand door and heaved.

‘Leave it!’ Rix stalked out, thrusting the doors wide, and the look in his eyes was so haunted that shivers crawled across Tali’s back. If ever a man wanted to die, he did.

‘There’s a hundred of them …’ began Tobry.

‘A hundred?’ said Rix. ‘A thousand, ten thousand, it makes no difference.’

He stood at the top of the six broad steps outside the palace doors, hand on his sword hilt, waiting.

Tali hesitated, then moved out to his right. Tobry took position on the left.

The horde reached the foot of the steps, led by a huge, raw-boned fellow, taller than Rix and broader across the shoulders. His threadbare shirt and trews had diagonal sprays of blood from the earlier killings. He carried an axe with a six-foot handle and a bloody blade a foot across.

‘It’s the lording who betrayed his own parents,’ sneered the axeman. ‘Run, little lord — let’s see how far you get before I spill your guts.’

Rix put his hand on the wire hilt of his sword but did not draw.

The axeman hefted the gigantic axe. ‘I’m going to chop your arms and legs off and split you for kindling.’

As he lumbered up the steps, Rix took several steps backwards. The axeman grinned and called the rest of the mob with a sweep of his arm. At least twenty followed, carrying axes, mattocks, knives and a sword or two. Another hundred waited below.

Tali’s belly throbbed. A rasping sound beside her was Tobry drawing his blade, though what could it avail him against so many? They were going to die here. And Rannilt inside, without waking.

The axeman’s weapon was back over his shoulder, ready to swing, yet Rix had not drawn his sword. Surely he wasn’t so far gone as to let the brute cut him down?

‘Rix?’ Tobry said in a strangled gasp.

The axeman swung. Tali let out an involuntary scream. Rix moved like a flash of silver, then the axe came clattering across the flagstones towards her and she had to leap out of the way.

The axeman was clutching his belly but could not hold his entrails in; he had been slashed across and back. They squelched out of him, splatting on the top step and oozing down while he stood there, his wet mouth slack. Rix’s sword was back in its sheath and she had not seen that, either.

Rix spun the axeman by the shoulder, put a foot in the middle of his back and sent him flying into the group halfway up the steps, knocking several of them over. He landed face down, making sickening gurgling sounds while his red fingernails raked at the treads and blood poured out of him to stain the white stone. The other thugs stared at the steaming entrails.

‘Reckon I can disembowel twenty of you before you kill me,’ said Rix. ‘Who wants to be next?’

They longed to see him die. Tali could read it in their eyes. They wanted to tear Rix to pieces and feed him to the dogs, then pillage Palace Ricinus of its treasures, defile it in every way and smash it to pieces the way life had smashed them. And if they attacked at once, not even Rix could stop them.

The axeman thrashed and screamed, his cries strangled for want of air, and muck dripped from his middle. His entrails slid down the next step and came to rest beside his cheek.

The thugs eyed each other and gave a collective shudder.

‘No?’ said Rix, after another minute. ‘Then take your meat and go.’

Two of them took the dying axeman’s legs and began to drag him away, his head thumping on the ground. The blood on the steps was already icing over.

‘All of him,’ said Rix with frosty menace.

A man wearing a leather butcher’s apron took it off, scowling, scraped the entrails into it and slung the dripping mess over his shoulder.

‘What sort of a man betrays his own parents?’ he said savagely. ‘Cut your own guts out and make Hightspall a better place.’

Rix choked, and even after they were out of sight he stood there, staring sightlessly across the grounds.

‘Come on, old friend.’ Tobry took him by the arm.

Back in Rix’s chambers, Tali checked on Rannilt, who lay in Tobry’s big bed, breathing shallowly. Though she was twice wrapped in blankets and had his thick quilt over her, her hands were cold.

‘Nothing can warm her,’ Tali said to Tobry. ‘I think her end must be near.’

‘All our ends are near,’ Rix said harshly. ‘At least she goes peacefully.’

‘Rix!’ Tobry said sharply.

Rix’s eyes, which had looked ever to the horizon since Lord and Lady Ricinus were condemned, focused on Tali.

‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘No truer friend have any of us ever had, and Rannilt is an innocent child. Tobe, see what’s happening outside.’

Tobry went out. Rix picked Rannilt up in her covers and carried her to the salon.

‘Bring the blankets,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ll make a bed for her in front of the heatstone. If anything can warm her in this dreadful winter, it can. We’ll sleep here tonight — if we’re allowed sleep. Should she rouse, she’ll know she’s among friends.’

He laid her on the couch close by the heatstone. It did seem a little warmer there.

Tali heard a faint rustle, like someone creeping down steps.

Rix drew his blade, wrenched the door open and was about to strike into the darkness when a boy cried, ‘Lord Rixium!’

Rix hauled a stocky, red-haired lad, no older than Rannilt, down into the light. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Nowhere else to go, Lord.’

‘You’re Benn,’ said Rix.

‘Yes, Lord.’ Benn bowed and called up the stairs. ‘It’s all right, Glynnie, it’s the lord. He’ll look after us.’

A slender girl crept down, her emerald eyes as round as plums. Her hair was redder than the boy’s and her nose and forearms were freckled. At most she was sixteen, Tali thought, and she was shaking.

‘The High Chancellor forbade any servant to return to the palace, Glynnie,’ said Rix sternly.

‘S-sorry, Lord,’ she said.

‘Then why are you here?’

‘After the hangin’s, and all the killin’s, we wus too scared to go out the gates. We been hidin’ up in the passages. We didn’t take anythin’ though. Not even a crust of the pigs’ bread.’

The boy’s stomach rumbled. Glynnie tried to shush him. ‘Besides,’ she added softly, ‘you saved Benn from a floggin’. We owe you — ’

‘You owe me nothing, and you’re welcome to whatever you can find in the pantries,’ Rix said wearily. ‘But you’ll have to go.’

‘Please, Lord.’ Glynnie reached out to him with both hands. ‘We’ll slave for you night and day.’

‘I don’t want anyone to slave for me.’

‘But the shanty people hate us.’ She clutched at his arm. ‘They won’t have us, Lord. Benn will have to steal to survive, and when he’s caught they’ll cut his hands off. And … you know what will happen to me.’

Rix flushed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I know. Damn the chancellor. You can stay.’

‘Thank you, Lord, thank you.’ She bowed three times, mechanically straightened the blankets and tidied the table. ‘Don’t stand there idle, Benn. Get to work.’

‘You don’t have to wait on us,’ said Rix,

‘How else will we earn our crusts?’ said Glynnie, scanning the room. ‘But you haven’t anything to eat.’

‘Can you cook?’

‘I can do everything,’ said Glynnie. ‘Benn, we’ve work to do.’ She ran out, dragging the boy after her.

Shortly they came back with hot fish soup. Tali spooned half a cup into Rannilt, though there was no change in her condition afterwards.

Rix sent Benn to keep watch then sat on the couch. Tali lay beside Rannilt, holding her cold hands. When Tobry returned, ice in his eyebrows and on the stubble of his beard, they were sitting in the malign twilight of the heatstone.

‘Are we to live the night?’ said Rix.

‘The chancellor has hanged three hundred of the rioters, flogged another thousand and locked up the alehouses. There’ll be no more trouble tonight.’

‘And tomorrow?’ said Rix.

The floor shook so violently that the table jumped a foot across the salon and the empty bowls fell and smashed. Tobry threw open the door to the tower stairs. Brilliant red light flooded in.

‘Fire!’ Tali gathered Rannilt in her arms.

‘Benn!’ wailed Glynnie, racing the other way.

Tobry ran up the steps, then called down. ‘It’s not the palace. It’s far off.’

Rix followed him to the studio. The light grew until it was bright as sunlight, though not in written history had such a baleful crimson sun illuminated this land.

‘Chymical fire!’ Tali clutched Rannilt to her chest and struggled up the steps. But how could anyone create such a vast and terrible conflagration, so quickly? ‘It’s as though the whole world is burning.’

Another shudder shook her off the step. Rix steadied her and helped her up. At the top, the glare streaming through the tower windows made her flinch.

‘It’s the Vomits,’ said Tobry. ‘In full eruption.’

‘Is it always like this?’ Tali set Rannilt on the settee and peered through slitted fingers at the distant fountains of fire and the red lava clots spinning through the sky.

‘It’s never like this,’ said Rix. ‘All three Vomits are erupting at once.’

‘And that last happened after the First Fleet landed,’ said Tobry. ‘It’s held to be a sign of the fall of nations.’

‘Ours, or theirs?’ said Tali.