Rebellion

CHAPTER 14

“Why do you hate me, Grizel?” Rannilt said late that afternoon.

Tali sighed. “I don’t hate you.”

“You seemed to like me, after I saved your life, but you don’t care for me any more. You’re always tryin’ to get away. You want to get rid of me, don’t you?”

The emotional blackmail had been going on for hours, and Tali was fed up with it. “All right! It’s because you’ve turned into a little bloodsucker.”

Rannilt froze. “What are you talkin’ about?”

The Sullen Man’s face appeared at the bars, though he was looking through Tali’s cell, to Lizue’s. Out in the corridor, old Kroni was bowed over part of the water clock mechanism but he was quite still. Spying for the chancellor.

“I tried to tell you the other day.” Tali thrust her wrist in the child’s face. “This! You’re like a vampire bat — no, like a leech.”

Rannilt blanched. “I take your blood?”

“I was too weak to stop you. And… and I thought, why shouldn’t you have it, if it would make you better? But you’re feeding on me like a horrible little leech, and I can’t bear it.”

“I thought we were friends,” whispered Rannilt. “But I’m a horrible little leech.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Tali said hastily. “But Rannilt — ”

“Don’t worry!” the child said stiffly. “I’ll never come near you again.” She dragged her bunk across to the far side of the cell. “Never, ever!”

“Please, come back,” said Tali. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“If you didn’t mean it, why did you say it?”

Rannilt stalked across to the porthole into Lizue’s cell and began an animated conversation with her. Tali raked her fingers through her hair, knowing there was nothing to be done. She had never met a child with more unwavering determination than Rannilt. Only time could heal the injury — if anything could.

She was pacing away when she realised that Rannilt was telling Lizue a story about their escape, and how determined Tali was to avenge her mother, and her other murdered ancestors. Did Rannilt know that each of them bore an ebony pearl, and that Tali did as well?

“Rannilt?” she said sharply. “Could you come here, please?”

Rannilt gave Tali a look of childish malice, then turned back to Lizue and said in a shrill, raised voice. “It’s my story too and I’ll tell it how I like.”

She began to tell Lizue about Overseer Banj’s attack on Tali in the sunstone shaft leading up from Cython. Tali’s heart nearly stopped — if Kroni told the chancellor that story in all its bloody detail, he would know how powerful Tali’s magery was and must guess where it came from.

She glanced across to the water clock but Kroni had gone. Shaking with relief, Tali slumped on her bunk, then noticed the Sullen Man’s shocked expression. He must be a spy as well.

But then it got worse.

“Then Tali killed Banj with a white blizzard,” Rannilt was saying in her bloodthirsty way. “Burst out of her fingertips, it did, and took his big round head right off and sent it bouncin’ down the steps.”

Tali’s mouth went dry. Rannilt had used her real name.

In an instant, Lizue’s face changed, as if a glamour cast on her had broken. Though she was still remarkably pretty, she no longer looked like a Hightspaller. She had the grey skin and black eyes of a Cythonian.

Lyf must have put the glamour on her before he sent her into Rutherin to try and locate Tali.

Lizue pointed a crystalline rod at Tali. A red beam touched her forehead, stinging it, and she felt the chief magian’s glamour disappear.

“Guards!” cried the Sullen Man, who now looked alert, focused. “Gua — ”

Lizue hurled a glass phial, which smashed on his bars, spattering his face with brown droplets that fizzed and released thin white fumes. He fell out of sight, choking and clawing at his nose and eyes.

Lizue ran the pointed tip of another phial across the tops and bottoms of the twisted bars between her cell and Tali’s. Whatever chymical potion the phial held, it dissolved the metal within seconds. From inside her coat, she withdrew a clear bag and a long, heavy blade, rather like a machete.

Only then did Tali realise her peril. She ran to the front of the cell and clung to the bars. Where were the guards? Where was Kroni?

“Help! I’m being attacked. Help, help!”

Lizue pulled out the eaten-away bars and tossed them on the floor, clang. She went back several steps, ran and dived through the hole, into Tali’s cell.

“What are you doing, Lizue,” cried Rannilt, trying to stop her. “Tali’s my friend. I didn’t mean it. Please, no — ”

Lizue elbowed Rannilt in the nose, driving her backwards onto her bunk. Blood flooded from her nose onto the mattress. Lizue turned to Tali, put down the knife and shook out the clear bag until it could have enveloped a melon. Or a head. It resembled the head bag that a healer in Cython had once used to save the guard Orlyk’s life. This bag wasn’t intended to save a life, though, but to take it.

Tali’s knees were trembling. She did not have the strength for a fight, even a brief one. She struck at Lizue’s eyes, and then her throat. The assassin avoided the blows lazily, almost contemptuously.

Tali drove a blow at Lizue’s midriff; again she avoided it. She knew what Tali intended as soon as she moved, and that could mean only one thing. Lizue must have interrogated Nurse Bet back in Cython, and knew exactly how she had trained Tali in the bare-handed art.

“Stop it, stop it!” wailed Rannilt.

From the corner of an eye Tali saw the child racing at Lizue, her fingers hooked, blood still dripping off her chin. Without looking, Lizue backhanded her halfway across the cell.

A blow to the belly dropped Tali to her knees. In another second, Lizue had whipped the bag over Tali’s head and twisted it around her throat to seal it. Lizue picked up the heavy knife and swung it back. She wasn’t planning to cut the pearl out of Tali here — that would take far too long. She was going to cut Tali’s head off and seal it in the bag with her blood, which would preserve the pearl long enough for it to be extracted elsewhere.

Tali couldn’t get out of the way in time. She was watching the swinging blade when the Sullen Man broke open the door of the cell and slammed it into Lizue’s back. She dropped the knife, but dived for it and swung it at her attacker, wounding him in the shoulder. He drove a punch at her throat. She swayed away and the blow did little damage.

Tali clawed at the head bag. It had been made from the intestines of the Cythonian elephant eel and the membrane was so strong that her short nails made no impression on it. It was tight around her nose and mouth and there was no air inside. If she could not get it off in the next minute she would suffocate.

She forced her fingers in under the tight opening of the bag and tried to stretch it enough to get it over her head. It gave a little, then snapped back — it was immensely strong. Stronger than she was in her weakened state. She tried again, failed again.

Gasping like a stranded fish, she tried to force the membrane into her mouth so she could bite through it. It would not stretch far enough. Her head was spinning. She had only moments of consciousness left.

The Sullen Man leapt at Lizue, feinted, then kicked her legs from under her. She landed hard and groped for the knife. He drew a knife of his own and stabbed her in the left thigh, the blade going in all the way to the bone. She cried out and slumped, the wound gushing blood.

He ran to Tali, who was starting to choke, and tore the clear bag apart.

“Out!” he gasped. “Run upstairs.”

Lizue staggered to her feet, the heavy knife in her hand, and plunged it through the Sullen Man’s chest into his heart. He fell dead without a sound.

Rannilt leapt up, picked up a fallen chair and whacked Lizue across the back with it. She reached out to Tali, her face twisted in anguish. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Another of those golden bubbles formed at her fingertip, shot across the cell, struck Tali on the forehead and burst there with a hot flare of light. Rannilt bolted out the door and up the steps, screaming for help.

Tali was rubbing her throbbing forehead when she felt her gift rising — rising all the way this time. Lizue staggered towards her, swinging the knife. Tali thrust out her right arm, her fingers pointing towards Lizue’s throat. Lizue froze.

The power was there but it would not come. They stared at one another for a long time, then Lizue smiled and lurched forwards. Tali threw herself through the open cell door and slammed it in Lizue’s face.

Rannilt had disappeared up the steps; Lizue was struggling to get the door open with her bloody hands. Tali looked around. If she remained here, she would die, for she was too weak to fight.

The stairs and the main part of the fortress were to the left, but Rannilt would have alerted the guards up there by now. Tali turned right and was heading down the dimly lit corridor when a rear door opened and Kroni came through, carrying a bucket of water for the water clock. Tali froze for a second, then continued, her face turned away, but he merely nodded and continued past. With the glamour gone, he had not recognised her, but he would soon discover what had happened. She lurched through the door, closed it behind her and ran.

But without food, winter clothing or any knowledge of where she might get help, where was she to run to? The Sullen Man might be dead, but Lizue would come after her. And the chancellor would soon read the signs. The head bag would give her secret away.

Within the hour, he would know she bore the master pearl.

And he would kill her before he allowed the enemy to get it.