Vengeance

CHAPTER 59

Tali had no idea how much time had passed. It was still dark and someone was pounding on a door, every thump sending a throb through her head.

‘Will you stop that,’ she said dully.

‘Quiet,’ whispered Tobry. ‘We’re here.’

‘Where — here?’

‘The abbey.’

She felt a spasm of panic. The past hours and perils had welded Rannilt and Tobry to her like brother and sister — or something stronger. The thought of being separated from them was unbearable.

‘Don’t want to be left with strangers,’ said Tali. ‘Take me with you.’

‘You need a healer and you’ve got to disappear. After our spectacular arrival, all Caulderon will be wondering who you are.’

Tali slumped; she was beyond anything save enduring.

‘I can look after her,’ said Rannilt. ‘Please, Lord Tobry.’

‘Tali needs the best healer there is,’ said Tobry. ‘I’ll send her to you when she’s better.’

‘I can heal her,’ Rannilt said desperately. ‘Please don’t make me leave her.’

‘I’m sorry, Rannilt. If anyone speaks to you while I’m gone, pretend you’re dumb.’

‘What’s dumb?’

‘It means you can’t speak. And you’re not a Pale, right?’

‘Why not?’ squeaked Rannilt.

‘If the chancellor hears about you, he’ll be after you too. You’re only safe if no one knows who you are.’

‘Who am I?’

‘You’re a servant girl from Nitterlay, on the other side of the Crowbung Range — ’

‘Who’s there?’ said a woman’s voice, old and quavery.

‘Tobry Lagger. Let me in.’

‘Come back in the morning.’

‘I must see the abbess. I bear news of great value — and an injured girl who needs her special healing gift.’

‘Wait!’

‘Hush,’ whispered Tobry to Rannilt. ‘Pretend you’re asleep.’

‘You’ll look after Tali, won’t you?’ Tears washed tracks down Rannilt’s grubby face.

He gave her a quick hug. ‘Yes, and you too.’

‘Where are you taking her?’ said Tali. Tobry had told her but she could not remember.

‘To old Luzia. She was my nurse when I was little, and Rix’s nurse after that. She’ll look after her.’

‘She’d better,’ Tali said feebly.

The bolts were drawn back and the reinforced doors drawn open. Tobry took Tali in his arms.

‘Who’s that?’ said the woman.

She was broad and stooped, her back so bent by a dowager’s hump that she could barely raise her head above the horizontal, and her old face was covered with a crisscrossing network of wrinkles. Had she been on all-fours, she would have greatly resembled a tortoise.

‘For Hildy’s eyes only,’ said Tobry.

He followed the old woman down several halls and into a large, crowded room lit by a single lantern. Half a dozen tables were piled high with books, papers, maps, carved busts of the Five Heroes and other objects that could not be made out in the dim light.

‘Lagger!’ spat a woman from behind a large table on the far side of the room. ‘Your unlamented grandfather killed three of my novices.’

‘A terrible business,’ said Tobry. ‘But he’s long in his grave.’

‘And you put him there.’ The abbess scowled at Tobry, making a finger sign over her head and heart. She had a soft, downy face and bright grey eyes, and was so plump that she was almost bursting from her skin. ‘What do you want?’

Tali stared at her in wonder. There were no fat people in Cython and she had never seen anyone like Hildy before. How could the abbey have so much food to waste? It was unimaginable.

‘I claim refuge for an injured woman, in the name of the Five Heroes.’ He put Rix’s bag of gold on the table.

She weighed it in her hand. ‘You don’t believe in them.’

‘’Course I do,’ Tobry said. ‘Seen the error of my ways.’

The abbess’s gaze turned to Tali, noted her unblemished skin and golden hair, the slave mark on her shoulder, and drew in a sharp breath.

‘A Pale! Where did you find her?’

‘She escaped from the Rat Hole yesterday. The first ever to do so, and she’s not just any Pale. Rix and I — ’

‘Rixium of House Ricinus?’ she hissed. ‘Never mention that house in my presence.’ She peered at Tali. ‘What’s the matter with her? She’s not diseased, is she?’

‘There is no disease among the Pale,’ Tali said haughtily. ‘Not so much as a cold.’

‘She took a Cythonian arrow in the thigh,’ said Tobry.

‘Bring her to the couch. Has the wound been attended?’

‘We did what we could.’

The abbess drew a sheet over the couch and rang a bell. A novice appeared, a stocky girl who appeared to have taken a vow of silence, her lips being pressed together so tightly that they made a straight line across her face. The abbess shooed Tobry away, stripped Tali’s silk gown and sandals off and passed them to the novice. ‘Burn these and scrub your hands afterwards.’

‘That’s my ancestor’s gown,’ cried Tali. ‘We’ve kept it for a thousand years.’

‘And now it’s ruined. Get rid of it. Bring hot water.’

As the novice carried the once beautiful gown out, Tali felt as though her house was burning to the ground.

‘What did this?’ said Hildy, staring at the welt across Tali’s belly.

‘An enemy chuck-lash.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A chymical weapon, intended to cause great pain. It blasts and burns against the skin.’

‘What’s it made of?’

‘I don’t know. There are many kinds. Some have shreds of metal inside. And then there are death-lashes — ’

Hildy’s eyes widened. ‘Chymical weapons?’ She glanced at Tobry.

‘Judging by the ruin they wrought on Gullihoe, they’re masters of many forms of alchymie,’ said Tobry. He described what he had seen there.

‘How does one fight such a foe?’ said Hildy.

‘I dare say we’ll soon find out. Thousands of them pursued us to the city gates. Pursued Tali, anyway.’

‘Why would they bother with one escaped Pale?’ said Hildy.

‘To stop her mouth, of course.’

The novice returned with buckets of steaming water, a towel and fresh garments.

Tali was stood in a dish, the novice holding her, and Hildy bathed her with a wet cloth. She appeared to be checking Tali for signs of disease.

Hildy examined the wounds with the light of a candle. ‘I see healer’s work here.’

‘I have a minor gift,’ said Tobry hastily, as if he did not want Tali to reveal her own healings, or Rannilt’s.

Hildy sniffed as she bent over Tali’s thigh. ‘The wound has been broken open, more than once. Has the girl been mistreated?’

Tali studied Hildy from under her lashes. She had not realised that so much could be read from an injury. But then, Tobry had said that Hildy was a great healer.

‘Enemies attacked,’ said Tobry. ‘We had to run.’

Hildy laid a plump hand over the wound for a few seconds and the pain disappeared. She was a great healer. She pressed discs of a smelly unguent to the entry and exit wounds and bandaged them. The novice poured a measure of a gluggy white fluid into a cup.

‘Drink,’ said Hildy, holding the cup to Tali’s mouth.

‘What is it?’

‘It kills infection.’

Tali drank. The novice handed her a grey blouse and baggy trews, and a pair of leather sandals. Tali dressed and lay down hastily; her head felt loose on her shoulders.

‘Take her and go,’ said Hildy.

‘What?’ said Tobry, shocked.

‘She’s not welcome here. Get out, and never return.’

Tobry’s mouth opened and closed, then he picked Tali up and carried her outside.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she said dazedly as he put her in the saddle and mounted. Tali took Rannilt in her arms again. She was sleeping soundly and did not wake.

‘I don’t know,’ said Tobry. He raked his hair with his fingers, staring around distractedly. ‘I suppose it’ll have to be Luzia.’

He rode out and turned left into a narrow street. It was freezing here, a damp, miserable cold that her underground-adapted flesh had never experienced. And everything stank.

In Cython, every place had its distinctive smell, most being clean and natural. There was nothing pleasant about the smell of Caulderon. The alleys reeked of urine and human waste, rotting fur, burnt bones and other unpleasant things that she could not identify in the gloom and did not want to think about.

‘It wasn’t always like this,’ Tobry said quietly. ‘In my grandfather’s day, even the poorest folk were well fed, well dressed, and healthy.’

‘What happened?’

‘The land turned against us.’

Shortly the sun rose, though by the time its light filtered through the brown smog of a hundred thousand fires there was no warmth in it. Now people appeared from every hole and hollow. It was like being back in Cython. No — in Cython every slave had a job and a purpose. And they had been clean.

The shanty dwellers were deeply engrained with grime, caked and crusted with it as though they had not bathed in their lives. Many were riddled with crater-like scars, others flush-faced as if freshly be’poxed, and they stank worse than the squatteries in Cython.

‘How have the people fallen so low?’ said Tali.

‘We thought the good times would last forever. We put nothing by. Then the eruptions began, the weather turned, the crops and the hot springs failed, the ice began to spread and everything went bad.

‘Except there,’ added Tobry as they rode along a red-brick thoroughfare. ‘Palace Ricinus.’

It was gigantic and extraordinarily beautiful, a colossus of carved stone topped by an enormous dome and surrounded by dozens of clustered towers yearning towards eternity. Its windows were carved into the shapes of flowers and the snow-blanketed grounds ran for hundreds of yards down a gentle slope to a masonry wall, beyond which she saw the misty shores of Lake Fumerous.

Tali gaped. Palace Ricinus was magnificent enough for an emperor. How, when the poor of Caulderon lived in such filth and misery, could it be the home of just three people?

‘Rix’s chambers are next to that tower, there at the back,’ said Tobry, pointing. ‘Torgrist Manor is up there, if you’d like to see it.’ He jerked his head in the other direction. ‘What’s left of it.’

‘Yes. I have to see it.’

He glanced behind them and cursed. ‘Hang on!’ He spurred Leather to a trot.

They hurtled around a corner, up a steep hill, then around another corner into an empty street with stone mansions to either side, all immaculate save one, which was a ruin.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Tali, alarmed.

‘We’re being followed. Hildy’s betrayed us.’

‘Who to?’

‘I’d say the chancellor, and you don’t want to fall into his hands.’ Tobry reined in. ‘Get off and over the wall, quick! Hide. I’ll come back when I can.’

‘Is this — ?’

‘Torgrist Manor? Yes, go!’

Tali half fell to the ground, scrambled across the footpath and through a break in a high stone wall. Long grass and tall weeds on the other side ran up to a broken tower, a ruined manor most of whose roof had fallen in.

Rannilt woke with a cry. ‘What’s happening? Come back.’

‘Sit up, child!’ Tobry said urgently. ‘Try to look like Tali. Hold on tight!’

They galloped off. Tali had lost her hat somewhere in the night and the sky was rocking again. Hearing hoof beats approaching, she crawled along a rabbit track and into a spreading, thorny bush. There she hunched into a ball, fought the panic and tried to stop her crashing heart from giving her away.