Vengeance

CHAPTER 29

‘Hat,’ gasped Tali.

Sweat was flooding down her chest and back. Tinyhead crammed the orange hat onto her head and dragged her away from the shaft. The hat came down to her eyebrows and, as the broad brim blocked out the sky, the tingling in her fingers eased and her thundering heart slowed. She tilted her head back, experimentally. The sky wobbled.

It must be a panic attack. Tali had seen other slaves have them, in dire situations, though it seemed unfair that she should be brought low by sight of the world she so yearned for. She looked down and the phobia eased.

This was her opportunity to uncover her mother’s killers, and her family’s enemy if Tinyhead knew it. She had to outwit him and that would not be easy. Having had no sleep last night, it was a struggle to think at all.

He hauled her through the maze of defensive walls into a bowl-shaped valley a few hundred yards across, and the world outside, the real world she had never seen before, overwhelmed her senses. A hundred unfamiliar scents flooded her nose. Her ears rang with trills and whistles, chirps and a dozen other bird calls. Soft grasses caressed her toes.

She looked up, too suddenly. Sky and ground seesawed, the tightness in her chest and the tingling in her fingers roared back, panic overwhelmed her and she froze. Tinyhead yanked on the strap, the hat slipped down over her eyes and she stumbled on.

Once she felt better Tali checked around her, careful to manage her field of view, and everywhere she looked was a wonder of wildflowers, birds and trees. Brown rocks, humped like flocked sheep, outcropped around the valley’s steep rim. To her left, a series of rusty iron racks held the sunstones the Pale had carried up earlier. Tinyhead stopped beside the racks, gnawing on a thumb. What was he worried about?

Again the images coruscated in her inner eye: white needles shearing Banj’s head from his body, and blood everywhere, spraying on the wall and flooding down the steps. Blood on her too — the front of her robes was soaked with it.

She had slain a Cythonian who had always treated her well. Killed him savagely, whether she had meant to or not, and it did not help that Banj would have executed her. Tali could not get past the ruinous violence she had done to him. She shivered and closed her eyes but the images would not go away.

Tinyhead crushed her wrist bones. She winced but refused to cry out. Forget Banj — she had to focus. How could she get the killers’ names out of Tinyhead?

A hollow thud echoed up the shaft. Sweeping Tali into his arms, he ran across closely cropped grass to a boulder cluster shaped like a handful of sticky peas and thrust her behind them. He crouched and peered around the left-hand side of the boulders, his jaw clenched.

‘You’re afraid of your own people,’ said Tali, to needle him.

‘I love my people,’ he said with bitter scorn.

He touched his blistered mouth and his face spasmed. Tinyhead had been in pain when she’d seen him at dinner last night, pain her eight-year-old self had inflicted in that unconscious attack after her mother’s murder. He must be in agony now, and if she kept at him she might create an opportunity to escape. Alternatively, he might knock her unconscious and carry her to her doom.

There was no sign of Rannilt, who had vanished the moment Tinyhead appeared, and Tali couldn’t blame her. One slave had escaped, which made today a very good day, the best for the Pale in a thousand years. Run, little Rannilt, and don’t stop until you get to Caulderon.

He began to whisper to himself, though Tali could not make out the words. His plans were in trouble. Five people had seen her cut down her overseer with forbidden magery, and for such a crime she must be executed in a way that set an example to every slave. If Tinyhead took her back into Cython, he would lose her.

But if he remained here, and the matriarchs discovered that he planned to sell the one to the enemy, he would be put to a traitor’s death, the worst fate any Cythonian could suffer.

Tinyhead drew a rattling breath. Tali peered around the side of her boulder as five Cythonians, led by the red-faced figure of Orlyk, emerged through the stone doors. She climbed onto the highest wall and scanned the valley, then snapped an order. The other guards carried two of the unconscious ones through the doorway. Orlyk dragged Mimoy’s body across the grass to the rim of the valley, dumped her over the edge and went down the shaft.

‘You’ll never sneak me inside,’ said Tali. ‘You’re stuck.’

Taking the blue ovoid from around his neck, Tinyhead rolled it back and forth in his hands. It might have been made from the mineral turquoise but, whatever it was, she felt sure it had saved him from the blast. A muscle began to twitch along the left side of his jaw. With a grimace, he thrust the ovoid into a pouch hanging from his sash, then stared at the doors to the shaft.

To claim his blood money Tinyhead would have to take Tali through Hightspall to the murder cellar, but any Cythonian caught in Hightspall would be killed on sight. What was he going to do?

He was watching her again, hatred rising from him like smoke. Tali surreptitiously tested the leather belt, which was tight enough to numb her fingers. The leather was unbreakable.

Tinyhead unwrapped a half loaf of yellow pea bread, cut a cylinder out of the top and filled it with the slimy red mushroom pickle known as glorn. Tali’s mouth watered but he did not offer her any. He was about to take a bite when rock clicked on rock, along the ridge to their left. Setting down the bread, he drew a knife the length of her arm.

It had to be Rannilt, and if Tinyhead caught her she would die. He crept to the far end of the pile of boulders, his gaze sweeping the ridge. How could she stop him? Tali remembered her unused plan from last night.

After one taste, I’ll tell ya anythin, Lifka had said.

Tali fumbled one of the withered Purple Pixies out of her pocket, poked it under the surface of the glorn and resumed her position, surreptitiously wiping the pickle off her finger. She was not game to lick it.

Tinyhead took several steps towards the ridge crest.

Tali shouted, ‘Rannilt, run, hide!’

He stalked back, the knife jerking up and down with each stride. She shrank away, expecting him to strike her, but he merely picked up his breakfast.

‘When we reach the cellar, she’ll cut your head open like this loaf.’ Tinyhead opened his mouth to take a bite.

‘Who’s she?’

Tali’s memories of the masked woman who had killed her mother were lost, save for her icy contempt. She had despised the Pale, viciously mocked the man who had been her accomplice and stood on Iusia’s chest as though she was rubbish.

Tinyhead froze for a second, mouth open, and a muscle on his jaw twitched. He tried to smile but it failed. ‘A traitor to her own people,’ he gasped.

‘Just like you, then.’

She had gone too far. Tinyhead dragged her upright by her bound hands and clubbed a fist. His misshapen face had gone purple; his whole body shook. With a visible effort he withheld the blow and shoved her backwards onto the grass.

‘You think I’ve suffered all this for gold?’ he spat. ‘For the enemy’s filthy coin?’

She tried to calm her galloping heart. His outrage was genuine. She had been wrong about Tinyhead all along, and it changed everything. Clearly, she had mortally insulted him by comparing him to the woman who had killed her mother. But if he wasn’t acting out of greed, or some deep seated hatred of the Pale, what did move him?

‘Why do you do it?’ she said softly. She needed to know. She had to understand him.

For the first time, he met her eyes. ‘I love my country. I was chosen. I serve.’

He took a huge bite from the loaf, through the cavity filled with glorn, then chewed twice and swallowed. Had he eaten the Purple Pixie? How long would it take to work? She found it hard to breathe. Would it work on a Cythonian?

‘Who do you serve?’ said Tali.

It was the vital question. If he wasn’t betraying Pale for money, if he was following some Cythonian’s secret orders, then whose? And why did that person require him to lead the women of Tali’s family to a distant cellar, to be killed in a particular way by that evil, masked woman — a Hightspaller and an enemy? It made no sense. Why not kill them in Cython? Why involve the enemy at all?

Could the women of her family pose a threat to someone in Cython, a threat most safely eliminated by having them killed by the enemy? It seemed far fetched; much simpler to kill the mother and her little daughter, thus eliminating the threat forever. Why allow each daughter to grow up and have another daughter?

Tinyhead squatted and attacked the rest of the loaf. His bloodshot eyes were on her mouth again. He was definitely afraid of something about her. Her gift?

Tali attacked the problem from another direction. What if the women of her house were not a threat? What if there was something valuable in them — some promise that had to mature: their magery, perhaps? But if so, why didn’t the Cythonians take it for themselves? Why hand it to an enemy? Unless, she thought with a sudden chill, there was something wrong with this unknown gift in her family …

Her stomach began to throb. What if there was something poisoned inside her? If she escaped and went home to Hightspall, might she carry that corruption to her own people? But she could not live her life on what ifs. She had to continue with her plan.

Tinyhead swayed and fell backwards, his eyes describing ovals in their sockets. He tried to sit up but fell down again — the Purple Pixie was starting to work. Tali had to get the truth out of him quickly. Once he began to hallucinate she would not be able to trust anything he said.

She checked on the shaft. Orlyk’s reinforcements must arrive any minute, to begin the search for her. She had to be gone by then, because the well-fed, tireless Cythonians would soon run her down. They could not afford to let her warn Hightspall about the coming war.

But first Tali needed the name of the woman who had killed her mother, or the man who had aided her, though they weren’t her ultimate quarry. Iusia had called House vi Torgrist’s enemy he.

And Tinyhead had said, I love my country. I was chosen. I serve. Who did he serve, and why was it such a secret that he would risk his life rather than allow his fellow Cythonians to discover it? It had to be her real enemy.

Voices came from the top of the shaft. The Cythonians were back. Tinyhead began to grunt and gasp. His pupils were so dilated now that his eyes were watering.

Tali bent over him. ‘Who killed my mother?’

‘Lay-lay-lay-’ he gasped, white tongue lolling from his open mouth.

‘Is that the woman’s name? Layla, Ladis, Layyalie?’

‘Lay-’ Tinyhead’s eyes rolled, then focused on somewhere behind her. ‘No!’ he said, trying to scramble away on his back like a four-legged spider. ‘Get away.’

There was nothing behind her — he was beginning to hallucinate. She was almost out of time; forget the woman’s name. Tali took him by the shoulders and whispered, ‘Who do you serve?’

‘The dead — the dead — ’

Tinyhead convulsed so violently that she was knocked aside, then stood up and began to reel about, waving his arms and bellowing incoherently. ‘M — M — Master — ’

Someone shouted, ‘I heard something, over there,’ from the direction of the shaft. Orlyk.

Tali only had seconds to get the name. Still hidden behind the boulders, she said, ‘Who is your master?’

‘Master …’

Tinyhead jerked like a loose-stringed marionette, then his left arm stilled and, moving at a calm purpose at odds with the rest of his uncontrollable body, he drew from his pouch the blue ovoid he’d been toying with earlier. It was glowing again.

‘Master? Help me, Master.’

His hand smashed the ovoid against the right side of his blistered forehead and blue light fled in all directions, leaving a small blue-green blob like thick jelly stuck to his brow. His dilated pupils contracted to pinpoints, swung onto Tali and focused like twin telescopes.

She gasped, for the air had gone so frigid that her lungs crackled with each breath. His eyes had turned an eerie yellow and someone was looking out of them, someone cold as death, patient as time, radiating rage and an implacable determination. The House vi Torgrist’s enemy had found her.

‘The name!’ hissed Tali, praying that the Purple Pixie still had some influence over Tinyhead.

‘Master — is … is — ’

With a boiling hiss, the blob vanished. Smoke rose from a small circle burned deep into Tinyhead’s forehead, then something white and gluey squirted from his left ear. He swayed in a circle but remained on his feet.

A piercing pain stabbed through Tali’s own brow. Her head began to throb like a beating heart and suddenly she felt exposed, naked, vulnerable. Her enemy knew where she was, yet she knew nothing about him.

Behind her, the Cythonians were shouting down the shaft for reinforcements, yelling at Tinyhead, gasping, choking.

Whatever he knew about her enemy, it was lost.

And Tali had but seconds to get away.