Vengeance

CHAPTER 71

‘What about this nose?’ Rix said exhaustedly when Tobry came up. He had redone the purple-veined bulb a dozen times but could not get it right.

‘I don’t care,’ snapped Tobry, who was ghostly pale. ‘Make it a bunch of grapes, a turnip, a crystal ball — anything as long as it doesn’t look like a drunkard’s todger.’

Rix laid his brush down. ‘What’s the matter with you today?’

‘I’m so worried about Tali I can’t think.’

‘I’m worried too, but I’ve got to get this done.’

Tobry did not reply.

‘You have to help me, Tobe. I can’t do this by myself.’

Tobry checked the nose, cursorily, and sat down. ‘It’s beautiful. Perfect.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Rix fretted.

‘Just finish the damn portrait. At this stage, it doesn’t matter what his nose looks like as long as he’s got one.’

‘There is such a thing as artistic integrity.’

Tobry jumped up and took him by the shirt front. ‘Have you been out today?’

‘I’m not allowed out.’

‘Would you like a report from the front?’

‘No, but I’m sure you’re going to give me one.’

‘You’d better sit down.’

‘I don’t want to sit down.’

Tobry picked him up by the shirt front and the belt of his kilt and threw him two yards onto the couch, which skidded backwards under his weight until it hit the wall.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ said Rix. ‘I’ll sit. Spit it out, then.’

‘I’ll start at the furthest distance and work in. Firstly, our forces have been attacked and beaten in Grume, Flekkitt, Ribrose and Tydderley. Oh, and the garrison at Plegm has been wiped out to the last man and the regimental donkey.’

‘That’s bad,’ said Rix.

‘Secondly, a thousand Cythonians have swarmed up from a rat hole at Tumulus Town — ’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Yes, you have. The chancellor told you about the attack there.’

‘Oh,’ said Rix, rubbing his temples. ‘Right. Where is Tumulus Town?’

‘It’s a scabrous suburb on the south-east side of Caulderon. Thousands of tiny shanties, hundreds of alleys — ’

‘Why would they attack there?’

‘It’s a strategic hillside — the perfect base for an attack on the rest of the city. They already hold thirty streets, they’ve driven out everyone who could run and probably slaughtered those who could not, and it’ll take us five times their number to gouge them out. And the enemy are gathering. At least thirty thousand of them.’

Far more than all the armies in Caulderon. Rix was silent, shaken.

‘Then,’ Tobry went on, ‘there’s the outbreak of dead-lung in the villages near Plegm, and all around the Rat Hole.’ Rix sat upright, staring at him. ‘What, you hadn’t heard about that?’

‘I told you …’ said Rix.

‘You can imagine who’s being blamed for it,’ said Tobry. ‘The treacherous Pale. If Tali is seen outside, she’s likely to be killed on sight.’

Rix put his head in his own hands. ‘Is that all?’

‘I’ve hardly started. Packs of jackal shifters have attacked dozens of villages that we know of, and doubtless many more where no one survived to tell about it. They go for the children first. It’s horrible, Rix. Unbearable to see what they do to them — ’ Tobry’s voice cracked.

Rix shivered. Nimry, Tobry’s little brother, had been killed by a jackal shifter and Tobry had never got over it.

‘A few have even been seen in Caulderon,’ Tobry went on, blank-faced, ‘though the Gods know how they got here.’

‘I suppose the mushroom eaters sent them up through their secret tunnels.’

‘And there was an attack on the gates of Palace Ricinus, just hours after the chancellor left.’

Rix leapt up. ‘The enemy, here? Why wasn’t I told?’

Tobry lowered his voice. ‘It wasn’t the enemy. The people from Tumbrel Town next door were rioting. They’re calling for a revolution and an end to the rotten system run by the greedy noble houses.’

‘Revolution?’ whispered Rix. ‘When we’re at war? What’s Hightspall coming to?’

‘A question that might have been better asked before things came to this state,’ said Tobry. ‘Their leaders were taken and are being tortured; a hundred of the rabble were executed and the rest driven off. The disgraceful business is being hushed up, though that’s hardly the end of it. They seem to think that the nobility are using them as a wall between themselves and the enemy. Which they are. And …’

‘What?’

‘It seems as though most of the trouble is focused on Palace Ricinus.’

Rix’s gaze fell on the portrait and his father’s eyes were on him. He kicked the easel, sending it skidding around until the accusing eyes faced away.

‘I should be out there, fighting. Why am I stuck here with this monstrosity?’

‘Because it’s necessary to the survival of the family,’ said Tobry. ‘And you don’t have an heir.’

‘Tell Mother to pick a wife for me,’ Rix said recklessly. ‘I’ll marry her now and be out defending the walls in the morning.’

‘Even for a scion of one of the noble houses, that seems an unsound basis for matrimony.’

‘What the hell would you know about it?’

‘You’re right,’ said Tobry. ‘What would I know about anything?’ He walked to the top of the stairs then came back. ‘If you’re done with the portrait for now, why don’t you have another go at the sketch?’

‘I’m afraid to. I can’t face any more bad news.’

‘If you are divining Tali’s future, we need to know now.’

‘What if I make it worse?’

‘Get on with it, damn you.’

Rix sketched the windowless chamber on the whited-out canvas, clenching his jaw as he tried to reproduce what had always previously been blind inspiration; clenching so hard that his teeth began to ache. It took but thirty brushstrokes to recreate the last one, exactly as before. It was always easy to get back to the previous sketch, but every stroke after that was agony.

He stared at the two standing figures at the end of the bench as if he could force their faces and identities onto the canvas, but nothing came.

‘They’re mocking me, Tobe. They know I know, but they won’t let me remember. Do you think if I got drunk — ?’

‘With the enemy on all sides and rebellion at the palace gates, that would be a mortally bad idea.’

Rix slumped down, the brush smearing paint across his kilt.

Tobry walked back and forth in front of the sketch. ‘I’d swear that’s Tali on the bench, and she looks dead. But what have those faceless figures to do with it? Did they kill her, or are they trying to save her?’

Without realising he was doing it, he looked at Rix, consideringly.

It was as if Tobry had punched him in the mouth. My oldest friend, who knows me better than anyone and has always supported me, thinks I’m going to murder the only woman I’ve ever been friends with.

Rix buried his head in his hands. And what if he was? What if, as the nightmares whispered, he’d already done something as bad, or worse? He had never wanted a drink more. He wanted to get blind drunk — no, he wanted to be blind drunk, instantly, and never sober up. He wanted …

I will not become my father. I will not!

Tobry was walking back and forth in front of the sketch. Then he stopped. ‘What’s that in the woman’s hand?’

‘Where?’ Rix said without raising his head.

‘There. Hanging down. Looks like a pair of tongs.’

Rix went to see, and of its own volition his hand rose to the canvas, the brush making a series of small strokes there. With another brush he touched at the hair of the girl on the black bench, then another couple of dabs at the tongs, before the inspiration went as mysteriously as it had come.

‘It’s definitely tongs,’ he said, ‘and the woman is holding something in them. Something small, round, red.’

‘Not red,’ said Tobry, and his eyes were staring again, as if he was looking into his own nightmare. ‘It’s black as a caitsthe’s livers. It’s just got red on it — ’

He walked away, very fast, raking hooked fingers down his cheeks, then ran back and peered at the woman’s blonde head. ‘There’s red in her hair, too. Blood.’

‘Her hair’s almost the same shade of blonde as Tali’s,’ said Rix. ‘It’s got to be her.’

Pain spiked his chest. Was she going to die because his sketch had forecast her death? Why had he done the sketch anyway? Had the voice in his nightmares ordered him to paint it because sometimes Rix’s paintings came true? Was it fixing him onto an immoveable path that led to him killing Tali?

‘But why the tongs?’ said Tobry. ‘And — what’s that in them?’

‘The red on that black marble is her blood,’ said Rix. ‘Are they trying to put it into her head?’

Tobry blanched and whispered, ‘No!’

‘Tobe?’ cried Rix.

Tobry swallowed, let out a parched croak, then gasped, ‘Have you heard of ebony pearls?’

Rix studied the black, red-flecked object in the tongs. ‘No.’

‘I think that’s one.’

‘What are they?’

‘No one knows much about them, but there are nasty rumours …’

‘For the Gods’ sakes, spit it out.’

‘They’re the most powerfully enchanted objects ever discovered and they have a dreadful origin. They’re incredibly dangerous — any non-adept who touches one with bare skin is liable to die most unpleasantly. And they’re so priceless, I doubt that the chief magian has ever seen one.’

Rix walked around the easel, trying not to look at what he had painted. Finally he said, ‘Who has?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then why,’ said Rix, feeling sick, ‘are they putting one inside Tali’s head?’