Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2 (18 page)

The chancellor carried out his threat at once. His guards hauled Tali down to his chambers and he called a junior healer, who took blood while he stood beside her. Tali watched it pumping into the bottle and thought that it did not look as red as previously. Had they taken too much? Was the new blood she was making no good?

“Anything?” said the chancellor.

“No. But when it happened before —”

“You kept it from me. Try harder.”

“I must protest,” said the healer.

“Get out!” said the chancellor.

She went, tight-lipped.

He bent over Tali until his crooked nose touched hers. “If you’d told me when it happened, I might have been able to find this key. But all my spies in Caulderon are dead now. All I have is you, and if I have to break you to get this secret, I will.”

Tali fought down her panic, and her terror of another reliving of her ancestor’s murder, and focused on her memory of the temple – the skull-shaped chamber, the freshly scrubbed stone walls. Suddenly the master pearl began to beat in her head like a pumping heart. Her vision blurred and she was in another time, another place. But it wasn’t the temple, not as it was now.

It was a horribly familiar place, despite it being in darkness, for it reeked of mould and damp, rotting wood and the stench of poisoned, decaying rats. She was looking back in the murder cellar underneath Palace Ricinus, the chamber that had once, in the distant days of old Cythe, been the Cythian kings’ private temple. The place where they had worked their king-magery to heal the land and its people.

But Axil Grandys had violated the temple and, beginning nineteen hundred years later, the lords and ladies of Palace Ricinus had debauched it by committing foul murders there. Four murders. Tali’s closest female ancestors.

A pinpoint of light on the far side of the cellar grew to a candle flame, flickering as it was lit and raised high. But this was not the cellar as Tali knew it, piled high with rotten crates, empty barrels and other discarded things. This cellar was almost empty, the only furnishings being a line of stone bins along the walls and a simple wooden bench in the centre —

Sulien’s heart was beating furiously; the floor was damp under her bare feet. She looked left, looked right. Why had she been led here, so far from home? And why, oh, why hadn’t she listened to Mimoy? Her mother had warned her to trust no one, but the young man had been so handsome and charming and kind, and all her life she had yearned for a little kindness. There was precious little among the Pale slaves, who treated each other more ruthlessly than their slave masters did.
 

The young man had disappeared the moment she had entered the room. Sulien had called out to him but her voice had echoed so alarmingly in the vast, empty room that she dared not call again. Yet the silence was worse.
 

Crack!

The sound raised the little hairs on the back of Sulien’s neck, for it was like the sound their masters’ chymical chuck-lashes made when they went off across a slave girl’s bare back. Sulien had not felt one herself, for Mimoy had taught her the rule of survival harshly – obey or suffer.
 

Her mother was a hard woman but a good teacher, and until today Sulien had not disobeyed any of her lessons. Even now, as a grown woman with a little daughter at home in the Empound, she was afraid of her mother. What had made Mimoy so hard and suspicious? Did it have to do with the terrible scar across the top of her head, which she would never talk about?
 

Another candle appeared to Sulien’s left, a third to her right. A stocky, well-dressed woman carried one candle, a beanpole of a man another. She could not see who carried the third candle but she could smell him: the pungent odour of a man dehydrated to stringy meat, twanging lengths of taut sinew, and brittle bone. He was the one she was really afraid of.
 

Sulien revolved on her small feet. What could they want of her? It had to be a mistake – she was just a little slave, of no value to anyone, and surely if she told them so they would let her go.
 

She smoothed down her sweat-drenched loincloth, raked her fingers through her blonde hair to tidy it, then put on a feeble smile and stepped into the light.
 

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Sulien and I’m lost. Can you tell me the way back to the Pales’ Empound?”
 

The desiccated man stopped, staring at her, then rubbed his forearms. Flakes of dry skin whirled up through the light of his candle. He swallowed; he seemed nervous. And so was the beanpole on her right. He did not want to be there. The stocky woman was the one driving them. Sulien turned to her and stretched out a hand. Surely, as one woman to another
—
 

“How dare you approach me!” raged the stocky woman, “Filthy Pale swine. Take her and hold her down.”
 

Only now did Sulien understand how naïve she had been, how foolish to trust the handsome young man, but it was too late. She tried to run but the tall man darted and caught her with arms almost the length of her own body. He held her tightly, then stood there as if he didn’t know what to do with her.
 

The woman was another matter. She struck Sulien in the belly so hard that it drove all the wind out of her. She slumped in the man’s arms while he carried her to the bench and laid her on it.
 

“You paid a fortune for the little bitch, Deroe,” the woman said to the desiccated man. “Come and take it.”
 

Deroe’s mouth worked and his shoulders heaved, as though he was going to be sick, but he got out his bone gouging tools and moved slowly towards Sulien
—
 

With a convulsion of horror, Tali separated from her great-great-grandmother and tried to block out the vision, the nightmare. But she could not; it only made things worse. At the same time that Tali was herself observing the sickening violence being done to her great-great-grandmother, she was also Sulien —

Trapped.
 

Helpless.
 

Watching the hideous tools approach the top of her head.
 

The victim having no idea what her captors’ intentions were until the toothed tube ground into the top of her skull. Her great-great-granddaughter knowing all too well what was going to happen and being utterly powerless to stop it, for it had happened almost a hundred years ago.
 

Sulien screaming and writhing until, suddenly, the cord between the present and the past snapped, taking her with it.
 

Tali was sitting upright, gasping. Her fists were clenched so tightly that she could not open them, and the pain in the top of her head went on and on, as if that ebony pearl – the very first – had been gouged out of her.

The nightmare was so much worse because she had seen the same thing happen to her mother. And because two weeks ago it had almost been repeated on herself.

“Well?” said the chancellor.

She couldn’t tell him what she’d seen. If he knew that another of her ancestors had been killed for a pearl, he would realise she bore the master pearl. But she had to tell him something. “I just relived my mother’s murder.” Her heart was still racing. “I can’t look again!”

“Not today, at any rate,” said the chancellor, ominously.

The guards took her back to her cell. Half of them had occupants now. On Tali’s right was a black-clad, sour-faced fellow who wore a perpetual scowl when he looked at her; she called him the Sullen Man. Evidently he knew her reputation as a traitor.

On the other side was an astonishingly pretty young woman whose mass of shining black curls hung halfway down her back. She had been imprisoned for some unspecified theft or fraud. Her name was Lizue and she seemed remarkably cheerful about her plight, evidently thinking that she would soon be released. Given her charm and physical assets, Tali did not doubt it.

Lizue and Rannilt were already chattering through the wall though, presumably because of Tali’s reputation, Lizue did not speak to her.

Tali lay on her bed, still shaken by the reliving. She tried to ignore the smouldering gaze of the Sullen Man, then realised that his eyes were fixed on Lizue who, as far as Tali could tell, had never once glanced his way.

Built into a niche in the far wall of the corridor outside Tali’s cell was a ten-foot-high water clock, a beautiful device made of brass, with three pink and gold dials, one for the hours, one for the days and one for the months. It was incredibly ancient, and must have been of great value, for an attendant appeared each morning to rub it down and polish its rock crystal dial covers.

Tali wondered what it was doing down here. It seemed out of place next to the cells, until she remembered that this level had once been a grand, ornate chamber. It had been divided up into cells at a later date. The water clock kept stopping, however, and, not long after she was returned to the cell, a man called Kroni was sent to fix it.

He was an oldish fellow, lean and middling tall, with sparse grey hair and a short grey beard. His face and hands were weathered the colour of cedar wood, and his fingers were crisscrossed with pale scars. He spent hours taking parts out of the clock and putting them back, to no avail. He’s not a clock mechanic, Tali thought. And I’ll bet his name isn’t
Kroni
, either – that’s too obvious a reference to time. The chancellor must have sent him down to spy on me.

Well, he wasn’t going to see anything, and she could not put off talking to Rannilt any longer. She was drawing on the wall with a piece of white stone.

“Child?” Tali said, “I need to talk to you.”

Rannilt was so absorbed in her drawing that she did not look up for some time. “Yes, Grizel?”

Mutely, Tali held out her bitten and scabbed wrist.

“What happened?” said Rannilt. “Does it hurt? Let me heal it.”

“No!” Tali said sharply.

Rannilt’s lower lip trembled.

“Your healing gift is gone, child.”

“No, it’s not!” Rannilt wailed.

“Yes, it is. Madam Dibly told me. Lyf must have stolen it.”

“He didn’t! He didn’t! He didn’t!” Rannilt wept.

“Anyway,” said Tali, discontinuing the fruitless argument, “You did this to me and it can’t ever —”

“Don’t say that!” Rannilt howled. “It’s not true. You saved my life. I’d never hurt you. Never, ever,
ever
!”

Tali tried again. “Look, I do understand, but —”

“No, no, no! Why are you bein’ so horrible?”

Rannilt collapsed on her bunk, weeping so piteously that Tali said no more.

The child had another nightmare that night, though the first Tali knew of it was when Rannilt’s teeth sank into her wrist. She tried to push Rannilt away but she scrambled onto Tali’s chest, pressing her down with two bony knees and holding her wrist with both hands while she lapped at her blood with quiet, clinging desperation. Tali whacked at her feebly, then Rannilt toppled off onto her own bunk and was instantly asleep.

Tali did not think she would ever dare sleep again. Her wrist was aching, the top of her head throbbing and the pearl was again beating like a frantic heart. For a few horrified seconds she thought the loss of blood was going to drive her into reliving Sulien’s murder again.

The feeling passed but the terror did not. What if Lyf was trying to get at her through Rannilt?

Tali sat up all the following night, determined to repulse Rannilt when next she came to her veins, but the girl had no nightmares and slept soundly all night. Tali snatched what sleep she could during the day after that. She felt sure she was safe in daytime. Safe from her, at least, but not from the chancellor. What would he do next time? She could not face that nightmare again.

“You’re looking mighty well today, Rannilt,” said Kroni, the clock attendant, who had his hands in the bowels of the clock mechanism again. “It must be good to be back with your old friend,
Grizel
.”

“No, it’s the diet,” Tali said sourly.

The old man glanced at her. “Doesn’t seem to be doing
you
any good.”

“Every bloodsucker in the fortress is using me. Most of all, the chancellor.”

“I’m sure he’s doing his best for Hightspall,” said Kroni.

“There is no Hightspall!” she snapped. “The enemy is tearing down the best of it and a hundred vultures are making civil war over the rest.”

“How would you know that,” he said in a steely voice, “when you’re confined to your cell with no visitors?”

“Just a guess.” Tali turned away, her heart beating erratically. She knew because the chancellor had confided in her. Why, why had she blurted it out to his spy?

She lay on her bunk and closed her eyes. Kroni was right about Rannilt, though. Every day she looked stronger; less scrawny and waif-like. The scars on her arms and legs, where the other slave girls had tormented her, were fading and her formerly sallow skin had developed a golden bloom. Healing blood indeed.

And of all the people who had taken her blood, Rannilt was the one Tali did not begrudge. She would have given it to her willingly.

She could not but resent the way it was taken, however.

“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.