“Nowhere to go — can’t swim ashore — find us right away — ”
“What about a boat?” said Glynnie. “There are dinghies on the shore.”
“We can’t get to them.”
“We’ll have to leave the door in a minute. It’s too big; too easily spotted.”
Glynnie’s teeth chattered again. She was trembling from the cold and her lips were blue. “Where can we go?”
“We can’t stay in the water much longer,” said Rix, kicking as hard as he could. “But we’ve no way of getting out.”
“There’s a lot of rubbish floating further out.”
The memory resurfaced — that gyre where all the timber had collected, forming a great wheel of debris on the water. If the wind hadn’t drifted it away.
A rattling sound echoed across the water, followed by a thump, then a rhythmical splashing.
“What’s that?” said Glynnie.
“Someone pulling up an anchor chain and rowing to the outlet. Then they’ll check the mooring piles…”
Another anchor chain was pulled up, and a third. The enemy must know that the escapee was Rix, and they were determined to find him. He had fought Lyf twice with Maloch, and hurt him, too. Lyf would want him dead.
“And then?” said Glynnie.
The light was fading now, though it could not save them.
“With three boats, and lanterns, they can search the whole area in half an hour, and turn over every bit of floating debris.”
Nothing would escape them. No one.
CHAPTER 7
“How fares the destruction, General?”
Lyf was perched on the wall at the top of Rix’s leaning tower, half a day after the fall of Caulderon. He was often drawn to the place, perhaps for the contrast with his reeking temple and his ever-more frantic search for the key.
“My king, a third of Palace Ricinus had been blasted down already,” said General Hillish, a squat, muscle-bound man with slash-tattoos across his forehead. A round head joined his torso without any visible neck. He stood on a box so he could see over the wall and pointed out the details.
“I have a thousand Hightspaller slaves hauling the rubble away,” Hillish continued. “Another thousand are digging out the cleared area to expose the foundations of the kings’ palace of old.”
“Very good,” said Lyf. “Before the invaders came, our palace stood there since the beginning of recorded history. Are you searching out its original stones?”
“We are, my king. Many were re-used in later buildings. I have a hundred masons checking every stone and marking all those from the kings’ palace.”
“Excellent. I’m going to rebuild it exactly the way it was before, to show that Cythe will always prevail. Where’s Rochlis?”
“Here, my king,” said General Rochlis, from the doorway.
“What progress can you report?”
“We’ve rounded up more than half the people on your list, including a goodly number of Herovians, and taken them away… to be dealt with.”
“Why did you hesitate, Rochlis?”
“My king, I’m a professional soldier. In battle I ask no quarter, and give none…”
“But?” said Lyf, irritably. One after another, his people were questioning or reinterpreting his orders.
“But putting people to death simply because they might cause trouble… my king, it…” Rochlis, an honourable man who always did his best, was struggling to find the words.
“It’s not that many,” said Lyf. “Barely two hundred.”
“Nonetheless, it turns my stomach. I’m sorry, my king.”
Lyf had once been an honourable man too. He was no longer honourable, but a good leader was careful not to drive his people too far.
“I won’t force you,” said Lyf, making his displeasure evident. “I’ll see to the executions myself.”
“My king,” said Rochlis, sweating, “I believe it to be unwise. It can only make the ones who escaped — ”
“Who escaped?” cried Lyf. “The city was sealed.”
“The chancellor and his retinue, for starters.”
“I suppose I should have expected him to get away. He’s a wily foe.”
“But he’s taken Tali with him.”
Lyf’s face froze. “How did this happen?”
“He must have had a hidden escape tunnel, further concealed by magery.”
“Find her! If the chancellor discovers that she bears the master pearl, and cuts it out, his magians might be able to command my four pearls.”
“We’re hunting her now, with every means at our disposal.”
“What about my other enemies?”
“We can’t find Rixium Ricinus,” said Rochlis.
Lyf let out a bellow of fury. “You told me the shifters had him trapped way down under the palace.”
“He killed them and disappeared.”
“One man killed a whole pack of shifters? How?”
“With that underground explosion we felt earlier. We believe he set off a sump full of stink-damp and burned them alive.”
“But not himself?”
“It’s thought that he crawled through a freshly opened fissure and found a way down into the ancient tunnels. We haven’t mapped them all yet.”
“He’s too quick, too clever,” said Lyf. “He must not escape.”
Not just because Rix was descended from that treacherous swine, Axil Grandys, who had betrayed, mutilated and murdered Lyf so long ago. And not just because Rix bore the cursed sword, Maloch, that had caused Lyf an aeon of pain and torment. Rix had fought Lyf twice, and twice had wounded him. He had a genius for escaping; he was an intuitive fighter and a leader who inspired loyalty. That made him a most dangerous man.
“Find him. And if he looks like getting away, kill him.”
CHAPTER 8
Regg carried Tali down three flights of an age-blackened stairway to a once grand, ornately decorated chamber with a carved ceiling and elaborate cornices. One half was now a fifteen-foot-wide corridor with an iron door at the far end. The other half had been divided into a dozen large, cold cells. The guard opened the fifth cell, dropped her on the bunk and locked her in.
The bunk was a mouldy palliasse, the toilet a filthy wooden bucket; the floor was puddled with water oozing from every crack in the ceiling and walls. The side and rear walls were stone, but the front wall was made of wrought-iron bars that writhed and twisted like a lunatic’s nightmare. Large portholes had been carved through the side walls and she could see into the adjoining cells, though the portholes were also meshed with tormented iron bars.
It was a struggle to stand up, but she had to know where she was. Tali tottered across to the right porthole and clung to the bars. Five or six cells away, a bent old man was shuffling back and forth. She called out several times but he did not look up. None of the other cells were occupied.
She wrapped her coat around her and lay on the palliasse. How long before the chancellor sent another healer to take her blood? He was a vengeful man, and how better to punish Tali than by rendering her so weak that she could not cause any more trouble?
She closed her eyes, longing for the oblivion of sleep, but it would not come. Enslaved again, and it was all her fault. Everything was her fault.
“Tali?” said a shrill little voice she had not heard in more than a week.
She looked up. “Rannilt?”
Two of the chancellor’s personal guards were at the door, one working the massive lock while the other held the child by the arm. She was a skinny, knock-kneed little thing, though not as skinny as the last time Tali had seen her.
Rannilt turned to her, frowned, looked up at the guards questioningly, then back.
“Where’s Tali?” she said, taking a dragging step through the door. The guards locked it and turned away.
“I’m right here,” said Tali. What was the matter?
Rannilt stretched out a skinny finger. A little golden bubble formed at her fingertip, some product of her unfathomable gift for magery. It separated, drifted towards Tali and burst on the tip of her nose with a small, cold pop, and Tali felt something stir inside her, her own buried magery. But it subsided again.