Rannilt started. “No!” she cried.
“He’s looking for something really important. I need to find out what it is.”
“You can’t ask me to look,” Rannilt said shrilly, and covered her face with her hands. “You can’t! You can’t!”
“What’s the matter?”
“He’ll get into my head again. He’ll rob my gift. It’s horrible, horrible…”
Tali cursed herself. Why hadn’t she thought before she opened her mouth? She hugged the trembling child. “I wasn’t going to ask you to look. I just thought you might be able to make it easier for me.”
“No,” Rannilt said faintly. “Nooo…”
Tali held her tightly, thinking hard. The only other way to spy on Lyf was with magery, if she could recover hers, but it would be taking a terrible risk.
Rannilt’s mood went steadily downhill after that, and became ever worse as the afternoon waned. She was dreading the night.
“Can I push my bunk against yours?” she asked around 4 p.m., when the distant light from a slit window above the stair was fading. Most of the lanterns had been extinguished to save lamp oil and it was almost dark in the cell.
“Of course,” said Tali.
In the night something roused Tali, a rustling in the straw. Just a mouse, she thought until Rannilt began to kick and bang her head on her pillow. She had crept closer in the night and was now lying against Tali.
She put an arm around the child and she lay still. But as Tali was dozing off again, Rannilt moaned, went rigid, then began to thrash so violently that Tali couldn’t hold her.
“Rannilt, wake up. It’s just a nightmare. You’re all right.”
Rannilt shot upright and stared around wildly, the faint light from the corridor reflecting eerily off her wet eyes. She shuddered, groaned, then seized Tali’s wrist and sank her teeth into it, at the little scar where Tali had drawn her own blood in that ill-fated attempt to heal Tobry on top of Rix’s tower.
Before she could pull away, Rannilt’s sharp little teeth broke the skin and the tip of her tongue began lapping at the wound, taking Tali’s healing blood for herself.
She tried to pull free. “Rannilt, what are you doing? Stop it, this instant.”
Rannilt’s bony fingers were locked around Tali’s wrist so tightly that, in her weakened state, she could not tear them off. Rannilt pressed her mouth over Tali’s wrist and bit down hard, hungry for her blood. No, desperate for it.
Tali swung her free hand at the child, smacking her across the face. Rannilt let go, swallowed then lay back and slipped into a peaceful sleep — if, indeed, she had ever woken.
Tali stumbled across to the table and collapsed into a chair, shaking so violently that she had to cling to the table. It could almost have been her nightmare, save for the pain in her torn wrist and the tang of blood in the cold air.
Had Rannilt reverted to the time when Lyf had been stealing her gift to strengthen himself, and unwittingly — or wittingly? — revealing the nightmares of his own distant past? Could Lyf use his connection with Rannilt to get at Tali? Was that what he was up to now? If he could, spying on him with magery would be the height of folly.
Or did Tali’s blood have some other value? Of course it did — while the master pearl remained inside her, it was bathed in her blood, and perhaps that was the connection Lyf really wanted.
Or was she over-analysing it? Was Rannilt subconsciously attempting to undo the damage Lyf had done to her the only way she could, by stealing Tali’s healing blood?
Whatever the reason, Tali thought guiltily, I precipitated it.
“I’ve spread a cover story about you being a traitor and spy,” the chancellor said the next morning, “to ensure neither the guards nor the prisoners will have anything to do with you. I’m sure you won’t mind.” He bared his crooked teeth.
His guards had come for her at first light. Rannilt had not stirred, which put off one problem, at least — what to say to the child when she woke. Tali looked down at the wounds on her wrist. Was she being used more ill by her enemies, like the chancellor, or her friends?
“I’m sure you don’t give a damn either way,” she snapped.
“No, I don’t.”
A burly guard stood on watch near the door. “When I first met you,” said Tali, “you surrounded yourself with women. How come you have male guards now?”
“After you deceived me and let me down, I came to realise that men are more reliable — at least in wartime. Enough talking. Eat!” A large table was set in a corner, by a window covered in a translucent membrane, perhaps the stretched stomach of a cow or buffalo. “You’re weak, and that’s no good to me.”
“You want to fatten me up so you can milk more of my blood.”
“So I do,” he said jovially. “The blood of a weakling is unlikely to have strong healing powers.”
The words stung, which doubtless was his intention.
“I’m just a living tool to you, something to be used then thrown away once I’m broken.”
When he did not react, she added, nastily, “Are you winning the war yet?”
“I’m not your enemy. Why do you keep fighting me?”
To distract you from thinking about the pearls, and reaching the conclusion that I bear the master pearl.
“How does it go, then? What’s your latest disaster?”
His lips tightened. He went to the table, which was set with an array of covered dishes at one end, and a small plate containing two slices of black bread and a thin wedge of green cheese at the other. After gesturing her to a chair, he sat, nibbled at a corner of black bread, then tossed it aside and picked up a yellow oval object.
Tali took a helping of white fish cooked in a spicy sauce. It tasted wonderful. Since her escape from slavery, almost everything did.
“The only news I’ve had in the past week has come via this speaking egg,” said the chancellor, fondling the yellow ovoid, “though I’m not sure it’s reliable any more. Now that Lyf has four ebony pearls, he might be able to corrupt the messages my spies send me. Or send lying messages of his own.”
His eyes rested on Tali as he said “ebony pearls’, and her heart skipped a beat. Did he know she bore the master pearl? Was he toying with her for his own amusement? It would be just like him.
The chancellor grimaced and set the ovoid down. He did not speak for some time, but the lines on his face deepened and the flesh seemed to sag.
“I don’t know where to turn, Tali. He’s intercepting my couriers and killing my spies. How can I fight a war when I can’t find out what’s going on?”
She didn’t answer.
“My only experienced generals died in the storming of Caulderon,” he went on. “Who can I turn to? And if I had good leaders, where could I strike that would make any difference?”
“You had a good man, one of the best. You cut his right hand off and left him to die.”
“Rix betrayed his own mother,” he snapped, nettled for the first time. “How could I trust a man like that?”
“You already knew Lady Ricinus was plotting high treason. I told you myself.”
“That’s not the point. He informed on her.”
“You’re a swine, Chancellor! You drove Rix to it, coldly and deliberately, because you were determined to crush House Ricinus. You gave him an impossible choice — between his mother and his dearest friend. She was a monster who abused him cruelly. Is it Rix’s fault that he cared more for Tobry than he did her?”
“It’s entirely understandable,” said the chancellor. “But how could I trust him?”
“For a man with his back to the wall, you’re overly discriminating. A good leader crafts his plans to take advantage of his officers’ strengths and compensate for their failings.”
He leaned back, folded his hands over his scrawny chest, and she saw his first genuine smile since their flight from Caulderon. “You speak boldly for a helpless prisoner. Perhaps next time I should insert the cannula into your carotid.”
The long bruise on her neck pulsed. “If I get hold of it, I’m liable to insert it through your larynx and out the back of your spine.”