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“I think Lyf stole her healing gift in the caverns under Precipitous Crag.”

“Is that so? My spies tell me Rannilt has nightmares and comes to you for comfort.”

“Not the kind of comfort you’re imagining,” said Tali, and showed him her scabbed wrist.

The chancellor stared. “She’s taking your blood?”

“I love the child, and I owe her my life, but…”

“But she’s like a little parasite, sucking your blood.”

“Yes, she is!” Tali cried, rising abruptly and lurching, stiff-legged, around the chairs. “You can’t imagine how much I resent it.” She used her passion to try and conceal the coming lie. “I’m not taking it any more — letting her take it,” she amended hastily.

His enigmatic smile troubled her. He knew she was concealing something. She had to give him more.

“There’s something else,” said Tali. “About Lyf.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve seen him.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I–I connected to Lyf after Dibly took my blood the first time. He’s searching for something, lost long ago.”

“What?” the chancellor said sharply.

“Some kind of a key. The ghost king with Lyf said, The key must be found. Without it, all you’ve done is for nothing.”

“A key lost long ago?” The chancellor leapt up and paced around the brazier. “Do you mean from the time he was abducted by the Five Heroes?”

That hadn’t occurred to Tali. “I suppose it must be.”

“What kind of a key? To a lock? Or a puzzle?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you’ve known this for how long?”

“A week or so.”

Purple flooded his face. He was angrier than she had ever seen him. “Yet you kept it from me.”

“You’ve treated me and my friends like enemies.”

“I’m trying to win the war.”

“Not hard enough!”

“If I’d known this a week ago I might have been able to do something. Find out!”

“What?” she said, shivering.

“Do whatever it takes. I’ve got to know what the key is.”

“I–I’ll do my best, but — ”

“I don’t want your best,” he said savagely. “I want the answer, now!”

“It’s dangerous. Lyf — ”

“Not as dangerous as I am when people fail me. We’ll start with another blood-letting. Right now!”

CHAPTER 11

Glynnie’s knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the floating door. She was staring back towards the lake shore as if expecting to hear someone cry out that they had found a body. Benn’s.

In the other direction the edge of the wheel of flotsam, thirty or forty yards away, stretched further than Rix could see. Mist was rising everywhere now, banners streaming up into the icy air to be drifted into fog banks by the breeze. It would soon be dark.

He had lost sight of the dinghies, though he could hear the searchers talking and the gunwales knocking together. They must have anchored above the outlet to the drainpipe, sending divers down to see if any of the escapees had drowned there. The search would not take long.

“We’d better abandon the door,” said Rix. “It’s too easily spotted.”

“Don’t think I can last much longer.” Glynnie’s teeth chattered. She clenched her jaw.

Rix didn’t have much left either. Between the cold, the pain in his wrist, the lack of sleep and the battering his body had taken in recent days, his strength was fading.

But he wasn’t beaten yet. “Come here. Put your arms around me.”

“Lord?”

“It’ll keep the cold away.”

She bit her lip. Was she afraid of him? No, Glynnie was still in awe of House Ricinus, and the mighty lord that Rix was in her eyes, rather than the dishonoured man he was in his own. He pulled her against his chest with his free arm and held her tightly, and after a while she put her arms around him and clasped her hands behind his back. The pain in his wrist faded a little.

“You’re warm!” she said in amazement.

“I was swimming hard.”

As warmth spread between them, Rix found himself clinging to her for comfort. All his life he had known where he belonged — the heir to a noble house — and where everyone around him fitted into the vast entity that had been House Ricinus. Now he had no house, no family, no place, and in this savage land a man who belonged nowhere was prey to all.

They pulled apart at the same moment. Pain lanced into Rix’s wrist bones.

“Can you swim out to the flotsam, Glynnie? You’ve got to be able to do it by yourself…”

If I’m killed, lay unspoken between them.

She looked that way and her small shoulders hunched. “I–I’ll try.”

It was little more than a dog paddle at first, but as she swam Glynnie’s stroke changed to imitate his. She was painfully slow; he could have towed her there in half the time, but she was a good learner. Her courage and determination were an inspiration.

They limped thirty yards before they reached the edge of the slowly wheeling gyre of debris. Glynnie was tiring, starting to thrash.

“Can’t go — any — ” She was gasping, making no progress.

Rix pushed a floating plank to her. She clung to it the way she had clung to him earlier.

He surveyed the gyre. There were scores of uprooted trees, a timber yard’s worth of lumber, hundreds of pieces of furniture — some broken, others unmarked — empty bottles of many sizes, shapes and colours, an inflated wine skin that might have been used as an emergency float, a white china teapot with a red rose painted on the side, bobbing its handle and spout. The water seemed thicker here and had an unpleasant red-brown tinge. And a smell Rix did not want to dwell on.

Dead seabirds, white wings spread upon the water, eyes pecked out. A drowned goat with bloated belly and four legs standing vertical. And bodies, some broken by the force of the tidal wave, some apparently unharmed, but all dead and eyeless, as if they could not bear to look upon the horror that had befallen them.

The gyre might have been a hundred yards across, or thrice that far. He could not see the further edge through the mist. It was the best hiding place they had, though only a miracle could save them from a determined search by three boats.

Rix looked over his shoulder but the mist had closed in along the shore as well; he could not see anything there. He could hear the faintest rasping though, the rhythm unmistakeable to one who had spent his youth in boats.

Glynnie caught the direction of his gaze. “What’s that funny noise?”

“Rowing. They’ve packed sacking into the rowlocks to muffle the oars.”

“They’re coming after us?”

“Yes.”

Rix caught the drifting wine skin. “Put this under your shirt. It’ll hold you up…”

She held onto it to support herself. “If the cold gets me, a float isn’t going to help.”

They headed towards the centre of the gyre, passing more broken timber, more dead animals, more bodies. One was a boy, floating face down with his arms and legs rigidly outstretched. And he had red hair -

“Benn?” said Glynnie in a cracked voice.

She sagged on the wine skin, her weight pressing it beneath the surface, then let go and it shot out of the water. She began to thrash towards the boy, making little progress and far too much noise. Rix caught her by the shoulder. She swung around and punched him in the nose, then flailed off. He caught her by the hair, holding her until she exhausted herself.

“It’s not him, Glynnie.”

“How would you know?” she sobbed. “I got to be sure.”

He didn’t want to look at any more bodies, and definitely didn’t want to see what time and predators had done to an innocent child, but there was no help for it. He swam with her to the body and turned it over.

She gave a muffled shriek, then turned away and clung to him, desperately. “That poor little boy.”

Rix turned the lad face down again. It seemed more respectful. He swam away, carrying her with him, to a pine table floating on its side.