She threw her head back, proudly meeting his eyes, staring him down. She wasn’t bluffing. Blathy was a terrible, vindictive woman, but a magnificent one too — she was prepared to risk everything on her estimate of his character, and face the consequences if she was wrong.
“What do I care if you live or die?” he muttered.
“You’re chivalrous, Deadhand. With my death on your conscience, you’ll burn with guilt.”
“You’re assuming I have a conscience.”
“When it comes to dealing with women, you’re weak. It’s your curse.”
There was nothing to say. He walked out, cursing his folly. I am weak, he thought, and she’s beaten me. How will I ever get rid of her now?
His wrist was aching worse than ever. He manually flexed the fingers of his dead hand, then rubbed the inflamed scar where it joined the healthy flesh of his wrist. It did not ease the pain. If there had been more of Tali’s healing blood, might it have saved his hand?
He had not thought about her in ages. In truth, he’d avoided thinking about Tali because her small betrayals — notably, not telling him about Lord and Lady Ricinus’s treasonous plan to assassinate the chancellor — had been too painful. Now he realised that her failings paled beside his own.
He flexed his fingers again. Why had his rejoined hand worked so well, then gone dead? He should never have used his own blood to paint with. Had the prophetic mural ended the life of his hand?
In the past, Rix had often painted things he did not want to see, yet painting had also been his main solace in childhood. It had been the one thing that had not been bought by the wealth of House Ricinus. He wanted to paint now. No — to get the insoluble problems of Glynnie and Blathy out of his head he needed to paint. Even something crude, which was all he could manage left-handed, would be better than nothing.
He turned and went up to see the castellan.
“Paintbrushes?” said Swelt, as though he’d never heard of such arcane objects. He peeled a dried fig off a string, popped it in his mouth and contemplated another. “Why would you want paintbrushes?”
“Painting helps me to think,” said Rix. “Do you have any artist’s brushes in the stores?”
“Certainly not. But…” Swelt masticated another fig, like a cow chewing its cud. “In the days when the great dame had ladies to stay, some of them used to paint. I’ll see what I can find.”
He lumbered out, and shortly returned, red in the face and gasping for breath, bearing a handful of brushes in one balloon-like hand and a rack of six little paint pots in the other.
Rix took them and thanked him. “Where did the ladies paint?”
“Out on the lawns, when the weather was clement. In the solar when it was cold or wet. Splendid light in the solar, they used to say.”
“Not at this time of night,” said Rix. “Is there a high room somewhere, quiet and away from everything else?”
“The great dame was fond of looking at the stars from her observatory,” said Swelt. “It’s a hundred and eighty steps up the rear tower — the one without a dome. You won’t mind if I give you directions?”
Rix preferred it. He took the rusty old key Swelt was holding out, a bracket of candles, the paint pots and brushes and some oil, and headed up the tower.
The observatory was open, windy and miserably cold, though in his present mood that suited Rix. Cold not only numbed his wrist, it also occupied his mind and turned off his endlessly cycling worries. About Glynnie, and the enemy, and all the other problems he had created for himself and could do nothing about.
He had no paper, no canvas, no board, but that didn’t matter. Rix was happy to paint on the pale stone. It would fade in months, and weather away in years, though that didn’t bother him either — it was the sheer act of creation that mattered, not what was done with the work afterwards.
He unfastened the lids of the paint pots, resurrected the desiccated contents by stirring with a little oil, took a handful of brushes, not sure which one to use, then out of habit thrust the largest brush through the hooked fingers of his dead hand.
And the fingers moved.
CHAPTER 29
Rix dropped the brush and stared at his dead hand in the yellow candlelight. His heart was thundering. Were his fingers less grey than before? It was hard to tell in this light, though he thought they were.
What was going on?
He flexed his fingers, one by one. This time they moved more easily and he felt a tingling pain in the middle finger. They were definitely pink now, though he could not imagine it would last. It had to be some cruel trick of the magery that had rejoined hand to wrist. But oh, the joy of holding a brush again.
He stirred in more oil until the paint was the right consistency, fretting at the time it was taking and afraid his hand would go dead. He mixed paint on the flat mount of a sundial, took some black on the largest brush and swept it across the wall. Rix eyed it for a minute or two, decided it was a meaningless swirl and rubbed it off with the heel of his hand.
He began again. And again rubbed it off.
Rix clamped his left hand around Maloch’s hilt, in case its protective magery had something to do with his previous painting, and blanked his mind.
Blathy appeared in his inner eye, imperiously naked, daring him to throw her out. Rix groaned and blanked his mind again.
He scrawled on the wall a third time, went to rub out the black marks then stopped with his right hand outstretched. Was that a figure in full flight? Or someone leaping into a pool, arms and legs spread? Or a man roaring in fury? Yes, definitely a man.
But the more he thought about it, the more inspiration was draining out of him. His artistic gift was intuitive and analysis always defeated it. Don’t ask what the man is doing. Don’t try to paint what you’re thinking. Concentrate on something else and let your painter’s hand, your magical, sometimes-live-and-sometimes-dead hand, paint what it sees. Concentrate on striking a blow against Lyf that will shake his confidence and boost Hightspall’s shattered morale.
He was painting unconsciously now, his eyes unfocused, indifferent to what he was doing, totally absorbed by a developing plan.
Rix was a gifted warrior of the rarest sort — not just enormously strong, but fast and dexterous too. And his tutors had been the best in the land. He had never been beaten in a fight and, with the enchanted sword in his hand, even his left hand, he was almost invincible.
Almost, he reminded himself. Pride leads to bad outcomes.
His first action on entering the fortress had been to review its defences, and Rix knew there was no immediate threat. No roving band of villains would dare attack such a well-fortified place while he was in charge.
At some stage the enemy would come after him, though moving troops in winter was difficult and it could take a fortnight to march a sizeable force here. In that time he had to unite the fortress behind him, and the best way to do that was by proving himself against the enemy.
He would lead Leatherhead’s fifty men down the mountain road in darkness and attack the enemy garrison at Jadgery, ten miles away. House Ricinus once held a manor near Jadgery, and Rix had spent several weeks in the area when he was fifteen. He had roamed all over the place and knew the land and the town well.
As he painted, he planned the route of the march and how he would attack the garrison. Were fifty men enough? Ideally, he needed a lot more attackers than there were defenders, but he dared take no more from here; he could not leave Garramide undefended. How could he get more?
The clatter of the falling brush roused him from his reverie. A minute ago his hand had been pink and warm, but it had suddenly gone cold, as if all the blood had withdrawn from it. His fingers were stiff and blue. Was the painting finished? It was hard to tell in this light.