He was watching the wall, dreading that his mural would reappear from the freshly exposed stone, when Tali came stumbling up in her nightgown. Her eyes were raw, her pale skin looked as though it had been scrubbed with a brick and her blonde hair was all a’tangle.
She stared at the bare wall, looked around wildly, then located him in the darkness ten feet away. “Rix?”
“What?” he snapped. Why could he never be left alone?
“I’ve been a fool.”
“You’ve been a fool, Tobry’s been a fool, I’ve been a fool. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“I’m a bigger one,” she wailed. She sank to the snow-covered flagstones, put her head in her hands and wept.
Rix stared at her, unnerved. Tali had suffered more and endured more than anyone he could name, yet of all the women he had known, she was the only one he had never seen cry.
“What is it?” he said, falling to his knees beside her.
He held her while she gasped out the dreadful story, covering the front of his coat with tears, and mucus from her running nose.
When she finished, he let out a strangled bark of laughter.
She thrust him away furiously, sure that he was mocking her, and stood up. Rix landed on his back, suppressing the urge to roar like a madman.
“We’re a trio, no doubt about it,” he said. “Here I am, desperately hacking my mural off the wall, terrified it’ll reappear out of nothing and call me to serve a dead man. While, downstairs, you’re carving up the man you love like a beast for slaughter.”
“It’s not funny,” she said, still sniffling.
“Our stupidity is hilarious. How could you imagine it would succeed? Any threat to a shifter always makes them shift to the more deadly form.”
“It started to work back in Caulderon.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Back then, Tobry had only been a shifter for an hour; the curse wouldn’t have taken properly. And he was fully conscious, the rational man in control. And,” Rix said pointedly, “you weren’t hacking a bloody great gash in him with your knife.”
“Had to try,” she said, almost inaudibly.
“No, you didn’t. Tobry refused you more than once. He explained why it couldn’t work, and so did Holm.”
“How do you know?”
“I make a point of talking to the people in my house. Why won’t you ever listen, Tali? Tobry’s shifted too many times; he’s run with the beasts and been one of them. His nature is fixed and can’t be changed, so promise me you won’t try again.”
“I promise.”
“No, look me in the eye when you say that.”
“I won’t try to heal Tobry with my blood again.”
“Do you think I’m stupid, Tali?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Say it properly, without leaving yourself an out — like healing magery.”
She swallowed, looked down. He caught her jaw in his big hand and tilted her face up. “Look me in the eye.”
She did so. “All right. I won’t try to heal Tobry again — with blood or magery.”
“Or anything else.”
“Or anything else,” she repeated.
“I still don’t trust you, but let that be the end of it.”
“You’re not angry with me?”
“I’m furious. You could have been killed or turned into a shifter, trying to do something that never had any hope of success.”
“It’s over,” she said bleakly. “He would have killed me, Rix. Tobry would have killed me — perhaps eaten me!” She shuddered.
“It’s not him. It’s the shifter madness.”
“I know, but it’s still over between us. My love wasn’t as strong as I thought it was.”
She shivered. “I’d better go down. I’m freezing.”
He took off his coat and put it around her like a cape. It reached all the way to her feet. “Wait a minute. I’ve got something for you.”
“What?” she said dully. Tali sat in one of the chairs, pulled her feet up and wrapped the bottom of the coat around them.
Rix unwrapped a little flat parcel and handed her the miniature of Lyf. “I cleaned it up.” He brought the lantern close.
“Thank you.”
She studied the miniature. The young Lyf could be seen clearly now, dressed in kingly robes that were a little too big for him, and wearing a simple circlet of filigree silver around his brow. His face wasn’t rendered perfectly, but it made him seem younger, more vulnerable and human.
“Does it tell you what you want to know?”
“Not immediately.”
“Some of the paint had flaked off,” said Rix. “I had to touch it up here and there. Had the devil of a job matching the colours — especially on the silver circlet — ”
Tali jumped up and ran on tiptoes to the top of the stair, her head cocked. She had acute senses: her hearing and sense of smell were better than anyone he had ever known. Survival attributes, for a little slave in Cython.
“What is it?” said Rix.
“I heard a cry.”
“Someone hurt?”
“Possibly. It was wild, savage. I… I think it sounded like Blathy.”
“Then it’s on.” Rix ran across and put himself between her and the stairs. “Are you armed?”
“No.”
He pulled a knife out of a sheath and handed it to her.
“Do you think it’s mutiny?” said Tali.
Rix slid on his steel gauntlet, drew Maloch and headed down. She followed.
“I’d say so. My informant didn’t think it would come while the enemy were outside, and neither did I. But if you were seen trying to heal Tobry, you’ve probably precipitated it.”
She stifled a moan. “I’m really sorry. I’m such a fool.”
“If so,” said Rix, taking pity on her, “you’ve done everyone a favour. If we were in our beds, they might have cut all our throats as we slept.”
She gave him a tremulous smile. “What are you going to do?”
“They’ll try to kill you, me, Tobry, Holm and Swelt first. Then everyone else known to be loyal to me. I’ll have to play it as it comes. Run and warn the others. Be careful.”
“Don’t worry,” said Tali. “In Cython, I was the best of all the slaves at not being seen.”
“To survive this, you’re going to need all the skill you have.”
Far below, the clock in the hall outside his room bonged five times, its deep note echoing up the stairwell. If I were bent on mutiny and murder, Rix thought, this is the hour I’d do it, while the overworked household lies in an exhausted sleep. More than two hours of winter dark remained to do the bloody business, gather their plunder and get away.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs on the second level, Glynnie screamed. Pain stabbed through his heart. He’d taken her for granted for so long, and had been so busy fretting about Tali and Tobry, that he hadn’t given a thought to the young woman who had served him so loyally and quietly.
The girl who had been picked on since the moment they arrived in Garramide, because no one dared to have a go at him. The mutineers could be cutting her throat right now.
Rix raced down the stairs on tiptoes. At the bottom he took off like a thunderbolt, hurtled the corridors to his chambers, then froze. The guard who had been stationed outside his doorway lay dead on the floor, blood spreading from a ragged wound in his side. The blow must have come without warning, from someone he had counted a colleague, if not a friend.
Rix sprang over him and through the door. He moved into his chambers, Maloch extended. His steel gauntlet was clenched into a fist that could have broken the granite jaw of the legendary Hero, Syrten. Two minutes had passed since Glynnie’s scream, and two minutes was a long time in a bloody mutiny.
The inner door stood open, a foot away from the wall. Rix pushed it closed. If anyone was behind it he would keep pushing until he crushed them, but he felt no resistance.
A furious rage was growing in him. He had made mistakes, plenty of them, but he had also done everything he could for the hundreds of people who called Garramide home. To have them threatened and murdered, while the enemy were camped outside the gates, was the most monstrous betrayal he could imagine.