The gentle air current cooled her sweat-drenched skin. One of the treadmill runners made a faint squeal-squeak. It needed greasing but the best grease in Cython came from the fat of dead slaves and there was never enough — ‘Slave!’ roared Banj, from inside.
Tali jumped. Cythonians never called the Pale by their names but she knew he meant her. The treadmill walkers did not look up — if she was in trouble, they wanted to know nothing about it.
What was she to say? Tali was better than most slaves at putting on an act and telling convincing lies. A heap of spilled compost lay against the wall, so she dirtied her feet in it and headed into the grottoes, holding her belly.
Banj, a compact, handsome man built like a bag of boulders, held up the dead baby. ‘Slave, what do you know about this?’
His tattooed face softened as he looked at Tali and he tugged on his lower lip. Banj didn’t like scourging slaves. Could they get away with it? Then she glanced at the baby and it took all her self-control to stifle a gasp, to compose her face.
‘N-nothing, Overseer.’ Tali clutched her belly, grimaced and looked down at her muck-covered feet. ‘Got a flux of the bowels.’ She heaved, as if she were going to throw up. ‘Been at the squattery.’
Her stomach muscles tightened. She really did feel ill. Mia must have been out of her mind with grief — in trying to save herself a scourging, she had earned the Living Blade for them both.
Mia had lied. She did have the gift, but far better she’d not used it at all than in such a feeble way. She had turned the baby’s grey skin pink, like a Pale child, but the night-black eyes and the sturdy little Cythonian frame proved otherwise. The faint aura surrounding the baby was an amateur’s mistake, proof that she’d done it with forbidden magery.
Mia caught Tali’s eye and a stricken look crossed her face at being caught out in the lie. Sorry, she mouthed. With Banj watching, Tali wasn’t game to reply.
He studied Tali’s hot face and her dirty feet, staring into her eyes as if trying to read her thoughts. It was hard to breathe; the sodden air stuck in her throat like glue.
Finally Banj grunted. ‘You’re lucky today is Lyf’s Day, slave.’
The most sacred day in the Cythonian calendar. Tali choked. They were safe! It was unbelievable, but it had happened. She bowed to the floor. ‘Thank you, Overseer. Thank — ’
‘You’re on a warning. Offend again and it’s the acidulatory for you.’
Then Banj drew Mia to her feet and, still holding her hand, bowed until his broad forehead touched the backs of her fingers.
Shivers scalloped tracks all the way up Tali’s spine, because only one circumstance ever led the Cythonians to bow to their slaves. She sought for her gift, sought it recklessly, suicidally, but it failed her again.
‘Alas,’ said Banj, and Tali knew his regret was genuine, ‘not even today can I forgive a Pale cursed with the abomination of magery. That art is forbidden to all except our long-lost kings, and you know the penalty.’
From the broad sheath on his back he drew a long hilt which terminated in a plate-sized annulus of transparent metal, wickedly bladed all around. It sang as it moved through the air and the colours of the spectrum flickered across it before settling to red.
Mia’s eyes widened, as if she finally understood what was happening. Her lips moved, Tali, help!
There was nothing Tali could do. One second Mia was warm, alive and real. The next, after a precise and poetic sweep of the overseer’s Living Blade, she became a human fountain, painting the low ceiling crimson.
And for an hour afterwards the drunken blade kept singing.
CHAPTER 7
The ice leviathan rolled over the shanty town beyond the eastern palace wall, pulverising it and squeezing its miserable occupants dry. Their blood foamed into the leviathan’s transparent tanks, the flattened husks were ejected at the rear. The tanks were already half full and one pass through the hive that was Palace Ricinus would fill them completely.
This is your fault, but you can stop it.
Go away, Rix gasped, but the split-ice voice kept echoing inside his head.
Two nights from now, at midnight, you will go down.
I won’t!
You will cut it out and bring it to me.
White worms were crawling all over Rix’s face. Go away!
It belongs to me.
Please leave me alone.
This is the only way for you to atone.
But I’ve done nothing wrong.
The voice became low, cunning. Remember the cellar, and the blood on your hands?
No, no, no!
Obeying me is the only way you can gain peace.
I’m not doing it. Get out of my head.
If you refuse, this is what will happen …
The leviathan crushed the outer walls of the palace, then the inner, before toppling a dozen towers and smashing the Great Hall, the wonder and the glory of Hightspall, to powder. Finally, as it loomed outside Rix’s tower, destroying everything that House Ricinus had achieved over four generations, coming directly for him because of what he’d done and what he refused to do, he screamed.
‘What’s the matter with you now?’
He roused, thrashing. A lovely young woman was shaking him, her breasts quivering in the golden light of his bedchamber. She was enchanting, all bosom and bottom and a waist that could be circled with a headband, yet he could not remember her name.
‘Blood,’ he whispered. ‘It squeezed the blood right out of them, into tanks.’
She thrust Rix back onto the pillows. ‘You’re sick! Sick as dog vomit.’
She marched out the door, across the hall and into Tobry’s bedchamber. There was a mutter of feminine complaint, then Rix heard Tobry’s amused drawl.
‘Sorry, Liana. There isn’t room.’
‘I’m not staying with him!’ cried Rix’s lover. ‘He’s off his head.’
Tobry sighed theatrically, then said, ‘Oh, all right. Squeeze up, girls.’
Laughter tinkled. Rix slumped against the headboard of his bed, shuddering.
‘I’m slipping out for a minute,’ said Tobry. ‘Don’t do anything I can’t do better.’
He came through, wrapping a robe around his lean, duel-scarred form. Tobry was only of middle height, wiry and not handsome, but there was a look in his grey eyes that every girl wanted more of and no mother could ever trust. He drew up a dainty chair and sat by Rix’s bed.
‘You’re dripping sweat. Another bad dream?’
‘Ugh!’ Rix rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe the images away. It was both his strength and his weakness that he could imagine the violence as clearly as if it had been painted. Two words kept ringing through his head and he could not rid himself of them. It’s time. IT’S TIME.
‘Worse?’
‘Much worse …and more urgent. I dreamed I was in my salon, in a trance … then moving pictures appeared on the heatstone … as if someone had sent them to me. Do you think that’s possible?’
‘Dreams come from inside, not out,’ said Tobry. ‘Wait here.’
He went out, then returned with a thick, square bottle and a vase-shaped goblet into which he poured a half measure of grey fluid.
Rix’s nostrils tingled. ‘What’s that?’
‘A traditional remedy — best to take it in a gulp.’