“I don’t believe you did.”
“Well, I would have thought it was obvious.”
“I’m set in my ways and I like things spelled out. Indulge me.”
“Because I was the first slave to escape from Cython. They have to punish me and set an example to the other slaves.”
“That all?”
“I also know Cython’s secrets.”
“What, all of them?” he said, grinning.
Was he mocking her? “Enough to be invaluable if the chancellor ever attacks Cython.”
“I still don’t see why he wants you so badly. Didn’t he question you about Cython?”
“At length.”
“And all the enemy prisoners would have been interrogated. The chancellor’s cartographers would have made maps of Cython.”
“A map’s not as good as a guide!” she blurted, then flushed.
“A guide for what? Leading an army into Cython?” For the first time, Holm seemed off-balance.
“How would I know?” she said lamely.
The muscles along his jaw had gone tight. “What the hell is he thinking?”
“He’s preparing the ground; gathering his forces; evaluating all kinds of options.” Why was she defending him?
“While the enemy is seizing the ground and destroying our forces.”
“Well, he’s making alliances…” Tali noticed Holm’s grim smile. “What’s the matter?”
“Why are you apologising for your enemy’s failures?”
“I–I don’t know. We often talked. The chancellor told me things he can’t say to anyone else.”
“If he doesn’t stop talking and start fighting it’ll be too late. Then all the strategies and alliances won’t make a jot of difference — ”
Holm broke off, adjusted the sail then took the wheel again, rubbing his jaw.
Tali looked out but saw nothing save ice and heavy seas. “Is something wrong?”
“Thought I saw something in the water, way across to port.”
“What do you mean, ‘to port’?”
He jerked a gnarled thumb to the left. “That way.”
In the morning light, the crisscrossing scars on his fingers stood out against the tanned skin. “Have you been tortured?”
He looked down. “They’re work scars. From clock springs, mostly.”
“I’ve no idea what a clock spring is.”
“It’s a long strip of metal — steel or brass — wound into a tight coil. The tension drives the clock. Some clocks, anyway. But when you have to take a coil out, sometimes it snaps open. Bloody business.”
“How did you come to be a clockmaker?”
“I failed at something important — ” His mouth tightened; he looked away. “The opportunity came up. Always been good with my hands.”
He went out and climbed twenty feet up the mast, hanging on with one hand and staring off to port. With every sickening roll of the boat the mast swayed halfway across the sky and she felt sure he was going to be hurled off, to break every bone in his body. Or go over the side and never be seen again.
What would she do if he went into the water? How would she get him out? In her present state she would not have a hope.
Tali imagined being trapped on a boat she had no idea how to sail, frantically trying to work the sail and the rudder without having any idea what she was doing, fighting the wind and the waves at the same time… Then the slow, sickening roll, the monstrous seas coming over the side and the little vessel foundering and carrying her down with it, the icy water flooding into her lungs -
Holm hit the deck with a thump, burst in and spun the wheel.
“What’s the matter?” cried Tali.
“Shell racers.”
“What are shell racers?”
“Long, low racing craft, rowed by four oarsmen. With a scrap of sail they’re faster than anything in the water, downwind. And infinitely manoeuvrable. They can go anywhere, even upwind.”
“I wouldn’t want to be out in these seas on a little rowing boat.”
“Nor I,” said Holm. “I’ve rowed them. They break up too easily.”
“What happens if they break up?”
“Go in water this cold and there’s only one minute to get you out. Beyond a minute, you die.” He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, studying her face. “But the massive reward the chancellor will be offering for you is worth any risk.”
And Tali still had no idea what Holm wanted from her.
He paused, then went on, slowly, “Time was when I would have thought the same. I was a great risk taker when I was young… though not all of them came off.”
Tali wasn’t sure how to interpret that. “What do we do when they catch us?”
“Can you shoot a bow and arrow?”
“No.”
“But you do know how to fight?”
“Only with my hands.”
“How good are you?”
“Not good enough to beat armed men.”
CHAPTER 22
“Not long now,” said Rix, frowning at the immense range that ran across their path. “Garramide is up there.”
It was raining again. Ten days had passed since they fled Caulderon, and it had snowed or rained every day. Ten days of travelling by night through the wildest country he could find, constantly looking behind, expecting his enemies to be there. Ten days of covering their tracks; ten days of practising with Maloch left-handed until he burst the blisters on his palm over and again. He would never be as good as he had been with his right hand, but he had to be good enough to beat most swordsmen.
The escarpment was covered in thick forest woven with vines and from this vantage point it blocked out half the sky. Inside the forest, the ground, the rocks and fallen trees were carpeted in moss, vivid green in the dull light. Water ran out of the slope in a dozen places, forming little, trickling rivulets only a foot across.
“It looks awfully steep. And wet,” said Glynnie.
“It’s rainforest.”
“Rainforest?”
“Temperate rainforest. It rains here two hundred days a year, I’ve heard. And snows for fifty.”
“How do we get up?”
“There’s a road of sorts up the eastern end. They can haul carts up in dry weather, but when it’s wet, or deep in snow as it is now, the only way up is on foot. But we can’t go that way. Their sentinels would see us hours before we got there.”
“But if Garramide is yours — ”
“It’s legally mine — but since the war began, anything could have happened.”
“So how do we get up?”
“According to the letter my great-aunt wrote me before she died, there’s a secret way up the western end. But we’ll have to set the horses free. It’s too steep for them.”
“What’s up there?”
“A volcanic plateau, four thousand feet high.”
“Sounds miserably cold,” said Glynnie.
“It has hard winters, to be sure,” said Rix, “but fertile soil and plenty of rain. There’s a good living to be had. More importantly, with mountains on three sides and this escarpment on the fourth, it’s easily defended.”
They dismounted, set the horses free and turned to the slope. “It’s as high as a mountain,” muttered Glynnie. “This is going to take a week.”
“At least half a day, I’m told, so we’d better get going.”
“It’s desolate,” said Glynnie, when they reached the top in the early afternoon and scaled a rocky hilltop to get a better view.
The plateau was about four miles long by two wide, undulating farmland covered in snow. She made out several manors and half a dozen villages. Black, ice-sheathed mountains defended the far sides.
“Pretty country though,” said Rix. “And the most beautiful fortress I’ve ever seen. One of the strongest, too,” he added approvingly.
Fortress Garramide was only a few hundred yards away. It had been built on a rocky hill at the edge of the plateau, an outcrop cliffed on two sides and surrounded by a thirty-foot-high wall that must have enclosed forty acres. Every fifty yards along the wall was a watchtower.
“The wall is eight feet thick at the top, and solid stone all the way through,” he recalled.