Ahead, two servants turned into the corridor, chatting as they walked. Tali pushed back against the sinuous wall, which was as warm as living flesh, and rubbed her slave mark. Don’t see me. Turn away. They did not turn aside, and it was impossible that they would not see her pale outline against the red wall. Look past me. I’m not here.
One woman was a tall, slender redhead, the other small and curvaceous, dark of skin and hair and eye, and both were remarkably pretty. Every servant in the chancellor’s palace was young, attractive and female. What kind of a man was he? Tobry had mentioned unnatural appetites, and if the chancellor caught her here …
‘Has he come after you yet?’ said the small servant.
‘Not so much as a sidelong glance,’ replied the redhead, with a regret-steeped sigh. She stopped at a cross-corridor only a few yards ahead.
‘Me either,’ said the small woman. ‘Mother will be furious. I’m the last hope of our family and it cost a fortune in bribes to get me a place here. If it’s all been wasted, I don’t know how I’m going to tell her.’
‘How could he not like you?’ said the redhead. ‘Your face and figure are perfect; you’re clever, but not too clever …’
‘Do you think he inclines the other way?’
‘If he does, why surround himself with women? There’s not a single man in his palace.’
Heaving another sigh, the redhead turned down the other corridor. The small, dark woman came on.
Don’t see me.
She passed Tali only a yard away and, though she must have been visible from the corner of an eye, the woman kept going and disappeared around the next corner. I’ve still got it, Tali thought. I can still hide in plain view, better than anyone.
Shortly, she caught a faint scent of the grubby child she had held in her arms for hours as they escaped to Caulderon. Rannilt! Her scent was coming from a door to the left.
Tali poked her finger into the oval catch, flicked upwards and it opened, revealing a large, bi-lobed chamber like two fused circles. The right-hand lobe was half filled by a curved table of dark red wood polished to a mirror shine. A series of scalloped shelves, partly in shadow, curved around the walls behind the table.
In the centre of the other lobe, scattering dirt onto pink granite flag stones, stood a battered set of wooden punishment stocks such as Tali had seen several times in the ride through Caulderon. Dirty hands and feet protruding through them belonged to Rannilt, who was fast asleep and apparently unharmed, though so pale, so wan. And no wonder, after finding Luzia bloodily murdered.
Tali rubbed her eyes, momentarily overcome. ‘Rannilt,’ she whispered, gently shaking her. ‘Wake up.’
Rannilt slept on. Was she drugged or bespelled? Her breathing was strong and, when Tali pushed her eyelids back, her pupils weren’t dilated. Tali was looking for a way to unlock the stocks when an amused voice spoke behind her.
‘I confess myself disappointed, Lady vi Torgrist.’
She whirled. A small man sat in the shadows in the far corner, high-heeled boots up on the table. His crimson pantaloons were patterned with sequins, the lurid yellow velvet coat had ruby buttons and the cravat was purple. But the chancellor’s commanding voice did not fit — that hollow chest should have supported no more than a breathless whine. Tali reminded herself that he was a brilliant and powerful man, and cunning too. And he would have guards everywhere.
‘Why?’ she said warily.
‘I never thought you’d walk into such an obvious trap. I don’t know that I can use you after all.’
‘Good! Then I’m taking Rannilt with me,’ said Tali, though she had no idea if she was ever getting out of here. Surreptitiously, she felt along the top of the stocks, found the catch, and pulled. ‘I trust you’re done with her?’
‘I could be persuaded to give her up as an exchange.’
‘For me.’
‘Why do you think I lured you here?’
‘You have an over-healthy ego, sir,’ she said in her best Lady vi Torgrist voice.
He chuckled. ‘I’m chancellor,’ he said, as though that were answer enough. ‘The best hope of my people in this dire war.’
‘And I love my country and want to help,’ she said passionately. ‘But I don’t know anything about the enemy’s alchymical weapons.’
‘I didn’t ask you about their weapons,’ he said softly. ‘Approach the table.’
She did so, trying not to creep, until she was brought up by its curved edge. The chancellor frightened her more than Lady Ricinus. Everyone said how ruthless he was, and he controlled a nation. What did he want? She felt that he was looking inside her, reading her strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and potential, and judging how he could use her. She squirmed.
‘It’s said you claim that the Pale are slaves, not traitors,’ he said lazily.
‘It’s said you’re a clever man!’ she snapped.
He quirked a pencilled eyebrow.
‘Only a fool would believe that absurd lie about us. And you’re not a fool, Lord.’
‘What lie?’
‘That a group of noble child hostages would go over to the enemy.’
‘Hostages, if held long enough, often end up taking the side of their captors.’
He said it as a fact known to all, not trying to convince her. Tali felt the ground shifting beneath her feet.
‘Not us! All our tales say the same thing, and so do the enemy’s. They often gloat about it.’
‘What tales?’
‘That one hundred and forty-four children, from the noblest families in Hightspall, were given up to the enemy as hostages a thousand years ago — and never ransomed!’
‘All traitors seek to justify their betrayal.’
‘Hightspall abandoned its children to a thousand years of slavery. Why?’ she said furiously, leaning so hard into the table edge that it was bruising her.
‘If it did, it’s not in any history I’ve read.’
‘They would have covered it up!’ she cried. ‘Then justified their betrayal, the mealy-mouthed hypocrites.’
Her passion seemed to amuse him. ‘If they did, how can it be proved after so long?’
‘There must be letters, reports, all manner of documents in the city archives. You’ll find them if you bother to look.’
‘I don’t have time. I’ve a war to prosecute, one we’re losing badly.’
That shook her. Things must be really bad if he was prepared to admit it. She considered the man. Pleas for justice would never move him, but self-interest might. ‘There are eighty-five thousand Pale, Chancellor.’
‘So many?’ he said, and bright reflections drifted across his eyes.
‘And right in the middle of Cython,’ said Tali, improvising desperately. ‘If managed well, they might turn the war from the inside.’
‘Weaponless women and beaten men?’ It was almost a sneer, but not quite. Was he giving her the chance to argue her case?
‘If you offered them something to fight for, if you gave your word as chancellor that the Pale would be welcomed home and the truth told about their slavery — ’
‘And their ancestors’ property torn from its current owners and bestowed on them?’ he said harshly. ‘Is that why you’re really here?’
‘Is that why they were never ransomed? So the families would die out and their estates be given to others?’
‘I’m losing interest,’ said the chancellor.
Tali had to make a big concession, or lose. ‘The Pale must have some recompense, Lord. But there can be no justice in taking all from the present to restore to the past.’
‘Set the lead, then.’
‘I want House vi Torgrist’s plague manor. Nothing else.’
‘Satisfy me and you will have it. And for the other Pale?’
‘A tithe of what they once owned.’
He leaned back, the deep little eyes peering into hers. ‘A tithe divided among so many would hardly amount to a cottage each. How can that satisfy?’
‘To a lifelong slave, a cottage is a palace.’
‘Ah!’ he said, smiling. ‘Just so.’