It fell dead, and immediately the pressure eased. The remaining two jackals retreated several feet, stinking saliva dripping from their black tongues, then ran. A horse whinnied, there was a gruesome thud, then the first jackal came flying through the air, a mangled mess.
Beetle, Tobry’s black-faced nag, poked its head out from between the trees. Leather was behind it.
‘I told you so,’ said Tobry feebly. ‘Put me in the saddle, there’s a good fellow — ’
Rix heaved Tobry onto his saddle and slapped Beetle on the left flank. ‘Go!’
Beetle bolted. Rix wrenched Tobry’s sword from the jackal’s skull, dragged himself into Leather’s saddle and followed. A second pack of jackals came loping down, then stopped, their tongues lolling.
‘What happened to that liqueur?’ said Tobry later, as they passed the entrance to the Catacombs of the Kings and all the upside-down heads. Rix, who might have died and been reborn in the past hours, no longer thought the insult a good idea.
He took the flask from the saddlebags and passed it across. Tobry took a deep swig and offered it back.
Rix shook his head. ‘I’ve never felt less like a drink in my life.’
‘I’ve never wanted one more.’ Tobry took another healthy swig. ‘How’s your head?’
‘Better. Ankle?’
‘No better.’
After a while, Tobry said, ‘That didn’t go so well.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘Well,’ Tobry was trying to sound his normal self and almost pulling it off, ‘we’ve no idea what the wrythen is up to but we know it’s bad, the snow is getting thicker by the second, you’ve got one day less to finish the portrait, Lady Ricinus will be apoplectic by now — ’
‘I meant, don’t tell me about it,’ Rix snarled.
‘And to cap it off,’ Tobry continued, ‘you came all this way to kill something big, and haven’t.’
He didn’t know the caitsthe was dead and there wasn’t time to explain. ‘I still might!’ Rix brandished his sword.
Tobry chuckled and urged Beetle on.
Rix followed, trying to make sense of all that had happened. Something had changed the moment the wrythen had recognised his sword. Where had it come from? Traitor’s blade. Liar’s blade. Oathbreaker’s blade, he had said, and suddenly the attack had become personal, vengeful. He wanted revenge for an injury done in the past, by some previous owner of this sword.
And he had committed House Ricinus to memory.
CHAPTER 27
Tali was frozen to the step. Though she knew Banj was going to kill her, obedience was so ingrained that it was a struggle to ignore his direct order. But she had to fight it.
‘I’m not letting Rannilt be killed by that vicious toad,’ she muttered, avoiding Banj’s stare. No, she had to be stronger. She must openly defy him — for her own sake, nothing less would do. Raising her head, Tali steadied her shaking knees, looked Banj in the eye and said firmly, ‘I refuse. Damn the matriarchs, damn Cython and damn you. I’m the one!’
Banj’s handsome features registered shock at the defiance, perhaps more so at the secret she should have known nothing about. Purple crept up his cheeks and he glanced over his shoulder. ‘Archers?’
‘Not here yet.’ Orlyk waved the crimson and yellow death-lash. ‘But with this I can sever her backbone from twenty feet away.’
‘Are you her overseer?’ Banj said stiffly.
Orlyk bent her head in angry submission.
Banj drew the Living Blade with which he had beheaded Mia. Red-tinged rainbows wavered around its transparent annulus and it began to keen gently as he lumbered up the steps. Tali retreated, knowing he would catch her before the top. Rannilt convulsed again and light blazed out of her in all directions. Tali could barely hold the jerking girl; it was all she could do to keep climbing.
‘Not now, Rannilt, please.’ Tali hugged her tightly, hoping to overcome her inner torment, but Rannilt did not respond.
Tali looked up desperately. Despite Mimoy’s earlier words, she was waiting at the doors, watching. The pressure in Tali’s head was almost unbearable now, and every flash from Rannilt’s fingers set off such a whirling of the coloured lights in her inner eye that she had to clutch at the rail to hold herself up.
‘Stop, slave!’ Banj, only two flights below her now, was taking three steps to her one.
‘Mimoy!’ Tali cried. ‘Help me.’
Mimoy did not reply.
‘Please don’t kill Rannilt,’ Tali begged Banj. ‘She didn’t ask for the gift. It just came to her.’
Banj was inexorable. ‘Magery is forbidden, obscene, and an abomination.’
‘But she’s an innocent little girl.’
‘Hightspall’s magery was conceived in treachery and birthed in blood. No one bearing its taint is innocent.’
‘Kill her and it makes you a child-murderer.’
Banj’s eyes slid away from hers, but he said, ‘All those bearing the taint must be put down. It’s our law and I swore to uphold it.’
‘It proves you’re nothing but savages!’ she shouted. ‘Your ancestors were too gutless to fight Hightspall so they enslaved its children.’
Banj’s dark eyes flashed. ‘Oh, we fought,’ he said softly. ‘For two hundred and fifty years our ancestors battled the barbarian invaders. If not for their sly, depraved magery, Cythe would still be ours.’
He said it with such passion that Tali had no reply. Her knees were shaking; she could carry Rannilt no further. Prising the girl’s arms from around her neck, Tali put her on the steps above the landing. Rannilt whimpered and reached out blindly, the warm yellow light flowing in waves from her fingertips.
Tali could only see Banj severing the little girl’s head. She shook her. ‘Rannilt, wake up. You’ve got to run, now.’
She did not wake, and Tali had no choice. She had to fight Banj bare-handed or they would both die. She stumbled to the front of the landing, facing him in the defensive posture Nurse Bet had taught her. Tali had practised the moves ten thousand times but had never fought a real opponent, much less an armed one. She would be lucky to get in one blow before he killed her, yet even one blow was more than her gentle mother had dared. Even one blow would be a blow for justice and an inspiration to all the Pale. The enemies were only human. They could be beaten. Though not here, not by her.
As she raised her hands, the pressure in her head grew until her skull bones creaked. The colours swirled furiously, she lost vision for a second and when it came back Banj was on the step below the landing, only six feet away, the annular blade pointing at her breast.
‘Surrender, Tali,’ he said, using her name for the first time. He inclined his head to her, then reached out as if to take her hand.
Prickles ran down her front at his mark of respect — Banj was honouring the doomed one. He was no savage. He was a decent man, within his limits. She shook her head. ‘You’ll have to kill me … Banj.’
No slave dared speak a Cythonian’s name to his face, but Tali wasn’t going to die a slave. She was any man’s equal.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, another first in a day of firsts, and bowed as he had bowed to Mia before he decapitated her.
Tali had never heard a Cythonian say sorry to a slave before. Banj drew back the Living Blade in the precise, balletic movement prescribed for execution of slaves with the gift. Tali had to get in the first blow, or die. She sprang forwards, swinging at his neck with the rigid edge of her right hand. Such a blow might bring down a frail slave, though she had little hope of hurting Banj through those corded neck muscles.
Perhaps disconcerted that a little Pale was attacking him, he swayed backwards and her blow missed. The Living Blade began to keen, the blood waves racing across it.
Rannilt screamed and the golden light seared out from her. The colours in Tali’s inner eye went wild, the pressure in her head made her skull creak and she felt a warm gush as if something had burst open. Then, as she frantically tried to beat Banj’s out-arcing blade with a backhanded strike, needles of boiling whiteness burst from her fingertips.