‘Where did we go wrong, Tobe?’
‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘We were happy when I was little. Oh, Mother was always sharp-tongued, Father always drank more than he ought, but life was good. Then I got sick, and after I was well again everything had changed.’
‘Sometimes terrible choices have to be made — as in my house.’
Rix said no more. Compared to the catastrophe that had crushed House Lagger, the problems between Lord and Lady Ricinus were insignificant.
As the first glow of dawn touched the eastern horizon, they were walking their horses across the broken country between the simmering salt lakes of the Inner Seethings. The earth here was baked like a burnt biscuit, and just as lifeless. Rix felt a sudden terror that the beautiful estates of House Ricinus would soon look this way. The enemy had terrible new weapons, ones Hightspall did not understand. How could they fight chymie when they did not know how it worked?
All the more reason to rescue Tali, who might know some of the enemy’s secrets. Surely even his mother would see the sense in that. Ha!
‘Where are we?’ said Rannilt, yawning.
‘Not far now,’ said Tobry. ‘Hungry?’
‘Always hungry.’
He handed her hard bread and even harder sausage. She gnawed at one, then the other in the dim light.
‘You’re goin’ to save Tali,’ she said with childlike certainty.
‘We’ll try. Have you known her long?’
‘Two days. I asked her to be my mother. She said I was being silly.’
‘What happened to your mother?’
‘The enemy killed her when I was five, because she could do magery.’ Rannilt said it without a trace of self-pity.
‘Is that where your gift comes from?’
‘Suppose so. Never knew my father. He was minin’ out a sunstone and his heart burst.’
‘What can you do with magery, apart from that golden light?’
Rannilt shrugged. ‘Scared to try. If you say magery in Cython they beat you. If they know you have it, they kill you.’
‘You’re in Hightspall now and you can use magery all you want,’ said Rix, amazing himself. Until he had saved them both with the enchanted sword, he’d had a deep-seated fear of magery.
‘Do you know anything about Tali’s gift?’ said Tobry.
‘It’s different. Strong. Buried deep and she can’t find it.’ Rannilt frowned at Rix, who pretended he hadn’t been listening. ‘Do you have a palace too, Lord Tobry?’
He let out a barking laugh. ‘No, child. I’m not rich like Rix.’
‘I could be a servant in your house. I’d love that … you don’t beat your servants all the time, do you?’
‘I have no servants. But when I did, I didn’t beat them.’
‘I’d work all day, every day, and all I’d want is a little tiny room. Ever since Mama died I’ve dreamed about having a room to myself.’
‘Is that your only dream?’
‘I dream about Mama and Papa, but they’re gone. Until I met Tali, nobody cared about me. No one in the world.’
Tobry hugged her and she closed her eyes. Rix looked away, swallowing.
After another mile, ahead of them the land rose several hundred feet to a doorknob-shaped hill whose flanks were covered in grey-leaved bushes, though the knob itself was bare rock the rich, reddish hue of iron ore.
‘From the crest we should be able to see the other track,’ said Tobry.
‘Let’s pray they’ve taken it. If they took some other route, we’ll never find them.’
As they climbed the hill, concealed from the track by tall scrub, Rix felt his pulse rise and the backs of his hands prickle. If they’d guessed wrong, Tali would die in Cython and everything she knew about the enemy would be lost.
‘Rannilt?’ Tobry roused her with a touch on the shoulder.
She woke with a start, flinched as though expecting a blow, then a lovely smile transformed her thin features. ‘Lord Tobry.’ She turned towards Rix and the smile slipped a little, though it did not go out.
Rix felt an ache in his chest, that a child should be wary of him. ‘We’re going to try and rescue Tali now, and you’ve got to stay here.’
Her eyes widened in alarm. ‘Don’t leave me. I can help. I’m quick and quiet.’
And brave, Rix thought, but clumsy. ‘No.’
‘But it’s out there. Huntin’.’
‘What’s out there?’ Tobry said sharply.
‘The thing in the dark. Shadow and shape, shiftin’, always shiftin’.’ She shuddered. ‘Please don’t leave me.’
CHAPTER 46
‘Does she mean a shifter?’ Rix mouthed.
‘I hope not,’ Tobry mimed back. ‘Rannilt, it won’t come in daylight, and we need someone really brave to watch the horses. It’s a vital job. Can you do it?’
Rannilt studied the huge beasts, chewing on her bottom lip. She nodded jerkily. ‘What if — what if you don’t come back?’
‘Can you ride?’ said Rix.
‘Of course she can’t ride,’ said Tobry. ‘There aren’t any horses in Cython.’
He scribbled on a scrap of paper, then laid a hand on his horse’s muzzle, speaking in a low voice. The horse stamped its front feet, one after the other.
‘My horse is called Beetle,’ he said as he shortened the stirrups. ‘If we’re not back by nightfall, Beetle will take you to Caulderon, to a friend of ours, a kind old lady called Luzia. She’ll look after you. Give her this note; don’t lose it.’ He handed the scrap of paper to her. ‘You can ride there in a few hours.’ He gave Rix an anxious glance.
The chances of a despised Pale child making it, through war and the Seethings, was remote. Though not as remote as their attack succeeding.
‘Beetle,’ said Rannilt. ‘That’s a nice name.’
‘He’s very gentle,’ said Tobry. Beetle folded his right ear over. ‘Look, he likes you. But don’t try to ride Leather. She has a very bad temper.’
‘Like Rix,’ said Rannilt, then covered her mouth and turned scarlet.
Tobry snorted. By the words of a child I stand revealed, thought Rix.
Tobry put various items in a small pack and tossed it over a shoulder. They shook her grubby hand, then Rix followed Tobry around the curve to the other side of the knob. When he looked back, Rannilt was a tiny, fragile figure, staring after them.
‘I hate this,’ said Tobry. ‘Leaving her all alone is wrong.’
Rix clasped his shoulder. ‘We’ll make it quick.’
As the light grew they had a good view over the broken landscape to their left — a myriad of lifeless salt lakes and brilliantly blue, boiling pools, each surrounded by a concentric banding of red, orange and yellow crystals.
‘Looks like the Gods vomited the place up,’ said Rix, who had not previously seen the Seethings from on high. ‘Why did the enemy delve Cython here? There are caves aplenty in the mountains.’
‘There’s rich ore under the Seethings. They already had mines here when our First Fleets came.’
‘Plus the heatstones they sell us for such usurious prices.’
‘Oh, how House Ricinus would suffer,’ said Tobry, the sarcasm floating light as cobweb, ‘if it didn’t hold a third of the heatstone monopoly.’
‘It’s no good to us now we’re at war.’
‘There’s the path.’ Tobry pointed. ‘They’d better be on it.’
A narrow isthmus meandered between two large, ragged lakes, a faint path running along it then skirting the shore of the larger lake not far below them. Half a mile on, the lake’s outflow passed down a sinuous channel and over a series of cascades into a third, smaller lake, and that into another, and another. Finally, several miles away, the outlet river tumbled over a precipice into Lake Fumerous, which extended north for twenty miles.
‘Unless I’m mistaken,’ Tobry went on, ‘the rock rats should appear from behind that little ridge and pass along the shore below us. And since they’re not in sight and I had no sleep last night, I’m trying for a nap.’
‘How can you sleep?’
‘How can I help Tali if I can’t think straight?’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Rix. The steep slope was littered with broken red rock. ‘There’s nowhere we can wait in ambush; no cover at all.’