It was growing dark and the lamplighters were out, their tasselled nose plugs inserted, lighting the stink-damp fuelled street lamps. Rix kept a safe distance away. Stink-damp gas, also tapped from underground, was a deadly poison that you could only smell when it was at its thinnest. It was also heavier than air, tended to collect in cellars, sumps and hollows, and was wont to explode without warning.
His gloom deepened as they rode up the long drive of Palace Ricinus, then around the corner past the baroque greenhouses full of tall, spiky-leaved castor oil plants, the family symbol. He glanced towards the rear of the palace and his own tower. The navvies were still in their trench, fruitlessly winding asbestos around the hot water tubule to keep the remaining heat in. The water had been cooling for years and was now only tepid.
Lady Ricinus was waiting at the monumental front doors, as he had known she would be. The chief guard would have signalled her the moment Rix passed through the gates.
Sweat soaked through his shirt, front and back. He would sooner have faced another dozen of the enemy — at least he knew how to combat them. He had no idea how to deal with Lady Ricinus, but as a dutiful son not yet of age he could not disobey her direct orders. Not when Hightspall was at war.
He had not expected his father to be there as well. It was Lady Ricinus’s doing, of course, and to have enlisted Lord Ricinus in the cause of disciplining her errant son, her fury must have been monumental.
She would not display it in public, though. She stood outside the door, as rigidly upright as one of their drill sergeants, and presented her polished and powdered cheek for him to kiss.
‘Welcome home, Rixium,’ she said through a mouthful of canines.
CHAPTER 57
Lord Ricinus slouched against a marble column, reeking of so many kinds of grog that he might have been swilling from the slops bucket in one of the lakefront taverns. He probably had been, Rix thought ruefully. The last vestiges of Father’s discernment had gone up against the wall long ago.
‘Well done, Son,’ he said, shaking Rix’s hand.
Rix was shocked to discover that his father’s grip, once so crushing, was now soft, almost pulpy. A mirror to the inside?
‘Father?’ said Rix, not sure what he was referring to.
‘For fighting through the encircling hordes. Killed a good few of them, I dare say?’
‘A good few.’ Rix took a deep breath. He knew what his mother was going to say, but if he were quick he might bamboozle Lord Ricinus into pre-empting her. ‘Father, now we’re at war I request leave from my duties to our house, to fight for my country.’
Lord Ricinus understood, at least, and he wanted to say yes, but Lady Ricinus had got to him first.
‘Your mother requires a word with you, and you’ll obey her as you would me. Family unity is all in these troubled times, Son.’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Rix dismally, longing for a drink. Was he going to turn into his father? Were the seeds of his own destruction already sprouting in him?
‘Come within, Rixium,’ said Lady Ricinus. ‘There are matters we must discuss.’ Her iron-hard lips thinned to blades. She looked down. ‘Where’s the sword I gave you?’
‘I–I lent it to Tobry.’
‘Get. It. Back,’ she said through her teeth. ‘Keep it by you, always.’
It raised a question that increasingly bothered him. He looked to his father. ‘I can’t read the inscription. Where did the sword come from, anyway?’
Lord Ricinus made a face. ‘From her side of the family.’
‘Mother’s side?’ Rix cried. Her family were of no account and it diminished the sword, somehow. ‘Where did they get it?’
Lady Ricinus looked outraged but did not reply. A servant held the door open and Rix followed Lady Ricinus down the hall to her suite of offices. She had lost weight lately; her limbs were becoming stringy and it did not suit her.
Rix’s father was shambling into a side passage when she said, more sharply than she normally would have in public, ‘Lord Ricinus, if you please.’
He made a stumbling about-face.
Inside his mother’s offices, Rix waited for Lady Ricinus to seat herself at her tiny desk, and for Lord Ricinus to slump onto a settee close to the nearest decanter. He looked longingly at it and she waved an irritable hand. Rix perched on the edge of the other settee, which creaked under his weight. The immaculate chamber had a faint rotten egg smell from the stink-damp lamps, though only someone who had been out in the open would notice it. Rix smiled to himself.
His mother’s nostrils flared as she looked at him and he tensed, involuntarily. She was not half his weight yet she dominated him in every respect.
‘Did you set out to deliberately undermine all the work I have done for this house over the past three years, Rixium?’ she said quietly. She seldom raised her voice; she felt it to be vulgar. Her gaze filleted him. ‘Or are you so stupid that you don’t understand when I give you a simple instruction?’
‘I’ve been having the nightmares again,’ he said, knowing how lame he sounded. ‘I had to get away for a bit.’
‘To risk your life doing things any paid soldier of this house could do better?’
‘I didn’t start out — ’
‘Don’t lie. You went hunting jackal shifters.’
‘They’re harmless. Not much worse than wild dogs, really — ’
‘They’ve taken dozens of our peasants and plenty of our guards — and turned three of them. Three good men who had to be put down.’ She fixed him with a frosty eye. ‘I inspected the portrait in your absence …’
The damned portrait. Rix’s hands were trembling. He clenched them around his knees, fantasising about snatching the decanter from his astonished father and swigging the lot.
‘It’s nearly done,’ he lied. ‘It won’t take me long.’ The smile he put on felt like a death rictus.
‘Seven days remain until the Honouring, and if the portrait is not done it will be a slap across Lord Ricinus’s face. The powers will interpret it as disunity, and the survival of our house depends on absolute unity. You will not leave your quarters until the portrait is complete.’
‘But we’re at war,’ he cried, leaping from the settee. ‘Surely you’ve heard what the enemy did to Gullihoe, and half a dozen other towns?’
‘Craven surprise attacks. When they’re face to face with our mighty armies they’ll run like the rats they are.’
‘I don’t think so. They’ve been preparing for this for hundreds of years. They’ve got new weapons that we don’t know how to fight.’
‘What would you know about it?’ she said coldly.
‘I was in Gullihoe not long after they attacked. They destroyed the place without losing a single man.’
‘They’re all cowards in Gullihoe,’ she sneered. ‘I’ve spoken to the chancellor and he assured me that we have the enemy’s measure.’
‘I’ve got to see the chancellor; I have important news.’
‘It can wait.’
‘No, he’ll be expecting me. He might have a command for me.’ Rix knew he sounded desperate, but it was his only way out.
Her small eyes glowed and he knew the hope was going to be dashed. Lady Ricinus had anticipated this escape, and blocked it.
‘At your father’s request,’ she said, and her smile was so snake-like that he expected her to lick her lips with a forked tongue, ‘the chancellor has given you a special exemption — ’
This was too much. ‘I don’t want an exemption,’ Rix bellowed, leaping to his feet. ‘I want to do my duty.’
Two white spots appeared on her cheeks. ‘How dare you shout at me,’ she said, her voice even lower and more controlled. ‘Sit down, boy. You’re not of age and you have no heir. Perform that duty and we will allow you to risk your life, but only in the defence of Palace Ricinus.’