‘But …’ Rix looked imploringly towards his father. ‘Lord Ricinus … Father … you know I have to defend my country …’
Lord Ricinus buried his nose in his goblet. Rix wanted to smash it over his head. He steadied himself and made a last, desperate bid for freedom.
‘Everyone will call me coward, Father. They’ll say I’m hiding behind mother’s skirts because I’m too gutless to fight.’
Lord Ricinus looked up sharply at Lady Ricinus. ‘The boy has a point.’
‘No!’ said Lady Ricinus.
‘A coward and the son of a coward, that’s what they’ll say,’ Rix said bitterly.
Lady Ricinus rose deliberately to her feet, took six precise steps to Rix and struck him across the face. The blow rocked him, for all that he had been expecting it, but he controlled his face as rigidly as she did her own. She returned to her tiny desk.
‘House Ricinus takes no notice of barking curs,’ she said thinly. ‘The servants will not allow you out of your rooms without a note written in my hand — and not one borne by you.’
Damn. He had been planning on forging one — another of his less reputable skills.
‘I will allow you one bottle of wine a day,’ she went on, ‘since you take after your father and can’t produce anything worthwhile when sober.’ She studied her empty desk, her cruel mouth down-turned. ‘And one bed mate. I shall select one I deem suitable.’
‘Like hell!’ he cried. ‘I’ve had enough of you interfering in my life.’
‘Do you think I relish it?’
‘Yes!’ he cried. ‘I know you do.’
She studied him as if he were a recalcitrant child, her nostrils flaring. ‘Until you come of age, you will do as Lord Ricinus and I say. And then there’s Lagger. He’s always been a bad influence on you and I’m not sure you should associate — ’
Rix sprang up again. ‘If Tobry goes, I will renounce my inheritance, walk out the door and never return, war or no war,’ he said, grinding the words out. ‘I mean it.’
‘Oh, very well,’ she said after a minute. ‘Now, where was I?’
She knew very well where she was. Lady Ricinus had a mind like a gimlet.
‘Ah, yes,’ she went on. ‘Speaking of children — ’
‘No,’ he said mechanically, knowing he was beaten already. Her concession on Tobry made any other improbable. ‘I will not take a wife.’
‘In view of your risk-taking behaviour, the succession of House Ricinus must be provided for right away. Lord Ricinus and I are united in this. Aren’t we, my lord?’
‘United!’ said Rix’s father, his teeth rattling on glass as he swilled brandy from the decanter.
‘Rixium, you will marry in ten days.’
‘No!’
‘I will give you a choice of six suitable girls. You will have until the morning after the Honouring to choose one. I expect your wife to be pregnant by the end of three months. If she is not, I will come to your bedchamber each night to make sure you’re doing it right. Do I make myself understood?’
No greater horror could be imagined. None could possibly be borne. Tobry would not have stood such treatment for an instant, but Rix had been brought up to be a dutiful son. It was his mother’s right to choose a bride for him; he had always known that.
He bowed his head in defeat. ‘I will marry and produce an heir.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Get on with it.’
‘The choice?’ he said dazedly.
‘The portrait,’ she said between her teeth. ‘I will come each evening to inspect your progress and, if necessary, give you instruction in the art of portraiture.’
You arrogant bitch! As far as Rix knew, his mother had never taken up a paintbrush in anger and, for all her carefully schooled conversation about the masters, he doubted that she knew as much about art as a common flea. The paintings in House Ricinus were chosen by an expert.
‘That will not be necessary,’ he said, bowing. ‘And don’t bother to send any bed mates to my tower. I’ve taken a vow of celibacy until the war is over.’
‘You won’t last a week.’
Rix bowed, insultingly low. ‘Mother, Father.’
CHAPTER 58
It rose up behind the child, a vast, looming shape with the heavy shadows surrounding it wavering, shifting and drifting so that, despite the light streaming from Rannilt’s fingers, it could never be seen clearly. Now it had the shape of a heavily muscled man with a frilled head, now it was more like a bear with clusters of whips instead of arms — or were they tentacles? Tali could not tell; it was transforming all the time, each morph more grim and ghastly than the one before.
It raised its head, tossed something into the air — a gobbet of horse haunch — caught it and swallowed with sucking noises and belches that glowed a sickly green and poisoned the air around it. And it seemed to smile, as if it delighted in death and ruin.
As the air thickened and congealed around it, Tali’s long bones ached and she tasted foulness in the back of her throat. She closed her eyes for a second but its shifting mental forms were more terrible yet. It was reaching out, trying to get its psychic hooks into her and tear her down to its level.
‘Why are you standin’ there!’ Rannilt screamed. ‘Run!’
But Tali saw instantly what the child could not, that Rannilt was a lure of no further use, a life to be savaged and trampled on the way to the real quarry. And not only because Rannilt was in the way. It was how the shifter had been created — as a weapon of terror, a destroyer.
Tobry choked and clutched at his blistered face with his free hand. His cheeks were the colour of an infected wound. He covered his eyes, as if he could not bear to look, and she thought he was going to break and run. But then, with a pitiful moan he shuffled forwards, Rix’s sword upraised. Tobry knew he had met his nemesis but it was not in him to turn away.
If she were to rescue Rannilt, Tali had to be mobile. She could not have summoned healing magery in her own defence but the peril of an innocent child brought it forth. Clapping a hand to her thigh, she twisted the healing charm to numb her pain.
The relief was so instant that she lost her balance and nearly fell. Tali snatched the titane sword from Tobry’s hand and ran, stiff-legged, for the golden glow. If the shifter was a creature of magery, the sword might help her to fight it. Her thigh felt peculiar and she was probably doing further damage but she put everything out of her mind save Rannilt.
The shifter took a swirling leap forward, the shadows writhing about it, arcing high and looming all around as if to cup the golden light in the petals of a savage flower. Another couple of leaps and it would be onto the child. Its right arm shifted to a cluster of metal-tipped flails, to barbed tentacles, to multiple arms terminating in hooked blades.
It was huge. One blow could shatter every fragile bone in Rannilt’s body, and Tali’s too if she went within range. But there was no other way.
She lurched forwards, swinging the surprisingly light sword while she sized the creature up for a killing blow. How, though? Since she did not understand what kind of creature it was inside, how could she tell where to strike? There was no time to reason it out; all she could do was hit hard and try to hurt it as much as she could.
It sprang again, shifter-shadows swirling about it like black flames, the heat of it blasting gusts of baked carrion at her. Tali gagged, choked down vomit and went at it, springing up to meet it as it leapt towards Rannilt to smash her out of the way.
As she closed in she saw a ragged mouth, eyes as black as the abandoned sinter pits of Cython and, above them, the deep indentation of a large hoof print, as if it had been kicked there. Such a blow would have killed any normal creature and might have dazed the shifter, perhaps weakening it. She took some comfort from that.
It struck at Rannilt from the left, a killing blow, but Tali was expecting it. She slashed safely above the child’s head and across, and felt a surge of strength flow through her from the weapon. It made a buzzing sound, an arm or flail or tentacle went flying, and momentarily the shifter drew back, shrinking a little as if gathering its remaining members to it.