The moment he closed his eyes, his father’s face reappeared in his inner eye, as it always did after a long close-up session. Rix did not try to blank it out; that never worked. He concentrated on the brushstrokes until they blurred into a miasma — a green mist wreathing across a dirty, windowless chamber.
Though he never wanted to see that image again, he had been waiting for it, even longing for it in a strange kind of way. It was horrible, yet cathartic — or would be once he had seen it all.
He went back to the studio, took the sketch from the cupboard and focused on the figure lying on the black bench. He thought it was a woman but could discover no more about her. At the head of the bench, two blurred shapes might have been people, though no amount of analysis could extract more from them.
But why would it? Last night he had done the sketch in a creative frenzy, not thinking at all. Rix made some tentative dabs at the shadows, though as soon as the paint went on he knew it was wrong.
Loading his largest brush with white, he painted the scene out and fixed the blank canvas in mind. Now he could sleep. He rubbed his eyes, yawned, picked up the small brush again and, without thinking, swept it across the canvas. A dozen strokes recreated the windowless chamber, another two dozen the miasmic background and the bench with the indistinct figure on it, the shadows at the end, the lot.
But now there was a diminutive figure off to the right. Was she the one who had been viewing the scene before? He did not think so. She looked too little, though the viewpoint would depend on where she had been standing. Yet why would he see through the eyes of a child? It did not make sense.
‘Still no faces?’ said Tobry from behind him.
Rix jumped and his brush spattered grey paint across the right-hand lower corner. ‘There’s nothing to identify any of them.’
‘That’s definitely a child, though. A small girl. And I can tell you one thing about her, from the way she’s standing.’
‘What’s that?’
Tobry wore a different coat but it still hung low on the left. ‘She’s scared. No, terrified — no, horrified.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘I have a gift for it.’ Tobry adjusted his coat. ‘How’s the portrait going?’
‘Progress, though I still hate it.’
Rix took a last look at the sketch then whited it out, wishing he could wipe his own imagination as easily. ‘What have you got in your pocket?’
‘A packet of powdered lead.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘I’ve a mortal fear of shifters, and especially caitsthes.’
‘A mortal fear?’ Rix said curiously, then remembered the look in his friend’s eyes when the caitsthe had been on his back — a terror that had nothing to do with dying, or being torn apart by the beast, but of something that to Tobry was far worse.
‘If we meet another one, I’ll be ready to burn its livers with powdered lead. Have I told you how the war is going?’
‘Disastrously, you said, and I don’t want to hear it again right now. How did you get on with Tali?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘What!’
‘She wasn’t anywhere in Torgrist Manor. I don’t know where she’s gone.’
‘How hard did you look?’ cried Rix, chafing because Lady Ricinus’s guards prevented him from going after Tali. ‘What if she’s lying in a fever somewhere? Dying?’
Tobry was unnaturally pale. ‘I looked everywhere, believe me.’
‘Maybe the chancellor has her.’
‘I hope not. He’s not a nice fellow.’
‘He’s been good to me.’
‘Don’t ever get on his bad side.’
That night he slept badly, troubled by feverish dreams, though there were neither shapeshifters nor leviathans in them, nor that voice urging him to do something terrible. He had not heard it since they had left for the mountains. The dreams were about his sketch.
After waking at first light he went to the window, looking out on the snowy palace gardens but not seeing them. Who was the little girl, and why did she look horrified? Why was the sketch seen from the viewpoint of a child anyway? And why did it have such an air of menace?
The inspiration might have come from one of those violent, old-fashioned paintings that had come with the Palace when House Ricinus bought it, generations ago. Rix remembered being frightened of them as a child. They had also been masterpieces, the study of which, later on, had done much to develop his own genius.
Yet he did not think Tobry was right this time. More strongly than ever, Rix felt that he was sketching something he had seen before; though why did it seem so remote? Had it been something innocuous he’d seen before that terrible illness, leaving his memories distorted by the fever that had nearly killed him? He did not think so. Rix felt sick every time he worked on the sketch, as though he was glorifying a crime. Or wondering whether he’d been complicit in it.
Who could tell him? Certainly not Lady Ricinus, who had passed Rix into the care of Nurse Luzia and a succession of tutors when he had been a toddler — ah!
He opened the door and said to one of the guards, a sallow, crook-nosed fellow he had never seen before, ‘Would you inform Lady Ricinus that I wish to visit my old nurse, Luzia, down in Tumbrel shanty town?’
‘Of course, Lord Rixium. Er, Lady Ricinus will want to know why.’
‘Surely I don’t need a reason to visit Nurse Luzia?’
‘I’m afraid so, Lord Rixium. Lady Ricinus was most adamant.’
‘Then tell her I wish to talk to Luzia about the good old days — when I was happy.’
The guard bowed and withdrew, shortly to return. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Rixium,’ he said, deeply embarrassed. ‘Lady Ricinus requires the portrait to be completed first.’
‘Bitch!’ cried Rix.
The word escaped him before he realised that he was talking to a servant but, good servant that he was, the guard pretended he had not heard. No doubt he would tell Lady Ricinus, though. Keeping anything from her ladyship would earn the guards a place in the monthly flogging tithe. He went into Tobry’s room.
‘Tobry.’ Rix shook him awake.
‘Yes?’
Rix lowered his voice. ‘Come up. I need you to do something for me.’
Tobry pulled on a kilt and followed. ‘Why can’t we talk down here?’
Rix did not answer until they were upstairs in the tower. He opened the window so the wind howled past and, even if someone had been standing two yards away, they would not have heard a quiet conversation.
‘I’m not entirely sure that mother doesn’t have some kind of spying device set up down there.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Find me a way out so I can talk to Luzia. I need to ask her about when I was ill.’
‘I’ll see what I can come up with,’ said Tobry. ‘I’ll need a bit for expenses.’
Rix tossed him a coin bag.
‘What are you doing today?’ said Tobry, pocketing it.
‘What the hell do you think? The cursed portrait — there are only five days left.’
Tobry returned that night, after dark, whistling.
‘What are you so happy about?’ snapped Rix.
‘Bad day?’
‘I hate Father! I hate Mother even more, and I curse this stinking portrait to the Pits of Perdition.’
Tobry inspected it. ‘It’s going well, all things considered. Though the subject seems even darker than before. Grimmer. Bleaker.’
‘I can only paint what I paint.’ He put his mouth close to Tobry’s ear. ‘Any luck?’
‘Yes. Come upstairs.’
Tobry had smuggled in a long length of woven strapping with hooks on either end. ‘We’ll go out the far window and over the wall into Tumbrel Town. It’ll be easier that way.’
‘And we won’t be seen?’
‘I’ve spread a few coins around. The shanty kids were glad to have them. Come on.’