Outside the window it was overcast, freezing and black as a caitsthe’s livers. Rix could not see a thing save for the enemy’s blazing arrows arcing over the distant city wall.
‘Don’t they ever stop?’
‘Only to come back with a new weapon,’ said Tobry. ‘It was fire ribbon this morning — horrible stuff that sticks to the skin and burns all the way down to the bone.’
‘Don’t tell me any more. I want to enjoy the next hour.’
‘It’ll be nice to see Rannilt again,’ said Tobry.
‘It will,’ said Rix. He did not mention Tali, and neither did Tobry, though Rix knew he was still trying to find her.
As they went down, a strong wind kept banging Rix against the side of his tower, grating the skin off his knuckles, but it was worth it.
‘This is just like old times,’ he said when they touched down at the bottom and crept across the grounds. ‘You and me, sneaking out after we’d been confined to our quarters.’
‘Save that there’s a war on and we’re losing.’
‘Cheerful sod, aren’t you?’
‘Sorry. I’ve got a bad feeling about tonight.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘Everything.’
They climbed over an unguarded section of wall and down into an alley. Two small boys came scampering up. Tobry gave them a silver coin each.
‘Wow!’ Rix heard the smaller boy say. ‘Thanks, Lord Tobry.’
‘Guard our climbing irons and keep a sharp lookout for my enemies,’ Tobry said in a melodramatic whisper, ‘and there’ll be another one each when we get back.’
‘What enemies?’ said Rix. ‘You could stagger from one side of Tumbrel Town to the other in a drunken stupor and the meanest footpad wouldn’t touch you.’
‘It makes the lads feel that they matter. They don’t have much in their lives.’
‘Speaking of which, I wonder how Rannilt is getting on with Luzia?’
‘Like a chick with a mother hen, last I saw,’ said Tobry. ‘Rannilt only stops talking to draw breath. It’s done my cynical old heart a power of good to see her cared for; and see her looking after Luzia, too.’
They made their way through the alleys to a slightly better part of Tumbrel Town, where Rix stopped at a small, single-roomed hut and rapped at the door. There was no answer.
‘It’s late,’ said Tobry. ‘Luzia’s probably asleep.’
‘She never goes to bed before two,’ said Rix.
‘She’s always up, a’doing.’ ‘She’s old now. Rannilt’s probably tired her out.’
Rix knocked again, and a third time. ‘I hope she’s not ill.’
‘I told Rannilt what to do if Luzia took a turn, and left coin for a healer. Though with those healing hands of hers, Rannilt would hardly need one.’
‘It’s a mighty healer that can heal old age,’ said Rix.
He lifted the latch, put his head through the door and shivers crept across his scalp again. ‘Something’s not right, Tobe. What’s that smell?’ He knew, though. It was the smell that haunted his nightmares.
‘Blood,’ said Tobry, pushing past and creating a fist of light in the dark room. ‘Don’t come in.’
Too late. Dear old Luzia, Luzia who had made Rix’s childhood bearable, was dead in her red-drenched bed. Her throat had been savagely cut, only the vertebrae holding her head in place. And it had been done recently, for she was still warm.
Rix had seen plenty of violence in his time and would have said he was inured to it, but this was like one of his nightmares brought to life. His head was whirlpooling and if Tobry had not helped him to a three-legged stool he would have fallen down. Waves of hot and cold passed through his middle; he felt like throwing up. He looked away, praying that he had imagined it, looked back and gagged.
‘Who?’ he gasped. ‘Not the girl, surely?’
Tobry did not dignify that with an answer. He was walking around the little hut, touching the plank table, water jug, the ends of the bloody bed and the door latch, as if reading their stories through his fingertips.
‘Where’s Rannilt?’ said Rix, clutching the sides of his stool, which seemed to be rocking like a dinghy in a heavy sea. ‘Have they killed her too?’
‘Shut up, I’m trying to think.’
Tobry waved his elbrot around the room. People-shaped shadows rose and fell, though if they had a story to tell Rix could not read it.
Abruptly, Tobry bent over Luzia, holding the elbrot to the hideous gash across her throat. ‘Incredible!’ he hissed.
‘What?’ said Rix. The sickness was getting worse; it was all he could do to remain in the hut.
‘The ends of the gash are healed,’ said Tobry.
Rix could not look. Not at the ruin of poor, kindly Luzia. ‘Ugh,’ he said, hand over his mouth.
‘It’s healed in for a good inch on either side. I wouldn’t have thought that possible.’ He looked around at Rix. ‘Luzia didn’t heal, did she?’
‘No.’
‘Rannilt must have tried to save her. She must have a mighty gift.’
‘But not good enough to replace all that blood.’
‘Where’s she run to?’ said Tobry. ‘Wait here. I’ll take a look outside.’
Rix lurched to the door. Nothing could keep him in this slaughterhouse by himself. Why Luzia? She’d never hurt anyone. Why, why?
Tobry found no sign of Rannilt.
‘Poor child,’ he said. ‘After finding Luzia like that, and trying to save her, she must be out of her mind.’
Rix did not reply. The nightmare was taking over and he had no idea how Tobry got him back over the wall and up into his tower. He vaguely remembered the reeking alley, and his friend taking care to pay the lookout boys the two silvers he had promised them. For a man who professed to believe in nothing, Tobry was meticulous in discharging his obligations.
After that, all was as much a blur as the fevered month when Rix had been ten. It was impossible that Tobry’s wiry frame could have hauled Rix’s bulk three levels up to the window of his tower. Utterly impossible, yet when Rix awoke in his bed at dawn the following morning, the scrape marks down his chest and arms could only be explained by his being dragged up over raw-cut stone.
He snapped upright and all he could see was blood. Blood and the gaping mouth and staring eyes of an old woman who had never had a bad word for anyone. A woman he had loved as he could never have loved his own mother.
‘How could anyone do that to her?’ Rix said, and wept until his dry eyelids rasped like grit rubbed on a plate. ‘In her whole life, Luzia never hurt a soul.’
‘We live in troubled times,’ said Tobry, holding Rix in his arms. ‘There’s violence everywhere. People will rob an old lady for the contents of her pantry — ’
Something rang false in his tone, and Rix thrust him away. ‘Never lie to me, Tobe. You don’t believe that for a minute.’
After a pause, Tobry said, ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Why did she die?’
‘To stop her talking to you about the time of your fever, I expect.’
‘Are you saying — ?’
‘I point no fingers. Anyone inside the palace might have murdered Luzia. Or anyone outside.’
‘How would they know I wanted to talk to her?’
‘You know what the palace is like.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
‘The servants gossip, and so do all the noble hangers-on.’
Rix had no discrimination left. ‘People like you, you mean?’
There was a longer pause before Tobry replied, in tones carefully neutral, though not neutral enough to disguise his feelings from someone who knew him as well as Rix did. Rix had hurt him.
‘If someone knows a piece of gossip or scandal,’ said Tobry, ‘everyone in the palace knows. Plus their families, and everyone who visits the palace or trades with it.’
‘Why did she have to die, Tobe? Why Luzia?’ It came out as a howl.
‘I don’t know.’
Rix staggered out of bed. ‘Get me a drink.’
Tobry had brought a flask with him, circumventing Lady Ricinus’s prohibition on more than one bottle a day, and this was a good one. Rix lurched up to his studio and emptied a quarter of it down his throat in one swallow.