‘Can I help you?’ he said, matching her coldness with his own. ‘It’s impossible to work with constant interruptions.’
‘Artists!’ She went to the top of the steps and called down. ‘Up here. Search the upper tower first. Lagger, don’t move from the couch until we’ve finished.’
‘Your wish is my command, Lady Ricinus,’ said Tobry with an ironic bow.
She curled her razor-edged lip. ‘If it was, you’d be hunting walrus on the polar ice in a scorpion loincloth.’
Four servants came up, two men and two women. ‘Begin up there and work down,’ said Lady Ricinus.
They went up the next flight and began opening doors and checking cupboards and storerooms.
She turned away. ‘Rixium, come with me. We have matters to discuss.’
‘Can’t we do it here?’ said Rix.
‘In public? Certainly not.’
‘I’ll need a note in your hand to get past your gorms on the door,’ he said sarcastically. Annoying her was never a good idea but Rix was beyond being sensible.
‘Don’t act a bigger fool than you already are.’
He followed her out. Should he ask about Luzia’s murder? No, she would spend the rest of the morning interrogating him as to how he knew about it.
Lady Ricinus was walking faster than usual and breathing noisily. To have rattled her, it had to be something serious, but Rix did not think it was the murder. To her, servants were cut-out humans, pressed into place to do a job. If one failed, ran away or was murdered, another would take the place. Not that Luzia had left any place to be filled. Once Rix married, gulp! his wife would pick her own nurse. Assuming she could stand up to his mother.
He contemplated the grim prospect. Did Lady Ricinus have the candidates lined up for his inspection? Unless, he thought hopefully, all the girls she’s picked have refused me.
As if that would happen. Their families would decide and the money would clinch it. Nothing short of a reputation for disembowelling young women and brushing his teeth with their blood would get the selected girls out of a liaison with House Ricinus.
They passed a cringing orderly. In the distance, a slender, red-haired maidservant girl was sobbing. Lady Ricinus froze for a second, then strode on.
‘What’s the matter with Glynnie?’ said Rix.
‘I put her little brother in the month’s flogging tithe.’
‘Why? Benn’s a hard worker, always eager to please.’
‘The boy brought me cold tea. It won’t happen again.’
‘You can’t do that, Mother. It’s not right.’
She did not bother to reply. Rix stopped next to Glynnie, turned up her tear-stained face and said quietly, ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll fix it.’
She gave him a tremulous smile and he continued.
‘What’s the matter, anyway?’ said Rix. ‘What’s going on?’
Without answering Lady Ricinus stalked into her chambers, waited until Rix had passed through and slammed the door, which started another frisson of disquiet. He had never known her to slam a door before — quiet, viperish deadliness was her style.
‘If you ever undermine my authority with the servants again,’ she hissed, ‘they will suffer.’
‘Take Benn off the flogging tithe,’ he said coldly, and forced himself to meet her eyes, to break her dominance, even if only for a minute.
After a pause, she said, ‘Very well. That’s one favour wasted. Sit down.’
His heart hammered as he went by. What was Lord Ricinus doing here? Mother only wheeled him in for emergencies, and this must be worst than most, for he was sober. Rix had not seen his father in that state since he was ten.
He gulped. His father was bad enough when drunk, but when stone sober he was an angry, bitter terror. Rix looked around for a flask but all were locked away. Lady Ricinus had planned for this meeting.
‘Sit!’ she said.
They sat. Rix stared at his father’s grossly misshapen, purple-veined monstrosity of a nose. He could see the veins throbbing. Was this what he would look like when he was old? Was he halfway to becoming his father already?
‘Where is she?’ said Lady Ricinus.
Rix stared. ‘Where is who, Mother?’
‘The Pale traitor you found near the Rat Hole.’
So that’s what this was about. He should have known that she would find out about Tali. Her network of informers was the best in the land.
‘I didn’t find a traitor near the Rat Hole,’ he said, matching her coldness and raising it a blizzard.
‘Don’t lie to your mother, boy,’ growled Lord Ricinus from the settee. ‘We know you met the scrag there.’
Rix leapt up, shaking with fury, and for the first time in his life failed to show Lord Ricinus the respect due to him. He loomed over his father, dominating him with his own size and strength and knotted fists.
‘The woman’s name is vi Torgrist, Father, and hers is one of the oldest houses of all. Far older than yours.’
His father tried to lurch to his feet. Rix was about to push him down again when his mother’s voice cut through the room like a flaying knife.
‘Sit down! Rixium, lay one finger on your father and I will have you flogged in the city square.’
Since she made a fetish out of keeping the family’s secrets, the threat indicated her dire state of mind. Rix went back to his seat, acid searing a track up his gullet.
‘There is no House vi Torgrist,’ said Lady Ricinus. ‘It died out centuries ago.’
Rix could have crowed. Her spies had failed her. It was the tiniest of victories, but any victory over his mother was rare and all the sweeter for that.
‘ Lady Tali can trace her name back to the Second Fleet. And she has her house seal. Tobry checked it, and as you know, there’s nothing he doesn’t know about the noble houses.’
‘It will do her no good,’ said Lady Ricinus. ‘Even if her claim could be proven after all these centuries, no Pale traitor can inherit.’
Rix did not reply. The more he said, the more his mother would use against Tali.
Waves the colour of purple grape juice washed across Lord Ricinus’s face. His slack mouth opened and closed; he clutched at his chest. ‘Drink! Need a drink.’
Rix’s mother tossed him a little key. ‘Get your lord father a drink. If I do it, I’m liable to jam it down his throat.’
The expression stirred a troubling memory, but it submerged before Rix could ease it up into the daylight. He opened the locked case on the far side of the room, took down a bottle of brandy and gave it to his father. Lord Ricinus sank a third of it in one gasping swallow, wiped slobber across his cheek with his forearm, then lay back, ‘Aah, aah, aaaahhh!’ His twisted mouth gaped.
Lady Ricinus looked as though she wanted to smash the bottle over his head, but swallowed her bile. She turned to Rix and said, through lips so pursed that a needle could not have been inserted between them, ‘Your impassioned defence of this woman disturbs me. Do you have feelings for her, Rixium?’
‘Certainly not,’ he lied, meeting her eyes. Few people could deceive her but he’d had twenty years of practice. ‘She’s not to my taste, insipid little thing that she is.’ He paused, wondering if he could make the planned half-truths convincing. ‘But I did help her escape the Cythonians.’
‘Why would you risk your life to help a Pale?’
‘Tobry and I had just seen the ruins of Gullihoe. When Hightspall needs to counterattack, a Pale who knows the enemy’s realm from the inside will be priceless.’
‘Indeed,’ she said, licking her lips, ‘and whoever can provide her will earn great favour with the chancellor. Favour we sorely need. In that, at least, you did well, Rixium. Tell me everything about her. Omit not the smallest detail.’
Rix sketched out their rescue of Tali and the subsequent hunt, glossing over all the risks he had taken and the number of times he had narrowly escaped death. It would do no good to tell his mother that. He also omitted every detail she could use against Tali.
‘Then why,’ she said when he had finished, ‘since you went to such trouble and took such stupid risks to rescue the chit, did you hide her from my seneschal?’