by Ian Irvine
“Jadgery is closest,” said Swelt.
“It would inspire everyone else. It would be the first start to an uprising.”
“Which would bring Lyf down on us, quick-smart.”
“But with all the battles he’s fighting, and all the provinces and cities he’s occupying, he can’t have many troops to spare right now.”
“It’ll be different in spring.”
“Once he controls his captured lands, he’ll be able to spare an army. If we wait until spring to take him on, it’ll be too late.”
“What’s your plan?”
“A raid on his garrison at Jadgery.”
“If you succeed it’ll be a great boost to morale,” said Swelt.
“I’ll take Leatherhead’s fifty. They’re the only experienced fighters I have.”
“How can you be sure they’ll fight?”
“If we win, they get a share of the plunder.”
Swelt shrugged, his shoulders wobbling. “If you win, it’ll also bind them to you.”
“What if I lose?”
“Try to lose the thugs we don’t want back.”
As Swelt was waddling out, panting with each breath, Rix said, “Swelt?”
He turned. “Yes?”
“How’s Glynnie getting on?”
“Surely you know better than I do?”
“She’s been avoiding me,” said Rix.
Swelt inflated his cheeks. “I’m not one to carry tales, Rixium!”
“I need to know.”
“Well, I have to admire the girl.”
“For taking charge of the household?”
“No,” said Swelt, “for taking on the lowest, dirtiest and most menial tasks of all, and doing them perfectly.”
He went out, leaving Rix staring after him.
“You called for me, Lord Deadhand?” said Glynnie, from behind Rix.
He had not realised she was there. He started and knocked the ink bottle across his map.
“Sorry, Lord Deadhand. Let me clean it up.”
“I’ll do it!” he said, more brusquely than he had intended. “And call me Rix, dammit.”
She stepped back smartly, until he could barely see her in the dim light, then stood stiffly to attention as though awaiting Lady Ricinus’s pleasure.
“Don’t be like that, Glynnie,” he said, sighing.
“How may I serve you, Lord?” she said in a voice stripped of all emotion, though it quavered on Lord.
“Please, not after all we’ve been through together.”
“That was then,” she said quietly. “This is now.”
“We were friends. I miss you. I need you.”
Her face was tilted away from him. “You’re back where you belong, the lord of a manor with thousands of rich acres and hundreds of servants. And I’m back where I belong — the least of them all. I’m not making that mistake again.”
“You’re not least,” said Rix. “I gave you charge of the household servants.”
“I begged you not to. I’m just a maid — the least of all.”
“You’re strong and clever, and you know how House Ricinus was run.”
“But I didn’t run it. I don’t give orders, I obey them.”
“You can run this household; I know you can.”
“They won’t have me, and I don’t want it.”
“Is that why you’re doing the dirty jobs? To spite me?”
“When I see a job that needs doing, I do it. There’s nothing more to say. Will that be all, Lord?”
She was turning to go when he said sharply, “What’s happened? What did they do?”
“Nothing, Deadhand,” she muttered. “Just the everyday life of a servant in a great house.”
He sprang up, caught her by the shoulder and turned her around. She resisted, then obeyed. Her left eyebrow was badly cut and swollen, the area around her eye turning blue-black.
“Who hit you?” he raged.
“I’ll never say and you can’t make me.”
“I’ll have the lot of them up here. I’ll make the bastards talk.”
“And they’ll get me for it. Rix — Lord,” she clutched at his hands. “I told you this would happen. Why wouldn’t you listen?”
“I was trying to do the right thing. You’re so clever and capable, and you’ve done so much for me.”
Glynnie exploded. “You’re so stupid!”
“What are you talking about?” he said, genuinely bewildered.
“Ten days ago you were looking for a housemaid’s position for me, without asking me, because I’m an inexperienced girl who knows nothing of the ways of the world. Now, suddenly I’m old and experienced enough to be put in charge of a vast household?”
After a long pause, he said quietly, “I — wanted to make up for the way I’d treated you.”
“You’ve got to take it back.”
“If I do, they’ll assume I’m weak. They’ll know they’ve won.”
“They have won. You know the rumours Blathy is spreading about me?”
“No,” said Rix, frowning. “How could I?”
She made an exasperated noise. “She’s calling me your mistress — though that’s not the word she uses.” She flushed.
“What word does she use?”
“Slut! Your slut, Rix.”
“But I’m trying to do the right thing,” he bellowed.
“It’s not working.” She went out.
Rix threw himself on the huge old bed, which emitted clouds of mouldy dust.
Damn Blathy. He had to get rid of her, right now. He could not put off the evil moment any longer. He sprang up and headed downstairs to the servants’ quarters, feeling that familiar pain in his belly again. What if she wouldn’t go and he had to throw her out?
“Where’s Blathy?” he said to the widow Lobb, a toothless crone who was sitting by a narrow window, using a darning needle to gouge an ugly splinter from a boy’s hand, and making a bloody mess of it. She must have been half blind. The boy’s eyes were damp and he was trying not to cry out.
“I’ll take you to her, Lord,” said the boy — a sturdy, grey-eyed lad of about eight years, with wild sandy hair and a gap where he’d lost two front teeth.
Rix looked down at the boy’s raw hand. “Yes, right away.”
The boy wriggled free of the widow Lobb. “This way, Lord Deadhand.”
“Mind you come straight back,” Lobb said sharply.
“What’s your name, lad?” said Rix, following.
“Thom, Lord. I’m one of the wood boys.”
“An important job. I’ll see you get leather gloves in future.”
“Thank you, Lord.”
Thom led Rix through a maze of passages and up a damp, south-facing tower to a weathered plank door. “Here’s Blathy’s room, Lord.”
“Thanks.” The boy was waiting, watching him, and Rix didn’t want any witnesses. “Better run back and get that splinter out.”
Thom studied his butchered palm, trembling. Rix took pity on him. “Go down and find Glynnie — you know her, don’t you?”
“Yes, Lord. She’s pretty.” Thom reddened. “And kind.”
“Tell her I sent you. She’ll have that splinter out so quick you won’t even feel it.”
“Thank you, Lord.” Thom ran.
Rix took a deep breath and rapped on the door. “Blathy, come out.” What if she wouldn’t go? He should have brought some guards.
After a minute or two she wrenched the door open and stood there in her shift, staring at him. She must have come from her bed, for her heavy-lidded eyes were half closed, her long hair was a tangled mess and her feet were bare.
“What do you want, Deadhand?” she said imperiously.
“According to the official charter, you have no right here. I’m putting you out. Gather your things.”
She stared at him for a long time, then strode across to the rumpled bed and in one swift movement drew her shift over her head and dropped it on the floor. She stood before him, proud, m
ajestic and completely naked.
“Throw me out.”
She was bluffing. She had to be.
“Get dressed.”
“Make me.”
He wasn’t going along that road. “I’ll send the guards up, and some women to dress you.”
She picked up a heavy knife. “They’d better come armed.”
“They will,” said Rix, cursing her.
“If you expel me I’ll tear my clothes off and walk naked into the snow, to freeze to death.”
“That’s your choice, not mine.”
“But you’ll be blamed. You’ll bear it for the rest of your life.”
She threw her head back, proudly meeting his eyes, staring him down. She wasn’t bluffing. Blathy was a terrible, vindictive woman, but a magnificent one too — she was prepared to risk everything on her estimate of his character, and face the consequences if she was wrong.
“What do I care if you live or die?” he muttered.
“You’re chivalrous, Deadhand. With my death on your conscience, you’ll burn with guilt.”
“You’re assuming I have a conscience.”
“When it comes to dealing with women, you’re weak. It’s your curse.”
There was nothing to say. He walked out, cursing his folly. I am weak, he thought, and she’s beaten me. How will I ever get rid of her now?
His wrist was aching worse than ever. He manually flexed the fingers of his dead hand, then rubbed the inflamed scar where it joined the healthy flesh of his wrist. It did not ease the pain. If there had been more of Tali’s healing blood, might it have saved his hand?
He had not thought about her in ages. In truth, he’d avoided thinking about Tali because her small betrayals — notably, not telling him about Lord and Lady Ricinus’s treasonous plan to assassinate the chancellor — had been too painful. Now he realised that her failings paled beside his own.
He flexed his fingers again. Why had his rejoined hand worked so well, then gone dead? He should never have used his own blood to paint with. Had the prophetic mural ended the life of his hand?
In the past, Rix had often painted things he did not want to see, yet painting had also been his main solace in childhood. It had been the one thing that had not been bought by the wealth of House Ricinus. He wanted to paint now. No — to get the insoluble problems of Glynnie and Blathy out of his head he needed to paint. Even something crude, which was all he could manage left-handed, would be better than nothing.
He turned and went up to see the castellan.
“Paintbrushes?” said Swelt, as though he’d never heard of such arcane objects. He peeled a dried fig off a string, popped it in his mouth and contemplated another. “Why would you want paintbrushes?”
“Painting helps me to think,” said Rix. “Do you have any artist’s brushes in the stores?”
“Certainly not. But…” Swelt masticated another fig, like a cow chewing its cud. “In the days when the great dame had ladies to stay, some of them used to paint. I’ll see what I can find.”
He lumbered out, and shortly returned, red in the face and gasping for breath, bearing a handful of brushes in one balloon-like hand and a rack of six little paint pots in the other.
Rix took them and thanked him. “Where did the ladies paint?”
“Out on the lawns, when the weather was clement. In the solar when it was cold or wet. Splendid light in the solar, they used to say.”
“Not at this time of night,” said Rix. “Is there a high room somewhere, quiet and away from everything else?”
“The great dame was fond of looking at the stars from her observatory,” said Swelt. “It’s a hundred and eighty steps up the rear tower — the one without a dome. You won’t mind if I give you directions?”
Rix preferred it. He took the rusty old key Swelt was holding out, a bracket of candles, the paint pots and brushes and some oil, and headed up the tower.
The observatory was open, windy and miserably cold, though in his present mood that suited Rix. Cold not only numbed his wrist, it also occupied his mind and turned off his endlessly cycling worries. About Glynnie, and the enemy, and all the other problems he had created for himself and could do nothing about.
He had no paper, no canvas, no board, but that didn’t matter. Rix was happy to paint on the pale stone. It would fade in months, and weather away in years, though that didn’t bother him either — it was the sheer act of creation that mattered, not what was done with the work afterwards.
He unfastened the lids of the paint pots, resurrected the desiccated contents by stirring with a little oil, took a handful of brushes, not sure which one to use, then out of habit thrust the largest brush through the hooked fingers of his dead hand.
And the fingers moved.
CHAPTER 29
Rix dropped the brush and stared at his dead hand in the yellow candlelight. His heart was thundering. Were his fingers less grey than before? It was hard to tell in this light, though he thought they were.
What was going on?
He flexed his fingers, one by one. This time they moved more easily and he felt a tingling pain in the middle finger. They were definitely pink now, though he could not imagine it would last. It had to be some cruel trick of the magery that had rejoined hand to wrist. But oh, the joy of holding a brush again.
He stirred in more oil until the paint was the right consistency, fretting at the time it was taking and afraid his hand would go dead. He mixed paint on the flat mount of a sundial, took some black on the largest brush and swept it across the wall. Rix eyed it for a minute or two, decided it was a meaningless swirl and rubbed it off with the heel of his hand.
He began again. And again rubbed it off.
Rix clamped his left hand around Maloch’s hilt, in case its protective magery had something to do with his previous painting, and blanked his mind.
Blathy appeared in his inner eye, imperiously naked, daring him to throw her out. Rix groaned and blanked his mind again.
He scrawled on the wall a third time, went to rub out the black marks then stopped with his right hand outstretched. Was that a figure in full flight? Or someone leaping into a pool, arms and legs spread? Or a man roaring in fury? Yes, definitely a man.
But the more he thought about it, the more inspiration was draining out of him. His artistic gift was intuitive and analysis always defeated it. Don’t ask what the man is doing. Don’t try to paint what you’re thinking. Concentrate on something else and let your painter’s hand, your magical, sometimes-live-and-sometimes-dead hand, paint what it sees. Concentrate on striking a blow against Lyf that will shake his confidence and boost Hightspall’s shattered morale.
He was painting unconsciously now, his eyes unfocused, indifferent to what he was doing, totally absorbed by a developing plan.
Rix was a gifted warrior of the rarest sort — not just enormously strong, but fast and dexterous too. And his tutors had been the best in the land. He had never been beaten in a fight and, with the enchanted sword in his hand, even his left hand, he was almost invincible.
Almost, he reminded himself. Pride leads to bad outcomes.
His first action on entering the fortress had been to review its defences, and Rix knew there was no immediate threat. No roving band of villains would dare attack such a well-fortified place while he was in charge.
At some stage the enemy would come after him, though moving troops in winter was difficult and it could take a fortnight to march a sizeable force here. In that time he had to unite the fortress behind him, and the best way to do that was by proving himself against the enemy.
He would lead Leatherhead’s fifty men down the mountain road in darkness and attack the enemy garrison at Jadgery, ten miles away. House Ricinus once held a manor near Jadgery, and Rix had spent several weeks in the area when he was fifteen. He had roamed all over the place and knew the land and the town well.
As he painted, he planned the route of the march and how he would attack the garrison. Were fi
fty men enough? Ideally, he needed a lot more attackers than there were defenders, but he dared take no more from here; he could not leave Garramide undefended. How could he get more?
The clatter of the falling brush roused him from his reverie. A minute ago his hand had been pink and warm, but it had suddenly gone cold, as if all the blood had withdrawn from it. His fingers were stiff and blue. Was the painting finished? It was hard to tell in this light.
He carried the bracket of candles to the wall. And started. The painting was crude, but it was definitely a man. A dark-skinned man, darker than any Cythonian he had ever seen, almost black. Their skin was pale grey, or occasionally a steely blue-grey, but seldom dark. Though it might darken in the sun, he supposed.
This man was heavily built but not fat — he was massively muscular, yet his arms and legs were thrown out in unnatural angles as though he was doing a dervish dance. No, not a dance. Rix looked closer. The man was in pain — an agony so intense that it had twisted him in ways no normal human could be twisted. He was screaming in agony.
As Rix moved the light, a fleck of paint reflected it back at him in brilliant, shimmering red. Odd, Rix thought. He moved the light the other way. This time the reflection was emerald, and then it was black.
Hair stirred on the top of Rix’s head. What did that remind him of? How could the light be reflected in completely different colours?
Opal could. Where had he seen opal that looked like this? He could not recall; he had emptied his mind too thoroughly. Without thinking, he rubbed the worn wire-bound hilt of his sword, and the image he had drawn blasted into his mind so clearly that he cried out.
He had seen that tormented figure several times before — a man carved from a single enormous mass of black opal — and each time it had been after touching Maloch’s hilt. Tali had seen it too; it had been floating in the white shaft of the Abysm, next to Lyf’s caverns under Precipitous Crag. The Abysm: the most sacred of all the enemy’s holy places, the very conduit between death and life.
Rix also knew who it was, for Lyf had told him and Tali in the cellar before stealing Deroe’s three ebony pearls. The figure wasn’t carved from opal — it was a man turned to opal.
It was the petrified body of the greatest of the Five Heroes, the man who had begun the war with Cythe and founded Hightspall. Rix had been drawn to him from the very first time he had heard the story, and was drawn to him still. Powerful, ruthless, creative and endlessly fascinating, he was a man Rix would have followed anywhere.