The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (87 page)

‘You’re hurting my hand, Mama,’ said Tali.

Her mama crouched in front of Tali, holding her so tightly
that she could hardly breathe. Mama’s blue eyes were wet, and Tali hated to see
her so sad.

‘We’re betrayed, little one. We’re never going home.’

‘Why not?’ said Tali, looking around in confusion. Why had
Tinyhead shut them in? Why hadn’t she told Mama her worries? Was this her
fault?

A familiar face carved into the stone high on the wall made
her shiver. It was Lyf, the enemy’s last and wickedest king, who had died long
ago. She had often seen the tattooed Cythonians kneeling before his image.

To her left, a series of dusty stone bins ran along the
wall, partly concealed by tiers of barrels. On the right, hundreds of wooden
crates were stacked nearly to the ceiling. In the centre, twenty yards away,
stood a stained black bench. The floor was damp and littered with pieces of
fallen stone.

Something rustled, far across the cellar. Mama looked around
frantically. ‘Over here,’ she said, hauling Tali to the crates. ‘Squeeze into
the middle where you can’t be seen.’

Tali clung to her. ‘I don’t like this place, Mama.’

‘Me either. And yet, I feel close to our ancestors here. In,
hurry.’

Tali was a good little girl, so she bit her lip and edged
into one of the gaps between the rotting crates. The floor was so slimy that
her bare feet kept slipping.

‘Don’t cry. I know how brave you are.’ Her mama kissed her
brow. ‘Tali,’ she choked, ‘if I don’t come back, Little Nan will give you your
papa’s letter when you come of age.’

‘Mama?’ Why would she say such a thing? Of course she would
come back.

‘Shh!’ Mama took Tali’s hands in her own and drew a ragged
breath. ‘Our family has a terrible enemy –’

The dead rat smell thickened and grew fouler. ‘Who, Mama?’

‘I don’t know. He’s never seen, never heard, but he flutters
in my nightmares like a foul wrythen –’

‘You’re scaring me, Mama!’

‘When you’re older, you’ve got to find your
gift
and master it. It’s the only way to
beat him.’

Tali shivered. In Cython, magery was forbidden. Magery meant
death. Children were beaten just for whispering the word.

At a hollow click from the far side of the cellar, Mama
jumped.

‘But Mama,’ said Tali, lowering her voice, ‘if our masters
catch any slave using …
magery
, they
kill them.’

‘Even innocent little children,’ said Mama, hugging her
desperately. ‘You must be very careful.’

Tali’s voice rose. ‘Then how am I supposed to find my
magery?’

Mama clapped a hand over Tali’s mouth. ‘I don’t know, child.
Don’t tell anyone about your gift. Trust no one.’

Tali pulled away. ‘Is Tinyhead the enemy?’ She took hold of
a splintered length of wood, wanting to jam it through his disgusting tongue.

‘Shh! You know what happens when you get angry.’

‘I’m already angry, and I’m going –’

‘Forget him. He’s nothing.’

‘When I find my gift, his head will be nothing. I’ll blast
it right off.’

‘Tali, never say such things! You must lower your eyes and
say, “Yes, Master.”’

‘I won’t!’ Tali said furiously. ‘I hate our masters and one
day I’m going to escape.’

‘Yes, one day,’ said Mama, dully. ‘But for now, promise
you’ll be a good little slave.’

‘I can’t.’

Mama stroked Tali’s golden hair. ‘You may think whatever
fierce thoughts you like, little one, for one day you will be the noble Lady
Tali vi Torgrist, but in Cython you must always act the obedient slave.’

It frightened Tali to hear her mama say such things. ‘All
right,’ she muttered. She had a bad temper, and knew it, but for Mama’s sake
she would try. ‘I promise.’

Her mother looked dubious. ‘I’ll put a little glamour on
you. It’ll hide you, as long as they don’t look directly at you. Hold still.’

She put her hands on Tali’s cheeks, whispered a word Tali
could not make out, then drew her hands down Tali’s sides, all the way to her
feet. Tali’s skin tingled and when she looked down, her body had blurred into
the shadows. Magery! She ached for it. Feared it, too.

Something made an ugly scraping sound, closer this time, and
her scalp felt as though grubs were creeping across it.

‘Stay here,’ Mama said softly. ‘Don’t look.’

‘Mama, what was that noise?’

‘I don’t know.’ Mama’s teeth chattered. ‘But whatever
happens, even if your gift comes,
don’t
use it here
.’

Mama darted away, her pale blonde hair flying. Her bare feet
skidded on the flagstones as she passed an ugly tapestry of three jackals
fighting over the guts of a nobleman, recovered, then zigzagged between the
barrels and the stone bins. She was a beautiful little bird, leading a snake
away from her nest.

But as she passed between a pair of stone raptors with
flesh-tearing beaks, two masked figures came after her. Tali clutched at a
crate, her fingers sinking into the powdery wood.

‘Mama, look out!’ she whispered, for the masks had fanged
teeth and awful, angry eyes. ‘Don’t let them catch you.’

Then Mama slipped and twisted her ankle, and the moment they
caught her Tali knew they were going to do something terrible.

‘No!’ she whimpered. ‘Mama, get away!’

The big man caught Mama’s arms and held her while his
accomplice, a bony woman, punched her in the mouth.

‘Treacherous Pale scum!’ the woman hissed.

Mama sagged, staring at them like a mouse trapped by two
cats, and Tali’s front teeth began to throb. Stop it, stop it! Mama, use your
gift on them.

They dragged her to the black bench and heaved her onto it.
The woman forced an oily green lump into Mama’s mouth, then passed a stubby
crystal back and forth over her head until the end glowed blue, scattering
brilliant rays across the cellar. Mama moaned and her toes curled.

As the blue crystal glowed more brightly, pain stabbed
around the whorled scar on Tali’s left shoulder, her slave mark, and cold
spread through her like venom. She shuddered and remembered to cover her eyes.

Born to slavery in underground Cython, she had learned
life’s lesson in her stone cradle –
obey,
or suffer
. But the people who held her mama weren’t tattooed like
Cythonians, and they were too big to be Pale slaves. Who were they?

Something made an ugly grinding sound. Mama shrieked.

‘Careful,’ the man cried. ‘He won’t pay if –’

‘It’s stuck,’ said the woman, and the grinding grew louder.

What were they doing to Mama?

‘It’s got to be taken while she’s alive,’ said the man.

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

Tali peeped between her fingers and nearly screamed. Mama’s
arms and legs were thrashing, green foam was oozing from her nose and a strand
of hair dripped blood. Mama! Tali could not breathe; for a moment she could
hardly see.

‘I can’t hold her.’ The man’s voice was hoarse, his eyes
darting.

‘Nor me if you don’t!’

The woman was pressing a metal rod against the top of Mama’s
head, twisting and shoving as if trying to force it in. Through the mouth of
the mask her grey teeth were bared. She was grunting and her hands were red.

Why were they talking like that? Why were they hurting Mama?
Tali’s breath came in painful gasps and her stomach was full of fishhooks. She
had to help Mama. But Mama had told her not to move. Only magery could save
Mama now, but she had told Tali not to use it here. Yet if she didn’t, Mama was
going to die. But Tali had promised …

No! She had to break that promise, and if she got into
trouble she would take her punishment. Tali had used magery once before, when
she was little. She had been really angry about something and her gift had
burst forth out of nowhere. She tried to summon it now but it shrank from her
mother’s warnings,
Always hide your gift!
Never use it or they’ll find out and kill you
.

She tried and tried, but it would not come. Tali was
desperate now. She had to save Mama. The glamour would hide her, wouldn’t it?
She crept out, picked up a piece of stone, took aim at the woman’s head and
hurled it with all the fury her small body could muster. And missed her.

‘Ow!’ cried the man, clapping a hand to the back of his
head. ‘What was that?’

Tali eased backwards to the crates, praying the glamour
would hold. She felt with her foot for a bigger stone.

The woman gave a last twist of her length of metal, withdrew
it and flicked a white disc, trailing a clump of bloody hair, to the floor. Was
that a piece of Mama’s head? Tali was reaching for a fist-sized chunk of rock
when the woman opened a pair of golden tongs behind Mama’s head, pushed in and
yanked. Tali heard an awful, squelchy pop. Mama’s arms and legs jerked, then
hung limp.

‘You’ve ended her,’ the man said hoarsely, shying away.

‘Who cares about a filthy Pale?’ said the woman, holding up
the steaming tongs. ‘I got it in time.’

Tali’s head spun and her eyes flooded. But for the crates
she would have fallen down. Though she was only eight, she had seen all too
many dead slaves. Why was this happening? Was it her fault? She should have run
and led them away; she should have done something, anything. Had the evil woman
killed Mama? No, she couldn’t be dead.

‘Mama, Mama!’ she whimpered, hurting all over.

The man gasped, ‘Did you hear a cry?’

You stupid fool, thought Tali. Now they’ll kill you too.

‘Are you useless?’ sneered the woman.

The man drew a long knife and waved it at her.

She laughed in his face. ‘Find the brat and finish it.’

 
THREE

The man took a lantern in his free hand and crept
towards the stacked crates.

The woman put on a long glove that shone like woven
green-metal – Tali sensed the whisper of magery coming from it –
and removed something round from the tongs. It looked like a black marble. She
stripped off the glove so it turned inside out, trapping the black object
inside.

Now – horrible, horrible! – she opened a vein in
Mama’s neck and filled the glove with dribbling blood, then tied a knot in the
long wrist and thrust the glove down her front. Tali made out a crimson glow
there, shining through the glove, but it went out. She checked on the man, who
was at the other end of the stacks, slowly moving her way.

On the far wall of the cellar, the carved face of Lyf
shifted. Yellow moved in its stone eyes and a foggy hand reached towards the
woman, stretching and stretching as if to pluck out the glove. It was more
magery, but whose?

There came a purple flash from behind a pile of barrels, a
zzzt
like a spell going off and the hand
recoiled, then faded out. The woman froze, staring at the stone face, then
laughed and picked up the gory tongs.

‘Oh!’ she whispered. ‘Oh, yes!’ and licked them clean.

Tali saw her muddy eyes roll up until the whites were
showing through the holes in the mask. Tali wanted to punch her nose flat.
After checking that the man wasn’t looking, the woman filled a square,
green-metal tin with Mama’s blood, twisted on a brass cap and licked her bony
fingers.

Tali’s eyes burnt and her nose was running. She wiped it on
the back of her hand, fighting the urge to scream. If she made a sound, the man
would cut her open like Mama. But she was much more scared of the evil woman
with the crab-leg fingers and those awful eyes. She pressed a finger to the
slave mark on her left shoulder, for luck. Touching it always made her feel
better.

The man was tall, with a round, jiggling belly like a
pudding basin. He was outside her hiding place now and she caught a glimpse of
the gleaming knife blade, as long as her arm. Tali recoiled and felt a shocking
pain as a nail in one of the crates pierced her hip to the bone. Tears stung
her eyes yet she dared not move. If she made a sound he would stab that knife
right through her.

The man was panting and the spirits on his breath made her
head spin. His hand shook as he raised the lantern, then lowered it. Silence
fell, apart from a sickening
drip-drip
from the black bench.

After Papa’s terrible death, Mama had taught Tali how to
hide. ‘A slave must be invisible,’ she had said. ‘Never be noticed and you’ll
be safe.’

No slave was ever safe, but Tali was the best of the slave
kids at hiding. She traced the loops and whorls of her slave mark with a
fingertip, trying to find comfort there, but nothing could comfort her now.
Mama couldn’t be dead. It wasn’t possible, yet she was gone.

He waited, as if he knew she was there. What if he pulled
the crates away? She had to do something. She felt among the broken wood on the
floor for the sharpest length, a piece as long as her forearm. If he came at
her, she would shove it into his fat belly and run.

Her arm was trembling so much she could hardly hold the
weapon. Then, to her shame, Tali realised that wee was running down her legs.
She clamped her thighs together and, to distract herself, began to count her
heartbeats, which were so loud that surely he could hear them. After another
twenty beats, the man grunted and moved on. She kept still.

He sprang back, hacking at the crates with his knife and
roaring, ‘Haaaaaa! Got you.’

Tali’s heart leapt up her throat and the nail ground into
her hipbone. She was almost screaming from the pain but she did not move. She
was going to win this contest, for Mama.

With savage hacks of the knife, the man began to tear down
the crates to her left, smash, crash. He was going to find her. How could she
stop him? She eased off the nail, took hold of the lowest crate and heaved. It
did not budge; the weight of all the crates above it was too great.

More crates crashed down. It would not be long now. She
could not go further backwards; the gap was too narrow. And she dared not wait.
Once he saw her, he would jam the knife through her guts.