Ian Irvine - Vengeance

He climbed the stairs to his white studio, which encircled the core of his personal tower like a doughnut, and leaned on a malachite windowsill, looking down across the lawn to the shores of Lake Fumerous, the sapphire glory of Hightspall. The nightmare had been so real that he half expected to see the leviathan approaching, but the palace gardens, lit by a thousand hazy gaslights, were empty save for a gang of navvies in a trench, packing another layer of asbestos around the main hot water tubule.

‘Waste of time,’ said Tobry from behind. ‘The heat’s gone and it’s never coming back.’

Caulderon had been built on a geyser field and for two thousand years a network of tubules had carried hot groundwater around the city, but a century ago it had started to cool. Now, no amount of lagging could retain what little heat was left.

‘’Course it will,’ said Rix, without looking around. ‘We just have to delve deeper.’

‘The last hot-rock bakery went out of business two weeks ago, and it was four hundred feet down. And all the public scalderies have closed.’

‘No wonder the common folk are on the nose.’

‘In my grandfather’s day, even the poorest folk were well fed and clean.’

‘Why don’t they use heatstones?’

‘Your mother would love that.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Nothing,’ Tobry said hastily. ‘You have to be wealthy to afford heat-stones, Rix. Life in the shanty towns is grim, and getting grimmer. The steam mills and screw pumps have to be driven by firewood boilers and we’ve stripped every hill bare for ten miles — ’

‘Enough bad news,’ snapped Rix. ‘Did you bring anything to eat?’

He turned and Tobry was levitating a tray above his head.

Involuntarily, Rix clenched his fists. ‘Do you have to? You know I hate anything uncanny.’

‘It’s hardly magery at all,’ Tobry said mildly. ‘You know what a dilettante I am. Never done a day’s work in my life.’

A waggle of his fingers and the black bottle poured a goblet of a brown, foul smelling wine. The tray turned upside down and floated towards Rix, yet nothing spilled or fell. Despite Tobry’s self-deprecation, his forehead had a faint sheen. He was showing off, just to be annoying.

Rix resisted the urge to swat the tray out of the air. Stay calm. It’s just his way. He clung to the carved green windowsill until his heart steadied and the pounding in his ears stopped.

‘Why do you hate magery?’ said Tobry.

‘Don’t know. I always have, since I was a kid.’

‘Did someone use it on you once?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Mother protected me from everything.’ Rix took a goblet, sniffed and made a face. ‘Yuk! What’s this?’

‘Fishwine. It’s traditional . I know how important that is to you.’

Tobry was mocking him because House Ricinus was so recently risen. Rix sipped. The wine left a foul taste in his mouth, but he drank it anyway. He wasn’t going to be beaten that easily.

‘Did you bring anything to eat?’

Tobry handed him a flat oval of hard yellow clay, the size of a small platter. His eyes were gleaming; he seemed to be restraining himself.

‘What is it?’ Rix said suspiciously.

‘Hundred-year cod.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s a rare delicacy. Very traditional in the oldest families.’

‘Baked?’ Rix sniffed the clay, which had no odour.

‘No, just matured for a hundred years. Or more.’

Rix cracked the clay, gingerly. The hundred-year cod was brown as peat, hard, and had no odour. ‘This isn’t one of your jokes, is it?’

‘Would I joke about Hightspall’s noble traditions?’

‘You make fun of everything else I hold dear.’

Rix picked a small piece out with the corner of a knife, put it in his mouth then, gagging, ran to the window and spat it out. ‘That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.’

‘Too traditional for you?’ Tobry was smirking.

Rix scrubbed his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘I don’t see you eating any.’

‘I only live for the present.’

Rix stalked away and uncovered a ten-foot-long canvas on which a nobleman in blood-spattered coil-armour was severing the head of a monstrous wyverin. The lava-streaked volcanoes in the background were nearly complete, and the wyverin had been painted in intricate detail, even down to the reflections in each pearly scale, but the nobleman was little more than a sketch. Only the purple, bloated nose looked finished.

‘Not your father’s best feature,’ Tobry said quietly.

How long could Lord Ricinus keep it up, Rix wondered. Surely the drinking would kill him before much longer. What had driven him to such sodden excess, anyway?

‘How can I do it to him?’ he said aloud.

‘I’m sure he’d want you to paint him the way he is.’

‘Father wouldn’t give a damn. It’s Mother who ordered the portrait, and if it’s not finished in time she’ll crucify me. But that’s not what I meant.’

Rix opened a pot of red ochre and dabbed some on his palette. He mixed colours, picked up a large brush then threw it down with another heavy sigh.

‘You used to love painting,’ said Tobry, sitting down. He brought out a liqueur bottle from behind his back, filled his own goblet and leaned back.

‘I still do.’ Rix selected a smaller brush. ‘When I’m working, all my troubles disappear, but this picture won’t come right.’

‘Your heart’s not in it,’ said Tobry. ‘You don’t want to do it.’ He sipped the liqueur and his eyes rolled upwards in bliss.

Rix’s knuckles whitened around the brush, which snapped. He tossed it aside, irritated by the pleasure his friend could take from the simplest things while he, Rix … ‘Of course I want to do it,’ he said. ‘It’s for Father’s great day.’

‘When is his Honouring?’ said Tobry.

Rix glanced at the cherry wood month-clock by the stairs. The knife-blade hands seemed to be spinning towards him. He blinked, focused and it was just a clock.

‘Eleven days,’ he said ominously. At this rate he wouldn’t have his father’s face finished by then, and the whole portrait had to be completed by the Honouring. That it not be done was unthinkable, for he was a dutiful son, and yet …

‘Would you like me to leave you alone?’

‘You’d better get back to my women,’ Rix said curtly, collecting crimson paint on the tip of another brush.

Laughter echoed up the stairs. ‘They seem happier without me.’ Tobry rubbed his chin. ‘And considering how hard I tried to please them, I find that a tad ironic.’

‘You find everything ironic.’ Rix dabbed at the line of his father’s twisted mouth, then scraped it off. ‘You don’t take anything seriously.’

‘With the world about to end in ice or fire,’ Tobry said lightly, ‘why should I? Life is a joke at our expense. I sometimes wonder if the entire universe isn’t a farce.’

As Rix reached out to the canvas, he felt the palace closing around him like dungeon walls. He was exhausted, but if he went back to bed the nightmare would batter him again, and again. He could not stay here, must not be here the night after tomorrow -

‘Are you all right?’ said Tobry.

‘What?’ Rix felt dislocated, as though a segment had been snipped from his life.

‘You’ve been as still as a gargoyle for a good five minutes.’

Rix cast the brush down. ‘I can’t do it … Come on.’

‘Where are we going?’ Tobry rose lazily, goblet in hand.

‘Anywhere but here.’ Rix thought for a moment. ‘Let’s go hunting in the mountains.’ He held his breath, waiting for Tobry to tell him what a bad idea it was, hoping he would. ‘Don’t try to talk me out of it,’ Rix said half-heartedly.