Read Rebellion: Tainted Realm: Book 2 for Free Online Page A

pack and scrubbed Benn’s grubby face and hands. He was half asleep and made no protest. She cleaned her blood-spotted garments as best she could, took stale bread and hard cheese from her pack, cut a portion for Rix and another for her brother, then a little for herself. She resumed her seat, nibbled at a crust, leaned back and closed her eyes. The flush slowly faded.
    Her eyes sprang open. “Lord, we got to fly. They could be creeping after us right now.”
    “Maloch will warn me. Rest. You’ve been up all night.”
    “So have you.”
    “I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. Hush now. I need to think.”
    It was a lie. So much was whirling through his mind that he was incapable of coherent thought. Rix clenched his right fist, for the pleasure of being able to do so. It did not feel as natural as his left hand, and the scabbed seam around his wrist would leave a raised scar, but he had his hand back, and it worked. He could ask for nothing more.
    “How did you know it would rejoin, Glynnie?”
    “Didn’t. But the captain cut your hand off with that sword…”
    “Yes?” he said when she did not go on.
    “It’s supposed to protect you. So I thought… I thought it might not have severed your hand on all the levels…”
    “What do you mean,
all the levels
?”
    “I don’t know. Heard it mentioned by the chancellor’s chief magian one time… when…”
    “When you were watching and listening?” said Rix.
    “Servants spend half their time waiting,” said Glynnie. “I like to make sense of things. I thought, if your hand hadn’t been severed on all the levels, it might join up.”
    He rested his back against the wall. Though it was deep winter in Caulderon, this far below the palace it was pleasantly warm. He raised his hand. Two places were still ebbing blood, though they were smaller than before. The healing was almost complete.
    He closed his eyes for a minute, but felt himself sinking into a dreamy haze and forced them open. The enemy were too many and too clever. It would not take them long to discover which way he had gone, and if he were asleep he might miss Maloch’s warning.
    He rose, paced across the square vault and back. Then again and again. His eyes were accustomed to the dimness now and the glowstone shed light into the corners of the vault. The stonework was unlike anything he had seen before. The wall stone was as smooth as plaster, yet the door frame, and each corner of the wall, was shaped from undressed stone, crudely shaped with pick and chisel. Though odd, it seemed right.
    These walls are crying out for a mural, he thought, and his hand rose involuntarily to the wall, as though he held a brush. He cursed, remembered that there was a child present and bit the oaths off. Again his hand rose. Painting had been his solace in many of the worst times of his childhood, and Rix longed for that solace now.
    “Lord?” said Glynnie, softly.
    “It’s all right. I’ll wake you if anything happens. Sleep now.”
    She trudged across, holding out a long object, like a stick or baton, though it took a while for him to recognise it as one of his paintbrushes.
    “Thought you might need it,” she said.
    “After I finished the picture of the murder cellar, I swore I’d never paint again.”
    “Painting is your life, Lord.”
    “That life is over.”
    “It might help to heal you.”
    He took the brush. His restored hand felt like a miracle, but it would take a far greater one to heal the inner man who had betrayed his mother and helped to bring down his house.
    Yet if he could lose himself in his art, even for a few minutes, it would do more for him than a night’s sleep. Rix set down the brush, since he had no paint, and looked for something he could use to sketch on the wall. There was charcoal in the ashes of the ancient campfire, though when he picked it up the pieces crumbled in his hand.
    Behind the ashes he spied several lengths of bone charcoal. He reached for a piece the length