Doctor Who_ Halflife - Mark Michalowski [12]
A couple of tents, their awnings and pennants flashing red and gold in the later afternoon sun, were being erected at one end of a fenced-off area, in preparation for some sort of tedious jousting tournament. Alinti felt herself tighten up as she approached the old man, who was swaddled in a cream blanket. From behind, he looked even older: hunched and thin, his white hair contrasting with his dark skin in the summer sunshine.
‘What?’ he snapped without even turning. Alinti felt her jaw clench.
‘Tannalis,’ she began in her most reasonable tone. ‘It’s about the staff.’
‘You complaining again?’ he grunted, turning to look at her. ‘Haven’t you got enough to be doing without wasting your time trying to turn my birthday into some sort of pantomime?’
He fixed her with a stare and then turned back to the view as if she’d suddenly stopped mattering. Alinti hated it when he did that – as if she were no more than a member of the Palace staff.
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said. ‘All you have to do is sit here and wait for the rest of us to get everything done. Life’s easy for you, isn’t it? I’ve been running myself ragged –’
‘Horse-cack,’ said Tannalis. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on you, woman: it’s Sensimi and the rest of my staff that have been doing the work. You’ve just been swanning around getting on everyone’s nerves and in everyone’s way.
You’re not Imperatrix proper yet, and don’t you forget it.’
Alinti took a deep, pointed breath, but before she got a word out, her husband turned in his chair.
‘This is my birthday, and I’ll celebrate it my way. Right?’
21
‘Darling,’ said Alinti with as much feeling as she could, holding out her hands to him, but he shooed them away.
‘Don’t “darling” me, woman. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on in that shrivelled little head of yours. You never thought I’d live to be a hundred and twenty, did you? You and that feckless son of yours have been hanging around like vultures for the past decade, waiting for me to drop so you could pick at my corpse. Eh? Well, I’ve made it. I’ve made it this far and I’m not about to give up yet.’
Alinti tried to smile compassionately, but he just snorted.
‘Everyone wants you to live to be a hundred and fifty,’ she said. ‘Nothing would make me and Javill happier. Even the doctors say –’
‘Huh! What do they know, eh? Those quacks you brought in from Eden were as much use as Javill. I’m glad I sent them packing and got some of my own in.’ He grinned at Alinti’s expression. ‘At least they won’t accidentally poison me.’
‘Poison you?’ Alinti put on her most horrified voice and clasped her hands to her breast in what she hoped was a gesture of astonishment. He waved her away.
‘Don’t start all that business,’ he said. ‘You can’t lie as convincingly with your hands as you can with your mouth. Stick to what you’re good at. Now leave me alone. It was a beautiful day until you dragged your raddled old carcass in here. Go on – go and harass someone. I’ve got thinking to do.’
Alinti smiled again, but she knew she wasn’t fooling him. Poison? Could he have guessed? And what thinking could he possibly be doing? Alinti didn’t like this: Tannalis was normally quiet and unassuming. She didn’t like this at all. Could it be connected with the offworlder that Tannalis seemed to have befriended?
‘What are you waiting for?’ Tannalis grunted, turning his back on her and leaning forward to peer out of the window.
‘Nothing, my dear,’ said Alinti as she headed purposefully for the door. ‘I’m not waiting for anything.’
The Doctor didn’t know where Calamee was taking him. Once they’d left the crowds in the square behind, she’d taken him on a seemingly random tour of tiny, shadowed streets, the evening sun slanting across the tops of them as it picked out the tatty, stuccoed walls and the terracotta-tiled roofs. Gleaming crucifixes, their gold-leaf pristine amid the