Chimaera

THIRTY-FOUR

Irisis was surprised at how smoothly the transition had gone. The occupants of Nennifer were so cowed by the long rule of Ghorr’s council, and Fusshte’s brief reign of terror, that they accepted the orders of the new council unquestioningly. Flydd and Klarm were well known to them as hard, uncompromising men, but fair ones.

The air-dreadnought was sent east to Fadd, the closest city to Nennifer. It carried three pilots so as to travel non-stop, and a contingent of artists and tale-tellers whose task it was to broadcast news of the fall of the old Council, and the succession of the new one, all along the rugged east coast from Einunar to tropical Taranta. Flydd sent a guard with them, and plenty of the Council’s gold to buy their passages. With fast ships and the wind behind them, the whole of the populous and wealthy east coast could be alerted in a few weeks.

Nish spent his days helping to retrieve survivors and supplies from the rubble. He wasn’t much use with a broken arm but working was better than sitting around in the cold. It was freezing, dirty and ultimately thankless work, for after the second day they uncovered only dead. He saw little of Flydd and Klarm, who had gone back into Nennifer time and again, recovering what they could of the old Council’s most precious devices and secrets, and destroying the rest. A large number of crates were loaded into the thapter and dirigible, which were guarded night and day.

Irisis was frantically busy, digging with teams of labourers into the workshops and storerooms to recover air-floater controllers, floater-gas generators and all manner of other crystals, devices and tools that would be needed for the fight-back.

About a week after Fusshte fled, they’d done all they could do. Flydd climbed onto a platform built from firewood to address the multitude in the rear yard.

‘The air-dreadnought is expected back from Fadd at any time,’ he told the four thousand survivors, who were still camped around their meagre fires. They’d recovered plenty of firewood but it would have to last for months. ‘It will begin ferrying you to Fadd, the closest place we can send you, but it’s going to take a long time. Even if we can pack one hundred into the air-dreadnought, it’ll take forty trips to carry everyone to safety, and the evacuation won’t be completed until next summer. In the meantime you must organise yourselves for survival, for we have to get on with the war.

‘There’s enough water in the cisterns, but you’ll have to dig out the storerooms to feed yourselves until supplies can be ferried back.’ Flydd looked up, searching for the source of a faint whirring. ‘That’ll be the air-dreadnought now.’

He stepped down. The refugees were already streaming out towards the broken parade ground on the other side of Nennifer. Flydd headed around the left-hand side, which was longer but would be quicker.

‘Laden with fresh fruit and vegetables, I hope,’ Nish said quietly to Irisis. They had been managing on hard tack for so long that eating dinner was like gnawing on a saddle.

‘They need it worse than we do,’ said Flydd. ‘You’ll have to wait till we get home.’

‘It’s funny to think of Fiz Gorgo as home,’ said Irisis. ‘Though I suppose it is.’

As they reached the front of Nennifer, the air-dreadnought, which had been slowly descending on its path to the parade ground, used the wind to turn sharply.

‘That was an odd manoeuvre,’ said Nish. ‘The pilot must be exhausted …’

Fire arced across the sky and disappeared over the lip of the Desolation Sink. No one reacted for a moment, then Flangers shouted, ‘That was a fire spear from a javelard. We’re being attacked!’

Three air-dreadnoughts broke out of the cloud where they’d been lurking. The one that had been landing was so close that Irisis could see the pilot’s terrified face. It turned away but half a dozen fiery spears struck its airbags and all five exploded in a stupendous conflagration. The boom echoed back and forth.

For a moment she thought the occupants might have a chance, the craft being so low, but it fell like a stone onto the fractured edge of the parade ground, broke in two and both pieces dropped into the Desolation Sink.

‘Like shooting a bird in a cage,’ gasped Klarm, who had pounded around the other side of the ruined fortress.

They stood together, wondering what was going to happen now. The three air-dreadnoughts put their noses down and raced for the rear of Nennifer. ‘It’s Fusshte!’ said Irisis. ‘He’s come for the thapter.’

‘If the refugees switch allegiance again, we’re done for,’ cried Flydd. ‘Why, why wasn’t I ready for this?’ He set off in his awkward stagger that covered the ground deceptively quickly.

‘You weren’t to know that Fusshte would come back,’ said Irisis, running beside him.

‘There was a skeet missing from its cage the other day,’ panted Klarm, who was having trouble keeping up.

‘And you didn’t think to mention it?’ cried Flydd.

‘I thought someone had eaten it.’

‘A spy must have been keeping Fusshte informed,’ said Flydd. ‘Once he realised I wasn’t going to use the amplimet he got his courage back. I should have cut him down like the vermin he is.’

He turned as he ran and Irisis saw a fury in his eyes that was close to insanity.

‘Where’s Malien?’ panted Yggur, limping up to join them.

‘I haven’t seen her all morning,’ Irisis called over her shoulder.

Flydd swore a ghastly oath. ‘We’re going to lose the thapter.’

They turned the rear corner of Nennifer and the first air-dreadnought was just a hundred spans from the ground. Its sides were lined with soldiers, all with crossbows at their shoulders. Javelard operators at front and rear were sliding spears into position.

‘Keep to the shadows,’ said Flydd. ‘They’ll be watching for us.’

‘They’ll be hard pressed to pick us out of four thousand people,’ said Nish.

‘Care to bet your life on it?’ Yggur grated. ‘Fusshte won’t take chances this time. Their orders will be to shoot us on sight.’

‘Can’t you spin an illusion around us?’ said Irisis.

‘Not on the run, out of nothing. I haven’t got the tiniest crystal on me.’

The thapter had been left about three hundred spans away, in an alley between piled rows of timber recovered from the wreckage for firewood. It was covered by a tarpaulin and, since there were canvas shelters all over the place, Irisis hoped that it wouldn’t attract the attackers’ immediate attention.

She edged through the heaps of rubble at the back of Nennifer. The air-dreadnought was hovering, its rotors roaring to keep it in place against the strong wind. A man at the bow – Fusshte himself, the stinking cur – had a speaking trumpet up to his mouth. Oh for a crossbow, Irisis thought, but hers was inside the thapter.

‘Where is the traitor Flydd and his treacherous companions?’ Fusshte shouted. ‘Where is the flying construct? Point them out and you’ll be well rewarded.’

‘We’re finished,’ said Nish.

‘Keep moving,’ hissed Flydd. ‘They don’t know where we are.’

They crept on. The low sun cast deep shadows behind the standing remnants of Nennifer and they took advantage of the cover to get closer.

‘Speak!’ roared Fusshte, ‘or I’ll shoot you down like the treasonous dogs you are.’

Evidently no one had betrayed them, for Fusshte turned to his archers, pointing down inside the walls of the air-dreadnought yard. Judging by the collective roar, they’d fired into the crowd. Fusshte’s signalmen exchanged signals with the other two air-dreadnoughts, hovering above, and they separated. One headed around the far side of Nennifer, the other over the rubble in their general direction. Someone had given away the location of the thapter.

‘See how easy it is to do your duty,’ Fusshte said.

‘Run!’ gasped Flydd.

Irisis put on a final burst, her long legs carrying her ahead. There wasn’t far to go – just down to the far corner of the rubble wall and around to the left, into the firewood alley, then along it for fifty or sixty spans.

Her breasts were thumping up and down painfully. Had she been expecting action she would have bound them. She looked back for Nish, who was labouring along, red in the face, about thirty spans behind.

Irisis didn’t wait, for the nearest air-dreadnought had suddenly altered course, the long airbags wobbling in their rigging as it tried to turn at right-angles. They had been spotted. The soldiers were lined up on the sides, crossbows at the ready. They weren’t within range but the javelards probably were.

Thud-crash. A spear buried itself in the timber just behind her. She raced on, weaving from side to side, risking a quick glance over her shoulder. Javelards weren’t accurate at that distance, but once within crossbow range the craft would turn side-on to fire a fusillade at them. They had a minute to get to safety.

Irisis turned the corner into the firewood alley and stopped in dismay. The canvas cover lay on the ground but the thapter was gone.

THIRTY-FIVE

‘It’s not there,’ Irisis was saying as Nish rounded the corner.

‘Malien must have seen them coming,’ panted Yggur, who had turned grey, ‘and gone looking for us in the thapter.’

‘We’ll be dead before she finds us,’ said Nish.

Irisis was running back along the jumbled windrow of timber, trying to see over it, but it was too high.

‘Keep going, to the other end of the alley,’ gasped Flydd. ‘She can’t be far away.’

Nish set off again, with Irisis, but the brief respite had sapped his stamina. He hadn’t run in a long time and every step felt leaden now. The middle of his back itched as if a javelard was lined up on it.

The leading air-dreadnought had completed its turn and was approaching rapidly. The one that had fired into the crowd was coming their way too. There was nowhere to hide.

‘Malien!’ Irisis screamed, though even if Malien were nearby, she wouldn’t hear over the whine of the thapter. She stopped halfway up the alley where a gap in the heaped timber allowed access into the adjoining alley.

‘No point running any more,’ Irisis gasped.

Nish edged into the gap, which provided some shelter from the attack, and watched the two craft moving in. ‘Malien wouldn’t go looking for us,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t know where to look.’

‘She wouldn’t stay and risk losing the thapter,’ said Yggur.

‘I never thought she’d abandon us,’ said Irisis.

‘She hasn’t,’ said Nish more confidently than he felt. ‘And she wouldn’t leave Tiaan either, after all the time they’ve spent together. That’s probably where she’s gone, to get Tiaan.’

‘She’d better make it snappy,’ said Flydd.

The first air-dreadnought was now inching into a turn against the strong wind, getting ready to fire a crossbow broadside that would cut them to pieces.

‘Can’t you blast them out of the sky?’ cried Nish. ‘Yggur? Flydd? Klarm?’

‘If we had that kind of power we would have used it at Fiz Gorgo,’ said Yggur. ‘There’s nothing we can do to air-dreadnoughts from this distance.’

‘Through here into the next alley,’ said Nish, pointing with his splinted arm. ‘It’ll buy us a minute.’

They scurried through the gap into the next alley. ‘Spread out and keep low,’ said Nish, ‘and press right up against the timber. They’re having trouble staying steady in the wind. Make their shots as difficult as you can.’

‘What’s that?’ hissed Irisis, cupping her ear.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ said Nish. With the whistling wind, the clatter of rotors and the cries of refugees, it was a wonder that anyone could.

‘It’s the thapter coming back,’ said Irisis.

‘Which way?’ snapped Flydd.

‘I can’t tell,’ Irisis wailed.

‘They’ll cut us down before we can get to it,’ said Flydd.

Without a word, Flangers leapt to his feet and scrambled up the timber pile.

‘What does the bloody fool think he’s doing?’ said Flydd. ‘They’ll shoot him –’

It was the atonement Flangers had been searching for ever since he’d shot down Klarm’s air-floater at Snizort. ‘No, Flangers,’ Irisis screamed. ‘Get down!’

‘I see it,’ Flangers shouted. ‘Three alleys across. Malien!’ He roared out her name, leaping in the air and waving his arms. ‘She’s –’

The impact of several crossbow bolts threw him onto his back. Irisis cried out and covered her face. Nish pulled her in under the tangle of timber. The others had taken what shelter they could. Bolts thudded into the firewood all around them and whined off the paving stones. A javelard spear smashed into a beam above his head, snapping it in half.

‘That’s the broadside,’ said Nish, looking up. ‘We’ve got about thirty seconds until they reload. Come on – through to the next alley.’

They ran through the gap, emerging just as the thapter appeared at the other end. The mechanism shrilled as it shot towards them, stopped, and the hatch sprang open. They scrambled up the ladder.

Nish was coming up, one-handed, when he realised that Irisis wasn’t behind him. Had she been shot as well? He leapt down, looking around frantically. She was staggering down off the pile with a limp and bloody Flangers over her shoulder.

‘You imbecile!’ Nish wept. ‘He’s dead. Leave him.’ Both air-dreadnoughts were turning into position, carefully maintaining a safe distance from each other in the wind, which was pushing them to the east. He threw himself up the ladder. ‘Malien? Have you a crossbow?’

She handed it out to him, carefully, for it was already loaded and cocked. Irisis wouldn’t make it before the archers were ready to fire. Nish hooked a leg inside the hatch to brace himself, steadied the bow with his splinted arm and aimed, trying to do deliberately what he’d once done by accident.

He fired at the left-hand rotor of the upwind air-dreadnought. It was more than a span across and at this distance he could hardly miss, though that wasn’t what bothered him. His worry was that the bolt would pass straight between the blades of the rapidly spinning rotor and out the other side.

Fortunately it did not. It struck one of the wooden blades, which shattered, and the unbalanced rotor immediately tore itself to pieces. With the other rotor going full bore the air-dreadnought slewed around, caught the wind and drifted towards the downwind machine. Its pilot turned as hard as she could, the outer airbags touched but unfortunately did not tangle, and it raced out of the way, downwind.

The damaged craft was full-on now, and the soldiers might have fired their broadside, had they not fled from the near collision. By the time their officers had cursed them back to the rails the craft had been carried out of range.

Nish climbed down, keeping a wary eye on the third air-dreadnought, now racing their way. He assisted Irisis up the ladder as best he could and Yggur helped her to carry Flangers below. Nish clambered in last.

Malien lifted the thapter off and curved away from their pursuer, raising an eyebrow at Flydd. ‘To Fiz Gorgo?’

‘Not while Fusshte is alive,’ he said grimly.

‘I don’t see what we can do about him.’

‘Just circle round while I think. Make the thapter go erratically, as if there’s something wrong with it. Nish, get ready with the crossbow.’

Malien shrugged and did as Flydd had asked. The damaged air-dreadnought rotored away, then dropped grapnels onto the far wall of the yard, holding the machine in place while the crew tried to make running repairs. The other two air-dreadnoughts were circling, keeping their distance for the moment, watching the thapter.

‘Which one is Fusshte’s?’ said Flydd, holding himself rigidly upright. His eyes glittered and a muscle was twitching at the corner of his mouth.

‘The one on the left,’ Nish said carefully, realising that Flydd was so angry he was barely in control. He wound the crossbow awkwardly.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I can see him standing at the bow.’

‘Would you go closer, Malien?’ said Flydd.

‘The thapter isn’t invulnerable,’ she said. ‘A heavy javelard spear, fired from close range, could smash right through the mechanisms.’

‘I know!’ he snapped, ‘but we’ve got to finish the old Council, utterly and forever. Go closer.’

She circled around Fusshte’s air-dreadnought. He stood boldly at the rail, watching them with a contemptuous sneer. Fusshte knew Malien wouldn’t dare come close enough to shoot him and, armed only with a crossbow, they couldn’t do appreciable damage even if they fired into an airbag. The huge floater-gas generators would make up any loss from a tiny hole in the fabric of one of its five airbags.

Malien circled again. Fusshte gave orders to his signaller, who began to wave a series of flags. The two air-dreadnoughts turned in the thapter’s direction, approaching from either side. The javelard operators readied their weapons; the archers raised their bows. The third machine had rigged a canvas rudder behind its remaining rotor, and now it cast off its grapnels and came at them from a third quarter.

Malien began to turn away.

‘Stay!’ snapped Flydd.

‘They’ll shoot us down,’ said Malien, giving him an imperious Aachim stare.

‘Stay, damn you,’ said Flydd.

She ignored him. ‘When I’m in command I take orders from no man.’

Flydd jerked his hand out of the pocket of his cloak, thrust it in Malien’s face, and snapped. A glass phial burst in his hand with a white spray of light and an acrid stench that burned Nish’s nose for a moment.

When his eyes had recovered, Malien was sagging at the controller, barely able to stand, and the thapter was zigzagging across the sky.

‘Surr!’ Nish cried in horror. ‘What are you –?

Flydd thrust him out of the way and slammed his hand down on Malien’s right hand before it slipped off the controller. He jerked it over so hard that the thapter turned on its side.

Malien slammed into the wall, eyes closed. She reached up blindly with her free hand, caught the rail and tried to pull herself up. ‘Nish, stop him before he kills us all.’

What was he supposed to do? Nish wasn’t going to attack the scrutator. He uncocked the crossbow and dropped it behind him so there could be no misunderstanding, then stepped towards Flydd, uncertainly. ‘Surr,’ he said.

‘Get out of the way, Nish,’ snarled Flydd. ‘I should have done this the first time and no one is going to stop me.’ The thapter’s mechanism spun up to a roar and it shot forwards.

‘Nish!’ Malien said frantically. ‘Stop him. He’s gone mad.’

Nish reached for Flydd, but Flydd kicked sideways, striking him in the knee. Nish went down, but managed to catch Flydd’s foot and tried to pull him down as well.

Flydd fought him off. His teeth were bared in a savage grimace; he was like a man possessed. He kneed Nish out of the way, pinned Malien’s other hand, turned the thapter and roared straight at Fusshte’s air-dreadnought.

‘What are you doing?’ cried Nish, sure that Flydd had gone out of his mind.

Flydd didn’t answer. There came a clamour of voices from the lower hatch and Irisis came running up the ladder, but Nish couldn’t tear himself away from the sight in front of him. They were approaching the stern of the air-dreadnought at frightening speed. Flydd was flying directly at Scrutator Fusshte and he wasn’t going to stop.

Fusshte realised it and a spasm of terror crossed his face. For Nish it was almost worth it, to see Fusshte turn and run, then understand that there was nowhere to run.

One or two bolts struck the thapter though most of the archers couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting the huge rotors. The thapter hurtled towards the air-dreadnought. Fusshte glanced over his shoulder; Nish saw the whites of his eyes and, caught up in the madness of the moment, felt a surge of savage glee. The thapter wiggled at the last second and shot past the rotors, its slipstream making them flutter. Flydd twitched his hand and the machine struck the side of the air-dreadnought, knocking it sideways in a hail of shattered timbers and shredded ropes and canvas. The archers were thrown off their feet; three went over the side.

Flydd moved the controller again and the thapter smashed into the bow of the air-dreadnought, tearing part of it off and sending more of Fusshte’s troops plunging to their deaths. The thapter turned so sharply that Nish was crushed against the side. He got to his feet in time to see Fusshte dive into the central cabin.

Flydd, teeth bared in a maniacal rictus, turned the thapter directly towards the cabin. More bolts hit its front and a javelard spear screamed off the rim of the open top hatch. There wasn’t time to reach up and pull it over. Flydd didn’t even flinch.

Nish did, as Flydd drove the thapter straight into the air-dreadnought, amidships, smashing its flimsy timbers. A length of canvas wrapped itself around the front of the thapter, cracking in the wind as it shot out the other side. Nish couldn’t see anything out the front. Neither could Flydd, though it didn’t seem to bother him.

Nish climbed up onto the side and looked back. The air-dreadnought had broken in half, its two hull sections swinging wildly from the tangled rigging of the five airbags and spilling the remaining crew down into the walled yard.

Flydd shook the thapter from side to side until the canvas tore away, then turned again. ‘Where is he?’ he grated. ‘Did you see him fall?’

‘No,’ Nish said quietly, not wanting to assist Flydd in this madness. Malien’s eyes were open but she wasn’t resisting him either. Irisis stood at the back of the cockpit, saying nothing at all.

Flydd tore through the wrecked craft again and again, after each impact standing off and searching the floating remains for his enemy.

‘He’s dead,’ said Nish. ‘He must have fallen long ago. You can stop now, surr.’

‘If he was I’d know it,’ said Flydd. ‘He’s still – ahhhhh!’ he sighed.

Nish saw it too. The air-dreadnought had been reduced to a tangle of rigging, two deflated air-bags and one that was still full of floater-gas. It was drifting across the yard towards the rear of Nennifer, with a dark-clad, meagre man clinging desperately to the ropes below the airbag.

Flydd brought the thapter up beside the rigging, matched its motion and stood on tiptoe to look over the side. Fusshte, battered and bleeding from mouth and nose, stared defiantly back at him. His feet rested in a tangle of loops and knots. One arm was twisted through the rigging, the other hand resting on a rope.

‘Surrender?’ said Flydd.

‘To be tried by you?’ spat Fusshte. ‘I’ll die first.’

‘Either way,’ said Flydd. The madness had passed, leaving him worn out and wasted.

‘But surr …’ said Nish, troubled in spite of his loathing for Fusshte.

‘He has to die,’ said Flydd. ‘While any of the old Council remain alive, the foolish and greedy will rally to them, and we’ll be fighting them instead of the enemy. Let’s put an end to it.’

Fusshte looked as though he was going to beg for his life, but steeled himself and nodded. ‘Would you grant me a dead-man’s boon?’

‘You mocked my agony as my manhood was cut away. I’ll grant you nothing but a quick end.’

Fusshte’s grotesque face crumbled. ‘Aaah!’ he wailed. ‘It’s not for me. It’s for my crippled mother …’ He reached out one hand in entreaty. ‘Once I’m dead, she’ll starve.’

‘Begging doesn’t become you, Fusshte,’ said Flydd.

‘Surr,’ said Nish, thinking of his own mother, whom he hadn’t seen in years. ‘Surely you can –’

‘What do you want, Fusshte?’ Flydd snapped.

Fusshte reached into his coat and held up a small object, like a jewelled bird’s egg. ‘It’s all I have now. Would you sell it and give her the coin?’

Flydd nodded stiffly and held out his hand. Fusshte sent the egg spinning across. Nish caught it and was about to hand it to Flydd when Irisis sprang up and batted it over the side.

‘What did you do that for?’ cried Nish.

As he finished speaking the egg burst asunder, peppering the base of the thapter with glassy shards that would have torn straight through their living flesh.

Without a word, Flydd spun the thapter around, curved away then drove it straight at the centre of the full airbag. Fusshte was begging, pleading, weeping, but nothing could save him this time.

Irisis pulled Nish down into the corner, pressed his face against her chest and bent her own head over his. There was an enormous bang and a flare of blue flame. He felt his hair crisping, his ears and the back of his neck burning. Irisis pulled him harder against her and then they were through it and out the other side. He smelt burnt hair, opened his eyes and Flydd was standing up at the controller, as bald as an egg. Every hair had been burnt from his head.

He turned and even his continuous eyebrow was gone. ‘It’s done.’ He released the controller to Malien and slumped to the floor. ‘It’s done at last.’

Nish looked over the side and saw Fusshte’s remains hit the ground. There was no movement but the people on the ground swarmed over the corpse and didn’t let up until there was nothing left of it. The other two air-dreadnoughts were hovering now, and the soldiers had their hands up. Nish signalled them to go down.

‘How did you know, Irisis?’ he said.

‘I didn’t. I just knew that Fusshte could never be trusted.’ She helped Flydd up. ‘You’d better say something to the crowd before we go.’

Blisters were rising on his cheeks and the top of his head, but the haggardness had gone from his face. Flydd had been relieved of his greatest burden. Still on his knees he turned to Malien, bowing so low that his forehead touched the floor.

‘I apologise most abjectly,’ he said. ‘I lost control.’

‘Never ask anything of me again,’ she said, so cold that Nish couldn’t look at her, ‘for I will not grant it. I’ve suffered enough from men like you for more than one lifetime.’

She set the thapter down next to the dirigible, which was packed with all sorts of gear recovered from Nennifer. Inouye went aboard and made it ready for flight. Nish fastened its tether, then Malien took the thapter over the yard and Flydd stood up on the rear platform. The people were spread around the walls of the enormous yard, apart from the few on their knees beside the bodies of those slain in Fusshte’s initial attack.

‘The old Council has finally been extinguished,’ he said, not loudly but in a carrying voice. ‘And the new one must fly to fight the enemy. These two air-dreadnoughts are yours – use them to ferry everyone to safety, then prepare to fight with us again, until Santhenar is free.’

He raised one fist. Every individual in the crowd raised their own with a great roar of acclamation.

‘Take us home,’ said Flydd and, with a nod to Malien, went below.

THIRTY-SIX

Flangers was still clinging to life, though only because of Healer Evee’s Arts, when Nish and Irisis came down the ladder.

‘How is he?’ Nish said.

‘He may live,’ said Yggur, ‘though with two bolts through the ribs and one that’s smashed his thighbone, I doubt if he’ll walk again, much less fight.’

‘You stupid, brave fool,’ Irisis said several hours later as Flangers came round after the bolts had been removed and the bone set.

‘I had to atone for my crime,’ said Flangers. ‘You knew that.’

‘And have you finished atoning?’ she said gently. ‘Or can we expect more such follies next time?’

‘I laid down my life, and it wasn’t taken. Only a fool would do it twice.’ He closed his eyes and slept.

‘You can’t talk!’ Nish accused her. ‘Going after him was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.’

‘The line has to be drawn, Nish,’ said Irisis. ‘In this bloody war I’ve done a hundred things I’ve regretted, and I expect I’ll do more before the war takes me. But I won’t turn my back on my friends ever again. That’s all there is to it.’

She must have been thinking of Inouye. ‘Flangers should have been dead, with three bolts in him.’

‘But he wasn’t.’ Irisis leaned against him and closed her eyes.

Nish was exhausted but his mind was too busy for sleep. He looked around. Tiaan was sitting in the corner, staring fixedly at him. She looked angry, lost and desolate in equal parts. Did she hold him to blame? Perhaps she did – he’d robbed her of the amplimet she’d striven so desperately to regain.

He had avoided her since, thinking that his presence could only make things worse. Tiaan had been in good hands. Malien had taken charge of her, bathing and delousing her and spending long days and nights talking to her, working to bring her out of her withdrawal psychosis. It seemed to have worked. Tiaan had been almost her normal reserved self by the time the air-dreadnought returned from Fadd. Nish had seen her laughing and joking with Malien, and once even with Yggur, though whenever Tiaan’s eye fell on Irisis or Nish he knew that she’d forgotten nothing and forgiven even less.

Nish looked away with a mental shrug. What did it matter? They didn’t need to work together.

Malien was so angry that she kept flying all night, only setting down at dawn for a brief rest stop before heading on. Her fury began to wear off during the day and at sunset she set the thapter down on a slaty hilltop in an unknown land. Flangers was out of danger and sleeping, so they left him inside with Evee and Inouye.

‘Let’s talk about the war,’ said Flydd at the campfire that night.

‘I’ve been putting together a plan,’ said Yggur.

‘So have I,’ said Flydd. ‘But let’s hear yours first.’

Nish was a little surprised at Yggur’s forthrightness. When they’d first come to Fiz Gorgo, about six months ago, he’d professed little interest in the war. But of course, the Histories told that Yggur had been a great warlord once.

‘Humanity is still strong, but its people, manufactories and armies are scattered across thousands of leagues and can’t easily be coordinated. But if they could be, we’d be a formidable force and many of the lyrinx’s advantages would evaporate.’

‘Intelligence and communication are the keys to victory,’ said Flydd. ‘To win we have to beat the enemy at both.’

‘The lyrinx avoid war during the winter mating season, and immediately after it,’ said Klarm. ‘So we have till early spring to prepare ourselves for the final phase of the war – just over three months.’

‘And in that time,’ said Yggur, ‘we must do a number of things. First, we must draw together all our allies, near and far.’

‘It would take a month to contact them all by skeet,’ said Klarm, ‘assuming we had enough skeets. And another month before the replies all came in.’

‘With the thapter we can visit them all in weeks …’ said Flydd. He gave Malien an abashed glance, which she did not acknowledge.

‘But the next time you want to consult them it’ll take just as long,’ Yggur said reasonably.

‘And the time after,’ Klarm chimed in. ‘You can’t be tied up as a messenger boy, Flydd. And if something goes wrong with the thapter, or we lose it, or it’s needed elsewhere –’

‘We must have more of them,’ said Yggur, ‘which is my second point. We’ll come back to the first. Are you prepared to share the secret of making thapters with us, Malien?’

After a brief hesitation she said, ‘With some disquiet.’

Yggur bowed his head. ‘Thank you. That raises another problem, of course. We can’t build thapters, or any kind of flying machine more complex than an air-floater, at Fiz Gorgo. We’d need an entire manufactory for that and it would still take years to construct one.’

‘Then the second problem is as insoluble as the first,’ said Klarm. He drained his goblet, which had been half full of a fine wine from the Council’s cellars. One of his crates had contained several small barrels. Klarm lived life to the fullest. ‘Why go back to Fiz Gorgo anyhow? Why not Lybing, for instance?’ Klarm had been the provincial scrutator for Lybing before his leg injury.

‘Lybing doesn’t have manufactories either,’ said Yggur.

‘But it does have skilled workers.’

‘We can bring skilled workers from anywhere,’ said Flydd. ‘In Fiz Gorgo we have an establishment and complete control.’

‘If you’re going to take on the role of head of the Council,’ said Klarm, ‘you need to be seen. Otherwise the generals and governors will seize the chance to intrigue against you. You’ve got to show them you’re just as tough as Ghorr.’

‘In Lybing I’d be pestered constantly by people wanting favours,’ said Flydd, ‘and I’ve no time for it. There’s a war to win.’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ said Klarm. He sighed, presumably for the fleshly delights of civilised Lybing. ‘Pass the barrel, Flydd. This is thirsty work.’

Flydd rolled it across.

Yggur scowled. He didn’t like indulgence, in any form. ‘Some months ago we recovered parts of a construct abandoned at Snizort, including its flight controller. With Malien’s advice, we ought to be able to make the controllers needed to turn constructs into thapters.’

‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ said Flydd. ‘You’ll take charge of that work, Irisis, and Tiaan can help you. If you require more artisans, we’ll press them from a manufactory.’

‘And the moment the flight controllers are ready,’ said Yggur, ‘we’ll fly to the battlefield at Snizort, put them in the best of the abandoned constructs and fly them back.’

‘But the node exploded,’ said Irisis. ‘There’s not enough field at Snizort to flutter a handkerchief.’

‘Leave that to me,’ said Yggur. ‘I dare say I can think of a way.’

She regarded him dubiously. ‘How many controllers will you need?’

‘As many as twenty, certainly,’ said Yggur. ‘More, if you can make them in time. We’ll need as many thapters as can be made to fly.’

‘So you’ll need to take a small army to Snizort,’ said Klarm. ‘And dozens of trained pilots, though I don’t see how you’re going to train them.’

‘And we’ll need a means of getting them there,’ said Yggur, standing up and circling the fire before sitting down again. ‘The plan is coming together. First we must train artificers to fix those constructs that aren’t too badly damaged, and pilots to fly them. That’s going to take a long time. Meanwhile, we’ll need enough air-floaters to carry everyone to Snizort. Cryl-Nish, you will command this operation.’

‘I don’t see how it can be done in time,’ said Nish.

‘You’ll have to find a way – we’ve got to have the thapters before spring.’

‘It takes time to train people.’

‘It has to be done, Nish, and you’ve got to do it.’

Nish gritted his teeth. ‘If I had a year and a hundred people I couldn’t do it all,’ he muttered. ‘I can’t just wave a magic wand like some people. I have to do real work.’ Irisis squeezed his arm, warningly. Yggur was glaring down his long nose at him. Nish buried his face in his goblet.

‘That’s only the first stage,’ Yggur said coldly, ‘but everything else relies on it. Coming back to my first point, of finding a way to talk to our distant allies and our scattered forces, there’s this.’

Yggur withdrew a glass globe, the size of a grapefruit, from a leather case at his side. He held it up. ‘Some of you may have seen it before. Fusshte stole it from Fiz Gorgo and it was the first treasure I went looking for in Nennifer. It’s one of the few surviving farspeaker globes of Golias the Mad.’ Flydd cleared his throat. Yggur continued. ‘Or if not, it’s closely based on his original. It doesn’t work, unfortunately. The secret was lost with Golias’s death.’

He glanced briefly at Nish. ‘I plan to rediscover Golias’s secret and, once I have, our skilled artisans will craft as many globes as we need. You may give one to each of our allies, Flydd. Such a gift, and the hope of greater ones, will do more to unite us than all the former Council’s threats and punishments.’

‘Many have sought Golias’s secret,’ said Flydd, ‘but none have succeeded.’

‘But they worked as individuals for their own greed or glory, sharing neither their discoveries nor their failures. For us, it’s our very survival. And around this campfire, Flydd, are people whose grasp of the Art is as great as any who have ever lived.’

‘I thought you said you were going to do it,’ Flydd said.

‘It’s my task,’ said Yggur, ‘but I plan to call upon everyone here. Everyone with a talent for the Art, I mean. We now have the greatest secrets and Arts of the Council, and they’d made many breakthroughs the world was never told about. If we can work as a team, and we must, together we will be greater than the greatest individual. We must crack Golias’s globe. We cannot win the war without it; not even with a hundred thapters.’

‘The Council didn’t believe the war could be won at all,’ said Klarm.

‘I do,’ said Flydd. ‘Is that your entire plan, Yggur? You haven’t given me much to do. Or Malien. Or Klarm, for that matter.’

‘Klarm will be poring over the Council’s Arts and devices. Malien … can speak for herself.’

‘I expect I’ll be at the controls of the thapter most of the time,’ said Malien.

‘You’re the head of the new council, Flydd. You must lead our embassy-at-large,’ Yggur went on, ‘since you know everyone in the east. While the air-floaters and thapter controllers are being built, and their pilots and artificers trained, you’ll need to fly east and north to rally our allies.’ Yggur looked around the fire. ‘That’s my plan.’

‘It’s a good start,’ said Flydd, ‘but we must also plan the second stage. The lyrinx have had it far too easy in the past. They’ve attacked and we’ve defended; and lost. The Council’s response has always been predictable, so we’ve got to be unpredictable. I want to mount a surprise attack on the enemy in early spring, before they’re ready to fight. I want to shock them; to make them worry about what we’ll do next and how strong we really are.’

‘Good idea. Incidentally,’ Yggur said casually, ‘Tiaan, I believe you attempted to map fields from the air, in the east.’

Tiaan, who was staring blankly at the fire, came out of her introspection with a start. ‘I – I spent a long time at it, surr. I’ve mapped the fields north and south from Stassor for a hundred and forty leagues, east to the sea and west for another eighty leagues – perhaps a tenth of Lauralin. My map is still in the thapter, if you’d care to see it.’

Yggur gaped. ‘You’re making a fool of me, surely?’

‘I never joke about my work, surr.’ She went into the darkness with her head high, returning a few minutes later with a rolled map drawn on coated linen.

Tiaan unrolled it on the rough ground and weighted the ends with rocks. A chart of north-eastern Lauralin, it extended from Guffeons in the north to Tiksi in the south, and as far west as the desert of Kalar. The mountains were drawn in relief and shaded pale grey. Overlaid were a series of black marks, with symbols beside them, each surrounded by coloured haloes of various shapes and sizes, some in single colours, others like rainbows.

‘These represent the nodes,’ said Yggur, touching one of the black shapes with a fingertip.

‘Yes. There are 317 of them in the area of this map. Most, as far as I can tell, were not previously known.’

Yggur glanced at Flydd, whose astonishment was nearly as great as his own. ‘But this is priceless! Why didn’t we know about this?’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘And the symbols?’ asked Flydd. ‘The kind of node, presumably?’

‘Yes,’ Tiaan said faintly. She hated being the centre of attention. ‘This symbol denotes a normal node, this a spiral node and this a double.’

‘A double node?’

‘It quite disturbed me, passing over it.’

‘How did you manage such detail?’ said Yggur.

‘Oh, this is nothing. I have larger maps of many of the nodes, back in Fiz Gorgo, showing how they changed the various times I passed over them.’

‘But –’

‘I see each field as a coloured picture,’ she said. ‘And once seen, I can remember it forever. For example, this one,’ she pointed to a dot in the Kalar Desert, ‘I can show you how the field changes over a day and –’

‘We can talk about the details at another time,’ Yggur said. ‘Tiaan, such maps may be vital to the war. Will be vital, I should say, especially if the lyrinx expand their attacks on nodes. Would you care to do more of it?’

‘I want to map all the nodes in the world,’ said Tiaan, her eyes glowing. ‘I – I long to understand how the fields work. But … don’t you want me to work on thapter controllers …?’

‘This is more urgent. If Flydd agrees, I’d send you with him when he goes off on his embassies.’

‘She’ll have to come anyway,’ said Flydd gracelessly. ‘Flying the thapter is hard work and Malien can’t do it all by herself.’

‘Assuming I agree to take you,’ said Malien quietly.

Yggur ignored the exchange. ‘Tiaan, wherever Flydd goes, you shall go too, and map the fields of all the lands you pass over. Then, should the war resume sooner than we expect, at least we’ll have maps to go by.’

‘Thank you,’ said Tiaan in a low voice, and turned back to her contemplation of the fire.

‘I believe you’re up to something,’ Flydd muttered to Yggur.

‘I’m thinking ahead,’ Yggur replied. ‘We make more use of the fields each day, as do Vithis’s Aachim, and Malien’s people in Stassor. Malien is worried that we’re taking too much from them. We talked about it some time back. And the enemy uses fields far more than they did before. Now there’s talk of nodes failing of their own accord, and nodes being drained dry by overuse. If it gets worse, whosoever knows the fields best will have the upper hand. That task is yours, Tiaan, and it’s a vital one.’

Tiaan was so transformed by the responsibility Yggur had given her that she declined to fly the thapter when Malien offered her the amplimet. Irisis, who was in the cockpit at the time, saw the longing in Tiaan’s eyes. She gazed at the softly glowing crystal for a moment, then edged it away with the back of her hand. ‘You fly. I want to map.’

All the long hours that it took to get home, Tiaan sat with the relevant section of the map unrolled on her lap, making annotations on a pad in a tiny hand, and coloured markings on an overlay. Each night by the campfire she wrote up her notes and refined her master map.

Klarm was working just as hard. He sat in his corner of the thapter, studying the sheaves of papers he’d taken from Nennifer and writing in a series of rice-paper books with different-coloured bindings. He worked by the campfire too, until dinner, after which he got roaringly drunk every night.

THIRTY-SEVEN

They returned to Fiz Gorgo twelve days after the beginning of winter, having been away for a little over three weeks, and for once it wasn’t raining.

Fyn-Mah came running out before the thapter had set down. Irisis, who was sitting on the rear platform, smiled to see the perquisitor. Normally so austere and controlled, that small, dark-haired figure was staring up at them, fists clenched at her sides. Fyn-Mah didn’t seem to take a breath until Flydd’s head appeared, whereupon she bolted to the ladder. At the bottom she hesitated, no doubt remembering the hideous scene at their departure. She looked up at Flydd, and he down at her, and then she smiled and went up to him in a rush. Shortly afterwards they went inside, ignoring everyone else.

Fiz Gorgo was in very good order. Fyn-Mah had the walls manned day and night and the damage repaired, apart from the upper sections of the blasted towers. The larders were provisioned for the winter and squads of soldiers were carrying out drills on the other side of the yard.

Four days after their return, Yggur called everyone together to discuss new intelligence about the war. Irisis sat up the front, next to Nish. Yggur scanned all the faces, frowned and said to Flydd, ‘Where’s Klarm?’

‘He’s gone out in the air-floater.’

‘What, again? Why wasn’t I told? I suppose he’s ransacking the cellars of ruined Garching this time, the sot.’

‘Klarm has work to do, as do we all,’ Flydd said pointedly. ‘Shall we get on? Now winter has ended hostilities, we must urgently plan our spring offensive. Time is running away on us.’

‘Since the lyrinx don’t like to fight in winter,’ said Irisis, ‘surely it’d be a good time to retake the lands we’ve lost?’ It was a question she’d often wondered about.

‘It’s too wet and cold,’ said Flydd. ‘Our clankers and supply wagons would bog, and soldiers don’t fight well with wet feet and empty bellies. And, while the enemy prefer not to fight at this time of year, they’ll aggressively defend what they have.’

‘I thought they hibernated in winter?’

‘Only for a month, and not all at the same time, except where they feel very secure.’

‘Oh!’

‘Is there anywhere else we can look for aid?’ said Irisis. ‘What’s Vithis up to?’

It was a much debated question. The behaviour of the invading Aachim seemed to be inexplicable. Why had they suddenly retreated north and walled themselves in?

‘There’s been no news since he went to the Hornrace,’ said Yggur, ‘though rumours persist that he’s raising a fortress there. But after the craven way he held back his forces at Snizort, I’d be wary of relying on him.’

‘What about the Aachim of Stassor?’ said Flydd.

Yggur glanced at Malien, who said, ‘I know what their reply would be. They don’t involve themselves in the affairs of old humans.’

‘They may find it in their interests to do so this time,’ said Flydd.

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Yggur dismissively.

‘Is there any hope for us, surr?’ said Irisis. ‘Give us the truth.’

‘The enemy don’t yet have our numbers but they surpass us in strength,’ said Flydd, ‘and in toughness and mobility. They have the advantage of flight, those who are winged and can use the Art, and lyrinx need less supplies, since they can live off our fallen.’

‘It’d be more profitable to consider their weaknesses,’ said Yggur.

‘The enemy seem to rely on strength more than intelligence,’ said Irisis, ‘but I’m not sure they’re very adaptable.’

‘They adapt well enough when they have the time,’ said Flangers from his litter by the fire. ‘But not in the heat of battle. When hard pressed, they fall back on their same old tactics, where we would work out new ones.’

‘Then whenever we’re fighting them, we must shape the battle plan to make them uncomfortable,’ said Nish.

‘They suffered from the heat in Kalissin,’ said Tiaan in a hesitant voice. Irisis looked around and found her sitting in the shadows of the far corner, as if she were hiding. ‘They prefer cool weather, though they don’t like bitter cold any more than we do. And another thing …’

‘Yes, Tiaan?’ said Yggur.

‘It seemed to me that they weren’t quite at home in their bodies.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It was the way they kept working their limbs, shrugging their shoulders and plucking at their outer skin,’ said Tiaan. ‘They seemed uncomfortable a lot of the time.’

‘That’s hardly surprising,’ said Flydd, ‘considering how greatly they flesh-formed their unborn young, to survive in the void. For every strength that served them well there, they must have a weakness we can exploit here.’

‘How do they feel in themselves?’ said Fyn-Mah, who was sitting close to Flydd, as always since his return. ‘Are they happy with what they’ve become?’

‘Not all of them,’ said Tiaan. ‘Many are born malformed. Some never develop wings and others lack pigment or the armoured outer skin.’

‘Do they treat these ones badly?’ asked Flydd.

‘Not as badly as humans would,’ said Tiaan, ‘though they are regarded as inferior. They’re rarely permitted to breed.’

‘Anything else?’ said Yggur.

‘Snizort had some other significance for the lyrinx,’ said Nish, ‘and it was more important than fighting us. They delayed the battle so they could complete it.’

‘Why hasn’t anybody mentioned this before?’ said Yggur sharply.

Nish shrugged. ‘They made a tunnel into the Great Seep and took a lot of relics out of it. Gilhaelith helped them to find the relics, I’m told.’

‘A tunnel into liquid tar?’

‘They froze the tar first,’ said Tiaan. ‘We saw the entrance as we escaped from Snizort.’

‘And I’ve thought of something else,’ said Nish. ‘Tiaan was with a man called Merryl, a freed slave who’d been held by the lyrinx for many years and spoke their tongue. If anyone knows the enemy’s secrets, it would be him.’

‘What happened to this fellow, Tiaan?’ said Yggur.

‘I haven’t seen him since we escaped.’

‘Chances are that he was put to work, hauling clankers,’ said Flydd. ‘If he survived that, he could be anywhere.’

‘I’ll tell my spies to keep watch for him,’ said Yggur, ‘though I doubt he’ll be found. Pity. Are we finished?’

‘Gilhaelith once mentioned that a lyrinx had developed a dreadful inflammation between its skin layers,’ said Flydd. ‘It clawed its armoured skin off and they had to put it to death. They buried the body and left hastily, as if afraid of infection.’

‘When was this?’ said Yggur, his mouth tightening at mention of the geomancer.

‘He came to visit me at the healers, before Fiz Gorgo was attacked.’

‘How curious,’ said Yggur. ‘Tell me, did he say why the enemy were tunnelling into the Great Seep?’

‘No.’

‘What did they find?’

‘The remains of an ancient village – wooden walls, floors, furniture, and a lot of bodies preserved by the tar. Also some large crystals of brimstone in boxes. They called one “The Brimstone”.’

‘The Brimstone?’ said Yggur. ‘What did they say about it?’

‘Gilhaelith didn’t know.’

‘Or wouldn’t tell you,’ Yggur said darkly.

Not even in that slave-driven time in the manufactory a year ago, after their return from the fatal trek across the ice plateau, had Nish laboured as hard as he did now. The expedition to Snizort required three more air-floaters, which had to be built from scratch in a month. He’d given a list of essential items to Klarm, thinking that they’d be obtainable in Borgistry, only to be told that the old Council had stripped Borgistry clean to make its sixteen air-dreadnoughts. He’d already searched the sites where air-dreadnoughts had crashed and burned but the intense fires had consumed everything, and no one knew what had happened to the other four Fusshte had fled with.

Nish worked in a cramped stone shed in a southern corner of the yard. Being built against the outer wall, it never saw the winter sun. His sole source of warmth was an open brazier fed with chips and wood shavings, when he had the time to gather them. He started work at five in the morning, seldom finished before midnight, and was often so tired that he slept on the floor.

He didn’t see Irisis from one day to the next for she was just as frantic, directing Tiaan and four other artisans in the making of all sorts of devices they’d need before the spring offensive. They’d recovered air-floater controllers, floater-gas generators and all manner of other bits and pieces from Nennifer, but still the work was endless. Nish missed her.

Yggur had sent Fyn-Mah off in the air-floater with Klarm to conscript artificers, smiths, carpenters and all the other workers needed, but she hadn’t yet come back. Some might be found at Old Hripton but others would have to come from Borgistry.

And making air-floaters was the easiest of his jobs, for at least Nish knew what to do and he had the original air-floater to use as a template. He also had to find skilled artificers to carry out whatever repairs would be needed to get the abandoned constructs running. Among the survivors of the amphitheatre’s collapse were a number of artificers who had experience with clankers, but constructs were very different. Nish would have to conduct most of their training without a thapter to work on, as it was about to leave on Flydd’s embassy to the east coast. Nish had the construct mechanism recovered from Snizort some months ago, but for the rest he had to make do with wooden models and drawings, which he knew were not good enough.

But his most challenging job was finding and training pilots to fly thapters from Snizort to Fiz Gorgo. If his other tasks were difficult, this one looked impossible. Few people had the talent to draw power with a controller, and most became air-floater pilots or clanker operators. Once trained for a particular machine it was difficult for an operator to adapt to another; the emotional bond usually got in the way.

Nish discovered that two air-dreadnought reserve pilots had survived the collapse of the amphitheatre. Unfortunately one had gone insane when her craft had exploded. The other, distraught at being separated from her machine, had stepped off the outer wall of Fiz Gorgo while he’d been away on the trip to Nennifer. After much searching, Nish despaired of finding a single pilot.

‘It’s hopeless,’ he said to Flydd after days of frustration and failure. ‘We’ll never be ready for spring, surr. I’m letting everyone down.’

‘Just take it one step at a time, Nish. Don’t think about winning the war, or even being ready for the spring offensive. Just concentrate on getting the next task done. And then the one after that.’

The following day there was a knock at the door of his shed. Nish fed the last of his wood chips into the brazier, held his blue fingers over it for a moment and went to see who was there.

It was Yggur’s newly appointed seneschal, Berty, a small, round, bustling man, not much short of eighty, with wings of frothy white hair on either side of a pink, bald skull. He was accompanied by a pair of downcast, bedraggled and red-eyed men, one big, pockmarked and hairy, the other small and completely bald.

‘Cook found them in an inn at Old Hripton,’ piped Berty. ‘They lost their machines in the battle at Snizort, then became separated from the army. They were pressed into service as sailors, deserted and worked their way from port to port around Meldorin. Gorm and Zyphus are their names.’ He nodded and hurried out.

‘Operators,’ Nish said hungrily, ignoring his misgivings. Since they’d lost their machines so long ago, retraining might be possible. ‘Let’s see what we can do for each other.’

When he took them to see the controllers Irisis’s team were working on, Gorm and Zyphus broke down and wept, and Nish had to leave them for an hour. When he returned, the hairy operator, Gorm, the ugliest, roughest fellow Nish had set eyes on in a long time, threw his arms around Nish and kissed him on the cheek.

‘You might change your tune when you see what you’ll be operating,’ Nish said. He led them to the side yard where the thapter stood, ready to depart.

The operators’ eyes stuck out like toadstools. ‘Not sure I could operate one of them alien craft,’ said Gorm. The small bald man, Zyphus, looked equally askance. ‘Used to clankers, we are.’

Nish cursed under his breath. Operators couldn’t be forced. They had to be cajoled, and if there was no bond with the machine they would not be successful. ‘We don’t have any clankers. What about piloting an air-floater?’ He needed three more air-floater pilots, plus reserves.

‘Don’t know,’ said Gorm, rasping at the wiry bristles on his chin.

‘It’s an air-floater or nothing,’ said Nish.

‘Used to watch them soaring above us at Snizort,’ said Zyphus. His skin broke out in goosepimples. ‘Always fancied one of those. Come on, Gorm, you’ll love it.’

‘Expect I won’t,’ said Gorm, ‘but it’ll be better than nothing.’

That was Nish’s feeling too, so he took them on and Irisis began to tailor two of the Nennifer controllers to them. That afternoon, Nish was sitting head in hands at his bench, despairing of ever finding anyone to become thapter operators, when there came a tentative knock at the shed door.

‘Enter,’ he said. Again the knock. ‘Come in,’ he roared, and a small, sweetly pretty girl who looked about thirteen put her head and shoulder through the crack.

Her straw-coloured hair was done in dozens of small plaits, her cheeks were red from the wind and her frosty grey eyes had a liquid shine. Unusual eyes around here; where had he seen their like before?

‘Please, surr,’ she said in a whispery little voice, ‘Lord Yggur sent us.’

‘Did he?’ said Nish. ‘What for?’

‘Operators, surr.’

Nish almost laughed aloud, but restrained himself. Yggur was not known to be a joker. ‘Really? Come inside. Put this on your head and tell me what you see.’ He held out a contraption of wires and crystals, like a jewelled skullcap, that Irisis had made up for him. With such a device, even a no-talent like Nish could identify people who might become operators.

She pressed it onto her head and immediately cried out, her eyes as wide as her charming bow-shaped mouth. ‘Oh, surr, it’s like all the rainbows in the world, spinning round and round. Surr, you must see.’ She held out the device to him.

‘I don’t have the talent,’ he said gruffly. ‘All right, that’s enough.’

Her lower lip wobbled. ‘Am I no good, surr? I thought you would at least …’

‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Kattiloe, surr.’ She made a clumsy but fetching attempt at a curtsy.

Nish smiled behind his hand. ‘And where do you come from, Kattiloe?’

‘Old Hripton, surr.’

‘I’m sure we’ll make an operator of you. Now, all I need is another twenty-nine.’

‘My big sister Kimli is outside, surr.’

‘Is she?’ Sometimes the talent ran in families. ‘Send her in.’

In she came. Kimli was minutely taller and nearly as pretty as Kattiloe, though her hair was an ashy brown. Her eyes were also that familiar frosty grey, and she too had the talent, though not as strongly as her sister. ‘Two!’ said Nish. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any more sisters?’

‘There’s seven of us,’ said Kattiloe, curtsying again. ‘Not counting the twins, of course, but they’re only fourteen.’

‘How old are you, Kattiloe?’

‘Twenty, surr.’

‘Are you really?’ Nish felt middle-aged, though he wasn’t much older. ‘Well, tell them to come and see me.’

They all possessed the talent of seeing the field, and most had it strongly. Chissmoul, a black-eyed, sturdy young woman of twenty-three, was so shy that it took hours to coax her into taking the test, though she turned out to have the strongest aptitude of all. Nish took on the lot, even the twins, who might have been fourteen but looked about ten. He suppressed his anxiety about using such young girls. Boys that age were dying in battle all the time.

‘Any brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins?’ he said hopefully.

The sisters turned out to be equipped with relatives of all sizes, shapes and ages. Most had those penetrating grey eyes. Yggur’s eyes! The old hypocrite.

Nish recruited thirty-seven of them, mostly young women and girls, before he’d exhausted the family tree, and then consulted the expert, Irisis. The majority had the talent so strongly that they probably would make operators, so he abandoned the search for more. Now all he had to do was work out how to train them. It wasn’t going to be easy – Nish knew no more about using a controller than he did about childbirth. But it must be done so, with the aid of his two trained operators, and Tiaan and Irisis, he would get it done.

Only after their flight controllers were tuned to them, and the operators had completed the lengthy process of familiarising themselves with them, could the real training begin. But of course they did not have flight controllers for thapters yet, and Malien’s machine was soon to take Flydd on his embassy to the east coast. Nish planned for his prentices to begin practising with Yggur’s little beetle flier, all too conscious of its inadequacies. Would he have the courage to get into a thapter flown by someone who had only practised with a toy?

The evening before Malien and Flydd were due to leave, Inouye’s air-floater touched down in the yard and Klarm scrambled out. Nish looked out the door of his shed and saw Flydd waiting on the steps outside the front door. The two scrutators held a hurried conference in the middle of the yard, Klarm handed Flydd a sealed packet which he slipped inside his cloak, they shook hands and Klarm scuttled back to the air-floater. It lifted at once and rotored off in the direction of Old Hripton.

The front door opened and Yggur came out. ‘Was that our peripatetic head of intelligence, favouring us with another of his flying visits?’

‘It was Klarm,’ said Flydd, turning to pass him by.

Yggur caught him by the arm. Nish stopped in the shadows, hoping to hear some news. Yggur and Flydd had been even more tight-mouthed than usual, lately.

‘What news from Borgistry?’ said Yggur.

‘I haven’t read his dispatches yet.’ Flydd was trying to pull free.

Yggur did not let go. ‘So Klarm has actually done some work this time?’

‘He’s been frantic, though I don’t propose to discuss it on the front porch.’

‘As far as I can see, all he’s done is spend my gold as though it flows down the river like water, drink himself witless night after night, and cavort with women half his age and twice his size, though why any woman would want –’

‘Klarm is the closest friend I have left,’ Flydd said coolly, breaking away and heading up the steps, ‘so be careful what you say about him. Spying on the enemy takes rivers of gold. Besides, most of the coin he spends came from the treasury at Nennifer.’

Yggur spun around. ‘I wasn’t aware that it had been found!’

‘It must have slipped my mind,’ Flydd said smoothly.

‘There’s still the matter of his general debauchery. I don’t see why we should fund –’

‘Klarm is a man of lusty appetites,’ sighed Flydd. ‘I was that way myself before the knife –’ He gave another sigh. ‘In his case, take away the appetites and you destroy the man. He’s doing good work, the very best, and that makes up for the other.’

‘Then why am I being kept in the dark?’

‘You’re not,’ Flydd said. ‘Come inside and we’ll go over his dispatches.’

‘All of them,’ said Yggur, ‘or just the ones he’s prepared for my consumption?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Flydd. ‘We’re all in this together.’

‘Are we?’ Yggur turned to the door. ‘How does he do it, anyway?’

‘Do what?’ said Flydd.

‘How does a sawn-off runt like Klarm attract women the way he does? I wasn’t an unattractive man in my prime, but they didn’t care for me.’

‘Most of Nish’s prentices have your eyes, you old dog.’

Yggur looked abashed. ‘A brief liaison two generations ago. She didn’t care for me either.’

‘What do you expect?’ said Flydd. ‘You keep people at a distance and give nothing of yourself.’

‘I gave once,’ Yggur murmured, ‘and look what came of it.’

‘They don’t see Klarm as a threat. He charms them and makes them laugh. And, er …’ Flydd gave a delicate cough.

‘What other amazing talent does the man have?’

‘It’s said that he’s not a dwarf in all departments. Quite the contrary, in fact.’

Yggur made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. ‘Don’t tell me any more!’

THIRTY-EIGHT

Yggur, Malien and Flydd had spent fruitless days studying Golias’s globe, trying to coax the mad mage’s secret from it. They attempted to probe it with Fyn-Mah’s scrying bowl, with a variety of other devices, and even with Muss’s eidoscope. All proved fruitless. Flydd and Yggur tried a dozen spells of seeing, divining, scrying and controlling, none of which had any effect.

For long days they ransacked each other’s Arts, revealing secrets that they’d kept to themselves for all of their long lives of mancing, trying to find a way to understand the globe. They brainstormed over flasks of the potent wines of northern Meldorin, now unobtainable because the vineyards had been abandoned. They tried hypnosis and trance states; they scoured the mouldering records of ancient times in Yggur’s library, but came up with nothing.

As the thapter was about to lift off, Yggur slipped the globe into Tiaan’s hand. He had developed a fondness for the young artisan with the faraway sadness in her eyes. They had something in common.

‘Take this with you,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ve as much chance of solving it as any of us.’

She looked down, surprised, and her fingers caressed the silky smooth surface of the globe. She gave him a fleeting smile, which reminded him that he had once been young, slid it into her pocket and turned away.

‘Do well in the east,’ said Yggur and went inside.

Tiaan hated Fiz Gorgo and couldn’t wait to be gone. It was too crowded and noisy, and too full of unpleasant memories. Every time she walked down the hall it brought back the morning of Ghorr’s attack. She’d been dragged from her bed, still half-asleep, and beaten black and blue by Fusshte’s soldiers before they realised who she was. She’d seen terror on their faces then; they’d be brutally punished for injuring such a valuable prisoner. A hand had been thrown over her mouth and nose, Tiaan had smelt a sickly-sweet odour; then, oblivion.

From that moment until she’d been hustled out of Fusshte’s air-dreadnought into Nennifer, Tiaan remembered nothing but a few shredded images: darkness punctuated by lantern gleams, faces she didn’t recognise leaning over her, doors opening and closing. And always in the background had been the ticking of the rotors as the scrutators fled for their lives, not stopping night or day.

Her time in Nennifer had been almost as confused – cold and darkness, rats and cockroaches writhing in a halo around her dinner bowl, Fusshte giving her viscous potions that disconnected her mind from her eyes, then questioning her for hour after hour about her talents and about the amplimet. Tiaan had no memory of what she’d told him, for something he’d done had woken the withdrawal she’d not felt since the portal between the worlds had been opened in Tirthrax.

Once withdrawal began, it had grown until those desperate feelings of longing overwhelmed her. She remembered little else. Not even the squalor of her imprisonment had registered once withdrawal reached its peak. Her next memory was of Nish and Irisis leading her towards the warding chamber, where the proximity of the amplimet had roused her again.

Remembering that moment still brought tears to her eyes – the pain and the ecstasy of communing with the amplimet, and the agony and loss when Irisis and Nish had robbed her of it, as they’d robbed her of her previous life at the manufactory. How she hated them. It was unbearable to be trapped in Fiz Gorgo with the two of them. She would have agreed to anything to get away.

Malien had spent days with her in Nennifer after Fusshte fled, patiently talking through all that had happened. Despite what everyone else thought, Tiaan was no longer troubled by it. The past weeks were just another trauma and she’d overcome many in the past year. Now all she wanted was to escape. There were too many people in Fiz Gorgo and she’d never been good with people. She was afraid of Yggur, terrified of Flydd and had nothing to say to anyone else. If only it were just she and Malien going in the thapter it might be like the good old days mapping the fields near Stassor – one of the most pleasant times of her life.

Tiaan had the amplimet back now but her longing for it had faded. Driven back to the lowest stage of awakening, it seemed so insignificant that she wondered at her previous longings. Had Flydd and the other mancers erased all that had made it unique?

After flying due east to Tiksi, a journey of more than five hundred leagues which, now that Malien was fully recovered, they hoped to do in six days, Flydd planned to head all the way up the east coast to Crandor. That long coastal strip contained half the population of Lauralin and most of its greatest cities and armies. He planned to stop at Tiksi, Maksmord, Gosport, Guffeons, Roros, Garriott and Taranta, before returning via the west coast of Faranda, the only part of that arid island with cities of any significance. The journey would take at least three weeks, if the weather was good and nothing went wrong, but they were expecting to be away for a month. Tiaan couldn’t wait to lift off so she could turn to her field maps.

‘We won’t be able to visit every important city in the east,’ said Flydd as the thapter’s entrails whined, ‘but we’ll do much good nonetheless. No one can have seen a thapter before, and the common people will marvel at it. The enemy may be able to fly but they don’t have thapters.’

‘It doesn’t mean the east will rally to you,’ said Malien, rolling her palm across the flight knob.

‘They can’t give us men or clankers; they’re simply too far away. But our visit is bound to do good for morale – theirs and ours. We’ll all feel that we’re not alone, and that’s as good as another army.’

‘I thought we were heading directly to Tiksi?’ said Tiaan an hour after they’d left Fiz Gorgo.

‘It’s impossible to fool someone who sees a map once and never forgets it,’ smiled Malien. ‘I’m taking a slight detour to visit my exiled clan, Elienor, on the coast of the Sea of Thurkad.’

‘Have you told the scrutator?’ Flydd was down below, deep in his papers.

‘Not yet.’

‘Do you … think it’s a good idea to keep him in the dark?’ Tiaan put it tentatively, knowing that Malien could be prickly.

Malien sighed. ‘I still can’t forgive him for taking over my thapter at Nennifer.’

‘We’ve all done things we’ve later regretted, Malien. If you and Flydd don’t trust each other, I don’t see how we can succeed. And …’

‘What is it, Tiaan?’

‘I won’t be able to concentrate on my mapmaking.’

Malien stared straight ahead for some time, clenching her jaw. Finally she said, ‘You’re right, of course. We Aachim have a strong sense of our own importance and we feel insults more deeply than we should. I’ll set things right with him.’

During Tiaan’s time at the manufactory, Flydd, as scrutator for Einunar, had been the supreme authority figure of everyone’s life. She still saw him that way and, not knowing what to say, avoided him whenever she could. In the cramped confines of the thapter that wasn’t easy so she sat up on the rear shooter’s platform in the icy wind, swathed in blankets and scarves, alone but for her map, which she’d mounted on a board to protect it in high wind, and her crystals. The platform on Malien’s thapter was surrounded by a knee-high coaming, and had a harness to keep her in place in bumpy weather, but it was miserably cold even in the mildest conditions. Tiaan mapped the fields all the daylight hours, and for as much of the evening as they travelled.

Flydd came back once to see what she was doing, but she said, in her most polite talking-to-the-scrutator voice, ‘I can’t talk to you just now, I’ll miss part of the field.’

Early the following morning, Malien crossed the Sea of Thurkad and settled the thapter outside a palisade of sharpened timber at the end of a narrow, rocky inlet. The ridges rose up steeply on either side and straggly forest ran east into the distance. Guards on the walls had spring-fired catapults and crossbows trained on them. Malien stood up and raised a blue flag. After some time it was answered by a flag from the wall.

‘Do you want me to hide, as I did last time?’ said Tiaan. They’d stopped briefly here on the way to Alcifer, after escaping from Stassor.

‘No; you’ll come with me and Flydd,’ said Malien.

‘But …’ said Tiaan. ‘What if –?’

‘This is an embassy and you’re under my protection. You’ll come to no harm.’

But you’re an exile too, Tiaan thought, dreading the meeting. Her escape and Minis’s maiming had ruined Clan Elienor, for it had been held responsible. Vithis had confiscated their constructs and sent them into this precarious exile.

Gates in the palisade were creaking open as Tiaan climbed down, following Malien and the scrutator. As she put one foot on the ground, seven Aachim came through the gate. With their red hair, compact stature and pale skin they were strikingly different from all other Aachim.

‘The first is Yrael, clan leader,’ said Malien to Flydd as they approached. ‘Next his wife Zea and daughter Thyzzea …’

Yrael, whose hair was the glowing flame-red of sunset in a smoky sky, stopped just outside the gate, waiting for them to come to him. His arms were crossed, his face expressionless. Tiaan felt a spasm of panic.

Malien introduced Flydd and Yrael shook his hand, as did each of the others. There was no need to introduce Tiaan, who had remained several steps behind – every one of Clan Elienor’s five thousand knew her. She would forever be in their Histories.

Yrael stepped around Flydd and came towards Tiaan, and her heart missed a beat.

‘Tiaan,’ he said, studying her with his head to one side. ‘You look worn.’

‘I’m sorry!’ she burst out. ‘I had to do it. I was afraid for my life –’

Zea, a small woman with kindly eyes, came up beside Yrael. ‘But of course you did,’ she said, ‘and though your escape cost us dearly, how could we blame you for it?’

‘It was your duty to escape,’ said Yrael, ‘and the negligence of our guards, and Vithis’s, that allowed it.’ He put out his hand.

Tiaan took it, tentatively, the long fingers wrapping right around her hand, but at the moment of contact a wave of relief swept over her. She shook hands with Zea and then her daughter, Thyzzea, remembering their kindness and Thyzzea’s impish good humour during what had been a desperate time for them. Thyzzea, who wasn’t even an adult, had stood up to Vithis to protect her. All at once, Tiaan felt as though she had come home.

‘Come within,’ said Zea, indicating the gate with a sweep of her hand.

They took refreshments in a small pavilion made of carved white wood, set on a grassy rise by the stream that wound into the end of the inlet. The camp, a mixture of tents and small timber buildings, was neatly laid out and the walkways paved, though it looked impoverished. It was also precariously close to Oellyll, just across the sea, and must have been miserably cold and damp at night. The Aachim were thinner than Tiaan remembered, though they looked no less cheerful.

‘We are glad to see you, Malien, but why have you come?’ said Yrael once the formalities had been exchanged.

‘To find out where you stand,’ said Malien. She explained what had happened at Fiz Gorgo and Nennifer, and Flydd outlined their plan to win the war, or at least such parts of it as he cared to reveal.

‘I realise that you must feel bitter towards us, because of your exile,’ began Flydd. He glanced at Tiaan but she avoided his eyes. ‘And that you won’t dare –’

‘On the contrary,’ Yrael broke in, ‘Tiaan did us a favour. We’ve lost much, it is true, but we’ve been cut free of the other clans who, many millennia after Elienor founded our line, still can’t accept us. To them we’re a nagging reminder of the greatest failure in our Histories, and we’ll never go back. Henceforth we will make our own way on Santhenar, and our own friends, beholden to none.’

‘I’m prepared to offer –’ began Flydd.

‘We cannot be bought,’ said Zea. ‘What we give, we give in friendship.’

‘And obligation,’ said Yrael. ‘We were twice shamed at Snizort. Shamed because Vithis made alliance with you, Scrutator Flydd, then held us back when your soldiers were overrun by the enemy. And shamed again by the shabby way Matah Urien and Lord Vithis treated Tiaan, who made the gate and saved us all. In payment of those debts, and in friendship between our species, you may call upon us at need and we will answer the call with a thousand men.’

‘What of the other Aachim?’ said Flydd, once they were in the air again. ‘Will they give us anything?’

‘My own people in Stassor will not,’ said Malien. ‘Sadly, they can think of nothing but their own security, though how they can imagine it’s threatened in such an impregnable refuge, I don’t know.’

‘That’s what the Council thought about Nennifer,’ Flydd reminded her. ‘What about Vithis and the other clans? They’ve more than ten thousand constructs. If we could just –’

‘Not while Vithis remains leader,’ said Malien. ‘I know his kind. Once set on a course, he will follow it to destruction rather than turn aside.’

‘How secure is his tenure? Are the other clan leaders likely to challenge him?’

‘I talked to Yrael about that – they’ve had word of Vithis’s doings. There’s much dissension among the clan leaders, but also much rivalry, and Vithis survives because of it. The other clans won’t give any leader the support to topple him. Clan rivalry is one of our longstanding weaknesses.’

They planned to stop briefly at Tirthrax, where Malien would gather certain materials needed to turn constructs into thapters, then head to Tiksi, which had been under siege for a year. Tiaan had been born there and knew it well, since her mother Marnie, the champion breeder of the breeding factory, still lived in Tiksi. Though Tiaan did not get on with her mother, she missed her terribly.

Unfortunately, as they were travelling across Mirrilladell, they encountered a blizzard so fierce that Malien had no choice but to put the thapter down and wait it out. She turned for Tirthrax, which was not far away, and they spent days there, unable to go outside the entrance for fear that they would not find their way back again.

‘I think we’d better pass Tiksi by and go straight to Fadd,’ said Flydd on the third day, when conditions showed no sign of abating. ‘It’s bigger and more important.’ He looked to Malien as if for affirmation.

‘Whatever you say,’ Malien replied indifferently. ‘I know nothing about the politics of old humankind.’

Even Tiaan knew the untruth of that statement, but Flydd didn’t challenge it. ‘We simply can’t spend more than a month on this trip and we’ve already used up most of our contingency time.’

Tiaan scrunched herself up in a corner and pretended to be asleep so Flydd wouldn’t talk to her. Long anxious about her mother, she was bitterly disappointed that they weren’t going to Tiksi. She felt lost and Flydd’s presence inhibited Tiaan in her friendship with Malien. Tiaan did the only thing she could do. She withdrew into her work.

The following day the blizzard eased and they headed north-east across the mountains to Fadd, a city on the coast some eighty leagues north of Tiksi. It had been besieged by the enemy for most of the autumn, so Flydd hoped their visit would be doubly welcome. Tiaan resumed her mapping and, when they reached Fadd, pleaded women’s troubles so Flydd would not require her to go with him. After Fadd they had a long flight along the seaward edge of the rugged coastal mountains to Maksmord, where her excuse still served, though judging by Flydd’s expression it would last no longer.

They continued north-west up the coast and the cities blurred into one another. Their visits were brief, normally just overnight. Malien would circle the city several times in daylight before setting down in the main square, or outside the governor’s palace, making certain that they were seen by the maximum number of people. They would meet with the governor, the army command and other notables, and the provincial scrutator.

The first questions were always about the legitimacy of the new council and the lack of eastern representation on it. The story of Flydd’s earlier condemnation was well known, as was the humiliation of the Council at Fiz Gorgo and the destruction of Nennifer. Yet here Flydd was, accompanied by an Aachim out of the Great Tales and carrying a charter signed by the legendary Yggur himself, and travelling in the astounding flying machine that the whole world was talking about. Once they saw that marvel, few could sustain their doubts. Flydd’s council was the new power in Santhenar and not even those scrutators who had been loyal to Ghorr put up further resistance.

Flydd made a point of meeting the common soldiers and townsfolk, to reinforce his message that the new council was different from the old one, and hoped that word of mouth would do the rest. At last, after receiving assurances of fellowship and support from the governor (if nothing else), the thapter would lift off early the following morning and crisscross the city several times, flying low, before heading to the next destination.

Finally they reached Roros in Crandor, the largest city in the world since Thurkad had been abandoned, only two days behind their original schedule. They planned to spend two days here. There would be many meetings, which Flydd required Tiaan to attend, though she did not have to say anything.

On the second afternoon, bored out of her wits with political manoeuvrings which meant nothing to her, Tiaan was feeling for an apple in her bag when her hand touched Golias’s globe. She hadn’t thought about it before – there had been too much on her mind. Tiaan made a mental note to study it in her room tonight, since all her maps were up to date.

Her thoughts turned back to her mother. There had been no news about Tiksi in Fadd, or anywhere else. Anything might have happened to Marnie in the past year. As the governor finished her interminable address, Tiaan slipped in beside Flydd, plucking up the courage to ask him. He shook the hands of a pair of noblewomen in silk robes and went with them towards the doorway. Tiaan went after him and was just reaching out a hand when he turned away to speak to the governor. Tiaan’s hand fell to her side.

‘Is something the matter?’ said Malien.

Tiaan even felt estranged from her now. She stared at the floor.

‘Tiaan, what is it?’

‘It’s my mother,’ Tiaan said mournfully. ‘I was hoping to see her in Tiksi. I’m so worried. Tiksi has been under siege for months …’

‘You should have mentioned it at the beginning,’ said Malien. ‘I would have talked Xervish into going there instead of Fadd. Come on. I’m sure he knows what the situation is in Tiksi.’

Tiaan could not imagine calling the scrutator by his first name. ‘He’s far too busy. I don’t want to bother him.’

‘He can spare you a moment.’ Malien went across. ‘Xervish … Excuse me,’ she said to the governor, ‘but I must speak to the scrutator for a moment.’

Even from where she was standing, Tiaan saw the flash of annoyance on the governor’s face, though it was swiftly hidden. ‘Of course,’ she said, bowing to Malien and to Flydd, and turning away.

They came across. Tiaan was mortified. ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she said, expecting the scrutator to be furious. ‘It wasn’t important –’

Flydd smiled, which didn’t make him any the less fearsome. ‘Governor Zaeff is the most tedious old bore I’ve encountered in a decade, and I’m delighted to be rescued from her. What can I do for you, Tiaan?’

‘It’s nothing really,’ she said. ‘It’s just that, I’m worried about my mother … Of course you wouldn’t know her, but she lives in Tiksi …’

‘Marnie Liise-Mar,’ he said. ‘The star of the breeding factory. Of course I know her.’

‘You know my mother?’

‘When I was scrutator for Einunar, which I still feel myself to be, morally, I tried to know about everyone important in my realm.’

‘Oh.’ She could not imagine why her mother would be considered important. There were many breeding factories. ‘Is Tiksi …?’

‘I had news in Fadd, and all was well then, so they’re safe until spring. Tiksi was besieged three times over the last year, and much damage done, but they’ve repulsed several attacks since. Ah …’ He gave her a keen glance from under his continuous eyebrow, now grown back to brown bristles that stuck straight out. ‘In the first attack the breeding factory was burned to the ground.’

Tiaan gave a little cry. ‘Oh, poor Marnie.’

‘I was there soon afterwards in an air-floater. It wasn’t long after you left Tirthrax in the thapter, the first time. As I recall, the women of the breeding factory had been evacuated, and all were accounted for.’

‘Marnie spent her whole adult life there,’ said Tiaan. ‘It was her life. What will she do?’

‘I’m sure it’s been rebuilt. It’s vital work, breeding, and I dare say she’s back at it.’

‘She may be past it by now.’

Again Flydd smiled, and even touched her on the shoulder. He didn’t seem quite as fearsome after all. ‘Then she’ll be having an honoured retirement. Marnie is, after all, one of the richest people in Tiksi. Excuse me, I’d better get back to the governor.’

‘There you are,’ said Malien. ‘I’m sure she’s perfectly all right.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Tiaan. ‘Marnie always did know how to look after herself.’

She wondered, momentarily, if she dared ask the scrutator about the bloodline register, a human stud book she’d seen in the breeding factory the night of her escape. Tiaan decided not to. Scrutators didn’t appreciate people prying into their secrets.

THIRTY-NINE

In another tedious meeting that afternoon, Tiaan found herself involuntarily stroking Golias’s globe. Taking it out of her bag, she surreptitiously inspected it under the table.

The inner spheres revolved with the slightest movement, as if bathed in oil. She squinted at them, trying to see how many there were. One, two, three, four, five … six, seven. She shook the globe and something moved in the depths. Eight – in Gilhaelith’s mathemancy, a perfect number.

She shied away from the thought of Gilhaelith. They’d been more than friends at the end of her time in Nyriandiol, but he’d not been able to take the next step. He couldn’t overcome his troubled past, and in the end greed for the amplimet had outweighed his regard for her. She still felt the betrayal, and Ghorr’s attack on Fiz Gorgo suggested that Gilhaelith made a habit of betrayal. Damn him. She dismissed him from her mind.

Each layer of the globe was different. The outer one was clear glass with, here and there, a few faint swirls of smoky grey, like wispy clouds in a clear sky. The next layer was also clear except for faint lines running around it that shone like silver metal.

The globe was very heavy, heavier than it should be if it were just made of glass. The third layer was faintly swirled with blue, embedded in which was a red band. Copper, she presumed.

Someone cleared their throat and Tiaan looked up. Malien was glaring at her. Tiaan put an attentive look on her face until Malien turned back to the governor, who was still droning on about clasped hands across the world and other such nonsense. It was what people did that counted, not what they said.

The device was a puzzle and Tiaan loved solving puzzles. It drew her in. Each of the succeeding layers was different, but all were combinations of clear, patterned or engraved glass which had been banded, woven or partly masked with metals of different kinds. The outer layers covered so much of the inner ones that she could see virtually nothing of the seventh and eighth layers, at least in this light. And what lay at its core?

A crystal that could draw power from the field? Or one charged by its maker before it had been put into the farspeaker an aeon ago? If charged, its power must have faded long ago, in which case the globe was useless. Each layer of glass was seamless and there was no way to take the device apart without breaking it.

Malien jabbed her in the ribs and Tiaan nearly dropped the globe. One or two people were giving her curious looks. She slid it into her bag and tried to concentrate on what the governor was saying.

‘… we will, of course, do all we can. But as you can see we are hard pressed ourselves …’

‘I’m not asking you to come to our aid,’ said Flydd in his best diplomatic tones. ‘Clearly that’s not possible. I’m asking that we all cooperate. Together we’re strong. Separately, nothing!’

‘Of course.’ The governor spread her arms. ‘But so far away … and skeets are so unreliable.’

‘We may soon have a better solution,’ said Flydd. ‘A faster, secret means of communicating.’

‘Oh?’ The governor half-rose to her feet, her eyes on him.

‘More of that when we have it. But in the meantime –’

Governor Zaeff stared at him, calculating. Even Tiaan could read her expression. What’s in it for me?

‘If you had a thapter, or two, it would make all the difference to your war,’ Flydd said, very quietly. ‘Not to mention the subsequent peace.’

Naked greed flashed in Governor Zaeff’s eyes this time. ‘You only have one, and you’re not giving it away.’ If she could have seized it with no danger to herself, she probably would have.

‘By winter’s end we expect to have several more,’ said Flydd, ‘enough to reward our most loyal allies.’

‘And none more loyal than Crandor,’ she said smoothly. ‘We’ve been friends with the west for two thousand years and that alliance is sacred to us.’

‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ said Flydd, ‘for it means just as much to us.’ Rising, he gave her his hands across the table. Everyone else did the same, to seal the agreement.

Tiaan, who was holding the globe again, didn’t know what to do when the man across the table extended his hands to her. She let it fall into the bag then took his hands, in her embarrassment not meeting his eyes. It was a minor breach of protocol, but forgivable in a foreigner. Everyone bowed to everyone else and they made their farewells.

‘Would you really give her a thapter?’ said Malien once they were safely in the air. ‘When the war is over, Governor Zaeff will use it to enrich herself immeasurably.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Flydd. ‘She’s as greedy as anyone I’ve ever met, and therefore a valuable ally. She’ll do everything in her power to protect her wealth, and no one could take better care of Crandor. It’s the richest nation in the world, and the strongest. She’s well armed, her troops well trained, her people well fed. Yulla Zaeff knows that the way to maintain her position is to keep everyone happy, and she does. I have great admiration for her, even though she’s like a sow in the trough. I’d give her a dozen thapters if I had them to spare.’

On they went, heading north-west across jungle, mountain, desert and the unimaginably vast canyons that led down to the bed of the Dry Sea. This terrain was unfamiliar even to Malien. Tiaan stared at the salt-covered desolation in wonder, for its nodes were unlike any others she’d seen.

That night, two-thirds of the way to Taranta, they camped in the drylands far from any habitation, and it was warm enough to sleep under the stars. Tiaan lay in her hammock, with the globe clutched to her chest, rocking gently in the warm breeze. What could be at the core of the globe that powered it and weighed so much?

Tiaan wondered if she might induce some aura in it with the amplimet, in the same way she’d once tested the failed hedrons back at the manufactory. That seemed a lifetime ago. Unfortunately she didn’t have the amplimet. Malien had taken to using it in her flight controller, and at other times it was always kept in the platinum box. Flydd was taking no chances with it, and perhaps not with her either.

The others were asleep, the night still, apart from the swish of wings as a colony of bats streamed in and out of caves in the escarpment just behind the thapter. The globe had been carefully designed and each layer must have a purpose. But how could she tell without seeing the details of each?

Tiaan brought to mind an image of the globe as she’d seen it earlier that day, in bright sunlight. She slowly rotated the image, one of the talents that made her such a brilliant artisan and geomancer. She could recall, as clearly as a picture, anything she had ever seen. If it was any kind of mechanism, like the workings of a clock, she could make it operate in her mind so as to identify the flaws in it.

Recalling the outside of the globe was trivial. Next she brought to mind the second layer, rotating it until she had put together a complete image of the surface. The third layer proved more difficult, since more of it was obscured by the upper layers. But soon she assembled the separate views until she had that too.

The fourth was more difficult again. Large sections were covered by the copper band, and when she mentally moved the globe to rotate all the inner layers, she tended to lose the image she already had. It took most of the night before she was sure she had it perfectly. Thinking about the fifth sphere, Tiaan fell asleep.

The following day she was too exhausted to do more than her mapping as they crossed the mountain range to tropical Taranta, although Tiaan did remember to take out the globe and inspect it under bright sunlight. After much rotating of the inner spheres she felt sure she had seen the entirety of the fifth and sixth layers. That night, after the meeting, she fitted them into her mental model of the globe and felt that she had achieved a feat no one else could have done.

The following day, not even her beloved work was able to keep her awake, so a swathe of country along the north-eastern rim of Faranda went unmapped. She hoped the omission would not prove costly.

They reached Nys, a large town on the north-west coast of Faranda, which marked the turning point in the journey. After this they would be heading south, back towards Fiz Gorgo and winter. It took all her spare time to complete her image of the seventh layer and fit it into the mental model. The eighth would be almost impossible, for it was dim and almost completely obscured by the seven layers rotating above it. She was looking forward to the challenge.

Completing the surface of the eighth sphere was like doing a jigsaw puzzle through a pinhole. She had hundreds of separate tiny images in her head, but could not see enough at a time to fit them together. In despair, she put Golias’s globe away and went back to her mapping.

Towards the end of the odyssey, Tiaan was sitting, as usual, on the platform at the back of the thapter. Malien had followed the coast all the way south, and then south-east. Here Faranda became a narrow, mountainous peninsula like the handle of a spoon, extending down to Tikkadel, midway along the Foshorn, which resembled its bowl. To her right was the Sea of Thurkad, then the island of Qwale. Running towards her was the short Sea of Qwale which separated the island from Meldorin.

On her left, clearly visible beyond the mountains from this altitude, lay the white-crusted immensity of the Dry Sea, so vast, arid and hot that seldom had it been crossed. Tiaan had eyes for it whenever she could spare them from her mapping, though that was seldom. Unfortunately she had little time for spectacles at the moment. A chain of powerful nodes ran down the handle of Faranda, so close together that many fields overlapped at once, and it was difficult to sort out which was which. Malien seemed to be having trouble too – the note of the thapter kept swinging high then plunging low.

What kind of fields were out there, in the Dry Sea? The urge to investigate was overwhelming. Tiaan could see the rainbow shadows of a number of odd, elongated fields, but their sources were too far off to discern.

At Tikkadel, Malien turned right to cross the Sea of Thurkad, intending to pass over Qwale, which as far as they knew still resisted the enemy, and thence on to Meldorin Island.

As the thapter turned, Tiaan felt a bulging pressure in her head, as if a balloon was being inflated inside it, and a momentary shearing pain. Purple lights began to pulse behind her eyes and more bright spots drifted across her vision, resembling the migraines she sometimes suffered after overusing her talent. Colours exploded in her mind. ‘Aah. Help!’ she groaned, putting her hands over her eyes to shut out the light.

The wind was blasting at them and Malien did not hear. ‘Malien!’ Tiaan screamed.

Malien’s head appeared up through the hatch. ‘Tiaan, what is it?’

‘I don’t feel well. Can you go down?’

‘We’re over the sea. I’ll have to turn back to the Foshorn.’

They landed on a grey, wind-tossed plateau overlooking the Sea of Thurkad. As the thapter came down it crushed the salty shrubs, releasing pungent herb oils that were like a tonic to her abused senses. Tiaan hung over the side, panting.

Malien climbed up to her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I … don’t know. The field –’

Malien helped her into the shade by the side of the machine. ‘You’ve been overdoing it. Come inside. You can lie down in the dark and sleep all the way to Fiz Gorgo if you need to. It’s only two days, with this wind behind us.’

‘I’m not ill,’ said Tiaan shakily. ‘I feel all right now, but I sensed something strange up ahead.’

Flydd came down the ladder, rubbing stiff joints. He looked as though he’d been asleep. ‘What did you feel?’ He squatted beside her.

‘A monster node, bigger than the one at Tirthrax, but its field was unlike any I’ve ever sensed before. And there was something else.’

‘I don’t see why a field should trouble you,’ said Flydd, ‘no matter how huge.’

‘I’m sorry – I’m not explaining it very well. It felt dangerous.’

‘That’s easily dealt with,’ said Malien, smiling. ‘We won’t go near it. Let’s get you inside.’

‘Something isn’t right,’ said Tiaan. ‘I have to put it on my map.’

Malien and Flydd exchanged glances. ‘I don’t think –’ Flydd began.

‘I must,’ Tiaan insisted. ‘If something’s wrong, I’ve got to see it.’

‘All right,’ said Malien. ‘We’ll go down to the tip of the Foshorn.’ Then, unaccountably, she shivered.

‘There, you’re feeling its wrongness too,’ said Tiaan.

‘Not at all,’ said Malien. ‘Just remembering the last time I was there.’ She did not elaborate.

‘Go carefully,’ said Flydd, giving her another meaningful look.

Malien withdrew the amplimet and Flydd closed the lid of the platinum box over it. She made adjustments to the way she controlled the thapter, to make up for not using the amplimet, and lifted off, just skimming the shore. The field of the monster node grew in Tiaan’s mind until it swirled all around her.

‘Can’t you see it?’ she said to Malien, who did not seem to be troubled now.

‘I’ve never been able to see the field; at least, not the way you do.’

‘Really?’ Tiaan was astonished. ‘Then how can you use the thapter?’

‘My Art is very different to the Arts that other mancers use. I think I mentioned that once. I know where power is, and using this controller I can draw upon it, but I don’t see anything.’

‘So what’s at the other end of the Foshorn?’

‘The Hornrace, a chasm five hundred spans deep that separates Faranda from the continent of Lauralin. I’m sure you’ve heard it mentioned in the Great Tales. The chasm was once spanned by the Rainbow Bridge, the most beautiful of all our works on Santhenar, but it was thrown down by Rulke during the Clysm. He caused the very earth of the Foshorn to move, tearing the Rainbow Bridge asunder and toppling it into the chasm. The remains of the bridge can still be seen, tangled up in the rocks of the Trihorn Falls at the eastern end of the Hornrace. Only the four pillars of the bridge still stand, to remind us of what we have lost. I never thought I’d see them again.’

‘They must be mighty falls,’ said Tiaan.

‘Indeed, for the Foshorn is like a dam holding back the weight of the Sea of Thurkad and the Western Ocean behind it. The bed of the Dry Sea lies two thousand spans below the Sea of Thurkad, which has a powerful urge to reclaim it. The water races down the Hornrace as fast as this thapter can fly, but compared to the vastness of the Dry Sea it’s no more than a dribble down a lunatic’s chin.’

‘Perhaps I’m seeing a node associated with the chasm,’ said Tiaan. ‘No wonder it’s so huge, and so different.’

‘No wonder,’ said Malien, though there was a wary look in her eye. ‘Let’s see.’

They kept to a slow pace in order to lessen the strain, so it was late in the afternoon before they finally came in sight of the Hornrace. The thapter crept along the coast, which was incredibly rugged here, the mountains rising directly from the sea. They passed by one black headland after another and Tiaan felt her nerves tighten, as if each headland represented another turn of a clock spring. She already felt overwound.

The swirling patterns were everywhere now; she could hardly think for them. Flydd came up with a mug of tea, which she drank in a single draught. It tasted of ginger and the bitterness of willow bark, and shortly her headache began to ease.

Malien rounded another jagged headland and the tension snapped so tight that Tiaan could hardly draw breath. Malien took her hand, and Flydd – the scrutator himself – put his arm around her and held her up. Another dark headland loomed ahead.

‘The next will be the last,’ said Malien, controlling the thapter expertly with one hand. ‘Brace yourself.’

They rounded the last headland and the field struck Tiaan in the face like a flail. She cried out. Flydd opened the platinum box, Tiaan reached in and touched the amplimet, just for a moment, and the tornado of light and colour eased enough for her to open her eyes.

Just below them, the sea swirled in a series of whirlpools between rocks that stuck out of the water like the teeth of sharks, only black. Beyond, the current raced towards a dark slot in the cliff.

‘Go up a little,’ said Flydd as air currents buffeted them violently. He closed the platinum box, to Tiaan’s regret.

The thapter rose a few spans and the eddies grew less. They crept forward, rocking in the air. Forward, forward, and suddenly the chasm of the Hornrace opened up in front of them. The black cliffs towered so high that Tiaan had to crane her neck to see their tops.

A wild gust – a gale of air – struck the thapter and sent it tumbling. Had not the hatch crashed down they might all have been thrown out.

‘Straps!’ yelled Malien, clinging grimly to the controller.

Flydd put his arm through one of the sets of straps hanging from the back wall, then whipped two others across Tiaan’s shoulders and buckled her in. He did the same for Malien, and lastly for himself.

Malien gained control of the thapter but a wilder gust immediately flipped them upside down. She righted the machine and it was tossed the other way.

‘Get out of here,’ roared Flydd. ‘The torrent is drawing a gale of air through the Hornrace and it’ll smash us on the Trihorn.’

Malien had gone pale. She tried to turn the thapter but it shook violently, swung towards the black cliffs, rotated one hundred and eighty degrees but kept going, hurtling backwards down the Hornrace. Below, Tiaan could hear compartments flying open and gear crashing everywhere.

‘The gale is too strong,’ said Malien, fighting the controls.

‘Give the thapter more power.’

‘I’m doing the best I can. It’s hard to take it from the node I’ve been using.’

‘What about the big node?’

‘I can’t sense it.’

‘Tiaan?’

Her skin crawled at the thought of trying to draw power from such a field. It would turn them all inside out.

‘I dare not,’ she whispered. ‘It’s beyond me.’

‘What do I do?’ cried Malien. ‘Flydd?’

‘Turn around,’ said Flydd through gritted teeth. ‘Don’t fight the wind. You’ll have to go with it.’

In turning, an eddy flipped the thapter over and a downdraught hurled them at the torrent of black water. Tiaan bit down hard on a scream. Malien pulled up on the flight knob, the thapter struck the water and skipped like a stone, the blast from its base sending steam corkscrewing up all around them like miniature tornadoes.

‘Go up! It’s deadly this low,’ he yelled.

‘I know it!’ she snapped. ‘It … doesn’t want to go up, Flydd. The downdraught is too strong.’

‘Try to get out into the middle.’

‘I’m doing all I can,’ Malien said, fighting the controller.

The thapter edged toward the middle of the Hornrace. The wild air eddies were fewer there but the gale was stronger, hurling them from side to side. They skated across to the southern side on a rising column of air. Tiaan closed her eyes, sure they were going to strike the basalt wall.

Malien took advantage of another eddy to carry them away, and managed to lift the machine a little. The dark cliffs of the Hornrace were rushing past. Tiaan had never gone so fast. How could Malien control the little craft?

Somehow she did. ‘We’re nearly halfway down the Hornrace,’ said Flydd. ‘Better try and get out.’

‘I know,’ Malien said crossly.

‘Sorry.’ Flydd explained to Tiaan. ‘At the other end, three pinnacles stand up in the middle of the stream, breaking it into four torrents. Beyond the pinnacles, the race plunges over the mightiest precipice in the world.’

‘The Trihorn Falls,’ said Malien. ‘Misnamed now, for the tip of the third peak collapsed when the earth moved and the Rainbow Bridge fell.’ She eased the thapter upwards. The buffeting grew less for a moment, until a gust plunged them down again. ‘Not as easy as it seems.’

The wild dance continued for another few minutes then, suddenly ceased as, in the distance, a pair of fanged peaks and a stump, almost as tall, rose out of the water. The craft hurtled towards them.

‘Now!’ cried Flydd.

Malien jerked the controller hard. The thapter shot up and with a momentary shudder broke free of the streaming gale above the water into slightly calmer air. She kept going up, though the pinnacles seemed to rise out of the water just as quickly. The thapter was going like a rocket and she couldn’t slow it.

Tiaan held her breath. One minute it looked as though they were going to make it, the next that they would smash straight into the left-hand peak.

‘Up!’ Flydd roared.

‘I’m doing my best,’ said Malien, tight-lipped.

She climbed, curving toward the gap where the third peak had been. An air whirlpool threw the thapter back toward the left peak. The controller was shuddering as if it lacked the power to lift the weight. It felt as though the whole machine was going to come apart. Malien tried again and again but the thapter wouldn’t turn. She just couldn’t reach the gap.

‘We’ll have to try and go over the top.’

Tiaan reached into the box, took out the amplimet and held it against her heart. They shot toward the tip of the peak; they were going to smash into the rock. At the last second Malien coaxed a little extra from the mechanism, the airflow over the pinnacle bumped them up and they soared over and out toward the Dry Sea. The buffeting ceased: they were sailing in clear air.

Malien slowed the machine, curving around so they could take in the majesty of the Trihorn Falls in their wild plunge, a whole sea full of water, down and down, fifteen hundred spans to the floor of the sea. It was magnificent, glorious, unsurpassed in the Three Worlds.

But Tiaan’s eyes were drawn beyond it, back along the top of the Hornrace, to where four black pillars stuck up, two on either side of the chasm. They were all that remained of the Rainbow Bridge.

Around each pillar were immense stacks of cut stone, the foundations for some monstrous structure that was even now being built. One of the piles on the Lauralin side of the Hornrace was already half as high as the bridge pillars, and five times as wide.

‘What on earth is that?’ Tiaan whispered.

‘So that’s what Vithis has been up to all this time,’ said the scrutator. ‘But what’s he building?’

‘And why?’ Malien said grimly.

FORTY

‘Whatever Vithis is building,’ said Malien, ‘he’s doing it with the utmost urgency. What he’s done in a few months is extraordinary.’

Flydd took the amplimet from Tiaan’s fingers and put it away. As they climbed, enormous camps became visible. Roads had been carved across the drylands, ravines dammed and aqueducts were being constructed.

‘He has the best part of ten thousand constructs, even after the losses he suffered at Snizort,’ said Flydd. ‘He could do a mighty lot of carrying, hauling and lifting with all of them. And don’t forget he has well over a hundred thousand disciplined adults to do his bidding.’

‘As long as he can compel their loyalty,’ said Malien.

‘Would you go over the biggest structure, Malien? I’d like a closer look.’

‘Be careful,’ cried Tiaan. ‘I went over another camp once and Vithis did something to the field. I nearly crashed.’

‘I remember you telling me,’ said Malien. ‘They won’t find this craft so easy to deal with.’

Nonetheless, she kept well up, circling while Flydd peered over the side with a powerful spyglass. ‘I wonder what he’s doing?’ said Malien. ‘Can Vithis be trying to span the Hornrace itself? That would eclipse the Rainbow Bridge and every other structure in the Three Worlds, but I don’t see the point of it. It would be a monument to hubris, nothing more.’

‘Or a way of staking claim to their portion of Santhenar,’ said Flydd. ‘In a manner that no one could dispute.’

‘And perhaps,’ Malien pursed her lips, ‘they plan to tap the great node here for some purpose we know nothing about.’

‘Or one we’d rather not know about,’ said Tiaan.

The headache and the visions returned at twice their former force and she doubled over, holding her hands over her eyes. Then, as they passed above the largest structure, for a fraction of a second it was as if they’d flown through a vertical beam of light. Tiaan saw right through Malien, her bones just shadows, even through the wall of the thapter to the world outside. She blinked and the spectral image was gone. The whine of the thapter stopped, and just as suddenly rose to a scream before settling back to its familiar whine. Tiaan closed her eyes but could still see the images.

‘What was that?’ came Flydd’s voice from beside her. He did not seem to be overly concerned.

‘Something to do with the node, I suppose,’ Malien replied, no less casually.

‘Did you see the light?’ said Tiaan.

‘What light?’

‘A boiling column of it. I saw something similar the first time I flew over an Aachim camp, before I crashed on Booreah Ngurle. It wasn’t as big as this one though.’

‘Curious,’ said Flydd; then, after a moment, added: ‘We’ve seen enough. Head for home, Malien.’

The pangs eased once they were over the sea. Tiaan went below and lay on the floor with her eyes closed. She could not work the node out. Its field radiated away in a perfect oval centred on the Hornrace, but inside that it gained strength in a series of concentric ovals whose fields were reversed to each other.

Still thinking about it, she fell into sleep and didn’t wake until the following morning. She couldn’t map at all that day, and fell asleep before Malien stopped for a few hours’ rest in the afternoon. She’d spent so long puzzling over the eight layers of the globe and how they fitted together that, even in sleep, her mind would not turn off. It ran the mental model over and over, rotating each layer this way and that. In the early hours it began to fall into place. The first and the second layer clicked together. The third.

The thapter hit a bump and Tiaan threw out her arms in the darkness, as if for balance. Shortly she turned on her side, pillowed her head on her hands and the dream continued. The fourth and the fifth layer snapped to the others, just a few seconds apart, then there was a long pause to the sixth, but straight after that, the seventh.

The last layer eluded her as she drifted from restless sleep to dream, to deep sleep and back again several times. But finally, not long before they began to pass over the swamp forests of Orist, the eighth layer slid into position. She had it.

Tiaan smiled in her sleep and turned the other way, giving a little sigh. She woke just as the thapter settled to the yard at Fiz Gorgo.

Tiaan wavered across the yard, still half-asleep. The great space was practically full now. Sheds had been erected everywhere, there were piles of dressed timber and rolls of canvas, stacks of firewood and cauldrons with black runs of tar down their outsides. On the other side of the yard stood the timber frames for the cabins of three air-floaters. And there were people all over the place: hundreds of labourers, carpenters, sail-makers, artificers and every other kind of craft worker imaginable.

Everyone was staring. Hadn’t they seen a thapter before? She supposed most had not. As she headed toward the front door, Nish came out, looking harried and thinner than before. He went to go around her then started.

‘Hello, Tiaan,’ he said distractedly. ‘How was your trip?’

‘Very good, thank you,’ she said formally.

She dodged around him and went inside, longing for a bath and time to herself. As she passed through the doors, something made her look back. Nish stood on the step, looking at her. She tossed her head and continued on. Going by the kitchens, she cadged some chunks of brown bread and a couple of boiled eggs from the red-faced, perspiring cook, and went to her room.

There Tiaan took off her boots and sat at the little table, munching bread. She idly spun one of the eggs on its pointy end, spun it the other way, then laid it aside uneaten. Taking out Golias’s globe, she weighed it in her hands. There was one final puzzle to solve but it still wasn’t clear how to begin.

She scratched her head. She’d not had a bath since Taranta, itched all over and hated it. After Nennifer, she couldn’t bear to be dirty. But she had to solve the puzzle first. She got out a box of crystals and her artisan’s tools and began to work. Then she planned to bathe, lock the door and luxuriate in being completely alone for at least a day.

Tiaan didn’t get the solitude she craved. Her hair was still dripping when she was called down to Yggur’s meeting chamber. She sat right up the back, in the corner, hoping no one would notice her, for she had much to think through.

‘You’ve done well,’ Yggur said after the scrutator had summarised their trip.

‘It went better than I expected,’ said Flydd, toying with the goblet in front of him. ‘Everyone knew about Ghorr’s fall and the destruction of Nennifer. They have a great hunger for news in the east and took great pleasure in hearing how the downfall of the old Council came about, though they were anxious about the new one. I believe I allayed their fears and gave them something to hope for.’

‘Splendid,’ said Yggur, leaning back and folding his arms. ‘Please proceed.’

‘We’ve made some friends, learned much useful intelligence about the enemy and done wonders for morale in the east.’

‘That’s all very fine, but how many clankers have you come back with? How many soldiers?’

‘None apart from Clan Elienor’s one thousand,’ Flydd said grudgingly. ‘And that was Malien’s doing. But I never expected to. Even if the east had men and clankers to spare, we can’t march them across the continent.’

‘The war will be won or lost here in the west, Flydd, and we can’t do it without armies. Have you got anything we can fight with?’

‘I have agreement that we can use a number of manufactories in the south-east to make the devices we need. And there are a few matters we need to discuss later, Yggur. Privately.’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

‘Where’s Klarm?’ said Flydd, looking around the room.

‘Away in Nihilnor, or perhaps Borgistry by now, spending gold by the bucket. Truly, the man is a profligate.’

‘But worth it.’

‘We can talk about that later, too. Thank you, Flydd. I’ll give you a report on our progress, which will advance the war effort. Nish?’ said Yggur.

Nish came out the front. ‘I’ve got two experienced clanker operators presently training to operate air-floaters, as well as thirty-seven prentices, four training for air-floaters, the remainder for thapters. Most of the prentices show promise though the real test won’t come until we put them in thapters. I also have eight experienced clanker artificers, and thirty prentices training to maintain thapters. Lacking a thapter, I’m doing my best with drawings and models.

‘You saw the air-floater vessels outside; they’ll be ready in a few days. Unfortunately I can’t get enough silk cloth for the airbags. We’ve made one with silk gleaned here and in Old Hripton, but we can’t finish the others without cloth and there’s none to be had, even in Borgistry. Silk comes from the east but Ghorr used the lot for his air-dreadnoughts.’

‘What about the ones that crashed in the swamp forest?’ said Flydd.

‘They either burned or their airbags floated away. We haven’t recovered enough silk to make a pocket handkerchief.’

‘Well, Thurkad was the centre of the western silk trade for a thousand years,’ said Flydd. ‘There’s bound to be silk cloth in its abandoned warehouses.’

‘If the lyrinx haven’t burned them,’ said Nish. ‘Or moths eaten the cloth.’

‘The lyrinx aren’t wanton destroyers, despite their reputation. And the warehouses would have been protected against the moth, for a while at least.’

‘We can discuss an expedition later,’ said Yggur. ‘Irisis, your report.’

She stood up tall and confident and beautiful, and Tiaan slipped down in the seat, avoiding her eye.

‘My people have been busy making the assemblies to turn construct controllers into controllers for thapters,’ said Irisis. ‘We’ve completed seventeen assemblies so far, apart from the special parts Malien was going to bring from Tirthrax.’ She glanced at Malien, who gave the slightest of nods. ‘As well, we’ve readied the controllers and floater-gas generators, brought from Nennifer, for two of the three new air-floaters, should we obtain the silk.’ She sat down again next to Nish and casually draped an arm across his shoulder.

‘I’ve not been idle either,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve had artificers going over various battlefield devices we recovered from Nennifer, and they’re ready to hand over to the manufactories.’

‘What about your own project?’ said Flydd. ‘You were going to tell us how to move the thapters from Snizort. There’s no field there, remember? At least, only enough to power an air-floater.’

‘I’m still working on it,’ said Yggur.

‘What progress do you have to report?’

‘None that I care to speak about in a general gathering.’

‘If we can’t move the thapters once we make them,’ Flydd said with deliberation, ‘there’s no point to any of this.’

‘I’ve said it will be done,’ Yggur said frostily. ‘Is there anything else?’ His eye fell on Tiaan and he gestured for her to come up.

She did so reluctantly, hating to be the focus of everyone’s attention, and she hadn’t even had time to brush her hair.

‘I’ve extended my node maps,’ Tiaan burst out, but couldn’t think what to say next. She hastily unrolled her master map so they’d look at it and not her. Everyone did, and the tension eased.

Yggur took the other side of the map and beckoned to Nish, who held her side. Tiaan outlined the thapter’s flight track across to Tirthrax and Fadd, up the east coast to Roros, west to Taranta and back down the west coast of Faranda to the Foshorn.

‘I’ve learned a lot,’ she said, ‘as you can see from the map. It shows another seventy-eight nodes, some of them powerful, and the extent of their fields. Many were not previously known, as far as I can tell. Of course, this wasn’t a proper survey and there are many gaps. I had to sleep,’ she said apologetically. ‘All it really tells us is how little we know.’

‘It almost doubles what we know about the nodes of the world,’ said Flydd.

‘Some were very strange,’ she went on. ‘The one at the Hornrace –’

‘We’ll come to that later,’ said Flydd hastily. ‘Malien or I will tell that tale, if you don’t mind.’

Tiaan did not mind at all. She looked at Yggur, then hesitated.

‘Would you like to go down?’ he said kindly.

‘There’s … something else.’ She gasped it out.

‘About fields?’

‘No.’

‘Oh? Well, please go on.’

Tiaan had her hand in her capacious pocket, clutching the globe for comfort. ‘Before we left, you gave me Golias’s globe.’ She held it high and the lamplight gleamed off it. ‘You asked me to look at it in my spare time.’

‘Never mind,’ said Yggur. ‘I’ve decided to begin again from scratch.’ He put out his hand.

Tiaan held onto the globe. She glanced around the room. Flydd was staring at her in puzzlement. Fyn-Mah was writing notes on a scrap of paper. Irisis played with a controller apparatus in her lap. Nish was staring into the fire.

‘Yes, Tiaan?’ Malien said encouragingly.

Tiaan flicked her wrist as if spinning a ball, but held the globe tight. Its internal spheres revolved, darting reflections in all directions, then she squeezed her fingers and the layers froze as if they’d been locked in place.

‘I’ve solved the puzzle,’ she said softly. ‘I know how the globe works.’

There was dead silence. Yggur set his goblet down with a clatter, looking to Flydd and Malien as if he suspected them of organising a joke at his expense. ‘How did you get it apart, and back together?’

‘I didn’t need to. As we were going along,’ she said, ‘I observed it closely and made a model of all the layers, in my mind. The first few were easy enough. The sixth, seventh and eighth proved rather difficult.’

‘We’ll take that as a modest understatement,’ said Yggur.

‘Once I knew how each of the layers was formed,’ Tiaan went on, confidently now, ‘and how they related to each other, it was a matter of using my artisan’s experience, and what I’d learned of geomancy from Gilhaelith and the Aachim, to work out how the globe could be used to farspeak. I like solving puzzles. Things are so much easier than people …’

‘Only to you, my little artisan.’ Yggur was smiling now.

‘But that was only half the problem,’ Tiaan said. ‘I knew there was something else at the core, but there was no way to see it without breaking the globe. It’s a lot heavier than the glass and metal foil the layers are made from, so the core had to be something very heavy. I weighed the globe, then again in water, and discovered that the core had to be heavier than iron, or even lead. But what elements are heavier than lead?’ She looked at each of them but no one spoke. ‘Only gold, platinum, and quicksilver.’

Putting the globe down on the table, Tiaan spun it hard. ‘It didn’t spin like a solid globe would. See how it wobbles? The core has to be liquid, and the only liquid metal is quicksilver.’

They were all staring at her now. Tiaan could feel a hot flush rising up her throat. ’But there was one last problem to be solved. The globe contains everything needed to act as a farspeaker, but how was it powered? There had to be a crystal at its core, in the quicksilver. What sort of a crystal? I could see nothing through the liquid metal.

‘I channelled power into the globe – so much power that even a dead crystal would have to respond. But this crystal wasn’t dead, and it gave forth such a strong aura that I could read it with my pliance. That told me what kind of crystal it had to be. It’s monazite.’

‘What’s monazite?’ said Irisis.

‘A stubby, hard yellow mineral Gilhaelith showed me once.’

‘It’s the first time I’ve heard of any mancer using monazite,’ said Flydd sceptically. ‘It doesn’t hold power at all.’

‘It doesn’t need to. Monazite has a particular and unique virtue,’ Tiaan said. ‘It generates power from within itself. Not much, but enough to power a farspeaker, and it lasts forever.’

‘Forever?’ said Malien.

‘Thousands of years, at any rate.’

‘But no one has ever been able to use the globe,’ said Flydd. ‘Some of the best mancers in the world have wasted their lives trying to.’

‘Including me,’ growled Yggur. ‘I can’t believe –’

‘I read some of their writings in Gilhaelith’s library,’ Tiaan replied. ‘In ancient times, mancers tried to recharge the globe, but the power was dispersed by the liquid metal. Besides, monazite can’t hold a charge.’

‘And recent mancers, such as my humble self?’ said Yggur. ‘Why did they not discover the answer?’

‘You know as well as I do, surr.’ The flush now covered her face up to the roots of her hair. Tiaan just wanted to get away.

‘Indulge me, artisan.’

‘Since fields were discovered a century ago, mancers seldom think of any other kinds of power. Malien and yourself are the only ones who still use the old ways. But the globe employs an entirely different force, forgotten aeons ago.’

‘Then why doesn’t it work?’ cried Yggur in frustration.

‘It’s a puzzle.’

‘A puzzle?’ he echoed.

‘No one else knew how to solve it because no one else could see all the layers at once, or understand how they worked together to create a farspeaker.’ She squeezed the top and bottom of Golias’s globe, then flicked her hand. The eight layers revolved. Tiaan stood with her eyes closed, visualising the moving layers, squeezed again, and all froze into place. ‘There.’ She held the globe out to Yggur but he did not take it, so she went on.

‘I work out the required alignment in my mind, spin the globe and, when the layers come to the right alignment, I stop them in place. The globe is ready to be used.’

‘So you say,’ said Malien. ‘But how can you prove it?’

From her other pocket, Tiaan took a small piece of crystal wrapped around with fine wires in intricate patterns. She carried it to the back of the room, sat it on a chair and returned to the front. Holding Golias’s globe close to her mouth, she said, ‘How can I prove it?’

A hollow, scratchy voice came from the crystal at the back of the room, fractionally delayed, ‘How can I prove it?’

Yggur’s eyes shone. ‘Oh, this is glorious! How far can you separate them, Tiaan?’

‘I don’t know. This is the first test.’

‘How did you know it would work?’ he exclaimed.

‘I didn’t. I almost didn’t mention it, I was so afraid of looking a fool.’

‘Let’s try it now, at once. This is marvellous, marvellous.’ Yggur leapt up and began striding back and forth in his excitement. ‘Tiaan, write something on a piece of paper and give it to Nish. Don’t tell us what it says.’ Yggur took up the wire-wrapped crystal. ‘Come on, everyone. We’ll go right to the other end of the fortress.’

Tiaan scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Nish. Everyone else trooped out after Yggur. Nish remained in his chair.

Tiaan wished he had gone too, but he didn’t budge. She gave them ten minutes to get to the other end of the building, then said, slowly and carefully, ‘I just want to go to bed.’

Five minutes later Yggur reappeared, panting. He’d run all the way. ‘ “I just want to go to bed”,’ he quoted.

‘That’s correct,’ said Nish, showing him the paper.

‘And as strongly as if you had spoken in my ear.’ Yggur came across and shook her hand. ‘This is it – the missing piece of our plan. You may just have won the war for us, Tiaan. Let’s sit down in the morning and work out a design for more farspeakers. Skilled artisans at one of Flydd’s manufactories can make them for us. It won’t be easy but it’s within their skills, Irisis tells me. And monazite isn’t a rare mineral. Tell me, can we use those to communicate with each other?’ Yggur held up the little wire-wrapped crystal.

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Tiaan. ‘Golias’s globe is the master farspeaker, while the other is just a slave, if you like.’

‘Go on,’ said Yggur.

‘The master drives the message out, but can only be used once the key has been set. The slave farspeaker only responds to that setting. It can call the master farspeaker, if the master is set to it, but it can’t call another slave. If someone with a slave farspeaker wants to talk to someone else with another slave, the message must go through the master.’

‘An excellent idea,’ said Flydd. ‘We must maintain control over what people say to each other. Free speech is a wicked thing.’

Tiaan, who had been imagining all the good things one could do with a farspeaker, such as talking to her mother, was so shocked that she couldn’t speak.

‘Spoken like a true scrutator.’ Yggur clapped him jovially on the shoulder. ‘Klarm will be tickled pink when he gets one. It’ll save him months of travel and give him so much more time for drinking and wenching.’

‘Presumably a message from the master farspeaker can be heard by all the slaves,’ said Flydd, frowning.

Tiaan didn’t want to answer, though the question was an interesting one. She thought for some time before replying. ‘It could, if all slave farspeakers were the same. But an artisan could tailor them so they only respond to one particular setting. Then you simply lock Golias’s globe at the correct setting and speak, and only the person you’re talking to will hear your message.’

‘Oh, very good,’ said the scrutator.

‘The message isn’t instantaneous,’ said Yggur. ‘I wonder why?’

‘Who knows what tortuous route it takes, via the ultra-dimensional ethyr,’ said Flydd. ‘Who cares if it takes hours to get from one side of Lauralin to the other, or even a day? Not even a skeet can beat it, and it can’t be intercepted.’

‘Nor will it tear your throat out, like a skeet will if you step too close to its cage,’ said Flangers.

They all gathered around, excitedly discussing the device and how it might alter the balance of the war. No one noticed Tiaan slip away quietly.

Malien realised that Tiaan was missing and went to her room.

‘I wasn’t joking,’ said Tiaan. ‘I just want to go to bed.’

‘I know. But tell me, you didn’t seem quite as pleased as everyone else, at the end.’

‘It was the way Flydd was talking about it,’ she said. ‘Wanting to control what people say. Farspeakers could be wonderful things. If only we all had them I could talk to Marnie now.’

‘You miss her terribly, don’t you?’

‘She’s the most annoying woman in the world, and we fight constantly when we’re together. She says the most awful things to me. But I do miss her – she’s the only family I’ve got. And I’m worried. She’s too old for the breeding factory now. What will become of her? She has no idea how to look after herself.’

‘She can afford a house and servants.’

‘If they’ll put up with her.’

‘I’m sure she’s all right. And Xervish is a good man.’

‘The way he talks frightens me. The powerful wouldn’t use farspeakers to help people, but to control them.’

‘But when the war is over, the whole world will be transformed.’

‘But how?’ said Tiaan. ‘For good or for ill?’

Later that evening, Malien, Flydd and Yggur met secretly, and Flydd told Yggur about what they’d seen at the Hornrace.

‘I don’t understand why the Aachim broke off their plans for conquest,’ said Yggur. ‘With all those constructs they could have swept from one side of Lauralin to the other.’

‘We Aachim have never been empire builders,’ said Malien. ‘Security has always been more important to us. And often, after a setback, instead of fighting back we’ve simply cut ourselves off from the world.’

‘Have you any idea what Vithis is constructing?’ asked Yggur.

‘It’s either a bridge – a gigantic arch – or a building spanning the gulf,’ said Malien. ‘Though I can’t imagine why anyone would go to such an immense labour.’

‘Any building to span the Hornrace would be a mighty one indeed,’ said Yggur. ‘I’d have thought it beyond the capabilities of any civilisation.’

‘We used to be fond of extravagant symbols,’ said Malien. ‘Vithis may simply be putting his mark on Santhenar in the strongest way possible.’

‘Do you think so?’ Yggur wondered.

‘If he is, it masks a deeper purpose,’ said Malien.

‘Such as?’

‘A gate to ferry the rest of the Aachim from Aachan? A device to change the weather and make the desert bloom?’

‘Could it be a weapon?’

‘It could. They are greatly advanced in geomancy. They taught Tiaan how to make a gate, something no one on this world could have done. They built eleven thousand constructs on Aachan in a couple of decades. They may be building a weapon that we cannot even conceive of.’

FORTY-ONE

Nish went back to his room that night, fretting more than usual. Everyone else seemed to have achieved wonders but his students weren’t trained yet, nor the air-floaters ready, through no fault of his own. Now that the thapter had returned he could do some work with his pilots and artificers, but there was nothing he could do about the air-floaters. Ghorr’s air-dreadnoughts had consumed all the suitable silk cloth available in Meldorin, and only silk would do. Nothing else was light yet strong enough for an air-floater gasbag.

Unfortunately, he was in charge and neither Yggur nor Flydd was interested in excuses. They simply expected the problem to be solved, and quickly. Nish could see no alternative but to make a raid on the silk warehouses of Thurkad, dangerous though it would be.

He went to see Flydd and Yggur about it in the morning and asked if they knew which warehouses contained silk cloth.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Yggur. ‘Thurkad had thousands of warehouses. Klarm would know but naturally he’s not here. I’ll put a discreet word around in Hripton, and also up at The Entrance, where all the thugs and pirates dwell. Someone there will know.’

‘And I’ll need to take the air-floater and a crew to Thurkad to steal the stuff,’ said Nish.

‘Klarm’s using it at the moment,’ said Flydd.

‘Is he ever not?’ said Nish. ‘It’s ironic, don’t you think, that I need the air-floater so I can make more of them, and train more pilots, but I can never get access to it.’

‘It’s generally the work done behind the scenes that wins the war,’ Flydd said, ‘rather than the armies slaughtering each other. Very well, put a plan together and, if you locate the silk, we’ll see what can be done. One step at a time, remember?’

Two days later, Seneschal Berty brought a villainous-looking old fellow to Nish’s shed. He had two teeth in the bottom jaw and three in the top, whose purpose seemed solely to hold the blackened pipe that never left his mouth. He certainly never used them to chew his food, his diet being entirely liquid. It was a foul-smelling brew, too, even worse than the turnip brandy the miners used to drink around the back of the manufactory. It smelled as though it had been distilled from the cook’s compost heap, a festering mound of vegetable peelings, food scraps, burnt fat and bones that even the dogs turned their noses up at.

‘This is Artificer Cryl-Nish Hlar,’ said Berty, keeping well upwind. ‘He is known to his friends as Nish. You are not his friend, Phar, and never will be. You may call him Artificer Hlar.’

‘Yerz, Nish,’ said Phar.

‘Hello,’ said Nish. ‘Come inside. No, let’s go out in the fresh air.’

The air in the yard was anything but fresh, reeking as it did of wood smoke and hot metal, sweaty labourers and bubbling tar. All were ambrosia beside Phar, who was small, bandy-legged, red of eye and so foul of breath that it signalled his arrival from five paces away. Nish could not imagine being cooped up in the thapter with him, if it should come to that. Phar’s sandals revealed splintered black toenails and ankles from which the grime could have been peeled with a knife. He was missing two toes, one thumb and half his left ear. He was, in short, the most repulsive individual Nish had ever seen.

Nish had already heard about Phar, who had a single redeeming feature. He had, through more than sixty years of crime centred around the waterfront of Thurkad, developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the warehouses and their contents. He loved the ancient city, in his own squalid and inarticulate way, and nothing would have induced him to leave it. Nothing, that is, but the threat of being eaten by a lyrinx. So Nish gleaned eventually from Phar’s rambling and incoherent discourse, punctuated regularly by slugs from his putrid leather flagon.

You were never in any danger, thought Nish, looking him up and down in disgust. There wasn’t a lyrinx in Santhenar that would have touched him, not even to feed its starving children.

‘I understand that you know the warehouses of Thurkad well, Mr Phar. I wonder if you would be so good –’ He stopped at the seneschal’s slashing gesture.

‘Allow me, Nish,’ said the seneschal. ‘Phar. We want silk cloth. Strong cloth, best quality. Long bolts of it. Where do we get it?’

Nish passed Phar a map of the waterfront which Yggur had given him. ‘Can you read, Phar?’

‘Maps. Not words.’

Nish spread the map on the paving stones. Phar squinted at it, picked his nose then turned the map upside down. He grinned broadly, his wagging pipe spilling clots of tarry ash on the map. Nish brushed it off hastily. The disgusting stuff stuck to his fingers.

‘Here,’ said Phar, pointing with a snotty fingertip. ‘Street of the Sail-makers. All these buildings behind are warehouses. This, this and this, all silk.’

‘You’re absolutely sure?’ said Nish.

‘Bah,’ said Phar, picking the other nostril and parking the residue on the edge of the map.

‘Disgusting brute,’ piped Berty, cuffing him over the half-ear. ‘Wipe that off, you pig.’

Phar smeared snot halfway across the sheet. Snatching the map, Nish rolled it up and said, ‘We’ll go at first light.’

Phar began to shamble off. ‘Not likely,’ said the seneschal. He called a pair of guards over. ‘Look after this fellow for the night, will you? And take good care of him; he’s escaped more times than you fellows have changed your underwear.’

‘Never change my underwear,’ said the first guard, evidently puzzled by the comparison. ‘Only when it falls to pieces.’

‘You’re in good company then. Lock him up tight. If he escapes you’ll be explaining why to Lord Yggur.’

The mission seemed doomed from the first second. When the guards went to the cell for Phar in the morning he wasn’t there; despite all the precautions, he had got away.

‘What the blazes were you doing?’ Nish roared, practically incoherent with rage. It did not matter that Seneschal Berty had given the orders and the guards carried them out. He, Nish, was in charge and there was no excuse for failure.

Berty looked worried too, which was unusual. He was always the picture of control. He hastily roused out the guards and soon a hundred people were looking for the thief.

An hour later Nish was sitting on the step to his shed, head in hands, a position he’d spent a lot of time in lately, when Yggur came stalking out the front doors of Fiz Gorgo, holding a crumpled, twitching object as far away from him as possible.

‘I believe you’re looking for this,’ he said, dropping Phar on the ground. The villain splatted, like a cow defecating. Lying on the paving stones, reeking, he did rather resemble a pile of droppings.

‘You won’t run away again, will you, Phar?’ said Yggur.

Phar covered his face, making a ratty squeal. He shook his head vigorously.

Yggur inspected his fingers, seeming to find some distasteful residue there, for he crossed to a wash trough and scrubbed his hands with sand-soap and water.

‘You won’t let us down, will you, Nish?’ Without waiting for an answer Yggur went inside.

No, Nish said to himself, I won’t, and he finished stowing his gear in the thapter. Yggur would not let him take the air-floater to such a dangerous place, deeming it too slow and vulnerable to lyrinx attack. Nish heartily agreed. They were to leave immediately.

‘Where’s Malien?’ he said to his crew after they had been waiting for half an hour. She was to pilot the thapter to Thurkad.

No one had seen Malien. He found her in her bed, looking wan.

‘I’m sorry, Nish. I’ve been throwing up all night. I don’t think I can even stand up.’

‘Was it something you ate?’

‘No. I’m afraid I overdid it, flying the thapter all that time. I’ve been feeling poorly for days. Maybe tomorrow …’

‘Well, look after yourself.’ He went out. Tomorrow was going to be too late. Nish was acutely conscious how time was fleeting by. It was mid-winter and they had to be ready for war in less than two months. At this stage, even a day could make the difference between success and failure.

In an emergency, Nish supposed Flydd and Yggur would agree to his taking the air-floater, though it was exquisitely vulnerable to attack by lyrinx. A single tear in the gasbag meant the loss of the craft and everyone on it, and any chance of recovering thapters. And though it was the mating season, when the enemy avoided all-out war, there would be plenty of lyrinx about who were neither hibernating nor mating. No, it had to be the thapter and they must go today. Flydd needed it in a few days’ time, to visit the manufactories in the south-east, which were to make farspeakers and other devices for the spring offensive.

None of Nish’s trainee pilots had ever been at the controls of a real thapter and there was no possibility that they would be allowed to take this one to Thurkad. He needed the best for such a dangerous mission. He would have to ask Tiaan.

Nish had kept clear of her ever since her return, for Tiaan made it plain that she loathed him. She only spoke to him when she had to, and avoided him whenever she could.

And if she refused, as he expected her to? Nish had no idea what he would do.

He knocked on her door. She did not answer. He knocked again. Still nothing. It was early and she could be asleep. He turned the handle.

‘Tiaan?’ he said quietly.

Her bed was empty. Perhaps she was down the hall having breakfast. Then Nish heard splashing, realised his error and, too late, turned to go. Tiaan appeared around the corner, naked from her bath, towelling her dark hair vigorously.

Had he slipped out at once he might have got away with it, for the towel was over her face. Nish hesitated just long enough for her to open her eyes and see him staring at her.

She fled back into the bathing room. Nish went the other way, scarlet with mortification. Now what was he supposed to do?

Irisis laughed herself sick when he confessed his folly. ‘What a prize clown you are, Nish. You can’t do anything right, can you?’

It stung, even from his best friend. ‘Not with Tiaan. I was trying to do the right thing.’

‘But Nish, she’s such a repressed little chit, and you sneaked into her bedroom. How could you imagine she was going to react?’

‘I didn’t sneak. I knocked twice.’

‘It was her bedroom. You should have knocked loudly and not gone in until she answered.’

‘I was trying not to disturb her.’

‘And she didn’t have any clothes on?’

‘Completely naked,’ he said miserably, ‘and still gleaming wet from her bath …’

‘Remember who you’re talking to,’ Irisis snapped.

‘Sorry.’

‘She’ll never forgive you, not if she lives for a hundred years.’

‘I know. I’ve ruined everything.’

‘Not necessarily. Just because she despises you and holds you in deepest contempt –’

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

She sniggered. ‘Of course I am. You were being a rotten little perv and now you’ve got your just desserts.’

‘I wasn’t!’ he said plaintively. ‘Why won’t you believe me?’

‘Because I don’t want to. It’d spoil the story, for me and for everyone.’

‘You’re not going to tell the others! No, please don’t, Irisis.’

‘Of course I am. We can all do with a good laugh. But, just to show good faith, I’ll get you out of your little problem.’

‘How?’ Nish said suspiciously.

‘As I was saying, just because Tiaan despises you more deeply than –’

‘Thank you! I got the message.’

‘– it doesn’t mean that she won’t fly the thapter.’

‘But …’ He looked at Irisis in sudden hope.

‘If you hadn’t caught her at her bath, and she had agreed, would she have done it as a favour to you?’

‘Of course not. She loathes me.’

‘Well, there you are. Now she just loathes you a little more. Er, a lot more, actually.’

‘Thanks! But I still don’t see –’

‘Go and talk to Malien. Confess your folly and get her to ask Tiaan to do it. Malien is her only friend.’

Malien looked a little better, and she also laughed when Nish shamefacedly told her what he’d done. ‘That’s worth two hours with the healer, Nish. How do you get yourself into such messes?’

‘Will you plead with her?’

‘I’ll ask Tiaan. She’s been working night and day on the farspeaker designs, but I believe they’re finished now.’ She pulled the bell cord and asked the servant, who appeared straight away, to fetch Tiaan at once.

‘I’ll go,’ Nish said hastily.

‘No, stay. Time is precious. Sit over there.’

He took a chair by the window.

Shortly Tiaan appeared. ‘How are you, Malien? They said you weren’t well.’

‘I’ve felt better. Dare say I’ll be all right in a day or two.’

‘If there’s anything –’ She caught sight of Nish and a flush mounted up her cheeks. ‘You vile, disgusting, repuls–’

‘I gather you had a small incident this morning,’ Malien said mildly.

‘He sneaked into my bedroom so he could spy on me at my bath!’ she cried. ‘He’s always been a squalid little pervert.’

Nish, even redder in the face than she was, wanted to die. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Between her and him, his words had always made things worse. He opened his mouth but Malien signalled, hand up, for him to say nothing.

‘I believe he thought you were asleep,’ said Malien, ‘and did not want to wake you suddenly.’

‘If you believe that –’ Tiaan cried, then broke off. ‘I’m sorry, Malien.’

‘I’ve been insulted by the most powerful people in the land, Tiaan. There’s nothing you can say to upset me. Now listen – I’m ill and can’t fly the thapter to Thurkad. It must go today or it will be too late. Nish went to your room to ask if you would do it.’

Tiaan opened her mouth to refuse, but Malien went on. ‘No one else can do it, yet it must be done. So I’m asking you, Tiaan. Will you fly the thapter?’

After a long hesitation, she said, ‘Of course, Malien. But let it be known I am not doing it for him.’ Turning to Nish she said formally, ‘I will be ready in one hour. Will that be sufficient?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

Still red in the face, Tiaan went out.

‘Sounds as though it’s going to be a jolly trip,’ said Malien, ‘what with you, Tiaan and Phar. Tell me all about it when you return.’

Tiaan turned up as the last grain of the hourglass fell, when the soldiers and Phar were already below. Nish took his place beside her. It was going to be a hideous trip. Tiaan, at the controller, was like an iceberg that, instead of thawing, seemed to get colder by the second. Nish tried to apologise.

‘Don’t say anything. Your apology means nothing, since I know you’re only offering it to get what you want.’

‘But, Tiaan, I didn’t mean –’

‘Do you think I don’t know your character by now?’ she hissed. ‘You’re a true son of your father. I have nothing to say to you. Just tell me where you want to go and what you want to do.’

He did so, since the soldiers were already muttering among themselves. Morale was critical to the success of any mission. Someone began to bang on the lower hatch.

‘What’s that disgusting smell?’ said Tiaan, edging away from him. ‘That wasn’t you, was it?’

‘Of course not!’ Flushing again. Nish lifted the hatch. He didn’t need to take a step down the ladder to discover that he’d made a gross mistake. The stench was so appalling that even the soldiers looked green.

‘Get him out of here,’ said the first, ‘or none of us will still be alive when we get there.’

‘Phar!’ snapped Nish. ‘I should have put you in the cauldron and boiled the filth off you. Grab hold of him, lads. We’ll take him up the back.’ He climbed up. ‘Would you set down, please, Tiaan? We’ll have to take this villain up to the platform and tie him on.’

‘You should have thought of that before we left,’ she said without looking at him. Tiaan directed the thapter toward a mud island in the swamp forest, taking it expertly down between the trees. She stood to one side, wrinkling her nose, as the soldiers manhandled Phar over the side and back to the shooter’s platform, where they secured him with ropes.

The stink lingered, and even after the long flight to Thurkad, Nish could still smell the fellow. They arrived over the city around one in the morning. Tiaan was standing at the controller, practically asleep on her feet. She was swaying from side to side.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Of course I’m all right!’ she snapped. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

He began to unroll the map of the city. Tiaan touched a panel globe above her head, which illuminated the binnacle with a soft white glow. Nish spread the map out as best he could over the irregular surface.

‘These three are the silk warehouses.’ Nish pointed to the buildings behind the Street of the Sail-makers. ‘Any will do.’

‘Just tell me which one you want to go to,’ she said curtly.

‘The easternmost one,’ said Nish.

‘Thank you. You can go now.’

‘I’ll leave the map –’

‘I don’t need it. Once I see a map I never forget it.’

He didn’t see how that could be possible, for Nish was used to poring over maps for hours and still getting lost. However, he rolled it up and went below. The place still reeked of Phar.

Shortly the thapter settled with a bump on a sloping roof. Timbers creaked underneath them and several slates cracked. Tiaan lifted the thapter off again, hovering just above the roof.

‘We’re here,’ she called down the hatch.

‘Time to go,’ Nish said to the soldiers. ‘Vim and Slann, would you bring Phar? He’s a burglar and it’s his job to find us a way in. I hope he can, otherwise we’ll have to make a hole in the roof and I’d rather avoid that. Tiaan, if you would keep watch …’

‘What if the enemy appear?’

‘If they see you and attack, go up at once. Come back every hour on the hour if you can, but don’t risk yourself or the thapter for us.’

For the very first time, some kind of feeling showed in her eyes, as if she’d realised that he was, after all, a human being not completely without redeeming features. To be abandoned in a city possessed by the lyrinx was not pleasant to contemplate.

‘I won’t,’ she said.

They gathered on the sloping roof beside the thapter with all their gear: packs full of tools for breaking and entering, coils of rope, a small hand winch, weapons. It was as dark as a cellar full of coal and the roof was wet and hard to stand on.

‘Ready?’ said Nish. ‘Come on, Vim,’ he hissed in the direction of the rear platform. ‘Get a move on.’

‘Phar’s not here.’

‘What?’ Nish scrambled up the back. The stench lingered in the open turret but it was empty. Nish felt along the rails, encountered the ropes and ran his fingers down them. The ends had been neatly severed.

‘He must have had a blade hidden away, and jumped off as soon as we touched down,’ Nish raged. ‘Why didn’t anyone search him?’

‘We searched him,’ said Vim. ‘But, well …’

‘I know,’ said Nish. It was a disgusting job. There was no point blaming anyone. But it was not a good start.

FORTY-TWO

‘I dare say he’ll come back once he’s done his bit of pilfering,’ said Slann. ‘He won’t want to stay here.’

‘If he does I’ll kick his arse right out into the middle of the bay.’

They had to break in through the roof. It wasn’t difficult but pulling up slates in the dark made more noise than Nish liked.

‘If there are any lyrinx about,’ he said, ‘they now know we’re here. And they’ll see us even though we can’t see them.’

‘It’ll be a quick death then,’ said Slann, who had a melancholy disposition.

‘Though not a painless one,’ said Vim. ‘Better get down there, quick.’

He fixed a rope around a roof beam. They climbed down it and, after breaking though a ceiling, ended up in the top floor of the warehouse. It was empty.

‘Suppose the silk will be in the basement,’ said Slann, ‘and we’ll have to carry it up ten flights of stairs.’

‘Shows how much you know,’ scoffed Vim. ‘They wouldn’t keep precious silk in the basement where it’d go mouldy. It’d be up high, where it’s warm and dry. Naw, I reckon the place is empty.’

‘It’d better not be.’ Nish gloomily headed for the stairs.

Before long they were on their way up again. The warehouse contained nothing but rat droppings.

The thapter was still there, thankfully. Phar was not. They climbed in.

‘Empty,’ said Nish.

Tiaan did not look surprised. ‘Shall I go to the next one?’

‘Please.’ He sat on the floor and put his head in his hands. Nish had a pretty good idea what he would find in the second warehouse. Nothing. Phar must have been extracting a petty revenge, and now that he was gone they had no hope of finding the right warehouse.

The second warehouse took a long time to break into, but proved as empty as the first. Nish was in a sick despair by the time he returned. Tiaan said nothing at all, just carried them to the third.

Nish consulted the stars as they got out. It was three in the morning. Dawn was around seven-thirty. Plenty of time if the warehouse was empty. Not long at all if they found what they wanted and had to lift it through the roof.

The top floor proved to be empty. So did the one below that. Halfway down the stairs, Nish paused. ‘I can smell something.’

‘So can I,’ said Vim. ‘Frying onions.’

It had not occurred to Nish that there might still be people living in Thurkad. He’d assumed that the lyrinx would have driven them away, or eaten them all. But unless the enemy had become vegetarians, there were people below.

‘Where’s it coming from, do you think?’

Slann sniffed the air. ‘Can’t tell.’

‘Be as quiet as you possibly can. If they find us, they’re bound to want a ride to somewhere safe.’

Nish shuttered his lantern to a slit and crept around the corner onto the next level. He slid open the door, shone the light around and could have wept for joy. The whole floor was packed with rolls of cloth.

‘Come on,’ he hissed, running to the first stack. It proved to be cotton, and so did the second, but the third was silk. Beautiful silk.

Nish sorted through the rolls. It didn’t have to be the finest cloth but it needed to be strong. All the rolls at the top turned out to be too fine, no use for anything but scarves and nightwear.

‘The best stuff is right down the bottom,’ said Nish. ‘Pull that one out, would you?’

The soldier, whose name he could not remember, hauled at the roll. It did not budge. ‘We’ll have to shift the ones up top first.’

Vim climbed the end of the stack, which was a couple of spans tall, and began hurling rolls down from the top. They thumped onto the floorboards.

‘Don’t do that!’ Nish waved his arms frantically. ‘If there are people below, they’ll come up to see what’s going on. Hand the damn things down.’

They were all panting by the time they’d uncovered the bottom of the stack, and the dust was tickling their noses. Nish resisted the urge to sneeze. ‘Help me unroll this one.’

They spread it out along the floor. It was good strong cloth, better than anything they’d been able to obtain at Fiz Gorgo. There were no flaws, no rat or moth holes. He paced out the length and width, calculating, then rolled it up again.

‘We’ll need eight of these to make three airbags. Vim, Slann, take this one. Leave it upstairs at the rope and come straight back.’

‘It’s bloody heavy,’ said Slann, a weedy man, as they heaved it to their shoulders.

‘Just get on with it.’

They went out, the cloth sagging between them. Scarcely had they turned the corner when there came a cry of rage.

‘Hoy! Put that down, you. Neahl, Roys, they’re stealing our cloth.’

The other four soldiers pelted to the door. Nish drew his sword and followed with the lantern. Opening the shutter wide he flashed it down the stairs.

About three flights down, a crowd of at least thirty people, ranging in age from dirty children to withered oldsters, had gathered. A good few of them looked fit, though they were only armed with an assortment of knives.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Nish.

‘We live here,’ replied a snaggle-toothed old man.

‘But the lyrinx –’

‘Don’t bother us and we don’t bother them, any more’n the rats do.’ The oldster gave a squeaking kind of laugh.

‘Well, we’ve just come for some of this silk.’

‘Can’t have it,’ said the old fellow. ‘It’s our’n.’

‘You’re not using it.’

‘We will one day, now clear orf.’

‘We can pay you for it,’ said Nish, feeling the ground sinking beneath him.

‘Get lost! Can’t eat yer stinkin’ money.’

‘You fellows get your crossbows ready,’ Nish said in a low voice.

‘They are,’ a soldier replied. ‘Just give the word.’

‘Don’t shoot unless there’s no choice.’ Nish raised his voice. ‘Whether you accept the money or not is up to you, old fellow. We’re taking the cloth anyway – for the war.’

Fingering a small bag of silver out of his pocket, he tossed it down the steps. It landed halfway and burst, scattering coins everywhere.

The old fellow did not look down. Nor, to Nish’s surprise, did anyone else. Not even the children scrambled for the silver. The cold feeling in the pit of his stomach grew colder.

‘We don’t give a damn about the war,’ said the old man. ‘The lyrinx leave us alone.’

‘Raise your weapons, lads,’ Nish said softly. Then louder, ‘Come any closer and we’ll shoot.’ Nish drew back to give the soldiers with the bows a clear shot, though he still hoped that they could intimidate the crowd into running away. To the others he said, ‘Take it up, Vim and Slann. You two, get the next bolt. And hurry!’

Vim and Slann thumped up the stairs. The second pair of soldiers hefted their bolt of silk. The crowd were a quivering mass of indignation. Nish darted in and tried to pick up the third bolt. It was extremely heavy, and when he got it onto his shoulders the ends of the roll bent to the floor. He’d never carry it up the stairs on his own.

‘Don’t move!’ said the soldier on the left.

Nish staggered to the door. The old man was slowly creeping forward. ‘If you have to shoot, try not to hurt him,’ said Nish. ‘This is their home, after all.’

The crowd moved up behind the oldster. One step; two; three. They weren’t looking at the two soldiers. Every eye was on Nish.

‘No further!’ Nish shouted. ‘Soldiers, shoot if they go one more step.’

The old man looked Nish in the eye and kept coming.

‘Stop or we’ll shoot!’ said the soldier on the left.

The old man ignored him. The crossbow snapped, the bolt taking him in the middle of the forehead and hurling him backwards into the throng. A woman wailed. Children screamed. Two men took the oldster under the arms and dragged his body down the stairs into the darkness. The rest moved down to the limit of visibility and remained there. The soldier frantically reloaded his crossbow.

‘You bloody fool!’ Nish raged, dropping his roll. ‘I said don’t hurt him.’

‘And then you said to shoot if he went any further,’ said the soldier, as if that made it all right.

Vim and Slann came thumping down the stairs, followed by the second pair of soldiers. ‘What’s happened?’ panted Vim.

Nish told them.

‘Not good,’ said Slann. ‘I wonder what they’ll do now?’

‘I don’t dare think. Come on. Get the rest of the rolls up. We need another six.’

The soldiers went up with another three rolls of silk, the second pair dragging a bolt each. Silence fell.

‘It’s very quiet down there,’ said Nish. ‘I wonder what they’re up to?’

‘Running for their lives,’ said the soldier who had fired. ‘Vermin.’

Disgusted, Nish returned to the silk floor and began to drag the remaining bolts toward the entrance. He was lifting the third when the soldier who had fired clutched at his throat and toppled down the steps. The other soldier threw himself in through the entrance.

‘What was it?’ said Nish.

‘A slug from a sling, I’d say. Caught him in the throat.’

‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’

‘If the slug didn’t kill him, or the fall, they will when he gets to the –’

Slaughtering noises came up from the darkness. Nish looked around the corner. The lantern still glowed in the middle of the step. He ducked back hastily as another slug smacked into the side of the doorframe.

The soldier picked it up. It was a piece of tightly rolled lead sheet, about the size of a plum. ‘Enough to kill a man if it hits him in the right place. Are they coming?’

‘Couldn’t see anything.’

‘Makes it worse. Should I put the bow around the corner and send a bolt down at them?’

‘Might as well,’ said Nish. ‘Aim high. I don’t want to kill anyone else. Though I don’t suppose they’ll be so scrupulous now.’

The soldier fired. A yelp was followed by sounds of people fleeing down the stairs.

Vim and Slann came creeping down and sprang in through the doorway.

‘Where are the others?’ said Nish.

‘Roping the rolls and winching them up,’ said Slann.

‘All right. Let’s get these last three.’

Before they could load them onto their shoulders, something clattered on the steps and began to rattle and sploosh its way down again. Something else followed it, then a third object.

‘Sounds as though they’re throwing buckets of water at us.’

‘Why would they throw water –’

Nish smelt turpentine; then, with a whoo-whoomph, fire exploded up the stairs, licking in through the entrance and coiling around into the room. Nish’s dangling sleeve began to smoke. He hurled himself backwards away from the door, dashing the flames out against the floor. Vim’s hair was ablaze.

Nish whacked it out with his hands and they moved further away, staring at the flames which were roaring up past them. The three bolts of silk on the floor began to burn.

He tried to drag one out of the way but it was already well ablaze and the silk would be ruined.

‘Can we get up the stairs?’ called Slann, who was furthest from the door.

‘Not a chance. Nor down.’

‘If we close the door it’ll keep the fire out.’

‘For a while,’ said Nish, who already suspected they were doomed.

They kicked the blazing silk down the stairs and dragged the door closed. It was solid wood and would take a while to catch, but burn it would. Nish sat down on the pile of silk rolls. The others took seats as well.

‘Seems a stupid thing to do,’ said Vim. ‘Setting fire to the stairs.’

‘The fire would go up before it went down,’ Nish said wearily. ‘They’d have plenty of time to get away.’

‘But it’s their home.’

‘Plenty more warehouses in Thurkad.’

‘That old man Welmi killed must have been an important fellow.’

‘Must have been.’

‘Any chance the fire will just go out?’ said the soldier who had fired last.

‘These old buildings are dry as tinder,’ Slann replied. ‘If there’s a decent wind it could burn half the city down.’

‘Good riddance. Thurkad always was a stinking place.’

‘The outside of this building is stone,’ said Nish.

‘Makes no difference,’ said Slann. ‘Everything else will burn and the stone will fall down.’

‘Any chance we can break through the outside walls?’ Nish said a while later. The floor was growing hot and smoke had begun to wisp up through cracks in the boards.

Vim inspected the stone. ‘Not a hope.’

‘So we’re going to burn to death?’ said Vim.

‘Looks like it,’ Slann replied.

‘Never thought I’d be going this way.’

The conversation petered out.

FORTY -THREE

Nish and the soldiers had been a long time. Tiaan’s eyelids were drooping when she heard a cry from below.

‘We’ve found it.’

She peered over the side of the thapter and saw lamplight through the hole. One of the soldiers had come up the rope with the hand winch slung over his shoulder. Another rope trailed down through the hole in the roof onto the ceiling. Climbing onto the side of the thapter, he attached the winch to the carrying racks that had been mounted at the back, pulled the rope through, tied it and began to wind.

‘Heavy work,’ he said conversationally.

‘Looks like it,’ said Tiaan, who’d never been good at idle talk.

‘Could you bring the flier round a bit, d’ye think? The way the rope’s hanging, we’re likely to catch the silk on the hole in the roof.’

She rotated the thapter into position. ‘How’s that?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Did you find enough silk?’

‘Plenty,’ he grunted, winding slowly and panting with each circle of the handle.

The rolls came up, two lashed together and hanging vertically. The soldier pulled the top ends onto the racks, took a bight around the lower ends and slowly hauled them on.

‘I’d help you if I could,’ said Tiaan, ‘but I can’t leave the controller.’ She didn’t want him to think she was a shirker.

‘I’m used to it. I don’t know why the others are taking so long.’

He tied the bundle on, threw the end of the rope down through the hole and shortly began to heave the second bundle up, three bolts this time. No sooner had he finished, and was binding it to the racks, than the second soldier came hand over hand up the rope, roaring at the top of his voice.

‘What’s he saying?’ said Tiaan.

‘Fire!’

‘Where?’

The second soldier pulled himself onto the racks, gasping. ‘There were people living in the warehouse. There was a fight. Welmi’s dead, and some of the natives, and now they’ve set fire to the building.’

‘Where are Nish and the rest of the soldiers?’ said Tiaan.

‘Three floors down. Fire’s coming up the stairs and they’re trapped on the silk floor.’

‘And there’s no other way out?’

‘Warehouses don’t have windows.’

The horror of their situation made her bowels tighten. To be burned alive … ‘I don’t see what we can do,’ Tiaan said reluctantly. Yggur and Flydd had made her duty plain to her before she left. Firstly, and at all costs, she must bring back the thapter – it meant the difference between survival (if only for a time) and ruinous defeat. And it was their only hope of victory, faint though that seemed.

Secondly, Tiaan had been instructed to protect herself even at the cost of the lives of any or all the others, because her talent was irreplaceable. Doing so went against her feelings, but she would follow orders. Thirdly, she had to ensure that whatever silk they found got back to Fiz Gorgo. And finally, lowest in importance, she must do her best to protect the lives of her crew, including Nish.

Nish, her nemesis. And yet, how could she think of him, or any of them, trapped by the inferno and knowing that they were going to be burned to death? Tiaan couldn’t allow that to happen, even to her enemy, if there was any safe way to prevent it. She came to a decision.

‘Get the silk inside!’ she rapped. ‘Quick as you can.’

They obeyed, squeezing the rolls through the small lower hatch and dragging them below, and went back for the winch.

‘Where are the breaking tools?’ she said.

‘Below, on the ceiling.’

‘Get in.’

They climbed through the hatch. Tiaan pulled it down and latched it. Taking hold of the controller, she allowed the thapter to fall onto the roof.

Smashed tiles flew everywhere and the roof timbers emitted a wrenching groan, but didn’t break. She hadn’t hit them hard enough. Lifting the thapter again, she went a little higher and dropped the machine onto the same place.

More flying tiles; torn timbers flashed across her view, then part of the roof gave way and they were through, still falling. She brought the machine to rest just above the ceiling beams in a rain of splinters and tiles.

‘Pick up the tools and get back in.’ She eyed the ceiling timbers. They were not heavy ones.

Using the same approach, Tiaan dropped the thapter through the ceiling. It gave way easily, ceiling joists being lighter than roof beams. The room below was wreathed in smoke and the thapter struck the floor before she realised how close she was. The impact shook the building but the floor held. These were much stronger timbers and she didn’t dare try to crash the thapter through them. It was solidly built but not indestructible.

‘Get out,’ she yelled. ‘Chop holes in the floor on either side of that joist – there where the line of nails runs. Hack into the joist as well, and the next one.’

The soldiers threw themselves out and began chopping furiously. Tiaan went below and rifled through one of the compartments, looking for a steel towing cable with an eye on each end, which she had seen previously. She threw it down.

‘Put one end through the first hole and bring it up through the second. Pass the second eye through the first and put it over the hook at the back of the thapter. Then stand clear.’

When that was done Tiaan took the thapter up hard. The cable twanged tight, the floorboards bowed. She had hoped to pull the floor joist out from the stone at the wall end, but it held. She reached out for the field, took more power; the joist bent then snapped in a fountain of broken floorboards, exposing the joists to either side.

‘Chop through the joists,’ she ordered. ‘Quick!’

They cut them halfway, but even then it needed several thumps to break through the floor. She put the machine down on the floor below and the soldiers got to work with their axes. Tiaan climbed out and inspected the thapter with a lantern. The metal skin was bent and buckled in several places, gouged and scratched in others, but no serious damage had been done. She silently thanked the Aachim for their workmanship. Clankers were strongly built but this kind of treatment would have wrecked one.

This room was even smokier and Tiaan didn’t see how anyone could have survived further down. She wadded up her sleeve and tried to breathe through it. Her eyes were stinging.

‘Is there any point us going on?’ she said to the furiously chopping soldiers. ‘Surely they’ll be dead by now.’

The taller of them, a dark-haired man with a circle of hairy moles on his chin, laid down his axe to wipe streaming eyes. A fit of coughing doubled him over.

‘I’d imagine so. But if they’re not, they’ll be real pleased to see us.’

They broke through. The other soldier put his head down one hole. ‘Hoy?’

There was no answer. ‘That’s bad,’ he said.

Tiaan checked the other hole. ‘The smoke isn’t much worse than here and I can’t see any fire.’

‘Smoke can kill just as quickly.’

‘Maybe they didn’t hear us over the noise of the fire,’ said Tiaan. ‘They could be right down the other end of the floor.’

‘Could be,’ said the dark-haired soldier. ‘That’s where the entrance is.’

Tiaan used her cable again, but this time, as soon as the strain went on it, it snapped. She cursed and dropped the thapter hard onto the floor. The building shook but the beams hardly moved.

‘These floors are built to carry a heavy load,’ said one of the soldiers.

It was past time to give up. She’d already gone further than she should have. Flames were visible through cracks in the far door and the smoke oozing in was black and choking. But having come this far, Tiaan did not want to give up until she knew that they were dead. ‘Is either of you game to go down through the hole?’

‘I will,’ said the shorter of the two. ‘Nish is a good man. I know he’d do the same for me.’ He looked Tiaan in the eye and his were moist, though perhaps it was the smoke. ‘You should hear the stories about him.’

Again it made her stop and think. In the past, she’d deliberately absented herself whenever people had talked about Nish’s deeds, not wanting to hear anything that would change her ill opinion of him.

The soldier tied the rope, threw it over, wrapped rags around his hands and slid down. As he reached the floor below, the building shuddered. The floor timbers squealed, and a crack zigzagged its way up the stone wall beside the thapter.

Tiaan felt cold inside. The building was going to collapse. She scrambled back into the thapter.

‘Where are you going,’ cried the soldier holding the rope.

She could see the whites of his eyes. He thought she was going to abandon them. ‘I’ve got to be ready. Can you see them?’

He put his head down the hole. ‘Not a thing.’

‘Give your friend a shout. We can’t wait any longer.’

‘Hoy, Plymes. Come on! The bloody building’s gonna fall down.’

He listened at the hole. ‘I can hear him! He’s coming up.’

‘Is there anyone with him?’

‘Can’t see. I don’t think so. Yes! Yes there is. There’s Vim and Slann.’

‘What about Nish, and the other soldier?’

‘Can’t see them.’

Again the building shuddered and the wall beside Tiaan seemed to move fractionally outward. This was madness. She lifted the thapter off the floor, one eye on the hole that she’d have to rise through, if she could find it in the thickening smoke, the other on the rope.

Again that white-eyed look from the soldier – and then he screamed, ‘They’re coming! Don’t go, they’re coming.’

Not nearly fast enough. She rotated the machine in the air, watching the cracks enlarging in the wall, the quivering of the floor above. If either collapsed on them, not even a thapter could get out. She’d been unforgivably stupid. She should never have come down.

Heads appeared through the hole: Vim and Slann, another soldier, then Nish. They scrambled through.

‘Get in,’ she screeched, waving her arms at them. ‘I’ve already disobeyed my orders. I can’t wait any longer.’

Vim and Slann took over the rope. The others climbed onto the racks. ‘In,’ she screamed. ‘If you’re not inside when we go up, you’ll be scraped off like muck from a boot.’

They fell through the hatch, crowding the cockpit, gasping for breath. Nish came last and his eyes silently thanked her, but she had no time for that.

‘Go below! You’re in the way.’ Tiaan revolved the thapter around the holes. ‘What’s the matter?’ she yelled to Slann.

‘Plymes has fallen off the rope. I’m going down.’

‘I can’t wait, Slann.’

He went anyway but stopped, just below the hole. Tiaan could still see his bald head. There came a tremendous roar as though something had collapsed below him, flames shot up through the hole and the floor buckled. Again the wall seemed to move outwards. Slann’s clothes caught fire, then the rope. He stared up at them, his face riven with agony as he tried to climb the burning rope. As it flamed up over his hands, he had to let go.

‘Vim! Come on!’

Vim was staring at the hole. He shook his head and leapt for the side of the thapter, catching hold of the racks. Tiaan, looking up, saw the floor above them move.

‘Hang on,’ she yelled. ‘The upper floor’s going to come down.’

She spun the thapter around and headed up towards the hole, which was moving. That meant the whole floor was slipping. There was no time to pull the hatch down. She manoeuvred through the belching smoke. The floor below suddenly collapsed and flames swirled towards them and over Vim, now clinging desperately to the racks.

She zigzagged the thapter up through the hole as the upper floor fell. Something struck the side of the thapter, making it lurch sharply. The smoke was even thicker on the next level and Tiaan hit the wall without realising it. Where was the ceiling hole? She had to go back and forth three times before she found it. Her lungs were burning. She shot up though it, up again and out through the roof to safety.

Hovering above the roof, she looked for a place to set down so Vim could come inside. The adjacent roof had a low pitch. She drifted across to it, settled down and put her head through the hatch.

The whole area was illuminated by the flames, which had ignited the timber wall of the neighbouring building. The racks were empty.

‘Vim?’ she yelled.

‘Where is he?’ said a soldier beside her.

‘He must have fallen off when we struck the wall,’ said Tiaan.

They looked back at the roof. Flames were coming up though the hole.

‘He’s dead,’ said Nish beside her. ‘They’re all dead. Let’s go home.’

He looked ghastly – soot-streaked, eyes running, a tremble in one arm. ‘I led them to their deaths,’ he said. ‘It’s not right that I got out and they didn’t. I failed them.’

For the first time, Tiaan saw the man inside Nish and pitied him. She put a hand on his shoulder. ‘We all did our best, Nish. There’s no more that anyone could have done.’

He nodded his thanks. ‘You risked your life for us. You shouldn’t have come down.’

‘I know. I disobeyed my orders and could have lost the thapter. I’ll be in trouble when I get back.’

‘I dare say. Why did you do it?’

‘I brought you here. I couldn’t leave you behind, no matter who you are or what you might have done.’

FORTY-FOUR

Things were never the same between Tiaan and Nish after that. Saving his life had transformed the way she felt toward him. On the long trip back to Fiz Gorgo, battling fierce headwinds all the way, Tiaan mulled over every aspect of their relationship, to see if she might not have been as wrong about him as he had been about her.

There was no chance to speak to Nish in private, then or later. When they finally landed in the yard, in the early morning more than a day later, the entire population of the fortress was waiting for them.

‘What’s the matter?’ she called as she climbed down the side.

The smile faded from Malien’s face. ‘What have you done to my thapter?’

‘We had a … few problems.’ Tiaan put her feet on the ground, which seemed to be heaving, and had to clutch at the racks to avoid falling on her face.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’ve not slept in forty-eight hours.’

‘You failed then,’ said Yggur, eyeing the empty racks.

‘Four of the soldiers were lost, and Phar got away at the beginning.’

‘I was talking about the silk.’

‘It’s inside. Five bolts. Not as much as Nish wanted, but it was all we could get.’

The others came out, still filthy, ragged and smoke-stained, but proudly bearing the precious rolls of cloth between them.

‘You’ve done well,’ said Yggur. ‘I didn’t think you would return at all, least of all actually bring back any cloth.’

‘Then why did you send us?’ said Nish.

‘I didn’t send you. This was your mission, Nish.’

‘But you permitted it, even at the risk of the thapter.’

‘If we dare not take risks we’ll never win this war.’

‘Nor if we take foolish ones,’ said Flydd, but he was smiling too.

‘You took the best team in the world,’ said Yggur. ‘If you couldn’t succeed, no one could have. Come inside. Breakfast is ready.’

Tiaan was seated next to Irisis at breakfast. The crafter seemed unusually friendly, or perhaps Tiaan could now allow her to be.

‘Is there no challenge you cannot rise to?’ said Irisis, open in her admiration.

Tiaan didn’t know how to answer. ‘I just did my best. I couldn’t leave them to die.’

‘Not even Nish?’ Irisis said, but Tiaan knew she was joking. ‘Thank you for saving his life, Tiaan. He’s my dearest friend and everything to me.’

‘I’ve been wondering about him all the way back from Thurkad. Wondering if I might not have been wrong about him. In some things.’

‘Perhaps you were, in some things,’ Irisis said. ‘We did you wrong, Tiaan, back at the manufactory, and I’m very sorry. It was my failing, more than his. I was a nasty, inadequate woman and I used him against you.’

‘You, inadequate?’

‘Another time,’ said Irisis. ‘But since we hunted you across the mountains and lost you to the lyrinx, and Nish’s father was so terribly injured …’

‘I remember that day all too well,’ said Tiaan.

‘Ever since, Nish has been a changed man. He grew up that day.’

‘I’ll never forget the way he treated me in Tirthrax,’ said Tiaan with a flash of fire.

‘But there was a good reason for it. Flydd sent Nish after you and, when he reached Tirthrax, he saw you bringing the Aachim through the gate. He truly believed that you’d betrayed our world.’

‘He was cruel …’ Tiaan trailed off, replaying the scene in her mind.

‘If you knew how he has suffered this past year, Tiaan, and all the great things he’s done, you would think differently of him. I know you would. But I’ll say no more than that. Talk to him, if you care to, and he can plead for himself.’

Flydd fell in beside Nish as they went inside. ‘Remember your despair after we came back from Nennifer and you couldn’t get anything done?’

‘I remember,’ said Nish.

‘Look how far you’ve come since. And keep it in mind, Nish, whenever you wilt under the burden of all we have to do – as I do. We just go one step at a time, and no matter how low we’re brought, we never, ever give up.’ He squeezed Nish’s shoulder and passed inside.

Nish stood there for a moment in reflection. The plan had come a long way, and so had he. One step at a time. He smiled and followed.

Two days later, with twenty people sewing the silk, the air-floaters were complete. He’d reclaimed the silk from the dirigible, and Inouye had discovered part of an air-dreadnought airbag hanging in a tree ten leagues away, giving them just enough to complete the airbag of the third air-floater. There had even been a little time to use the thapter for training the pilots and artificers. Every pilot had made at least one flight under Malien’s stern guidance. No one had crashed it, though there had been sufficient incidents to make Nish fear for what would happen if they did recover any machines from the battlefield.

‘Everything’s ready,’ he said to Yggur, after having worked all night. ‘We can go as soon as you say the word.’

‘Excellent!’ beamed Flydd. He shook Nish’s hand. ‘And on time, too. It’s a pleasure to deal with a man who’s as good as his word. Well, Yggur, if you would just explain to Nish how he’s to move the thapters without access to the field, he can be on his way.’

Yggur looked as though he’d had no more sleep than Nish. ‘My devices aren’t ready yet.’

‘What?’ said Flydd, putting on a show of surprise. ‘But you said you were nearly finished a week ago.’

‘I am nearly finished, but I haven’t tested them to my satisfaction.’

‘Why not?’

‘There are a few wrinkles still to be ironed out.’

‘But everything depends on them.’ Flydd seemed to be taking a malicious pleasure in Yggur’s discomfiture. It was a weakness in his character that Nish could only appreciate, in the circumstances. The two mancers might be working together but they would be forever rivals.

‘I’m aware of that,’ Yggur said, stone-faced.

‘And the least delay to the schedule could be fatal to our chances of being ready for the spring offensive.’

‘Yes,’ said Yggur. ‘It could.’

‘Well, I won’t pretend that I’m not disappointed,’ said Flydd. ‘Bitterly disappointed, in fact. It’s a major setback.’ He gave Yggur a sly glance, then said cajolingly, ‘When do you think it will be ready?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Not tomorrow!’ Yggur snapped.

‘What about the day after?’

Flydd had such a strange, coquettish look on his craggy face that Nish wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d batted his eyelashes.

Yggur cracked. ‘I don’t know, damn you.’

‘Then I won’t keep you,’ said Flydd. ‘I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to your workshop and try to make up for lost time. Good day.’ He nodded and turned away, taking Nish’s arm and pulling him after him. ‘Wipe that grin off your face, Artificer,’ Flydd said sternly. ‘Show some respect for your betters.’ But as soon as Yggur was gone, Flydd clapped Nish on the back, taking the sting from his words. ‘Well done, lad. You can go to bed now.’ He went off, whistling a cheerful air.

The following day the thapter set off for the south-east, carrying the patterns for various devices that were to be made up by manufactories there, including Tiaan’s plans for master and slave farspeakers. It was to be a lightning trip, both Malien and Tiaan taking turns and going night and day, as Flydd hoped to be back in just over a week.

The trip proved uneventful, apart from their first brief call at Tiksi, where Tiaan hoped to see her mother. Unfortunately Marnie was not at the rebuilt breeding factory.

‘She lost everything in the fire,’ said Matron. ‘I haven’t seen her in nearly a year.’

‘Poor Marnie,’ Tiaan wept. ‘Cast out on the streets with nothing. Doesn’t anyone know what happened to her?’

She was unable to find out, for the city’s records had been lost in the fires.

Thence they turned west to her old manufactory. Tall, dark-skinned Tuniz was still overseer, and she reminded Flydd of his promise, that if she met all her targets for a year he would send her home to Crandor, to the children she had not seen in two years.

‘I remember,’ said Flydd. ‘And have you met all your targets, Overseer?’

‘Not all, but nearly,’ she said, anxiously baring her filed teeth.

‘Then the condition has not been met and I owe you nothing!’ She winced. ‘Nonetheless,’ Flydd went on, ‘I do want to send you home, and will if you complete this last task to my satisfaction. I have here a number of samples.’ He showed her Golias’s globe, several different slave farspeakers Tiaan had made, plus her detailed designs of each. ‘Can you make me, say, ten master farspeakers, and one hundred of the slave variety, in a month?’

‘The slave farspeakers will be no trouble,’ said Tuniz, after a careful study of both. ‘The master globes are another matter.’ She ran her fingers through her frizzy hair and asked Tiaan a number of technical questions. Once they’d been answered to her satisfaction Tuniz said, ‘If I divert all of my crafters and artisans to the task, I believe we can do it, surr, though I’ll need to talk to my chief crafter to make sure.’

‘Call her. I plan to return in a month, more or less. Have them ready and I’ll take you home to Crandor in this thapter.’

Her eyes shone. ‘It will be done, surr. You can count on it.’

They went to several other manufactories nearby, where Flydd left other commissions, and headed directly home.

‘I’ve done as much as I can, for the moment,’ Flydd told Yggur when they arrived back at Fiz Gorgo on schedule. ‘Though to make a difference in the spring I have to give our allies more than words.’

‘I hope we can give them much more. Nish left just an hour ago for Snizort.’

‘Was he prepared?’ said Flydd, meaningly.

‘As well as could be managed. Though of course –’

‘I meant, did he have some way of moving the thapters in the absence of a field?’

‘Of course,’ said Yggur airily, as though it had been the most trivial of tasks, hardly worth discussing. ‘He could not have gone, otherwise.’

‘How is it to be achieved, as a matter of interest?’

‘Oh, I made up some little devices that store power,’ Yggur said in an offhand manner. ‘Enough to drive a thapter for leagues. I charged them up from the field just before he left.’

‘I noticed it was drawn right down as we came in,’ said Flydd. ‘Malien had more than a little trouble getting the last couple of leagues, and at one stage we thought we were going to come down in the swamp. What kind of devices?’

‘Just something I put together with a little tinkering,’ said Yggur.

‘Sounds like they could transform the war,’ said Flydd. ‘With enough of them we could make our craft independent of the field. Let the lyrinx attack the nodes as they dare, then.’

‘Unfortunately, the core of my devices relies on a most rare crystal, the only one known capable of storing the amount of power required. I had the only three in existence and I used them all.’

‘Might I know the name of this crystal?’ said Flydd casually, though he knew Yggur wasn’t going to tell him anything useful. Noble and dignified he might be, as a rule, but Yggur couldn’t resist the urge to get his own back.

‘Inkspar.’

‘I’ve never heard of it.’

‘It’s rare, as I said.’

‘Only three devices? That’s going to limit the number of thapters we can recover.’

‘If they recover more than three, which I doubt, they’ll have to shuttle the devices back and forth in the air-floaters. It’s inconvenient, but not a fatal problem.’

‘It could be if they’re under attack.’

‘It was the best I could do.’

‘Oh well,’ said Flydd. ‘It’s out of our hands now. They’ll either come back or they won’t. No point worrying about it.’

‘Plenty of point, just no use,’ said Yggur. ‘Oh, and I’ve found Merryl.’

‘Merryl?’ The scrutator frowned. So many names in the past couple of months. So many faces. ‘Ah, the one-handed prisoner. The fellow who speaks the lyrinx tongue. How did you find him?’

‘One of my spies was asking around and someone knew him. Merryl was in a refugee camp south of Gnulp Forest.’

‘Was?’

‘Well, he’s here now.’

‘Why didn’t you say so?’

Hurrying down to the other end of the fortress, they ran into Tiaan, who was talking to Malien. ‘We’re going to talk to your friend Merryl,’ said Flydd. ‘Would you like to come along?’

Her face lit up. ‘Merryl is here?’

‘Yes,’ said Yggur. ‘He came in with one of my spies on the air-floater this morning.’

Tiaan had a lump in her throat. Merryl had cared for her in Snizort, asking nothing in return, and she would always think kindly of him for it.

He was lying on a straw-filled pallet, asleep. His left arm, the one lacking a hand, hung over the edge of the bed. Merryl stirred as they entered, and sat up. He was very thin.

‘I am Yggur,’ said Yggur, ‘the master of this place, which is known as Fiz Gorgo.’

‘I know who you are, surr.’ Merryl’s eyes turned to the smaller man.

‘This is the scrutator, Xervish Flydd, and … where has she got to?’

Tiaan stepped out from behind Yggur.

‘Tiaan!’ Merryl reached out to her. ‘I saw the Aachim take you. I was so afraid.’

‘That’s a long time ago now. What have you been doing these past months?’

‘Surviving. I became a slave for my own kind, hauling clankers out of the mud.’

‘Me too,’ said Flydd. ‘Not an occupation with much to recommend it.’

Merryl gave him a curious glance. ‘After it was over, most of us were abandoned to our own devices. Some of the slaves joined the army, but I did not.’

‘Not willing to do your duty, Merryl?’ said Yggur.

‘I never shirked my duty, surr,’ Merryl said mildly, as if nothing anyone said could touch him. ‘And I’ve spent the past twenty years paying for it. Not liking what I saw of the scrutators, I pretended to be one of the peasants pressed into hauling duties, and afterwards I disappeared into the countryside.’

‘You must have had a lean time of it,’ said Flydd. ‘The armies had scoured the land bare.’

‘I went hungry more times than I ate, but I wouldn’t have changed anything. I’ve been a prisoner of the lyrinx for half my life. They treated me well enough but I lived with the threat of being eaten if my usefulness expired. After that, even the freedom to starve was a precious gift. Why did you bring me here?’

‘We need to know about the lyrinx, Merryl,’ said Yggur. ‘Particularly any weaknesses we can use against them.’

‘I’ll write out a list for you.’

‘Just tell us!’ said Flydd.

‘The thoughts don’t flow, with mancers and the like staring at me,’ said Merryl, unperturbed. After surviving all the enemy had done, no mere human could bother him. ‘I work better in solitude.’

‘Whatever gets us the list the quickest,’ said Flydd, turning away.

‘Just a moment,’ said Yggur. ‘Why did they make a tunnel to the centre of the Great Seep, and what did they find there?’

‘The remains of a village of ancient times, under edict for sorcerous practices, I understand,’ said Merryl. ‘Apparently the village sank into the tar and the lyrinx wished to recover some relics that had been lost at that time.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. Since I knew their language, they were always careful what they spoke about in my presence.’

‘And what did they find?’

‘Bodies, young and old, preserved in the tar, and other household items of that time. Some yellow crystals which, I heard, they were excited about. I didn’t see the relics, for the node exploded.’

‘Do they have any diseases or illnesses?’ asked Flydd.

‘Not many. They’re healthy, robust creatures, generally.’

‘But their children are sometimes born malformed, lacking the ability to develop wings. Sometimes they’re born without armour, skin pigment or claws.’

‘That’s so,’ said Merryl. ‘Such malformations are common, but not all survive to adulthood.’

‘I heard,’ said Yggur, leaning forward, ‘that one lyrinx working in the tar tunnel developed a dreadful skin inflammation that rendered him helpless.’

‘I saw several with that affliction,’ said Merryl thoughtfully. ‘They were in such torment that they sloughed their outer skin, though that was as agonising as if the layers of our skin were peeled away.’

‘The less said about that the better,’ said Flydd, rubbing his upper thigh.

Merryl gave him a puzzled look. ‘Sometimes grit gets in between the armour and the inner skin, which is irritating to them. But this inflammation was much worse.’

‘Do you know what caused it?’ said Flydd. ‘Was it the tar?’

‘I believe it was a mould, or fungus.’

‘Do they often get this kind of complaint?’

‘I never saw it before, in all my time with them. It may have come from one of the relics they found in the tar.’

‘Thank you,’ said Yggur. ‘That’s most interesting.’