The captain scowled, for military matters were his province and to be pa.s.sed over in this way was a deliberate slap in the face. Knowing better than to show it, Gir-Dan composed his features. The scrutator was not a forgiving man.

Tuniz smiled. Her filed teeth made the gesture threatening though she was, by nature, cheerful and friendly.

'The enemy have come out of the ranges all along the coast, surr. As you may have seen, Tiksi has been attacked and badly damaged.'

'We've been down there,' Flydd said flatly. 'It's bad, but they're holding out.'

'Then your news is more recent than mine, surr. There have been attacks on most cities between here and Gosport. Maksmord is likely to fall; Guffeons is sorely pressed. We don't know as much as I'd like; the enemy are targeting skeets now and some messages have not come through. I have the despatches here.' She held out a leather wallet. 'Some are for your eyes only.'

The scrutator took out the papers, riffled through them and sorted them into two piles. He began to read the pile at his right hand. No one spoke for the ten minutes it took him to finish.

Flydd cleared his throat. 'It is worse than I thought. The enemy now hold most of the lands about the Dry Sea, save for Crandor. The mountains of Faranda are theirs, though not the lowlands, and some of the arid lands north of the Great Mountains. And of course Meldorin fell last year, save for the southern peninsula. Thurkad was a crippling loss. We still hold the east coast, the fount of our wealth, central Lauralin and everything south of the Great Mountains. But the east coast is in peril now, and with the Aachim flooding across Lauralin ... Well, we shall see about them in due course.'

He set his jaw and eyed them one by one. All broke under his glare, save Irisis. 'We will never give up, not even if all we have left is desolate Luuma Narta. Anything else, overseer?'

'We will meet our target again this month, surr, or better. Three clankers, I'm pleased to say.'

'Very good. Crafter Irisis?'

Irisis also stood out in the manufactory. She was tall, though not as tall as Tuniz, but with pale skin, bright blue eyes and hair as yellow as b.u.t.ter, a sight few people here had seen before her arrival. She had a breathtaking figure, which meant that, despite the shortage of males, she could take her pick. Irisis had been Nish's lover at one stage, though by the time of his departure that had changed to an abiding friendship.

As crafter, she was in charge of the artisans who made controllers for the clankers built here. Twenty artisans now worked to her direction, and fifty prentices. Because their work was so fine, completed controllers were being shipped to other manufactories.

'We have also exceeded our target,' she said. 'We've built eleven controllers this month ...'

'But?' snapped Flydd. 'What is the problem, crafter? Remember you are on probation.'

'I could hardly forget it, surr!' Irisis stood up to everyone, and sometimes it got her into trouble. 'The problem is crystal. We've used up almost all we have and the miners can't find more. And since Ullii went away ... We need the seeker to sense it out. I'm told you brought her back, surr?'

'I did, but I'm not sure what use she will be. She has suffered a considerable trauma and lost her talent.'

'Lost it?'

'It may come back. The healers are looking at her now.'

'This is bad, surr. How can I find the crystal I need?'

'I've no b.l.o.o.d.y idea. Discover a way.' He turned to the first of his foremen.

'One more thing, surr, if I may.' Irisis was unaccountably tentative.

'What is it?' the scrutator snapped. 'I've got a war to win, crafter.'

'What ... happened to Nish, surr?'

'We lost the d.a.m.n fool!'

'Is he dead?' she whispered, rod-straight and hands clenched by her sides.

'Almost certainly. Maybe Ullii can tell us, if she gets her lattice back.'

'She can't.'

'What?'

'Ullii can only see the Secret Art, and Nish has no talent.'

'Useless fellow. He'll be no b.l.o.o.d.y loss. M'lainte can tell you the tale, when our important business is done.'

Irisis joined the mechanician in the refectory afterwards, and over bowls of cabbage soup M'lainte told her what had happened.

'Scrutator was practically in tears,' said the mechanician, slurping from her bowl, 'and that's a sight I've not seen in the thirty years I've known him. Nish did well, notwithstanding that he did not recover the crystal nor get Tiaan back. A boy left us a month ago. At Tirthrax I saw a man, transformed.'

'And now he's dead!' Irisis said bitterly. Despite their many fights, little Nish had been good to her and he was the only man she really cared about.

'You never know. I've got work to do.' M'lainte stood up abruptly.

Irisis remained where she was. She had work to do as well, but her workshop was running smoothly and she needed to think. The loss of Nish changed everything.

Many people had died in the war. Very many men. The population was falling and it was the duty of everyone to mate and produce more children. Irisis had done that duty eagerly, with a number of partners, but so far without result. She had considered bonding permanently with Nish, but that would never happen now. There would be pressure on her to take another partner. For the first time, Irisis found the idea unappealing.

'Done all your work, crafter?'

She jumped, for the scrutator had come up behind her without a sound. 'Sometimes I just need a quiet place to think.'

'I have to talk to you.'

'I'm listening.' She reached for her bowl of ginger and lime tea.

'Not here here. Come outside.'

They went through the front gate and Flydd turned right. Irisis had expected him to go left, down in the direction of the crystal mine. She walked beside him up the path, under the aqueduct and towards the tar mines, where fuel was obtained for the furnaces. They lay four hours up a steep path. Irisis hoped he was not planning to go all the way.

After labouring up a steep incline, the scrutator turned left and settled onto an upthrust boss of pale rock, a d.y.k.e that ran across the slope like a series of k.n.o.bs on a backbone. 'Sit down, crafter.'

She perched beside him. 'If this is about my work, surr ...' Had he learned the terrible truth about her, that she had lost the most crucial talent an artisan could have the ability to draw power from the field? That to cover it up she'd become a liar and a fraud, despite her undoubted ability to manage her team of artisans.

'I'm happy with your work, Irisis.'

She relaxed, just a little. Some day she would be exposed, but not today. 'What is it, surr? Something to do with the war?'

'Everything is to do with the war, crafter!' Flydd snapped. 'There's a problem that I didn't wish to bring up, in there. People talk, despite themselves.'

'I don't!' don't!'

'You already know something about it. Do you recall a time, some months back, when a vital node went dead, stranding fifty clankers on the plain of Minnien?'

'It was before Tiaan's fit of crystal fever. Just before she was sent to the breeding factory ...'

His dark eyes probed her. 'About which the least said the better. The lyrinx destroyed every one of those clankers and we have been trying to find out what happened to the node, or at least to its field field, ever since.'

'What have you discovered, surr?'

'Very little, and now it has happened again.'

'Where?'

'A number of places. Two are Maksmord and Guffeons, way up the coast, where the enemy have had their greatest successes. It's a great blow to us, Irisis. A terrible blow. Without clankers, we have no hope.'

'Why are you telling me this, surr?'

'No one else has been able to solve the problem. I'm going to give you a try.'

'Me?'

'I have confidence in you, crafter, but you won't be going alone. You've worked well with the seeker in the past. I'll send her with you, once she regains her talent.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'Find out why the nodes are failing. Are we draining them dry, or has the enemy found a way to block or destroy them?'

'Not much is known about nodes, surr.'

'Then you will have the thrill of discovery,' he said dryly. 'Get your work done and organise the best artisan here to take your place. You have a week to be ready.'

'What if Ullii has not recovered by then?'

'She'd better have. Choose two artisans, best suited to the task. You'll go in the air-floater, with guards.'

'Go where?'

'To Minnien, then to the next node, if necessary. And the one after that. Be prepared for anything.'

He got up, then sat down again. 'Another matter. A minor one but I thought you'd be pleased to hear about it, since you're under suspended sentence of the place.'

'I've no idea what you're talking about.'

'In the attack on Tiksi, the breeding factory was burned to the ground.'

She smiled. 'I'm delighted to hear it.'

'I dare say it will be rebuilt soon enough.'

She tapped her fingernails on the stone. 'Tiaan's mother was there. What will she do, I wonder?'

'She's a wealthy woman. She'll survive better than most.'

'I dare say.'

Marnie was not surviving well at all. Only weeks before, as the war approached, she had sold everything and converted it to gold, which she kept in a chest in her room. She had been downstairs when blazing b.a.l.l.s crashed though the roof, and the fire had burned so fiercely that there was no chance to recover anything.

She went back in the morning, before the ashes cooled, tramping through the rubble in a pair of workman's boots found in the gardener's shed. She tracked back and forth for three days, until there was not a handful of ash she had not sifted. Marnie found the half-burned leg of her chair and the bra.s.s bands of a chest with her name engraved on it, but that was all. The scavengers had already been. The gold was gone.

All she could do was join the thronging dest.i.tute who had lost everything but the clothes they were wearing, and hope someone would take pity on them and give them a few sc.r.a.ps to exist on. Marnie knew her life was over. The breeding factory would be rebuilt but they would never take her back. She was past it.

SIXTEEN.

Irisis sat with Ullii in her darkened room every day, making time where there was none to be had. The seeker spoke not a word. She had taken to throwing her clothes away again and most times squatted naked in a corner, rocking on her bare feet, staring at the wall but seeing nothing. Then, on the third day, she uttered a single word, 'Nish!'

'What is it, Ullii? Can you see him in your lattice?'

'Nish!' she screamed. 'It's got Nish! It's eating his leg! Claws, claws claws.' She began to sob. 'Myllii, Myllii, Myllii.'

'Who is Myllii?'

Ullii did not reply and Irisis could get no more out of her, for the seeker went back into that silent state.

Returning to the workshop, Irisis sat at her stool and considered her artisans. Of the twenty, there were only three that she would consider taking with her: Goys, a woman of sixty, brilliant but erratic and past her best; young Zoyl Aarp, equally clever but inexperienced and naive, his head turned by every woman who paid him the least attention; and Oon-Mie, no genius but level-headed and a master of every aspect of her craft. Fistila Tyr, now back at her bench after the birth of her third daughter, was also steady but she must stay here. No one else could be relied upon to get the work done and manage the p.r.i.c.kly personalities that most artisans were.

So Oon-Mie had to come; Irisis also needed someone she could rely on. Should the other be Zoyl or Goys? Experience or youth? Several teams of artisans and mancers had already worked on the problem and failed. In this hierarchical world those teams would have been packed with experience. A brilliant insight was required here, and that was the province of the young. Zoyl then, and Oon-Mie would balance him.

Everything was ready, and Irisis was awaiting the arrival of the air-floater, when a lightning raid on a shipment heading down to Tiksi resulted in the loss of six newly built controllers.

The scrutator was beside himself. 'Those controllers were needed desperately. The node mission will have to wait. How quickly can you make a new lot, crafter?'

'We have the mechanisms already, surr,' said Irisis. 'But without crystal we can't make them work, and we have no suitable crystal left.'

'What the h.e.l.l are the miners doing?'

'The mine is practically worked out. The last vein Ullii found, before she went away, contained only three suitable crystals. We've used them all.'

'There must be more somewhere.'

'No doubt, but our miners can't sense it through solid rock.'

'And Ullii is no better?'

'No.'

'This is bad, crafter. I don't know what we're going to do.'

'There is one possibility, surr.'