by Ian Irvine
‘How long can Gospett last, with Snizort so near?’ said Irisis.
No one bothered to answer.
The air-floater landed in the main street of the town, much to the excitement of a group of children playing a game with a ball made of bound rags. They gathered around in their hundreds until the scrutator came down the ladder and called for someone to take them to the perquisitor’s house, whereupon they melted away. Except one, a boy with a twisted leg, not able to dart off like the others.
Flydd grabbed him by the collar. ‘What’s your name, boy?’ he said in the common speech of the south-west.
‘Nudl,’ said the boy.
‘Noodle? Funny name for a boy.’
‘That’th what I’m called, thurr.’
‘Well, Noodle, I need someone to show me to the perquisitor’s house. Can you do that?’
‘No, thurr,’ said the boy.
‘Why the blazes not? Surely you know where it is.’ Flydd’s continuous eyebrow crumpled up like wet twine.
‘Too thcared, thurr.’
‘You’re afraid of the perquisitor? Why?’
Nudl hesitated. ‘Boys put me up to it, thurr.’
‘Put you up to what? You’re like a limpet, boy.’
‘Thank you, thurr. Throwing thtoneth on perquithitor’th roof, thurr. But one mithed and went through the window. Threatened me –’
‘Yes, yes, I understand! Well, Noodle, I am a scrutator and you know what that means?’
‘You eat children, thurr.’
‘I don’t eat children, Noodle, though I’m bloody well prepared to make an exception, just this once. Take me to the perquisitor’s house, right away!’
They were there in ten minutes. The house was a relic of better times, a spacious place of orange brick with a high brick fence all around. Wide verandas sheltered all sides but the south. The perquisitor answered the door. She was a small, slight woman, black of hair and with eyes the same colour. Her skin was palest amber, her features delicately proportioned, her manner reserved.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Flydd. ‘This is a pleasant surprise, Fyn-Mah.’
Fyn-Mah smiled, which was rare for her. ‘It’s good to see you, scrutator. And you, crafter.’ She nodded curtly to Irisis, for they disliked each other. ‘Let’s sit on the porch. It’s cooler. I presume, from the Council despatches case in your hand, that you are scrutator again?’
Bowing, he passed it to her. ‘Indeed I am. What are you doing here? And a perquisitor, no less.’
‘You can hardly act surprised, surr, since you recommended my promotion.’
‘These days any recommendation of mine is a dubious one. I didn’t know you’d been sent west, though I’m very pleased to see you.’
‘I’ve always had a special interest in the enemy flesh-forming art,’ said Fyn-Mah. ‘There are more flesh-formers at Snizort than anywhere in Lauralin, and their work is well –’
‘So I understand. You can brief me about that in private. You may also be interested in what we’ve got to say.’
‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ Fyn-Mah said, ‘and I hope it’s good news. In my last report –’
‘I was briefed before we left Nennifer. Let’s see what can be done.’
‘Whatever is done,’ said Fyn-Mah, ‘were well that it be done quickly. The lyrinx are readying for war. The final assault.’
‘We’ll also talk about that later.’
‘There’s someone else you’ll be pleased to see, surr.’ Fyn-Mah called down the hall. ‘And you too, Irisis.’
A man came up. Middle-aged and slim, he was dressed in brown homespun leggings and shirt, and grey sandals. Dark hair, cut short, stuck up all over his head. He had a chiselled jaw, prominent cheekbones and a gleam in his grey eyes.
The man put out his hand. ‘Scrutator. Irisis.’ He sat in an empty chair.
Irisis noticed Flydd inspecting the fellow surreptitiously. She was sure she had never seen him before. Ullii came trailing along the path, where she had been communing with the flowers. She wore her goggles and earmuffs. The man stood up. ‘Hello, we haven’t met. You must be Ullii.’
Now how had he known that?
Ullii extended her little hand. ‘Hello, Mr Muss.’
There was a long silence, then Flydd’s laughter came like a thunderclap. ‘Oh, well done. Eiryn Muss, the best prober in the business. That’s the first time anyone’s disguise has fooled me.’ He shook the fellow’s hand again. ‘Ullii, what a marvel you are.’
Irisis inspected the man again. The disguise, or rather transformation, was miraculous. There was not a trace of the fat, bald, shambling halfwit from the manufactory, nor the least mannerism to give him away. But Ullii did not require such things. She could distinguish every human alive by their smell.
Irisis smiled. ‘I dare say it would take more than a few bottles of turnip brandy now.’
‘Indeed it would, crafter,’ said Muss primly, ‘since I do not touch spiritous liquors.’
FIFTY-SIX
Gilhaelith was led away, still trying to see the amplimet. Tiaan felt betrayed. He did not care a fig for her, and never had. He had wanted the amplimet all along, and everything else he’d said to her had been to make sure of it. She cursed herself for falling into the trap, once again.
Ryll fed her a bowl of what looked like green porridge but tasted like slimy compost. She could not feed herself, since her arms were trapped inside the patterner. She slept as if she had been drugged, waking with a fuzzy head to find a group of lyrinx gathered around the patterner three down from her. They had bowed heads, deferring to an ancient male whose skin bore a permanent red blush. His flaccid crest angled to the left and he wore a pair of spectacles. The small oval lenses only covered the centre of his eyes and were set in thick frames of leathery hide. Tiaan had not seen a lyrinx wearing glasses before. It looked odd.
The old male was speaking lyrinx, and though Tiaan did not know that language, it was clear that he was unhappy about something. Ryll and the other lyrinx had changed their skin to the colour of sand, as if they were trying to disappear against the walls, and their crests sagged.
The old lyrinx limped towards Tiaan, lifted her out and inspected her minutely. It had happened so often that she was hardly embarrassed at all. Her skin, irritated by the jelly, had gone blotchy. Behind the lenses, the pupils of his yellow eyes narrowed to slits. He swung around to Ryll, questioning him in a raspy staccato. Tiaan recognised her name several times, and once, ‘Tiksi’. She supposed Ryll was telling the old lyrinx her history.
The old creature grunted and his wings half unfurled. He snapped them down. ‘What have you done with the flying construct?’ he asked in her language.
Tiaan had been expecting that question. ‘I gave it to Querist Gan’l,’ she lied, making up a name at random. There were thousands of querists and he could not know all their names. ‘It was near a town south of here.’
Ryll muttered something in the old fellow’s ear. He grunted a question. Ryll went out, soon returning with the amplimet on its chain. As the old lyrinx took it, his crest stood up and bright red specks appeared at the tips. He pushed the amplimet away without touching it, his eyes glowing like molten toffee. In Kalissin the lyrinx had not known what the amplimet was. This fellow knew very well, and he was excited about it.
He rapped out a series of instructions in the lyrinx tongue, in which one word, torgnadr, was repeated several times. Ryll jumped. Liett ran down the row of patterners. The old lyrinx adjusted his chest plates as if they irritated him and went out, followed by the rest of his group. Ryll bent and began doing something to Tiaan’s patterner, below the level of her vision.
‘What’s going on?’ she cried.
‘We must begin.’
‘Begin what, Ryll?’
‘Making a torgnadr.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I … may not say. It is to aid us with the war.’
‘It’s not another monster like your nylatl?’ Just
the name sent shudders of remembrance up her spine.
Ryll stiffened, closed his heavy-lidded eyes and opened them again. ‘Nothing like that. I have … I am forbidden to do flesh-forming.’
‘Coeland was not pleased with you after the nylatl escaped?’
‘The Wise Mother was furious, and so was Liett.’
‘So you did not get your heart’s desire after all?’
‘I am forbidden to mate, not that it matters now. No female would take a wingless travesty like me. My spoiled line must die with me, for the good of all. Ah, but still … ’ He cast a tormented glance down the row, where Tiaan could just see Liett, bent over and displaying her majestic buttocks.
‘Are you going to take flesh from me again,’ she said, ‘to make your torgnadr?’
‘Of course not! Torgnadrs are not flesh-formed. Besides, that practice is forbidden.’ He bent down to reach something near the floor, then slowly stood up, his eyes ablaze. ‘What do you mean again?’
Tiaan wished she had not spoken, but from past experience knew that the lyrinx would drag the truth out of her, so she might as well tell him straight away.
‘Liett took a small piece of my flesh to make her snizlet.’
‘What?’ At his bellow, Liett leapt up and stared in their direction, but on seeing nothing amiss she bent to her work again. ‘She would not dare. That is forbidden.’
‘I still have the scar,’ said Tiaan. ‘On the inside of my arm.’
In one swift movement, Ryll pulled her from the patterner and sat her on top, glistening with the clinging muck. Tiaan looked him in the eye and held out her left arm.
He felt the small circular scar with a fingertip. ‘This was not here when I saved you from the frozen river.’
‘She put it in her jar to grow the first snizlet. I think she used her own tissue as well.’
Ryll slid Tiaan back into the machine. Without further word he went out, walking proud and tall. Dangerous red slashes seared across his chameleon skin.
What had she done? When Liett came by a few minutes later, Tiaan pretended to be asleep. Shortly the troop of lyrinx reappeared, she was hauled out yet again and the scar inspected.
‘Tllrixi Liett!’ the old male roared.
Liett came running. There followed a furious exchange, the old lyrinx roaring, Liett shrinking down until her colourless wings rested flat on the floor. Her arms were stretched out and the old lyrinx stabbed a finger at a mark in her armpit. Liett was questioned in her own tongue. She answered in monosyllables, head bowed.
Finally the old lyrinx struck her once on each cheek, a ritual humiliation. She lay on her face even after he had gone. Ryll stood by, speaking softly in the lyrinx tongue. She groaned but did not move. He squatted beside her but she turned her head away. He lifted her in his arms, tenderly. As she sagged there, Liett’s eyes fixed on Tiaan, giving her such a baleful glare that Tiaan had to close her eyes.
Liett said not a word to her, though she was always in sight for the rest of the day. Ryll hurried back and forth, carrying containers to one patterner or another. Tiaan could not see what they held. Late in the afternoon, Liett appeared with a pair of barrel-sized glass buckets, which she set on the floor behind Tiaan.
Ryll came in, nodded to Liett, then put his hands on Tiaan’s bare shoulders. ‘We are going to begin the patterning. Don’t be afraid.’
She was terrified. Ryll put the amplimet around her neck and held her head straight. Liett lifted something, resembling an upside-down jellyfish, out of the larger bucket and eased it down over Tiaan’s head. Tiaan thrashed her trapped arms. The cool slipperiness cut off her senses one by one, until all she was left with was touch. Strangely, it was not claustrophobic.
Everything felt stronger, more enhanced, from the slippery muck against her belly and back to the clinging, wet-flesh sensation of the tentacled mask over her face. As Tiaan struggled, the amplimet pulsed between her breasts and she began to see the field.
Nothing else happened. She did not draw power, since there was nothing she could do with it in this blind state. Tiaan sensed an immense flow of power, far more than it took to drive a clanker, though she could not tell where it was going.
Like looking into the flames of a campfire, the field was endlessly different and fascinating, and stranger than ever here. She must have watched the play and pattern for hours before it finally flickered out. Tiaan let it go, overcome by melancholy. Everything was so futile, worthless and sad. She wept. She slept.
Tiaan woke just as miserable, and cried for an hour. She did not know why. The mask had been taken off, but something felt different. The smaller glass bucket sat in a recess on top of her patterner, just out of reach, had she been able to reach. Something had begun to grow from its base, rather like a little mushroom. It must be the torgnadr.
A long time ago, back at the manufactory, she had recovered an image of something similar from the aura of a failed controller crystal. It had been a lyrinx spying device. Were they stealing her talent and putting it into this growing torgnadr? If so, why?
The patterning went on once a day, rarely twice, and each time it took a few hours, during which she could feel the amplimet pulsing furiously. After each episode, she woke weeping. They took her out and washed her down periodically, for the jelly irritated her skin. As she finished the sixth patterning, and blinked at the light in her eyes, there came a gasping exhalation from the cube on her right. Rather, it came from the thin-faced woman inside it. As Tiaan stared, the woman’s head flopped to the side, smacking against the top of the patterner.
Liett leapt right over the row, hauled the woman out and laid her on the floor on her back. She was a little bony creature, hardly there at all. Liett thrust down her breastbone several times, so hard that ribs cracked. She put her ear to the thin chest, shaking her head as Ryll raced up.
‘Another failure, Liett?’ he said.
‘What am I going to tell Old Hyull?’
‘What are you going to tell the Matriarch?’
Liett snapped her magnificent wings at him, hurled the contents of the glass bucket into a slops tank and stalked off, leaving the body lying on the floor.
‘Ryll?’ Tiaan could only stare at the sad, dead woman and think she would be next. ‘Ryll, what happened to her …?’
He hunched his shoulders up and down as if his outer skin plagued him. ‘Patterning is hard on humans. In three years we have only created six torgnadrs, and only two at Snizort.’
Tiaan stared at him. ‘How many people have you murdered to make them? Hundreds? Thousands?’
He shook his head. ‘It is dangerous, though usually it is the torgnadrs that fail. Humans rarely die from it. I was against using this one from the start.’
‘What are the torgnadrs for, Ryll?’ She had often asked that question but never received an answer.
‘I can’t tell you.’
After that, Ryll and Liett worked with increased urgency. Lyrinx ran in constantly, shouting what could only be exhortations to hurry. The patternings became more frequent and the sessions longer.
Despite Ryll’s words, two more people, a man and a woman, died in the patterners in the next three days. Tiaan’s melancholy grew worse after each session, and though she knew that it was due mainly to the patterner, she could not stop. Her face was swollen from weeping, her tear ducts so inflamed that it hurt to cry. Ryll added salt to her diet, she had wept so much away.
Tiaan could not eat – the green porridge made her want to vomit. She even gagged on water. Ryll brought women from the other patterners to sit with her. That only made it worse. None could speak her language and none was affected by patterning the way she was. She was different, special, and they seemed to resent her.
The patterning had been going on for well over a week. Tiaan could no longer tell what was day and what was night. She’d lost count after ten sleeps. She felt very weak. Even if she’d had the use of her legs, after so long without activity she could not have stood up. She felt s
ure she was going to die.
Something was going on – the lyrinx showed skin patterns all the time now, livid, clashing colours and jagged designs, and they ran everywhere. Tiaan discovered, from something Liett had said, that human armies were marching toward Snizort. The lyrinx expected to be slaughtered here, or burned alive, but they seemed less worried about that than about completing their great project before the siege began.
The Matriarch and Old Hyull often came in to inspect her torgnadr. As her melancholy increased, they appeared more frequently, but now their skin colour showed agitation. After their last visit, Ryll had lain prostrate on the floor for an hour, and when he got up his eyes were shrivelled like raisins.
Liett barked at him in the lyrinx tongue. He flashed yellow and black, half-heartedly. She lifted him to his feet and propelled him from the chamber. Shortly she returned to stand by Tiaan’s patterner, looking down and clacking her toe claws on the floor.
The silence became uncomfortable. ‘What’s the matter?’ said Tiaan.
Without replying, Liett stalked away.
Tiaan worried about that until Ryll returned with a man she vaguely recognised – the one-handed fellow she had seen as she entered Snizort.
‘Tutor speaks your language,’ said Ryll, hurrying off.
Tiaan could hardly see the man through her swollen eyes. Thin, a sallow face, dark eyes, dark hair. He said nothing, but after a minute he dabbed at her eyes with a piece of rag. She sniffled. He wiped her nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying.’
‘The patterner occasionally has that effect.’
He spoke the common speech with a familiar accent – the one spoken on the south coast of Einunar. Of course. He had taught Ryll that language. She wept for the joy of hearing the sounds.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I haven’t heard anyone from my own land in half a year.’ It filled her with longing for her place in the manufactory. ‘What’s your name? Or should I call you Tutor?’