Chimaera (26 page)

‘No, Ryll is right,’ said Gyrull. ‘We do need Liett to complete the flisnadr; she has special abilities. Enough of that. What news from your scouting, Anabyng? Why do we need the device by the end of winter? I thought we had months more.’

‘The humans are too clever and cunning,’ said Anabyng. He crunched the rest of the thigh bone and slurped up the marrow. ‘I’m worried that they’ll come up with some fiendish new strategy over the winter.’

‘We have them on the run,’ said Gyrull. ‘We’ve defeated them time and again, and by spring we’ll have another ten thousand to set against them. I’m not afraid –’

‘There have been developments. The whole Council of Scrutators attacked Lord Yggur at Fiz Gorgo a few weeks ago but the chief scrutator was killed, along with many others. Only seven of their sixteen air-dreadnoughts escaped.’

‘I heard,’ said Gyrull. ‘But that’s something to celebrate, surely?’

‘Fusshte has taken over,’ said Anabyng, ‘and he’ll pursue us more relentlessly than Ghorr ever did.’

‘But he’s no leader,’ Gyrull said, dismissing the threat. ‘And leadership is what they need most desperately.’

‘I think …’ began Ryll tentatively. ‘Er, Great Anabyng …’ He squared his shoulders and tried to meet the male’s eyes boldly, though Ryll was only too conscious of his physical deficiency, his lack of wings. ‘This power in Fiz Gorgo, that can defeat the entire Council and all their soldiers and mancers, must be a threat to us. We’ve got to find out who they are and what their plans are. If a great leader should emerge from the present chaos we could have a hard time of it, since we’ve failed with the flisnadr. Gilhaelith –’

‘Indeed.’ Anabyng’s eyes met Gyrull’s. ‘I believe that’s the kind of strategic thinking you were talking about, Matriarch. We must extract everything Gilhaelith knows about Fiz Gorgo, without damaging him too much, then put him to work.’

‘Quite,’ said Gyrull. ‘What of the other humankinds?’

‘Lord Vithis has gathered all his Aachim around him. They’ve built camps near the Foshorn, by the south-western edge of the Dry Sea, planted gardens and harvested enough fish from the Sea of Thurkad to see them through the winter. Now they’re building vast stone structures at the Foshorn.’

‘Are they preparing for war against us?’ said Ryll.

‘There’s little sign of it,’ said Anabyng, ‘though I can’t say what they
are
up to. And if driven to it –’

‘Since they’ve broken with the old humans, at all costs we must avoid provoking them,’ said Gyrull. ‘Or the Stassor Aachim. Or the exiled ones, for that matter. What was their name?’

‘Clan Elienor,’ said Ryll. ‘Though without their constructs, and reduced to beggary on the shores of the Sea of Thurkad, Elienor can’t threaten us.’

‘If we attack them, Vithis might come to their aid despite sending them into exile. We must do nothing to provoke any of the Aachim, for we cannot fight them
and
the old humans. But it’s the old humans that worry me. They adapt too quickly, and they’re deadly inventive. We’d better step up the attacks on their manufactories.’

‘Indeed. And now I must rest for an hour or two,’ said Anabyng. ‘It was a wearying flight and I’m spent. After that, we’ll see what the tetrarch can tell us.’ He bowed to the matriarch, nodded to Ryll and went out.

‘You haven’t eaten your meal,’ Gyrull said to Ryll, glancing at the joint on the table.

He walked across and tossed it back in the tray. ‘I no longer enjoy the taste of human flesh, Matriarch. I’d like to talk to you about that … if you have the time. I’ve begun to feel that it’s wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ she said without emphasis.

He had no idea what she was thinking. ‘To eat the flesh of another sentient species, one that is, despite outward appearances, not so very different from ourselves, it just seems … I feel that it reduces us to the level of beasts.
And we’re not beasts!
’ he cried. Then he went on, more tentatively, ‘Are we, Matriarch?’

‘No, Ryll,’ she said softly. ‘We were artists once, and philosophers, with a noble culture that stretched back a thousand years. In those days our identity did not depend on warriors’ arts. We were once great, and we lost it all. No,’ she said reflectingly, ‘our ancestors abandoned the past so that we could survive in the void. We had no choice.’

‘This war stopped being about survival long ago,’ said Ryll. ‘It’s become
existence
, and it’s not enough. I want our culture back, Matriarch. I feel hollow inside, as if I’ve lost my soul. And I’m not the only one.’

‘Many of us have begun to feel that way,’ she said. ‘And we matriarchs are doing what we can to shape our people for the future, ill-fitted as we are for the task.’

‘Don’t say that, Matriarch,’ said Ryll. ‘You are the best of us; our guiding force.’

‘We
were
, in the void, and even in the early days here. But the world is changing too quickly, Ryll, and we’re too fixed in the old ways. We can’t guide you much longer. We must make way for a new generation, and I’m afraid …’

‘You, Matriarch?’ he said uncomprehendingly.

‘The war may soon be over but the peace will be even more dangerous for us, for our warrior caste is not fitted for it. Many of our people can conceive of nothing but war and don’t want to give up its glories, even for peace.’

‘We must find a way to change their minds,’ said Ryll.

‘They know nothing but war and if we take it away without giving them something else, they’ll be broken; people without a purpose. It’ll tear us apart. We matriarchs of the six cities have had much mindspeech on the topic this past year. We’re starting to try to shape the thinking of the progressives, like you …’

‘What about the warriors?’

‘The warriors too, as best we can,’ she said, ‘though with limited success. But they are disciplined and obedient to our edicts – in the void, anything else meant extinction. If all else fails, we will have to issue a Matriarchal Edict. It’s not been done since we made the decision to come out of the void, but I think they’ll obey. I
think
they’ll lay down their arms, but what happens after that I cannot say.’

‘We must replace our warrior culture with a sounder one, fitted for peace.’

‘With what we had before? How can we, Ryll?’

‘We can’t return to the past, Matriarch. All we can do is discover what we once were, and use the best of that heritage to shape our future here on Santhenar, after the war.’

Gyrull was smiling, and now she put an arm across his shoulders. ‘Your forethought constantly surprises me, Ryll. Come, let’s take a walk and you can tell me more.’

‘H
ow is he?’ said Nish from the doorway.

Four healers were gathered around the shrouded figure of Xervish Flydd, blocking Nish’s view, and he was reluctant to go closer for fear of the horrors he might see, to say nothing of the righteous wrath of the healers. Cryl-Nish Hlar, artificer, who had faced down the mighty, who had defied the greatest figures on Santhenar including the late and unlamented Ghorr, was afraid of these diminutive healers. He had no place here and no right, and he knew it.

The chief healer turned, regarding him with hard black eyes that saw all men as brutes. Her dark hair was pulled back so tightly that her brow and cheeks were shiny taut. Evee was younger than he, and only chin-high to Nish, who was a small man, but she had such presence that he stepped backwards.

‘I’m sorry. I – I was worried, you see. He – he’s an old friend and …’

‘Had you any part in this?’ she said, snapping back the sheet.

Nish didn’t look but still the red registered. Flydd was a ruddy brown colour between the lower belly, where the flaying had begun, and mid-thigh.

‘I – I wasn’t there,’ he stammered. ‘I couldn’t sleep, you see, and I went for a walk. I was in the tower when the air-dreadnoughts descended on us …’ Nish realised that he was babbling.

‘Boys’ games,’ she said scornfully, drawing herself up to her insignificant height. Evee, who was little, plain, stringy and completely covered in freckles, dominated him in every respect. ‘Men destroy and women are left to put it all together again.’

It isn’t like that, he wanted to shout, our whole world is at stake here, but there was no point in saying it; his pride didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Xervish Flydd should survive and be made whole again so that he could lead them against Nennifer. No one else would do.

‘I’m sure you’ll do everything you can for him,’ he said quietly, and went outside.

On their return, Yggur had assembled the soldiers, artisans and crew left behind when the scrutators had fled. There were nearly three hundred of them: about a hundred and fifty soldiers and almost as many artificers, artisans, prentices, deck hands, junior cooks and other workers both skilled and unskilled. He had offered each a choice: to enter his service at Fiz Gorgo, or money and free passage aboard the next trading vessels going to Lauralin. Most had opted to return to their homelands and families, though some fifty soldiers and forty workers had accepted his offer of service. Yggur questioned each of them, rejecting several, who were also given passage east, then took the oaths of the remainder. They, plus carpenters and masons hired from Old Hripton, were immediately put to work repairing Fiz Gorgo and strengthening its defences.

Nish had a more important obligation to attend to. It had taken him a day to find a place to bury Ullii, on a little rise covered in trees overlooking the bay, and another day to dig a deep enough grave through the heavy clayey soil. It was painful work with his gashed arm but he wouldn’t allow anyone to help. He had to set Ullii to rest by himself. He’d spent most of the third day gathering stones for a cairn and hauling them to the gravesite, for there were none nearby, then sitting by the mound afterwards in silent contemplation of what they’d had and all they had lost.

At the end of that day, Yggur called the company together after dinner. Malien was talking as Nish entered, late. Instead of eating he’d walked to Old Hripton and back to clear his head for the urgent work to come. It hadn’t worked – he couldn’t concentrate – he just kept reliving that desperate day in the tower and up on the amphitheatre, and the way it had ended.

Ullii was dead and he couldn’t come to terms with it. He kept seeing her as she’d been the first time they’d met, crouched in the corner of that dark room in the manufactory, rocking on her bare feet. And all the times afterwards: hiding in her basket in the balloon as they’d set off to try and track Tiaan down; climbing the slopes of Mount Tirthrax; making love in the balloon after they’d fought off the nylatl. Escaping Snizort with Flydd, many months later, when she’d been so angry with him about the baby and Nish hadn’t even known she was pregnant. And then the ultimate horror: Myllii with his arms around Ullii as if trying to carry her away, and Nish trying to stop him, and the knife sliding into Myllii’s back. The moment that had changed both their lives and surely had led inevitably to her death.

He’d talked to Irisis about that, and Malien. Ullii had been glad to go, they’d said. There had been nothing left for her in this world, and she’d wanted to atone for betraying them to Ghorr. Nish knew that as well as they did, but it didn’t help. He missed Ullii, with all her frailties and all her strengths, more than he could ever have imagined. Even though they’d had no future together, there had never been anyone like her. She’d been the mother of his dead son and, now she was gone, he had nothing left of Yllii either. Every time he thought about them, tears welled up under his eyelids. If he’d only done things differently they would both be alive.

Yggur cleared his throat and Nish realised that he’d stopped in the doorway, lost in his thoughts. Malien was beckoning him – he was late.

‘We have to decide today,
now
,’ she said in a low voice, once Nish was seated and the door sealed, ‘whether to go through with the attack on Nennifer. If we are to go, it must be now or not at all. Gilhaelith knew of our plan, and while I don’t think he would betray it deliberately, we can’t rely on it remaining a secret.’ She inclined her head towards Klarm.

The dwarf scrutator was sitting on the edge of the table with his legs dangling, toying with an enormous goblet of Yggur’s finest purple wine, for which he had a capacity entirely out of keeping with his small stature. He took a hearty swig, rubbed a trickle of wine off his chin, leaving a mark like a purple bruise, and nodded. ‘Aye. Now or never.’

‘What news of Flydd?’ said Yggur, scowling at the dwarf. Hospitality demanded that he offer wine with meals but, being a man of modest and constrained appetites himself, Klarm’s indulgence and sheer gusto aroused his ire. ‘It was his plan and I don’t see how we can succeed without him.’

‘The healers have wielded their Arts as only they can,’ said Klarm, setting down his goblet with a sigh of contentment. He took pleasure in provoking stern, conservative Yggur and in another frame of mind Nish would have been amused by it. ‘The damage to his body will heal after a fashion …’ Klarm trailed off, as reluctant as everyone else to talk about the true nature of Flydd’s injuries. The matter was too private and personal – as if, by talking about what had been done to his body, they were taking the flaying blades to his soul.