Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (11 page)

She pulled her arm free. ‘If you do,’ she said coldly, ‘don’t think I’ll go without a fuss. Your father the perquisitor will be told that you talk on your lover’s pillow, and that I bribed you to bring Tiaan down and make me crafter. It’ll be the end of your career too,
Ex-Prober
Cryl-Nish.’

He knew she would. He might lie his way out of it but his prospects would be badly damaged. His liaison with her was already the talk of the manufactory and she could turn his collaboration into treason. It would be a disaster for them both.

Nish had everything to lose if she went down, much to gain if she did not. Her family was nearly the equal of his own. It would be a good alliance, to say nothing of the pleasures of her glorious body. But if she was behind the sabotage he must denounce her.

He faced up to his duty. ‘I don’t care! I hate Tiaan, but I’ll go to my doom before I help the enemy …’ He tried to look implacable.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I admit that I cut the page from her book and hid it, but only because of what she’d done to me.’

Nish took a deep breath. It did not make things any easier. ‘And the sabotage of your controller?’

‘Don’t be absurd!’ She met his eye, unflinching.

Irisis looked convincing, though Nish knew what a gifted liar she was. ‘Swear it!’

‘I swear,’ she said evenly, ‘on my sacred family Histories, that I had nothing to do with the sabotages. Any of them!’

He was still not absolutely convinced, though he had no option but to take her word. ‘In that case, who did?’

‘Tiaan did!’ she grated. ‘Why won’t you look at the evidence? Nothing I’ve said changes the facts. You heard the guards -there’s no one else it could be.’

‘I still have to tell Gi-Had that you cut out the page.’

Irisis looked as if she’d been slapped across the face. Her big eyes were on him, a single tear quivering on one lash. She took a tentative step toward him, a gliding movement, then up on her toes at the end. Her bosom heaved. The buttons seemed to have come undone. It was the oldest trick of all and he wasn’t going to be taken in by it.

‘Please, Cryl-Nish!’ She held out her arms.

He folded his across his chest, desperately trying to control his body. With an insignificant movement at her waist, her trousers fell to her ankles. She stepped out of them. Ah, but her body was magnificent!

‘Would you let them kill me so cruelly? They would disembowel me, hang up my entrails for the world to see and cut my body into quarters to feed the scavengers.’ With another movement she stood naked before him. ‘Would you do that,
to this
!’ She held out her breasts, one in each hand.

Nish flung himself on her and they copulated on the floor of Tiaan’s cubicle like beasts. After it was over and they lay panting, slicked with sweat, Irisis opened her eyes. They were so very blue. ‘I think I see a solution to both our problems.’

‘Oh?’ he said.

‘Do you believe Tiaan is innocent or guilty?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said heavily.

‘What do you think?’

‘I think, on the balance of the evidence, that she probably is guilty.’

‘Then help me stop her. If something were to happen to Tiaan …’

He pushed her away roughly. ‘What are you talking about? It had better not be what I’m thinking.’ Though for more of what he’d just had, there was little he would not do, if he could get away with it.

Irisis pulled him back, and he relented. ‘She has betrayed her country, and you, and me! Soldiers have died; clankers have been lost. I know my duty too, Nish. We’ve got to be rid of her for the good of the war.’

She was moving too fast for him. ‘But … the manufactory can’t do without her.’

‘Do you know how many artisans there are, just in this province?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘More than a thousand! If something happened to her, or to me for that matter, either of us could be replaced tomorrow.’

‘I hadn’t thought there could be so many,’ Nish said.

‘Well, there are.’

‘Do you deny she is a good artisan?’ Nish expected her to.

‘Tiaan is very talented. Since I’m being honest with you, she’s better than I am. But she’s using those talents against us, Nish. She’s helping the enemy.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘That’s because you’re in love with her.’

‘I’m not! But …’

‘After what she said to you the other day? No
real
man would put up with that kind of abuse.’

Still he hesitated.

Irisis stood up. ‘Make up your mind, Nish. Support her and you’ll get no more of me,
ever
! Which is it?’

‘I hate Tiaan for what she did to me,’ he said. ‘If proof against her can be found – proper proof – I’ll help you destroy her.’

‘And you won’t tell Gi-Had that I cut out the page?’ Those big blue eyes were all over him again.

‘No,’ he said softly.

Nish spent the rest of the day agonising about what he had got himself into. Concealing evidence was a serious crime, and if he was wrong about Irisis, it would mean his doom.

T
iaan returned from the mine, still puzzling over Joeyn’s observation that crystals exposed on the mullock heaps were useless. Oblivious to the furore, she collected a handful of hedron chips and put them at various locations inside and outside the manufactory, to test the effects of exposure. She did not need to hide them since they looked like any other fragments of quartz.

On the way back to her cubicle Tiaan ducked into the library and went to the section where the Great Tales were kept. These books, of which there were twenty-nine, were the highest achievement of the Histories and every child was taught them. The manufactory’s copies were bound in red leather reinforced with brass, and fixed to the shelves with brass chains. She lifted them down, one by one. All of the Great Tales were there save one, the twenty-third.
The Tale of the Mirror
.

She went to the librarian, an old, old man as bald as a marble, with thin blotched hands and perpetually moist eyes.

‘Hello, Gurleys,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for one of the Great Tales.’

‘They’re all on the shelf.’ He did not take his eyes from his catalogue.

‘No, one is missing.
The Tale of the Mirror
.’

He looked up sharply, opened his mouth and closed it again. He seemed to be in pain. Moisture leaked from his eyes.

‘There is no
Tale of the Mirror
!’

‘But … it’s the twenty-third tale. There must –’

‘There is not!’ he hissed, ‘and if you keep on about it I will have to enter your name in the scrutator’s log.’

‘I beg your pardon.’ Tiaan thanked him and went out. So Joeyn had been right. But why
had
the tale been withdrawn?

Just outside the door, Tiaan was called to Gi-Had’s office. The overseer was sitting behind his table. He said nothing as she came in and shut the door, though he held himself as straight as a poker. He indicated a chair. She sat down.

‘What did you want to see me about, overseer?’

He pinned her with those deeply sunken eyes. ‘This!’ Gi-Had threw a controller onto the table.

Tiaan started. It was the one Irisis had been working on for the past month, though so battered that it could not be repaired. She picked it up. ‘How did this happen?’

‘Irisis accuses you,’ Gi-Had said without expression.

‘Me?’ Tiaan swallowed. ‘Why would I do such a wicked thing?’

‘Because you and Irisis are feuding? Because you hate her? Perhaps because you are in the pay of the enemy?’ He held his hands out as if offering her a choice rather than accusing her, but all at once she felt desperately afraid. The breeding factory could be the least of her worries. Gi-Had looked every bit as ferocious as that perquisitor of her childhood. And after all, Irisis was his second cousin. Blood was thick in these parts.

It was hard to control her voice. ‘I – I don’t like Irisis, but I don’t hate her. I’m just trying to do my job and my best for the war.’

‘The guards say you’re the only one who went in there this morning.’

‘The night guard spends most of her shift gossiping by the furnaces. She’s never around when I finish work.’

‘The day guard says the same thing. And Irisis’s controller has been smashed in
your cubicle
.’

‘Maybe someone is trying to get rid of me,’ she said simply.

‘Are you accusing Irisis?’

‘I don’t believe she would wreck her controller, even to be rid of me. She loves her work too much.’

‘Then who?’ Gi-Had cried.

‘I don’t know, overseer.’

‘I suggest you try very hard to find out!’ Once Perquisitor Jal-Nish hears of this outrage he may decide to pay us a visit. He’s not as trusting as I am, Tiaan, and he’s quick to jump to conclusions. If he decides against you,
nothing
I say will change his mind. That’s all!’

She went out, a black chill settling over her. She had heard all about the new perquisitor. Before she reached her cubicle Tiaan found another reason to be afraid. The perquisitor was Nish’s father. She had spurned the little artificer and now he was Irisis’s lover. There was no doubt whose word Jal-Nish would take.

Her only refuge was work, though it could not stop her cycling thoughts. The new crystal needed no shaping; it was perfect as it was. After waking it with her pliance, Tiaan merely cleaned up a few sharp edges, then reconstructed the mounting on the front of her helm to fit. At dinnertime she slipped the crystal into place. It fitted perfectly. Pushing the clasps down, she sat back. It was a fine piece of work, as good as she could do, but it gave her no pleasure. And again, as she put her devices down, Tiaan had the feeling that someone, in some distant place, was trying to find her.

Uncomfortable with that thought, she closed her eyes and lay her head on the bench. The door opened. Irisis stood there, the last person she wanted to see. ‘I heard about your controller –’ Tiaan began.

Such fury passed across Irisis’s face that Tiaan froze. ‘Don’t say another word!’ Irisis snarled.

Tiaan looked down at her helm, wondering what it was that Irisis wanted.

‘Have you found the answer yet?’ Irisis picked up one of the failed hedrons.

‘No, but I’m making progress. What about you?’

‘It’s not
my
controllers that failed.’

‘I thought you’d want to help, for the sake of the war,’ Tiaan said acidly. A tiny victory but it made her feel better.

Irisis’s eyes darted to the globe and helm. ‘What’s that? Another toy for your bastard brothers and sisters?’

As little as twenty years ago that would not have been an insult, in the days when women could choose to take a partner, or not. Tiaan clenched her fists. Irisis laughed openly. ‘You came from the breeding factory and that’s where you’ll end up. It’s all you’re good for anyway, lying on your back with your legs over your shoulders.’

Tiaan gritted her teeth and said nothing, since that would annoy Irisis more than any reply she could think of.

‘Well, what is it?’ Irisis burst out.

‘I should have thought someone with your great crafter heritage would know at a glance.’

‘Just tell me!’

‘It’s a probe,’ Tiaan said, ‘to read the history of the faulty controllers and find out why they failed.’

A spark lit in Irisis’s eyes. ‘It’ll never work.’ Picking up the helm, she weighed it in her hands and then put it on her head, where it sat like a pancake. ‘Doesn’t even fit.’

‘My head is smaller than yours.’

Irisis rotated the helm, pushing its spidery legs down hard. She reached for the globe that still held the faulty hedron, but as she touched it the crystal in the helm flared white. There came a snapping sound, accompanied by a sizzle. Irisis screamed, tore the helm off and hurled it at the bench.

‘Are you all right?’ Tiaan could not comprehend what had happened.

Irisis staggered drunkenly about, her eyes crossed. Her fingers rubbed furiously at her temple. Tiaan got her into a chair. The skin beneath where the crystal had sat was blistered and several strands of yellow hair had frizzled up.

Irisis’s eyes uncrossed and she slapped Tiaan across the face with the full weight of arm and shoulder. It knocked Tiaan sideways. ‘You rotten little cow, you did that deliberately. Stay away from me, do you hear?’

Tiaan backed away, rubbing her cheek.

Irisis rose out of her chair as if propelled by a spring. She looked frightened, not a common expression on her face. What had the device done to her?

‘That thing’s corrupt, like you, Tiaan. You’ll never get anything out of it.’

‘You just don’t understand it,’ said Tiaan as Irisis made for the door. She could not resist a taunt, for she seldom got the last word with Irisis. ‘Maybe it’s you who’ll be going to the breeding factory.’

‘People like
me
don’t go to the breeding factory!’ she spat. She was peculiarly sensitive to slights against her ability as an artisan. ‘We marry well and live in luxury. Enjoy it while it lasts, Tiaan. You won’t be here much longer.’

Tiaan, who before her mother’s decline had come from a long line of proud, independent women, wanted to fling herself on Irisis, clawing and screaming. But restraining herself, she slammed the door in her rival’s face. In a few days she had made two mortal enemies. And despite the shortage of men, she had no doubt that Irisis would make a good match. Her kind usually did.