by Ian Irvine
Another artisan might have fled to make a new life somewhere far away. Irisis could not. Her entire identity was tied up with her family and her trade. For all that she railed against them, for all that she neglected them, she would rather die, even in disgrace, than live without her family.
Nish brought the seeker down before dawn, when the manufactory was at its quietest. Even so, it was a trial for her. Ullii shied at every sound and whenever someone approached she shrank against the wall.
The crafter’s chambers comprised two rooms. The larger one was a combined office and workshop with an enormous rosewood desk in the centre, surrounded by three leather chairs. Along the far wall a wide bench was still cluttered with the equipment Barkus had been using when he died. Another wall contained a library of several dozen bound volumes, plus scrolls and fan-folded books. The smaller room was stuffed with artisans’ tools, charts and blueprints, mechanical devices complete and incomplete, and stores and materials of every kind. Irisis had found the reels of spider-silk there.
A tray beside the door contained food and drink. Irisis was tapping one foot when Nish came in, Ullii at his heels like a masked, earmuff-wearing dog. He closed the outer door and locked it, then the inner.
Ullii looked anxious. Irisis wondered if it was the unfamiliar surroundings, or what they expected of her. She stood against the inner door, head to one side, sniffing the air.
‘Would you like something to eat, Ullii?’ Irisis said loudly.
The earmuffs allowed some sound through and the seeker jumped, as if she’d not known the artisan was there. There were so many odours in the room that she had not picked Irisis out. It smelt of old books, mouldy carpet, the spicy bouquet of rosewood, oil and fuming acid from the bench, hot candle wax and an indescribable odour from the mounted swordfish over the fireplace. Irisis had half a dozen aromatic oil diffusers going over candle stubs: civet and rosemary and the sharp tang of cedar oil. She’d done it deliberately, to see if Ullii could be confused.
‘No, thank you,’ Ullii said, mimicking Irisis’s voice. She went around the room step by step, once bumping into the desk, another time a stool, though only on her first circuit. Occasionally she touched things, or brought them to her nose.
Nish stayed close behind. He can’t take his eyes off the little cow, Irisis thought. It made her angry. Could she be jealous of the seeker? Surely not.
‘Tell us what you’re doing, Ullii,’ said Nish softly.
Perhaps too softly, for she looked around as if trying to make out a whisper in the dark. He repeated his words more loudly. Ulli looked at Nish, using her own voice now, which was as soft and colourless as her hair. ‘The lattice is different here. It’s all twisted up and there are new knots in it.’
‘From the old crafter’s artefacts, no doubt,’ said Irisis. ‘If you can see the Secret Art, you’re in the right place. He had magical devices aplenty. He used to show them to me when I was little.’
‘I can only see two,’ said Ullii, in Irisis’s voice. She no longer used Nish’s. That irritated Irisis too. Ullii answered Nish’s question. ‘I am seeking out the lattice and trying to fit you into it.’
‘What does it look like?’ Irisis asked.
A stubborn expression crossed Ullii’s face, then she seemed to think better of it. ‘Did you make this?’ She held out the front of the spider-silk blouse.
‘Yes,’ said Irisis. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It feels lovely. Other clothes make me itch and burn all over.’ She shivered. ‘The lattice looks just how I want it to. I change it, sometimes.’
‘What does it look like now?’ asked Nish.
She frowned, just visible above the mask. ‘Fans.’
‘Fans?’ cried Irisis. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
For once Ullii did not cringe or bridle, though she moved closer to Nish. ‘I like fans!’ she said defiantly. ‘Mancer Flammas, who let me live in his dungeon, had hundreds of them. They were beautiful. All the colours; all the patterns. I used to peek through my fingers.’
‘Ullii, our minds can’t see what you see,’ said Nish. ‘We don’t understand what you mean by fans.’
‘My lattice is a fan. A great one comes out in front of me, folded in a hundred places.’ She held out spread arms. ‘It’s turquoise now, but I can change the colour if you like – ’
‘I don’t care what bloody – ’ Shushed by Nish, Irisis broke off.
‘Everything in front of me is on the fan, like a million scribbles. People look different to things. They’re brighter, but tangled. Sometimes I can unravel their knots.’
‘What people?’ said Irisis, intrigued. ‘You mean you can see everyone in the world?’
‘Of course not! Only people with talents.’ Her scorn was withering. ‘Most are just little tiny spots and I can’t see inside, but some people make bright tangles, especially ones who use the Secret Art. Jal-Nish taught me that.’
‘Can you see me?’ Nish asked eagerly.
‘You don’t have any talent.’ She said it so baldly that he cringed.
‘You can’t see me either,’ Irisis said in a dead voice.
‘Oh, yes. I can see you! But you’re not a knot, you’re a hard black ball.’
After a pause Irisis spoke. ‘You said fans.’
‘Another fan goes behind me. It’s azure now, much smaller. I can’t see it so well. And fans go out to the sides.’ She held her arms out. ‘And up, and down. The one that goes down is brown but I can’t see much on it.’
‘Brilliant!’ said Irisis. ‘That’s the talent we’ve been working so hard to tap? She scribbles on fans? We might as well ask the perquisitor to cut off our heads right now.’
Ullii froze with her arms out. Nish gave Irisis a furious glare.
Ullii slowly rotated, arms spread, until she faced Nish. ‘Cut your head off?’ she whispered.
‘If we don’t find Artisan Tiaan and get her back, that’s what will happen to us,’ said Nish. ‘What we were hoping, Ullii, was to make a magic device that we could use with you, to see where Tiaan might be.’
‘It doesn’t have to be fans,’ said Ullii. ‘It can be anything I want it to be. Sometimes the world is like an egg floating in the air, full of coloured speckles. Or –’
Irisis gripped a handful of yellow hair as if to tear it out. She began grinding her teeth.
Nish squatted down in front of Ullii. ‘The problem is, Ullii, that we don’t understand how you see the world. We don’t see in fans, or specks in eggs, and we don’t know how to use your lattice to find Tiaan. We have to find her or we will lose the war and the lyrinx –’ He broke off as she shrank away.
‘She has to know,’ said Irisis.
‘The lyrinx will eat us all,’ Nish finished.
Ullii choked, scuttled into the storeroom and curled into a ball. They did not go after her.
Nish carried the platter of food to the desk, offering it to Irisis. She refused. He took a handful of dried figs, tearing their leathery skins open with his teeth and sucking the grainy insides out. Irisis found the sound particularly irritating.
‘This isn’t going well, Cryl-Nish!’
He looked up, startled. ‘That’s the first time you’ve used my proper name in ages.’
‘Which should tell you how desperate I feel.’
‘I can’t believe you’d give up, Irisis.’
‘We’ll never do it. We’ll never see what she sees, and even if we could, I can’t make a device to hunt Tiaan down. You know why.’
‘I’m beginning to,’ said Nish.
‘What are you going to tell your father?’
‘That it’s impossible to make a seeker device because it would take years to work out how Ullii does it. That’s true enough, anyway.’
‘Yes! No need to say that it’s because I’m a useless, incompetent fraud!’
‘No need,’ Nish echoed. ‘We’re finished, then.’
He wandered the room, looking at the charts, books and scrolls, and
the strange, half-finished devices on the bench. Irisis tore the end off a stick of cinnamon-flavoured sausage. She ate a small piece before laying it aside and staring gloomily at the dusty table.
Someone knocked on the outer door. Nish ignored it but the knocking continued.
‘Will you answer the damned thing!’ Irisis snapped.
He opened the inner door, unbolted the outer. It was the perquisitor, looking agitated. ‘Well?’ Jal-Nish cried.
‘We’re making progress,’ lied Nish. ‘I can’t talk now; we’re in the middle of something.’
Jal-Nish grabbed him by the shirt. ‘You’ve got till dawn. Gi-Had’s troops found Tiaan in the mine but a band of lyrinx attacked them. Gi-Had was the only one to survive. And Tiaan … Tiaan …’ He choked on his own rage. ‘This is going to ruin me.’
‘What?’ cried Nish. A cold foreboding came over him. ‘What is it? Is she dead?’
‘Her body wasn’t among the others. Either she’s dead and eaten, or they’ve taken her! If they torture our secrets out of her …’
‘Maybe she’s escaped,’ Irisis interrupted. ‘She’s good at it.’
‘No one could escape a lyrinx. What am I going to tell the scrutator?’
Nish sank to his knees. ‘What are we going to do?’
The perquisitor hauled him up. ‘The scrutator wants Tiaan. We’re going to find her, if she’s alive, and get her back.’
He flung Nish backward to land hard on his bottom. ‘You’ve got until dawn. Succeed or fail, you two are coming with us to finish your work, or to go up against the lyrinx as common soldiers.’ He slammed the door in Nish’s face.
‘I feel sick,’ said Nish. ‘Like when my father asked me about my school work. Nothing was ever good enough.’
Selecting a piece of cheese, Irisis gnawed at a hard edge. Nish scratched his fingernails on the floorboards. The noise was so annoying that she wanted to smack him in the mouth.
‘There’s only one thing we can do,’ said Nish, ‘since making a seeker device is quite impossible. We’ll have to take Ullii with us and try to use her directly.’
‘She’ll go mad!’
‘Our necks depend on finding a way.’
Ullii came creeping over to Nish and touched his cheek. ‘I want to help you, Nish.’
‘I know you do.’ He sat up. ‘Can you see Tiaan?’
Ullii shrugged. ‘I don’t know what she looks like.’
Irisis leaned forward. ‘The other day you said you could see a woman with a bright crystal. Can you still see her?’
‘The crystal went out.’
‘You mean she’s dead?’ cried Nish.
‘I can’t see her.’
‘When was this?’
‘Today. Yesterday.’
‘Which, Ullii? It’s important.’
‘I don’t know.’
Irisis put a controller on the table and unfolded its arms. ‘This was made by Tiaan. It might help you sense her out.’
Ullii did not look at it. ‘I don’t need to sense her out. If the crystal wakes, I’ll see it in my lattice.’
‘Is the woman Tiaan?’ Irisis demanded. ‘Is her knot like this controller’s?’
‘No, but I can tell she made it.’
‘So the woman was Tiaan?’ Nish said urgently.
‘Yes.’
‘At last!’ Irisis cried. ‘And what is the crystal? Is it like the one in this?’ She held the controller out.
‘No,’ said Ullii.
‘What about this?’ Irisis took the pliance from her neck and pressed it into the seeker’s hands.
‘No, it’s much stronger.’
‘What can it be?’ said Nish.
Irisis’s blue eyes positively gleamed. ‘I wonder …?’
‘What?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Do you understand maps?’ Nish said to Ullii.
‘I know what they are. I’ve never looked at one. The bright light hurts my eyes.’
Pulling down one of the charts he had been looking at earlier, he unrolled it on the floor. ‘This is a map of the manufactory. Here is the room where you live …’ He broke off. ‘Of course, you can’t see it, and I can’t describe it well enough.’
She stared at him through the mask. A long silence. She shivered. Finally, ‘I will try with the … goggles. Just for a little while.’
He fetched them off the bench then eased the mask off her face. Her eyes were screwed shut. He fitted the goggles and buckled the straps.
Irisis, noting how his fingers grazed Ullii’s nape, scowled.
Ullii looked down.
‘Can you see the map?’ Nish asked.
‘Yes.’ Her reply was faint.
He explained the symbols for walls, doors, windows and furniture. She seemed to catch on quickly. Ullii lived in a world of symbols. ‘Your room is here. This is the way we walked today. This is where we are now.’
She traced the walls with a finger, so Nish knew she could see them.
‘This symbol is the scale. You can use it to work out how far things are from each other – how many steps we walked.’
She understood the concept of measurement but could not apply it. Direction was another problem – she knew right and left, front and back, but the points of the compass meant nothing to her. Her lattice was not based on a fixed frame of reference.
Nish tried to explain north, south, east and west, but Ullii related them to right hand and left hand, becoming hopelessly confused when he turned the map around. He showed her another map, of the lands between Tiksi, the manufactory and her home town of Fassafarn. That meant nothing to her either – the journey here, inside her bag all the daylight hours, had been such a nightmare that she had blocked everything out. Ullii had no idea how far she’d gone, what lands she had crossed or even how long it had taken.
‘This is so frustrating,’ Nish said to Irisis that evening. They had made no progress at all.
‘Give it a rest. You can’t teach her in a day what takes most people years.’ She turned to Ullii. ‘Tomorrow, we must go after Tiaan. We have to go outside. We need you to find her. No one else can do it. Will you help us?’
Ullii tore off the goggles and put the mask back on. She was trembling. Putting her hands over her eyes, she shook her head from side to side.
Irisis stood up. ‘What is it? Is she saying no?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Nish.
Ullii also rose, looking up at them. Her fingers were curled into hooks. ‘I will go with you,’ she said in a despairing voice. ‘Though I’m afraid. But if you leave me behind …’
‘We’re afraid too,’ said Irisis.
‘I’m very, very afraid,’ shuddered Ullii. ‘Clawers. Clawers everywhere.’
TWENTY-FOUR
The lyrinx’s mouth opened wider. The front teeth were as long as her thumb and fearsomely sharp. Tiaan closed her eyes.
The creature dragged her closer, trying to say something. Only a choking noise came out, as if there was a bone caught in its throat.
‘Chzurrrk!’ it said. ‘Zzhurripthk!’
She thought it was going to throw up all over her. Then, as its mouth yawned wider, she saw the crossbow bolt protruding into its gullet through the back of its neck. Blood ran down its throat. It tried to get its tongue at the obstruction but could not reach. It clawed at the back of its neck with its free hand, which had lost three fingers in the battle. The bolt was too deeply embedded to grip.
The creature gave a choking cough, which brought purple blood foaming up its throat. Another cough spattered Tiaan with the stuff. It was drowning in its own blood. Its eyes crossed; it gasped a breath which made a gurgling sound deep in its chest, like a plumber clearing a blocked sewer pipe, and its grip relaxed. Tiaan rolled out of the way as the lyrinx collapsed, still clawing at its neck. Its impact with the floor blew foam everywhere.
She stood up on shaky legs, watching the creature in the guttering flares. A whiff of pitch-smoke caught in her nose. I
t felt as if her air passages were on fire. Bent double with coughing, Tiaan circled behind the creature. The bolt had gone through the corded muscle to the right of its spine. The other beast lay nearby. It looked dead but she kept well clear. The live lyrinx tried to turn its head and gave another gasp.
Unlike other lyrinx she had seen, this one lacked wings, apart from a pair of vestigial nubs below its shoulders. Something seemed wrong about it – it did not quite seem to fit its body.
A spear lay on the ground. If she forced it into the lyrinx’s neck beside the bolt, might it be enough to kill it? She raised the spear, staring at the bloody wound, imagining the gruesome thud of blade into flesh, the creature thrashing and screaming. Tiaan hesitated and with a pained grunt the lyrinx turned its head, looking her in the eye.
She willed herself to deliver the death blow. Her sheltered life had not prepared her for this. Tiaan had not killed a living creature before, but now she had to. She dare not risk leaving it alive to follow her.
The big eyes were mesmerising. Blue patterns ran up and down its neck. Tiaan felt an unexpected surge of compassion and wondered if the lyrinx was trying to control her. Some of them were mancers.
She plunged the spear into the wound. The lyrinx screamed and flung itself around, tearing the spear out of her hand. One thrashing leg caught her on the hip; it was like being struck by a battering ram. Before she could pick herself up, the lyrinx was standing over her, the spear still waggling in the back of its neck.
‘Glarrh!’ it rapped. ‘Minchker!’
‘I don’t understand you,’ she gasped. It was hard to make out what it was saying. A wonder it could speak at all with such an injury.
‘Take … out,’ it said in a bloody croak.
Tiaan hurt too much to move. Seizing her by the shoulder with its good hand, it squeezed so hard that her joints ground together. Claws pricked through her skin. ‘Take out!’
There was no choice. ‘I will. Let me go.’
It released the shoulder but immediately caught her leg. ‘Go behind. Take out. Do not … try again.’
She edged behind, wondering if she dared defy it. It could tear her leg right off. Eyeing the mess her spear had made, Tiaan felt nauseated. Besides, it seemed to have done little harm, though a lesser creature, a human, would have been dead. Tiaan took hold of the spear. Dare she give it one hard thrust? The lyrinx crushed her ankle, a warning. Pulling the blade out, she tossed the spear on the floor.
