‘What a racket,’ said Nish, putting his hands over his ears as it turned ponderously into the wind. The rotors made a squealing clatter that grated on the nerves.
‘There’s no badge or insignia,’ said Flydd, putting down his mug. ‘But it came from the north-east.’
Soldiers lined the sides, dressed in the same red with black jags. It was not a uniform that anyone recognised. Red helms covered their heads, the nosepieces extending down to their upper lips.
The air-dreadnought settled in an empty space on the far side of the square, its triple keels crunching on the gravel. The rotors squealed into silence. A board was lowered, like the gangplank of a ship. Everyone was staring now.
A file of soldiers marched down and stood to one side. Each was armed with a crossbow of extravagant design, and a long sword. Another file took their position on the other side.
Tiaan rose to her feet, trying to see. The plank was empty. No, someone now appeared at the top. A man, though not a tall one. He too was masked and clad in red, with a red cape. A golden chain was suspended from the back of his neck, the ends passing over his shoulders. On either end, at breast height, dangled a bag of black silk or velvet.
The man paused at the base of the plank, nodded to the guards and turned across the square. They fell in behind him.
Xervish Flydd dropped his knife. Irisis had gone white. Nish’s hair was standing on end. He looked as if he had just seen the dead rise. He ran out into the open.
‘Father?’
The man turned towards him and the sun flashed off the platinum mask that covered two-thirds of his face. He had only one arm.
‘I thought you were dead, Father,’ Nish said. ‘And eaten.’
‘I dare say you hoped I was,’ said Jal-Nish Hlar.
Xervish Flydd lurched around the left-hand end of the table, trying to look self-possessed but not quite pulling it off. ‘Quite a plan, Jal-Nish. Even I was fooled.’
Jal-Nish stopped twenty paces away. ‘Not the most difficult of tasks, Xervish.’
‘Only my friends call me Xervish.’
‘You’ve told me that before.’
‘And I dare say those are the tears of the node that exploded at Snizort. The lyrinx didn’t have them at all.’
Jal-Nish touched the black bags, which were giving off a humming sound, and it rose in pitch. ‘Do you hear the song of the tears? I don’t bother with the paltry fields – I carry the power of a node with me wherever I go.’
‘It was you who brought down Vithis’s watch-tower,’ said Nish.
‘I needed to test the power of the tears,’ said his father, as if no other explanation was necessary. But then he added, the visible part of his jaw tightening, ‘The Aachim had no right to come here.’
‘And you who flooded the Dry Sea.’
‘To drown the enemy. Would that I had made up for your negligence sooner, Flydd. You trapped the enemy and failed to crush them.’
‘And you directed the Well at us,’ said Nish.
Jal-Nish waved a careless hand, as if none of these staggering achievements were of significance to a man who had mastered the tears.
‘How did you get away?’ said Nish. ‘I saw your boot at Gumby Marth, with just a gnawed shinbone sticking out of it.’
‘One shin looks much like another after the lyrinx have been at it,’ Jal-Nish said. ‘You always were slapdash, Cryl-Nish. I didn’t think you’d look too closely.’
‘And then you ran like a cur from the battlefield,’ said Nish, ‘leaving your brave men to their doom.’
Jal-Nish’s head jerked up, but he recovered almost at once. ‘When the battle is lost, a prudent man withdraws. And it was lost because of you.’
‘Me?’ cried Nish, balling up his fists.
‘I knew the lyrinx were stone-formed into the pinnacles,’ said Jal-Nish. ‘I was waiting for them, but your clumsy flight woke them before I was ready.’
‘You – you dare blame me –’ Nish was so incoherent with rage that he couldn’t get the words out.
‘What a practised liar you are, Jal-Nish,’ said Flydd. ‘Had I realised it when you were a lowly perquisitor, I would have made sure you rose no higher.’
Jal-Nish didn’t bother to argue, though his eye shone like a viper’s.
‘Still, I’m glad you’ve come,’ Flydd went on. ‘The tears will come in handy in the reconstruction.’
‘Oh, indeed. I’ve already begun to make plans for that.’
Another chill prickled the top of Tiaan’s head.
‘You won’t be involved in it, Jal-Nish,’ said Flydd. ‘The old Council is no more.’
‘I thoroughly approve. It outlived its purpose long ago.’
‘And the governors are even now meeting to carve the world up between them.’
‘The world doesn’t need governors either.’
‘If you would hand over the tears, Jal-Nish,’ said Flydd.
Jal-Nish pulled one black bag away and a gasp rippled around the square. On the end of the chain was a roiling, silvery black ball, like boiling quicksilver. He plunged his hand into it.
Flydd choked, clutched at his throat and fell down. His heels drummed on the ground for a minute, then Jal-Nish withdrew his hand. It came out slowly, as if the tears were reluctant to let go their hold, and wisps of silvery vapour clung to it. His skin was white and flaky, the nails as vermilion as his cape.
Jal-Nish smiled. ‘It would be so easy, Xervish, but I don’t plan to make it easy for any of you. You betrayed me, though I can forgive that – I’m a most forgiving man. But you also betrayed our world and that I can never forgive.’
‘We saved it,’ said Yggur, pushing back his chair and coming forward, ‘and that’s something the scrutators never looked like doing. It was the enemy, after all, who kept them in power.’
‘Yggur,’ said Jal-Nish, turning in his direction. ‘A failure from the past presumes to lecture the future.’
‘You might find me a more difficult failure to deal with,’ said Yggur with a glance at Flydd, who still lay on the gravel.
‘I doubt that.’ Jal-Nish plunged his hand into the ball again and within a minute Yggur was stretched on the ground beside Flydd.
Jal-Nish looked around, his eye met Tiaan’s, and she felt a sick numbness creep over her. ‘Artisan Tiaan – I’ll deal with you later. I’ve a special torment reserved for you.’ His eyes flicked to Irisis and his stare became so cold that ice formed in Tiaan’s belly. ‘And as for you, Irisis Stirm,’ he hissed, ‘you’re the one I came all this way for. In my two years of agony, yours is the one face that has kept me going. Guards – secure them.’
Tiaan could hardly stand up. It was the end of the world. Her stomach felt as if it was going to drop out of her belly. She looked around for help but everyone seemed as stunned as she was, and Jal-Nish’s troops were already moving in. No one had brought weapons to the luncheon anyway.
She could see everyone but Klarm, who’d been at the end of the table. But even if he’d run for the army, they wouldn’t get here in time. The camp was half a league out of town.
Yggur or Flydd, she could not tell which, began to moan, and then a curious thing happened. A fracas broke out across the square and the moment Jal-Nish turned that way the crowd, which had been hanging back, flowed around the table like a multicoloured tide.
A hand caught her by the shoulder – Nish. ‘This way, Tiaan.’
She eased further into the crowd with him, trying not to be noticed. Gilhaelith was just ahead, bent low. Merryl and Irisis were by him, Malien too.
‘Malien thinks you might be able to do something in the thapter, Tiaan,’ said Nish. ‘You’ve still got the amplimet, haven’t you?’