Again he broke off. Out of the corner of his eye Nish saw Klarm slide out from under the tablecloth, stand up and bowl something towards them, underarm. Nish couldn’t tell what it was at first, but as it sped across the ground he realised that it was Golias’s globe. What did he hope to achieve? The globe had a self-powered crystal at its core, but that was all.
Jal-Nish watched it all the way. Nish exchanged glances with Irisis. He expected Golias’s globe to explode, but it simply rolled up to Jal-Nish, who stopped it with his foot and stood looking down at it.
‘Is this the best your half-sized ally can do?’ Jal-Nish sneered. He thrust one hand into the tears. ‘There’s no harm in the globe. It’s not been booby-trapped in any way.’
No, Klarm wouldn’t be that crude. He would use its true nature, but how? The farspeaker was just eight concentric glass spheres filled with quicksilver, and the crystal at the centre. The self-powered crystal.
Jal-Nish was about to kick the globe out of the way when Yggur moved his bound hands in a particular way. The globe instantly glowed hot, then its layers split from the inside to the outside and a cone of boiling quicksilver burst out.
It caught Jal-Nish across the exposed cheek and the platinum mask. He reeled back, screaming and tearing at the mask. The soldiers holding Flydd also went down, letting out anguished squeals, for boiling quicksilver was hotter than molten lead. Flydd had known to turn his head away in time, but drops of quicksilver burned smoking holes through his coat. Three of the troops by Nish and Yggur also fell, struck down by crossbow fire.
‘Run!’ Klarm roared. The table was thrown over and his three soldiers fired from behind it. Klarm pointed a glassy rod and the remaining soldiers went down like a series of coloured dolls.
Jal-Nish had the platinum mask off and was clawing at the festering hideousness that it concealed, making a keening noise like an injured beast as he tried to rend out the embedded, burning globules. Bloody, smoking welts were rising across his mouth and cheeks, and the area that had been beneath the overheated mask looked red-raw.
Flydd hacked through his bonds with a shard of glass and tried to get to the tears, but Jal-Nish’s scrabbling fingers reached them first, throwing up a clear barrier around himself. He crouched on the ground inside it, squealing in agony, but he still had his hand in the tears.
‘Come on!’ shouted Flydd. ‘We can’t do anything here.’ He began to lurch in the direction of the air-dreadnought, his cloak trailing fumes.
Klarm appeared beside Yggur, slashing his bonds, then those of the other prisoners. Yggur took off like a hare for the air-dreadnought, his long legs flashing. Troist and Fyn-Mah ran too. Flangers was running towards the crowd. Irisis and Nish followed.
As they were three-quarters of the way to the craft, one of the guards rose shakily to his knees and sent his sword spinning through the air. The back of the blade struck Nish behind the knees and he went down. He tried to get up but his whole leg had gone numb.
Flydd, Yggur, Fyn-Mah and Troist were climbing into the air-dreadnought. Klarm wasn’t far behind, not looking back. Flangers was running around the edge of the crowd, carrying a silent Chissmoul. Irisis glanced over her shoulder, saw Nish on the ground and skidded to a stop.
‘No, Irisis,’ he screamed. ‘Go, go!’
She came running back and helped him up. ‘Put your arm across my shoulder.’
‘I can’t walk,’ Nish said. His father was already on his feet. Two more of the guards were up now, and staggering towards them. ‘Run, Irisis. He won’t hurt me, but he’ll flay you alive.’
‘I’m not leaving you,’ she said stubbornly. ‘We can still get there.’
‘Please, Irisis,’ he begged. The soldiers were recovering, starting to trot.
‘No, Nish.’ She picked him up in her arms and headed for the air-dreadnought as fast as she could go.
Nish looked back. It would be a near thing. The soldiers were recovering rapidly, running now. He looked for help at the air-dreadnought, but Klarm had just cast his useless crystal on the ground and the others weren’t armed. Jal-Nish’s guards had cut down Klarm’s soldiers, and now the air-dreadnought began to lift at the stern.
‘Put me down, Irisis. Please.’
She glanced over her shoulder and tried to run harder, but before they were even close to the air-dreadnought, the guards had their swords at Irisis’s throat.
She clung to Nish’s neck for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Ah, Irisis,’ he wept. ‘Why did you come back? He hates you more than anyone.’
‘Because you’re my dearest friend, Nish,’ she said simply, ‘and I love you as I’ve never loved anyone before. I couldn’t leave you, even at the cost of my life.’
The air-dreadnought rose into the air, turned away and disappeared over the trees.
The guards tied Nish and Irisis’s hands and dragged them back to the middle of the square, where Jal-Nish still swayed inside his protective barrier. He had forced the mask back on over his swollen, raw cheeks. Blood formed congealed drops on his chin. Quicksilver had puddled at his feet and its vapour drifted around the inside of the barrier. He pried his eye open and fixed on Irisis.
‘Put her there,’ he slurred through lips that were bursting apart.
Jal-Nish pointed to the glassy patch on the ground, no longer molten but still hot. They stood her on it.
‘Irisis Stirm,’ said Jal-Nish, allowing the barrier to fade away. ‘Two years I’ve waited for this day.’
‘I’ll bet you have – I know your kind all too well,’ she said with an arrogant lift of her chin.
‘And I know yours. The world was a better place when women knew their place in it. Cryl-Nish’s mother taught me that lesson. She only wanted me for what I had, and once I became this maimed monster, in the service of my world, she cast me out.’
‘You were a monster long before Ryll put his claws in you,’ said Irisis.
‘And you were a liar, a cheat and a fraud, as the record of your trial at the manufactory shows only too well. For fifteen years you’ve been an artisan under false pretences, an offence punishable by death.’
‘I recovered my powers long ago. Besides, the war is over, Jal-Nish. It doesn’t matter any more.’
‘The war is only just beginning, and the first stage is to rid the world of those who betrayed it: you and Tiaan most of all. You destroyed my life, though that matters not. You conspired to save the debauched, depraved, flesh-forming lyrinx, the greatest abominations this world has ever seen. You cozened and coddled and yes, maybe even mated with them –’
‘You’re sick, Jal-Nish. You’re mad.’
‘You set the lyrinx free!’ he screamed. ‘You gave them a world of their own, and one day they’ll be back. For that alone you must die. Beg and grovel all you like –’
Smoke was rising from Irisis’s boots but she did not flinch. ‘Then die I will,’ she said calmly, ‘but it won’t make a jot of difference.’
‘Oh, I think it will,’ he hissed.
‘I go to my death knowing that I’ve fought for what was right and good,’ she said. ‘Whereas you, Jal-Nish, if you live to be a hundred, will always know that you gambled with the lives of your soldiers, lost, then ran like a cur from the battlefield. That’s the kind of man you are, and the Histories will tell of it long after my name is forgotten.’
How Irisis had grown from the petty, mean-spirited woman Nish had once known. She was entirely selfless and noble now, and it threw Jal-Nish’s character into sharp relief.
He knew it, too. He could not meet her eyes for the moment, but then he said, ‘The means is justification enough. I’ve won the world, and he who owns the world writes the Histories.’
‘May you have joy of your victory, you craven dog! I’d sooner die than live in a world of your shaping.’
‘And die you will. The greatest pleasure of victory is revenge, and mine will be unending. Guards!’