‘How is the flisnadr going?’ asked Anabyng, referring to the power patterner that Ryll and Liett had been trying to create for many months. ‘Have you made much progress since I left?’
Ryll took up his joint again, stared at the red flesh for a moment, then all at once let it fall on the table. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, human flesh, which he had enjoyed all his life, had lost its appeal. ‘There hasn’t been any progress, Great Anabyng. We’re bedevilled by the same problem that we’ve had from the beginning: linking the individual patterners, with their humans inside, to grow the flisnadr. And we still haven’t worked out how to use Gilhaelith’s geomantic globe to solve this problem.’
‘Then you’d better torture it out of him.’ Anabyng stripped the rest of the meat off the upper thigh, then bit off the protruding bone and crunched it noisily. ‘We’ve got to have it by the beginning of spring.’
‘What’s the matter, Anabyng?’ said Liett, devouring her haunch with gusto. ‘Why so soon?’
Anabyng’s head jerked up and his eyes glowed, though he did not speak.
Matriarch Gyrull struck the table with her fist. ‘Be so good as to use Anabyng’s proper title, daughter. He is our greatest hero of the battlefield, and the greatest in the Art, too. He earned his honour the hard way.’
Liett dipped her head in a perfunctory manner. ‘But I’m the daughter of the matriarch!’ she said sulkily.
‘Then it’s incumbent upon you to observe the proprieties, more than anyone.’
Liett’s eyes flashed. ‘You said we had to recreate ourselves to suit the new world once the war is won. That’s what I’m doing.’
‘Have you learned nothing?’ cried Gyrull. ‘You expect me to choose you as matriarch after me, yet you display few of the necessary qualities. Your lack of respect diminishes you, daughter.’
‘Name one person more suited to the honour than me,’ Liett said with an imperious tilt of the head.
‘Even Ryll is more suited to the honour than you,’ Gyrull replied deliberately, ‘and he is male.’
Anabyng spread his great maw wide, making a choking noise that Ryll could only interpret as a laugh. Ryll wasn’t laughing. To even compare him to a candidate for matriarch was mortifying. ‘Matriarch, you mock me,’ he said, hanging his head. His skin colours flashed red and purple and he felt an unusual burning sensation in his cheeks.
‘And insult me,’ cried Liett, giving him a savage look, as if he had deliberately undermined her.
‘By millennia-long custom we are led by a matriarch,’ said Anabyng, ‘and none of us would seek to change that.’
‘Nor I,’ said Gyrull. ‘I merely point out that, in the half-year since we returned from the fall of Snizort, the wingless one has set an example in the mastery of his Art, in strategic thinking about the war and the future, and in unassuming leadership. When he speaks, the common folk set down their tools and listen. You’d be well advised to follow Ryll’s example, daughter.’
Liett, incredulous, flashed out her beautiful wings and bared her teeth at Ryll, for all that she had long sought permission to mate with him, and he with her. Theirs was a volatile relationship.
‘Assuming you do wish to be a candidate for matriarch,’ said Gyrull. ‘On that display, I doubt it. Leave us, Liett.’
‘What?’ said Liett, belatedly folding her wings.
‘Leave us!’ Gyrull snapped. ‘I wish to speak about matters of importance with those mature enough to offer worthwhile opinions.’
Liett began to flounce away. She caught Ryll’s eye and he gave a little shake of the head. She snapped her teeth at him, a last display, then slunk out, head bowed.
‘I truly don’t know what I’m going to do with her,’ sighed Gyrull.
‘Send her to the battlefront,’ said Anabyng. ‘If she survives, it may make a leader of her yet. She does have a great talent, though it’s wilfully misdirected.’
‘I need her here,’ said Ryll hastily. Though he knew it made good sense, he couldn’t bear the thought of losing Liett. ‘To send her to battle, unarmoured as she is, would be to condemn her to death.’
‘Perhaps your feelings for her overpower your good sense,’ observed the black lyrinx.
‘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.’