Geomancer

They ran out. The agonising silence dragged on. The foreman stood as rigid as a post. The distinctive clove odour of nigah permeated the room.

Nish could not bear to hope. Finally he heard the clatter of running feet and the soldiers and recorders reappeared. Shortly after that, Ullii came in. Her light step made no sound at all.

'Well?' said Flydd.

'We found nothing,' said the first soldier.

'You witnessed this?' Xervish demanded of the recorders. 'The search was thorough?'

'It was just as they say…'

'Damn you all!' cried Gryste. 'I'll have reparation for this insult to my honour!'

'Indeed you will,' said the scrutator. 'If you prove to be innocent.'

'The soldiers found nothing,' snarled Gryste.

'And the seeker? Did she seek out what was hidden?'

'She did, surr,' said the recorders together.

'Come up, Ullii,' said Flydd. 'Did you find nothing at all?'

She crept up. 'Only this.' She took a sagging leather bag out of her shirt.

'It was under the floor, concealed by a charm,' said the chronicler.

The scrutator poured the contents onto the floor, a heap of ringing platinum. His eyes met those of the foreman, and such a look of contempt passed across his face that Nish's skin crawled. 'I wondered how you could support your nigah habit on foreman's wages,' said Flydd.

The foreman did not reply. His eyes darted this way and that.

'You're a failure of a man, aren't you, Gryste? You were a lousy foreman, a disastrous sergeant, and then a lousy foreman again.'

'Everyone was against me, surr. People are always trying to bring me down.'

'It's always someone else's fault, isn't it?'

'It is, it is!'

'Have you anything to say for yourself, Gryste?'

'The seeker is lying, surr. They're all lying. They've never liked me.'

'I don't like you either. And this is not your only crime, is it? You sabotaged Tiaan's crystals. You poisoned her with calluna. You killed the apothek to stop him talking.'

Gryste said nothing at all.

'Traitor Gryste, you will be executed tomorrow for grave treachery, by the method prescribed for your craft and rank. What is the method, clerk?'

She whispered something.

'How appropriate,' said Flydd with a death's-head smile. 'Traitor Gryste, you will be fed into the grinding mill. Take him down!'

The foreman was dragged off, wailing and screaming obscenities. 'Crafter Irisis,' Flydd continued, 'the unproven charges are dismissed. Sentence for the proven charges is suspended for one year. After that time, if you have met all your goals as crafter, they will be stricken from the record. This trial is ended.'

Nish went up to the bench. 'What about Muss, surr?' he said quietly as everyone was filing out. 'We can't afford -'

'Muss has been my prober here for seven years,' said Flydd, equally softly. 'And a damn good one. No one ever broke his cover. You could take a lesson there, boy. He won't be seen in this province again.'

F IFTY – T WO

After some six weeks of slave labour the work slackened. It had to, for everyone was so exhausted that they were making mistakes, and the toll of injured workers was horrific. They began to work six days a week and take a half day's rest on the seventh. On the second of those half days off, as Nish was sitting with Ullii in a darkened room, she sprang up. As usual, she wore nothing but spider-silk knickers and a sleeveless blouse. Her skin gleamed in the dim light.

'I can SEE her!'

'Ullii!' He leapt up to embrace her and she threw him against the wall. He'd forgotten how sensitive her skin was.

'I'm sorry!' He picked himself up. 'I was excited.'

'Your coat is like hooks dragging through my skin. Did I hurt you? I am trying hard, Nish.'

Ullii was much better now. She hardly ever used the mask these days, preferring goggles most of the time. Once or twice she had even been outside without earmuffs or plugs. It had been a tremendous ordeal but she had coped. Her brain could deal with one overloaded sense as long as the others were shielded. When she wore earmuffs, bright light did not hurt her so much. Only her sensitivity to smell had not changed. If anything it had grown more sensitive, as if to compensate. Often the tiniest of odours, that no one else could smell, would set her off. Outside her room she wore plugs in her nose.

Nish wondered how she had managed the changes in her life. Was it because he had befriended her, and Irisis defended her? Certainly she had seen more kindness and caring in the past months than in the rest of her life, and maybe that had helped. She had discovered that not everyone wanted to use her.

But of course I do want to use her, Nish thought. He was not blind to his own failings. He lusted after her small, sweet body every night; the soft, almost colourless hair, the baby-smooth skin, the small breasts and full thighs. He wanted nothing but to sate himself in her and to hear her cry out and wrap herself around him.

'I can see her,' Ullii reminded him, dragging him out of his unhealthy obsession.

'Where is she?'

She pointed south-west.

'Are you sure?' he said foolishly.

She continued to point.

'How far is it?' An equally foolish question.

'I don't know. A long way.'

'When did you first see her?'

'In the middle of the night. She hasn't been there for months, then last night she appeared, like a flower opening. Her crystal was so bright that I lost all the knots around her. I saw lakes and mountains too.'

That was not much help – to the south-west there were lakes and mountains for hundreds of leagues. 'I'd better find the scrutator.' He had been to the manufactory twice in the past month and was due to leave today.

She shrank back against the wall. 'Your friend, Xervish,' said Nish.

She slowly relaxed, then gave a tentative smile. After searching everywhere, Nish found the withered little man at the front gate.

'Yes?' Xervish said sharply. 'Make it snappy, artificer! The weather is closing in and I must be in Tiksi tonight. Another field has failed and we don't know why.'

'The seeker has seen Tiaan.'

The scrutator gave a great sigh. 'Which direction?' Anybody else would have said 'Where?'.

'South-west. A long way.'

The scrutator nodded, scribbled a note and handed it to the captain of his guard. The man saluted and turned down the path. Xervish came inside. He had the most peculiar, lurching walk, as if his bones had been dislocated in the torture chamber and not put back together properly.

'Let's see what we can find out. Not a word to anyone!' Ullii greeted the scrutator cheerfully, but despite much urging and coaxing she could tell him no more than she had told Nish. Finally she became distressed, so they left her.

'What would I not give for one of the farspeakers of old,' said Xervish heavily.

'What were they?' Nish had never heard of such a thing.

'A way of talking from one side of Lauralin to the other. Golias the Mad invented them near three thousand years ago, using special crystals and wires.'

'What happened to them?'

'He was assassinated to get the secret, but the spark soon went out of the crystals and no one else could make them work, or find the source of them. Golias was a mancer and no doubt some great spell drove the farspeakers, but the spell and the secret died with him. If we had them now…'

'I don't see how it would help us,' said Nish.

'And you an artificer!' Xervish walked off in the direction of the refectory. Nish followed.

The scrutator selected baked vegetables, steamed millet and a small piece of poached fish from the trays, ladled the fiery red sauce called yalp over it, and carried it to a table. Nish took a small bowl of candied pears and another of rose-petal tea, since he'd already dined.

'If you would explain, surr,' Nish said tentatively, standing by the scrutator's table with his bowls.

'Sit down, lad!' Xervish ate quickly, using the old-fashioned eating sticks rather than fork and knife. His table manners made Nish cringe but he made allowances – his scribing days had taught him that what was ill-mannered in one place could be required behaviour in another. Besides, the scrutator was of another age, and he could decide Nish's fate with a snap of his fingers. And yet, Nish sensed that here was a man much more flexible than his father. A man always prepared to listen.