Geomancer

'That rule can be broken, in an emergency.'

'Not by me.'

'A chief examiner can. You promised it to Tiaan. I heard you.'

'You didn't want me at all!' Nish cried. 'All you wanted was what you could get out of me.'

'Are you unhappy with what I've given you?'

'N-no!'

'Good, because I can't stand whiners. Were you lying to Tiaan? I hate liars more than anything, Nish. I hope you never lie to me.'

The fury of his thoughts showed on his face. 'I… I might be able to do something for you. I have… some influence with my father, and more with my mother. I think I can sway them, as long as there is something in it for them.'

Irisis did not believe him, though she had not expected much. 'There will be. Now, how shall we seal the deal?'

She looked down and he up. He put his hands around her head, drawing her down, and this time she went willingly. Irisis rolled over and shook Nish awake. He struggled out of deep slumber into listless lethargy.

She leaned on one elbow, gazing at him. 'While you were snoring, I've been thinking.'

'Oh?' he said dully.

'I have an idea who the spy might be.'

He sat up abruptly. 'Really?' He clutched at her arm, staring into her eyes. 'Who?'

She smiled, showing those teeth again. 'I think it's Tiaan.'

He burst out laughing. 'Tiaan? You'd never make a prober, Irisis.'

She hurled herself off the bed, flinging the sheet around her with a gesture simple yet elegant. She looked like a marble statue carved by one of the masters of old, though her face spoiled the pose. 'No? What was she up to yesterday?'

'Visiting her mother. She goes down every month.'

'Tiaan was a long time away.'

'Maybe she had shopping to do.'

'And maybe she was meeting an accomplice to hand over our secrets.'

'Probers require proof,' he said loftily. 'Not idle speculation born out of malice.'

'I'll prove it to you!' she hissed. 'And now, Nish dear, get out!' Nish left Irisis's rooms physically sated but more anxious than before. If she betrayed his confidence, he would suffer. No prober's position then. No future at all, just the front-line until a lyrinx tore him apart.

Irisis was wrong. He'd had his eye on Tiaan for months. There had been nothing suspicious about her behaviour. Tiaan worked night and day, talked to her solitary friend, the old miner, and occasionally visited her mother in Tiksi. That was her entire life.

If there was a spy or a saboteur, and it seemed there must be, it had to be someone else. Possibly Irisis, unlikely as that seemed. With a thousand workers in the manufactory it would not be easy to find out.

Better patch things up with her. He could not afford to make enemies, especially of someone so well connected. And as he returned to his bench the image of her long, lush body grew in his mind. Nish knew he'd struck gold with Irisis. He might never find a better lover and he wanted more of her lessons. Better humour her, take her suspicions seriously, offer to help with her career and, if necessary, hint at a subtle prober's threat behind it.

But if he found the least scrap of evidence against Irisis, he would destroy her. Not without regret, but without hesitation.

F IVE

Gi-Had's news came as a great relief to Tiaan. She had begun to doubt her own competence, but if hedrons from other manufactories were also failing there must be more to it than bad workmanship. Did the enemy have a way of disabling them from afar, or were they being sabotaged here? How could a crystal be sabotaged yet look unmarked? She had never heard of such a thing, nor had the other artisans. She was not out of trouble yet.

While everyone was at lunch, Tiaan scoured the crafter's rooms for anything he might have written on the topic. She found nothing, but did not return The Mancer's Art to its hiding place. She was not ready to give it up.

As she locked the door, Irisis appeared. 'What are you doing?' she said furiously.

'I'm trying to find out how a hedron could be sabotaged and leave no trace,' Tiaan replied, and passed by.

Something woke in the artisan's eyes. Irisis stared after Tiaan for a very long time. Tiaan could think of only one approach – to probe deeper into the faulty hedrons, even if she destroyed them in the process. Slipping her pliance over her head, she reached for the first crystal, but stopped. What if the damage spread back? Her throat went tight at the thought of losing her pliance. She dared not risk it. Instead she got out the rough design she had done in the night and set to work.

After three days of dawn-to-midnight toil Tiaan had put together a hedron probe, in two parts. The first was a globe constructed of copper wires following longitudes, latitudes and diagonals, on which were set a number of movable beads, like a model of the moons and planets in their orbits. The beads, each different, were made of carefully layered strips of metal, ceramic and glass. The other part was a helm of enamelled silver and copper lacework in delicate filigrees, designed to fit over her head. A series of springy wires went down through her hair, their flattened ends pressing against the sides and back of her head, unnervingly like a wire spider. At the front, a setting the size of a grape was designed to hold a shaped piece of crystal.

Tiaan opened the two halves of the globe and placed one of the failed hedrons inside. Inserting a piece of crystal into the setting on the helm, she put it on her head. The wires were chilly. Closing her eyes, she slid her hands around the globe and pressed her fingers in through the wires until her fingertips touched the faces of the hedron.

At once she sensed something in its heart – a tiny, shifting aura, all fuzzy and smeared out, like a comet's tail. Her fingers moved the beads one way and then another. The aura was stronger in some positions, almost non-existent in others. Once or twice it disappeared. She tried rotating various wires, then flipping them north to south. That did not help either. Her apparatus was not powerful enough to read the aura, though while viewing it she had the uncomfortable feeling that someone was looking for her. She opened her door but found the workshop empty.

Tiaan examined the small crystal in the helm. It was not a particularly strong one, just the first she'd picked up. She searched through her offcuts but found nothing better, and the basket of waste crystals was empty.

'Gol?' She looked around for the sweeper boy. He did not answer. Tiaan found him sleeping in one of the nooks behind the furnaces, his head pillowed on a burlap sack. These hidey-holes had been the favourite haunt of factory kids since the manufactory had been built. She had used this nook herself once or twice, when she was little.

Tiaan looked down at the sleeping boy. He was an angelic-looking lad – olive skin, a cheerful oval face, red lips and a noble brow capped by black curls.

'Gol!' She shook him by the shoulders.

He woke slowly, smiling before he opened his eyes, as if from a pleasant dream. When he saw her standing there, his eyes went wide.

'Artisan Tiaan!' He fell out of the niche in a comical attempt to look alert and hardworking. 'What can I do for you?'

With an effort she kept a straight face. Gol was always willing, but his work never came up to expectation. Slapdash as well as lazy, he did not know the difference between a job well done and an entirely inadequate one. A harder master would have beaten that out of him but Tiaan could not bring herself to do it.

'Where did you put the waste crystals from my workbench?'

'Around the back of the manufactory,' he said brightly. 'On the ash pile. Would you like me to show you?'

'I told you to put them in the basket in my storeroom!' she said sharply. 'If this happens again, Gol, I'll send you back to your mother.' As if she could. The poor woman was a halfwit with seven children, none good for anything but lyrinx fodder.

'I'm sorry!' He assumed an expression of profound mortification.

Gol's emotions tended to the extreme. Tiaan wondered if there was a brain in his head at all. 'Come on! I'm in a hurry!'