It would make all the difference in the world, Tiaan thought, if one of you actually showed you were sorry. Just you, Minis. Please.
Minis stared at the child. A tear ran from one eye, and he seemed to come to a decision. His eyes slid away and she knew she had lost everything.
'I am truly sorry, Tiaan.' He went back up the ladder to stand beside Vithis.
The constructs began to move, all in the same instant. She stood where she was, daring them to run her down and not caring if they did. Her eyes were fixed on Minis but he was staring straight ahead.
The front rank split and went around her. The succeeding ranks followed, heading down to the broken wall. They moved out onto the ramp of stone and ice, onto the glacier, and around the corner towards the lowlands.
'Curse you!' she screamed. Laying Haani's body down gently, Tiaan ran back, gathered up the bags of platinum and hurled them after Minis's construct. It did not help. Sitting beside the dead child she took the slender, bloodless hand in her lap. All for nothing. Less than nothing. She had bought their lives with Haani's. So many people had died that she might bring the amplimet to this place. Fluuni, Jiini, Lyssa, Joeyn; whole squads of soldiers and many lyrinx too. She saw the broken bodies and knew that the price was too high.
The constructs kept coming for an hour and a half. While they were still going around her she stood up, Haani's body in her arms.
'I swear by this dead child,' she whispered, 'that I will never love again! I curse you, Minis, and all your line, until eternity. I will be revenged on you who have so betrayed me. You will live to regret that you left me alive, noble Aachim!'
It made her feel no better. Staring blindly after them, she was roused by the crash and grind of metal. Three constructs, locked together, hung on the lip of the gate. Another nudged them over. They struck the floor and broke apart. Aachim scrambled out and leapt onto the sides of the other constructs. The procession continued, another twenty-two machines, and that was all.
Tiaan stumbled to the gate, carrying the child. Looking up inside she saw a long tunnel, a wormhole curving to infinity. There were hundreds more constructs in it but they could not get out.
The surface of the gate shimmered with colour and began to break up. Quite suddenly, it vanished. Again she heard that awful wailing and knew that another host of Aachim had been lost in the void.
The final twenty-two constructs formed a line. They flashed beams vertically at the ceiling; a signal, or a requiem. Then they turned and followed the others out of Tirthrax.
As Tiaan watched the last machine disappear through the side of the mountain, another horror struck her.
'We have a world to make our own,' Vithis had said. Such a force as was assembled here would have taken years to create. All this must have been planned long ago. They had used her from the very beginning. Minis had not loved her at all. The Aachim had told him what to say and do, every word of it. She had betrayed her world, for nothing. Nish, hiding in the shadows, stared at the rank after rank of black machines, standing hip-high above the floor. They looked vaguely like clankers though even from this distance he could tell how superior they were to the clankers he had worked on. A keen student of the Histories. Nish knew what they were.
They were constructs, made to the pattern of the one Rulke the Charon had built over two hundred years ago. Nish did not know who was inside them; he was too far away to tell. He assumed they were lyrinx, or their allies. However, it was clear that they represented the greatest threat Santhenar had ever faced, and that Tiaan had helped to bring them here. Traitorous bitch! His duty was self-evident. He must take her back for justice, no matter what it involved.
The constructs were moving again, going around Tiaan and heading towards the broken entrance. He pulled Ullii down the stairs until just their eyes peeped over.
Nish counted them past, noting how many there were, what size and how armed, and estimating the number of enemy that might be inside. The constructs numbered more than eleven thousand; the enemy a hundred and fifty thousand at the very least. That was priceless, strategic information, perhaps more important than capturing Tiaan. He must survive to get it home. Where had they come from? The armada was large and potent enough to deliver the final blow to humanity.
'What was that?' Ullii asked as the last construct went by.
Nish marked the direction on his chart. When he looked back towards the gate, it was gone. Tiaan was too.
'The end of humanity.'