Tiaan could see the smouldering sensuality in her, and the desperate ache in Ryll to mate. It made her uncomfortable.
Liett put down the caged creature she was working with and bent over to pick up something from the floor. It was a display; a tease or a taunt. Ryll let out an involuntary groan.
Liett spun around. ‘What are you …?’ She broke off, as Ryll turned his back.
‘Never!’ Liett raged in Tiaan’s language. ‘Not in a hundred eternities would I allow you, wingless one!’
Ryll’s crest coloured red, then purple. Bright spirals shimmered across his chest plates, gorgeous patterns that could only have been a reply to her taunt. He stood in a loose-limbed crouch, the colours so intense that they lit up the dim room. Tiaan had never seen anything so beautiful, futile or sad.
‘Think you that I would mate with you?’ he spat. ‘Better no mate at all than one as naked as a human. One with no colour at all. One who cannot skin-speak.’
Liett’s wings flashed out to full size, spanning half the bubble-room. They were beautiful, like pearly, translucent milk. She looked majestic. It made Ryll’s lack all the more evident. Extending one hand, waist-high, she slid her claws out like oiled machinery. ‘Open your groin plates again! I will neuter you this minute,’ she hissed.
Tiaan ducked under the bench and pulled the stool in front of her. She could imagine the ruin if they fought. Fortunately, before it could begin another lyrinx entered the room, head and shoulders bowed to pass through the opening. It was the old female, Coeland, matriarch of the spire clan.
‘How are …?’ As she took in the attitudes of Ryll and Liett, her cheek plates hardened. ‘What is it?’ Her voice was a file rasping against steel.
Ryll hung his head, his crest dulling to the colour of his skin. Liett glared at him but would not meet Coeland’s eyes. Neither answered.
‘Well?’ Coeland roared. ‘We are at war, remember?’
As the silence lengthened, it became clear that neither could reveal the source of their disagreement without losing face.
‘Very well,’ said Coeland, ‘when this is over you are both sentenced …’
She broke off, noticing Tiaan cowering under the bench. ‘Ah, human. Come out. Explain the problem.’
Tiaan remained where she was, holding the stool in front of her like a shield. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Ryll staring at her. She knew what he was thinking. Don’t reveal my shame!
Crossing the distance between them in two quick strides, Coeland caught Tiaan by the wrists. The claws dug in as she dragged Tiaan from her hide and tossed her on the bench. The huge eyes seemed to see right into her head.
‘How do I know what lyrinx fight about?’ Tiaan said, trying to evade the eyes.
‘You weren’t so coy the day you arrived.’ Coeland’s hand squeezed until Tiaan thought her wrist bones were going to splinter. Blood ebbed from the claw punctures. She cried out.
‘You may speak,’ said Ryll. ‘I would not have you harmed on my behalf.’
‘Ryll is desperate to mate,’ Tiaan gasped. ‘Liett too. But neither wishes to mate with another who is flawed. Liett flaunts herself, taunts him, and then threatens to neuter him if he approaches her.’
‘Is this true?’ Coeland asked.
‘Yes!’ Ryll said in a choked voice.
‘Yes, Wise Mother!’ said Liett. Her eyes flashed fire at Tiaan and Ryll.
Coeland sprang at Liett, striking her so hard across the flat of her forehead that the small lyrinx went tumbling across the room to land with her backside in the air. Picking Liett up, the Wise Mother held her out at arm’s length.
‘You will work with him without complaint,’ she said through bared teeth, ‘or I will have Ryll neuter you!’
‘But I am your daughter!’
‘All the more reason to do your duty,’ Coeland said coldly.
‘He is nothing but a beast.’ She tried to spit in Ryll’s direction but it merely dribbled down her chin. ‘He has no wings!’
‘And you, my unfortunate child, have skin like a human, a far worse handicap. You cannot skin-speak, and you cannot go outside without skin paste, or clothes. You have never proven your worth. Ryll, wingless though he may be, is a hero who has given everything to bring this treasure to us. You will work with him or he will neuter you at my command. Will you?’ She lowered Liett until her feet touched the floor.
‘I will,’ Liett said softly, laying her cheek submissively on her mother’s arm. But as she did so her eyes flashed at Tiaan, such a baleful glare that Tiaan had to turn away.
‘And you, Ryll?’ said Coeland.
Ryll bent until his forehead touched the Wise Mother’s feet. His crest went purple, then red, before fading to grey. ‘I will do my duty,’ he said, equally softly.
FORTY-THREE
The following day Tiaan learned what they wanted her for. The cages were constructed of finely drawn cometary iron, with floor and sometimes walls of rock glass formed by the impact. Each had particular properties that enhanced the flesh-forming Art. She was required to channel power from the Kalissin fields into the iron filaments so as to induce a smaller, more concentrated aura inside the cage. The lyrinx hoped, by this, to grow their flesh-formed creatures larger.
‘I will not do it,’ Tiaan said with a shudder.
Liett whirled, caught Tiaan’s head in the claws of one hand, and squeezed until they broke the skin in five places. Tiaan dared not move. The lyrinx was strong enough to tear her face off. Liett held her for a minute, then Ryll cried ‘Enough!’ and Tiaan was released.
‘Will you do it now?’ Ryll asked, soft-voiced.
‘No.’
Liett bared her teeth but Ryll simply plucked the amplimet from Tiaan’s fingers and placed it on a high shelf. Taking her by the arm, he led her up to her room and locked her in.
Tiaan knew what to expect now, and perhaps because of that, withdrawal seemed to come on more strongly than ever. Or perhaps it was knowing that Ryll would never relent. Within twenty-four hours she was climbing the walls. By the following dawn she began screaming, which aroused the worst memory of all, the horrible night that had seen her banished to the breeding factory. When Ryll appeared she just gave in.
One touch of the amplimet and the withdrawal was gone. Within an hour she was at the bench, ready to do whatever he required. Tiaan blocked out the betrayal – she had to.
However, after hours of trying she laid the amplimet aside, unable to visualise the strange field here. Her normal way of seeing it did not work. ‘I can’t do it.’
Ryll scowled. ‘Another attempt to delay us, artisan?’
‘It’s not like the field I’m used to,’ she stammered, afraid of their fury.
‘Try harder!’
She did, no more successfully, but that evening, fiddling with a piece of iron on the bench, Tiaan noticed that it had smaller particles clinging to it. She tried to pick it up and had to wrench it off the surface. It was a little magnet, and maybe the bench was a bigger one. Perhaps the whole spire was!
The room vanished and suddenly she saw it. She was standing inside an iron spire jutting up from the earth, its feet in fire, tip crusted with ice. She could image the heat flowing from one end to the other, radiating out in all directions before being swallowed by an ocean of frigid air.
Now Tiaan sensed a different, subtler force. The iron spire seemed to be made up of horizontal bands, oriented one way or another, out of which swept fields of force in elongated, intersecting loops. It was like … Tiaan struggled to think of any comparison. Then she had it – an exercise Crafter Barkus had given her before she even began her prenticeship.