‘What’s he doing now?’ Nish wondered aloud.
Simmo had gone inside and was sitting in his seat. The clanker’s legs moved back and forth, the front pair scratching against the counterweight.
‘Smart idea,’ said Tuniz, walking backwards along the cliff edge with her rope. ‘He’s trying to spin the counterweight around the clanker. Take hold of the braking ropes, just in case.’
They did so and braced themselves. The clanker’s metal feet screeched on the stone and it rotated the right way, a full turn. ‘Oh, brilliant work!’ exclaimed the querist. ‘Twice more and he’ll have it.’
Simmo tried again. This time it took quite a few attempts but finally the counterweight swung another turn. The legs thrashed, ground against the slowly rotating boulder and caught on something.
‘No! Back off!’ Tuniz yelled. ‘Ky-Ara, you can free it. Pull hard, that way!’
‘What’s the matter?’ called Fyn-Mah.
‘The counterweight rope’s caught around one leg. Stop or you’ll break it!’ she roared with all her might. ‘Pull hard, Ky-Ara, that way!’
Simmo did not hear and Ky-Ara just let go of his rope. The legs jerked, the rope snapped and the counterweight dropped out of its rope cage. They watched in horror as the clanker fell, slowly at first, faster as it ripped the twisted ropes apart. The broken end whipped up, lashing about before it went through the pulley.
The clanker rolled over in the air and landed upside down on one of the boulders, splitting open down the middle. Armour and leg parts went flying in all directions. The pair of iron flywheels spun across the snow, out of sight. The smash came echoing up. Silence fell.
Irisis hopped to the edge on her crutches, then shook her head. Nish caught a faint smile on Ky-Ara’s face, but when he checked again the operator had composed himself.
They looked at one another. ‘Simmo’s dead, of course,’ said Fyn-Mah.
‘The impact would have broken every bone in his body,’ Tuniz replied. ‘Now what do we do?’
‘We ski back to the ice houses,’ Fyn-Mah ground out. ‘We put Ky-Ara’s controller into one of the clankers and he brings it back. And this time we work out how to get the damn thing down without breaking it!’ Her voice was as bleak as ice. No doubt she was wondering how to explain yet another disaster on this catastrophically failed hunt.
Nish and Irisis exchanged glances. ‘I’d be keeping a close watch on our operator if I were you,’ she said quietly. ‘Ky-Ara did that deliberately.’
‘Yes,’ said Nish. ‘He knew he’d never be given another clanker.’ That reminded Nish of his own part in the affair. Had he not pressured Ky-Ara, the clanker would not have been lost, nor Tiaan, nor her crystal. And back at the manufactory, at the enquiry into the failed expedition, his, Nish’s, folly would be revealed. What then? He was doomed.
It took two days to get the other clanker down and there were many times when Nish thought it was going to end up in the same condition as Simmo’s. The weather stayed unchanged, bitterly cold with gale-force winds. Nish had frostbite on the tip of his nose, and the querist in her fingertips, by the time they untied the machine at the bottom of the cliff.
They climbed in but it refused to go, for the oil had set hard and in the blizzard that followed they could not even see who they were standing next to. Fortunately there was dry scrub in the ravines cutting into the plateau. They made a fire there, a roaring blaze under an overhang, or they would not have survived.
Irisis had not mentioned the lost crystal again. She was recovering well, hobbling about on her crutches, though she would not walk unaided for at least six weeks. However, she suffered her disability without complaint and was the most cheerful of the crew except for Ky-Ara, who was in ecstasies of bliss at having a clanker again. He had quite recovered, apart from occasional headaches and memory loss. There were times when he had to ask the names of the people around him. He often asked what had happened to Simmo.
Ullii had retreated into herself since the attack. The horrors of the battle at the ice house, or perhaps the flesh-forming, had rewoken some primal fear in her. She spent the days with mask on and earplugs in, and often a black silk bag over her head. Nish did not try to bring her out. He no longer had the strength. He asked her several times a day if she could see Tiaan. The answer was always no.
The greatest worry was Jal-Nish. The perquisitor’s shoulder and chest were already healing but his face had not. The rents were hideous, weeping wounds, so ghastly that no one could bear to look at him, least of all his son. Worse, Jal-Nish had caught a brain fever that made him rant, curse and attack whoever came near. Twice, after taking food to his father, Nish had to have the iron fingers prised from his throat. The perquisitor was surprisingly strong, considering the butchery that had been done on his shoulder.
Irisis was his main target. Sometimes Jal-Nish cursed her for hours without stopping, in a gurgling, pus-sodden voice. He blamed her for seducing his idiot son, for what she had done to Tiaan, but most of all for saving his life instead of letting him die.
Irisis seemed unaffected by the abuse. She took her turn changing his dressings until the day the weather turned and they were about to head for home. She limped up, carrying a mug of hot broth for Jal-Nish. He threw it in her face, knocked her off her crutches, and was about to grind his boot into her throat when Nish and Ky-Ara dragged him off.
‘Slutting bitch!’ Jal-Nish screamed. ‘You’re a liar and a fraud, Irisis. I’ll see you in the breeding factory when I get back. You’ll never be an artisan again.
He ranted and cursed, and kept it up for an hour until Ky-Ara, the only one able to get on with him, took him tea doped with nigah syrup. After that they kept him sedated twenty-four hours a day and his good arm was bound to his side.
Three weeks had passed since the battle at the ice houses, before they came in sight of the manufactory, and such labouring days they were in the bitterness of the mountain winter that many times Nish thought they would not get back at all. No one travelled up here at this time of year. Had the clanker not been so well built they would all have perished.
Finally they found their way back over the mountain through which the mine tunnels were delved and looked down to see the grey bulk of the manufactory on the other side of the valley. They had been gone for more than a month.
Irisis levered herself out of the back of the clanker. As Nish handed her the crutches there were tears in his eyes. Everyone stared down at the manufactory. The only one not glad to see it was Ky-Ara. He looked agitated, and though it was as cold as ever he was sweating and casting anxious glances at the querist.
‘Should not the furnace chimneys be smoking?’ Fyn-Mah said, coming up between them.
‘They must have gotten slack while the overseer’s been away,’ Nish replied lightly.
Fyn-Mah held a spyglass to her left eye. It moved slowly across the landscape, then the hand holding it fell to her side. ‘There’s not a chimney smoking anywhere. Not at the manufactory, the galleys, the laundries or dormitories, or even down at the mining village.’ Her voice cracked. Nish caught her eye and her self-control failed. ‘The lyrinx have come!’ Fyn-Mah looked as if she was going to cry. ‘All those children.’
‘Damned hypocrite!’ Irisis muttered.
‘Dangerous ground, artisan,’ said Fyn-Mah glacially.
Irisis yawned in her face. She did not seem to worry. ‘What do you care for the children? I don’t see any evidence of you doing your duty.’
Fyn-Mah crushed one fist into another, then pulled the tall woman to one side.
‘How dare you lecture me on duty, after the crimes you’ve committed?’