Then the real torment began. The entire manufactory lined up, from Eiryn Muss the halfwit to the scrutator himself, and even Ullii. In stately tread, like pallbearers at a funeral, the greatest and the least went to the pile of clanker parts, selected one each, paced across to the open door of the furnace and hurled it in.
Ky-Ara screamed, and again for every succeeding part, until he no longer had the voice to make any sound at all. That process took many hours, and the line had gone round several times before they approached the end, the pair of cast-iron flywheels. Nish took hold of one, Overseer Tuniz the other. Far too heavy to lift, the flywheels were rolled across to the furnace door, where a dozen hands eased them up a sturdy plank and into the all-consuming blast.
The operator shrieked and fell unconscious. A bucket of water was hurled over him, for the trial was not finished yet. Crafter Irisis removed the controller that still hung about Ky-Ara’s neck, took it apart piece by piece, after which she and the artisans and their prentices solemnly carried the pieces to the fire. Ky-Ara writhed as they went in, but made no sound.
Last of all the scrutator came forth, bearing a knife on a square metal plate. Placing the plate on a small table, beside the hedron from Ky-Ara’s controller, he signalled to the guards. They slashed Ky-Ara’s bonds.
The scrutator beckoned. Ky-Ara lurched to the table. He was a bilious yellow-green and watery blood ran down his chin from a much-bitten tongue. The scrutator indicated the hedron with his left hand, the knife with the right. Nish held his breath. Would the operator take the ritual suicide, the dishonourable way out, or would he pick up the hedron and carry it to the furnace, then await his fate? Or might he go berserk with the knife?
The operator’s emaciated frame was wracked by a bone-wrenching shudder. His hand hovered over the knife, he looked up at the merciless face of the scrutator; then, strangely, he smiled and reached for the hedron instead.
The instant he touched the crystal Ky-Ara was transformed. He stood up straight and the anguish vanished. He seemed ennobled. Holding the hedron out in cupped hands, he bowed to the scrutator, to Overseer Tuniz and to Crafter Irisis, and finally to the mass of workers. Ky-Ara then spun on one boot-heel and marched to the furnace.
There his momentum failed. He made a half-hearted motion of his hands as if to hurl the hedron in, but could not go through with it. Ky-Ara turned back to the watchers, baring his teeth in agony. The scrutator said not a word.
Ky-Ara forced himself. Taking two steps up the plank, he darted his head forward. Nish gasped, thinking that the operator was going to throw himself in, but again Ky-Ara hesitated.
Rotating to face the manufactory, he steadily raised the hedron above his head. Against the blast from the furnace his body was just a dark shape, though the hedron, in front of the dark iron, shone brightly.
Ky-Ara was concentrating so hard that his hands shook. It was not until one of the prentice artisans collapsed, until Irisis cried out and held her temples, that Nish realised what the former operator was trying to do. He was calling power directly into the crystal, a deadly dangerous thing to do. Was he trying to destroy them all?
Nish ran forward but the scrutator caught his coat, dragging him back effortlessly. ‘I can’t afford to lose you, boy.’
The hedron began to glow, lighting up Ky-Ara’s fingers red from behind. A tendril of steam rose from his hand, then the hedron flared so brightly that Nish had to cover his eyes. Ullii screamed and curled up into a ball.
When Nish looked again the hedron had gone dull and he realised that he had not seen steam at all, but smoke. The operator’s whole body was smoking. His clothes were smouldering, and his hair. The crystal brightened again. Ky-Ara gave a shrill laugh which was cut off abruptly. Smoke wisped out of his mouth, his ears, and most gruesome of all, from his eyes. Steaming jelly oozed down his cheeks. Ky-Ara gasped, then slowly began to char from the forehead down. The burning garments fell off and he was like charcoal underneath.
The man was dead but he did not fall down. He became a spread-legged, carbonised statue, still holding the hedron above his head. Beside Nish, Ullii was screaming.
He bent down to put his hand over her nose. It did not calm her until, with a fizzing pop, the hedron burst, scattering fragments everywhere. The seeker’s screams cut off instantly.
‘A fitting end, anthracism,’ the scrutator remarked. ‘Cast the remains into the furnace!’
The remainder of the winter was a time of unending toil for everyone in the mine and the manufactory. Even though the people who’d fled from the raid were back at work, it took weeks to put the place back into operation. One of the furnaces was full of solidified iron and had to be partly demolished to get the residue out. It was not a happy time. Foreman Gryste, put in charge of the artificers after Tuniz’s elevation, drove them like slaves, pouring out bile for the least infringement of his rules. Once Nish was flogged because he failed to ask permission to use the latrine. Gryste was driven by bitterness bordering on insanity, which they had to endure in silence.
Before they could begin building clankers they had to produce all the parts that went to make one up: metal plate, gears and driving rods, housings, nuts and bolts, pins, and a thousand other objects, to say nothing of controllers. The seeker laboured just as hard in the mine, for finding crystal proved more difficult than merely pointing to the rock. However, the crystals Ullii did locate were the best they’d ever had.
In their few free moments, Nish and every other able person laboured with stone and timber for the carpenters, the masons and the metalwrights as they worked to improve the defences of the manufactory. The new gates and strengthened walls were not impregnable, but they would resist attack by the small bands that had so damaged the place before. It would take a sizeable force now.
No one had time for leisure after the work was done – they simply fell into their beds in the middle of the night, knowing they would be dragged out again before dawn. And after all his work was done, Nish still had to visit Ullii and find out if she had seen anything, and if Tiaan had reappeared on her fans. The answer was always the same. Nothing.
Nish hardly saw Irisis from one week to the next, though each time he did she looked more and more stressed. They had not been lovers since leaving on the failed hunt for Tiaan. One night he went past her door at two in the morning and noticed that her light was still on. He knocked.
‘Come in, Nish!’
She was sitting up in bed with a coat about her shoulders, staring at the wall. ‘I’m not in the mood,’ she said before he could open his mouth.
‘Neither am I.’
‘But …’ She did not go on.
‘I came because … are you all right, Irisis?’
She had drawn the coat sleeve across her face and was rubbing furiously at her eyes. ‘It’s started again.’
‘What?’
‘The sabotages. Another controller was damaged yesterday while we were out. Gryste has been making veiled threats.’
‘Against you?’ he said incredulously.
‘The saboteur isn’t Tiaan!’ Irisis said with dripping sarcasm. ‘After she went to the breeding factory I felt that it was the apothek, but he’s dead. So who is it? I once suspected Muss the halfwit, but I don’t know any more. Now I’m being blamed. Every time something has happened, I’ve been around. I have a record and I’m the obvious suspect. And if I didn’t do it, Gryste is demanding to know why I haven’t found out who did. I am in charge, after all.’
‘Gryste is a bitter man,’ said Nish. ‘Is he out to get you, do you think? Have you ever had …?’
‘He’s not my kind of man.’
‘Have you ever rejected him?’ Nish asked delicately.