Nish went up to the bench. ‘What about Muss, surr?’ he said quietly as everyone was filing out. ‘We can’t afford –’
‘Muss has been my prober here for seven years,’ said Flydd, equally softly. ‘And a damn good one. No one ever broke his cover. You could take a lesson there, boy. He won’t be seen in this province again.’
FIFTY–TWO
After some six weeks of slave labour the work slackened. It had to, for everyone was so exhausted that they were making mistakes, and the toll of injured workers was horrific. They began to work six days a week and take a half day’s rest on the seventh. On the second of those half days off, as Nish was sitting with Ullii in a darkened room, she sprang up. As usual, she wore nothing but spider-silk knickers and a sleeveless blouse. Her skin gleamed in the dim light.
‘I can SEE her!’
‘Ullii!’ He leapt up to embrace her and she threw him against the wall. He’d forgotten how sensitive her skin was.
‘I’m sorry!’ He picked himself up. ‘I was excited.’
‘Your coat is like hooks dragging through my skin. Did I hurt you? I am trying hard, Nish.’
Ullii was much better now. She hardly ever used the mask these days, preferring goggles most of the time. Once or twice she had even been outside without earmuffs or plugs. It had been a tremendous ordeal but she had coped. Her brain could deal with one overloaded sense as long as the others were shielded. When she wore earmuffs, bright light did not hurt her so much. Only her sensitivity to smell had not changed. If anything it had grown more sensitive, as if to compensate. Often the tiniest of odours, that no one else could smell, would set her off. Outside her room she wore plugs in her nose.
Nish wondered how she had managed the changes in her life. Was it because he had befriended her, and Irisis defended her? Certainly she had seen more kindness and caring in the past months than in the rest of her life, and maybe that had helped. She had discovered that not everyone wanted to use her.
But of course I do want to use her, Nish thought. He was not blind to his own failings. He lusted after her small, sweet body every night; the soft, almost colourless hair, the baby-smooth skin, the small breasts and full thighs. He wanted nothing but to sate himself in her and to hear her cry out and wrap herself around him.
‘I can see her,’ Ullii reminded him, dragging him out of his unhealthy obsession.
‘Where is she?’
She pointed south-west.
‘Are you sure?’ he said foolishly.
She continued to point.
‘How far is it?’ An equally foolish question.
‘I don’t know. A long way.’
‘When did you first see her?’
‘In the middle of the night. She hasn’t been there for months, then last night she appeared, like a flower opening. Her crystal was so bright that I lost all the knots around her. I saw lakes and mountains too.’
That was not much help – to the south-west there were lakes and mountains for hundreds of leagues. ‘I’d better find the scrutator.’ He had been to the manufactory twice in the past month and was due to leave today.
She shrank back against the wall. ‘Your friend, Xervish,’ said Nish.
She slowly relaxed, then gave a tentative smile. After searching everywhere, Nish found the withered little man at the front gate.
‘Yes?’ Xervish said sharply. ‘Make it snappy, artificer! The weather is closing in and I must be in Tiksi tonight. Another field has failed and we don’t know why.’
‘The seeker has seen Tiaan.’
The scrutator gave a great sigh. ‘Which direction?’ Anybody else would have said ‘Where?’.
‘South-west. A long way.’
The scrutator nodded, scribbled a note and handed it to the captain of his guard. The man saluted and turned down the path. Xervish came inside. He had the most peculiar, lurching walk, as if his bones had been dislocated in the torture chamber and not put back together properly.
‘Let’s see what we can find out. Not a word to anyone!’
Ullii greeted the scrutator cheerfully, but despite much urging and coaxing she could tell him no more than she had told Nish. Finally she became distressed, so they left her.
‘What would I not give for one of the farspeakers of old,’ said Xervish heavily.
‘What were they?’ Nish had never heard of such a thing.
‘A way of talking from one side of Lauralin to the other. Golias the Mad invented them near three thousand years ago, using special crystals and wires.’
‘What happened to them?’
‘He was assassinated to get the secret, but the spark soon went out of the crystals and no one else could make them work, or find the source of them. Golias was a mancer and no doubt some great spell drove the farspeakers, but the spell and the secret died with him. If we had them now …’
‘I don’t see how it would help us,’ said Nish.
‘And you an artificer!’ Xervish walked off in the direction of the refectory. Nish followed.
The scrutator selected baked vegetables, steamed millet and a small piece of poached fish from the trays, ladled the fiery red sauce called yalp over it, and carried it to a table. Nish took a small bowl of candied pears and another of rose-petal tea, since he’d already dined.
‘If you would explain, surr,’ Nish said tentatively, standing by the scrutator’s table with his bowls.
‘Sit down, lad!’ Xervish ate quickly, using the old-fashioned eating sticks rather than fork and knife. His table manners made Nish cringe but he made allowances – his scribing days had taught him that what was ill-mannered in one place could be required behaviour in another. Besides, the scrutator was of another age, and he could decide Nish’s fate with a snap of his fingers. And yet, Nish sensed that here was a man much more flexible than his father. A man always prepared to listen.
Xervish dipped his finger in the water at the bottom of the steamed millet. A few grains stuck to the twisted digit. On the tabletop he drew a series of arcs to show the coastline, a sweeping curve that was the line of the Great Mountains, the linked ovals of the inland seas of Tallallamel and Milmillamel and, between the seas and the mountains, the wilderness of lake and forest that made up the frigid lands of Tarralladell and Mirrilladell.
‘We are here.’ The scrutator stabbed a finger at the eastern end of the mountains. ‘The seeker said south-west, which could mean anywhere along this line. But if … if we had a farspeaker, and could speak with another seeker a long way away …’ his finger wandered across the seas to land on the other side, ‘… say, here, at Drow, and if that that seeker could find Tiaan, say, a little east of north …’ He drew a line in that direction until it intersected the other line. ‘There she is!’
Nish was stunned. The idea was so simple, so obvious, yet he had never thought of it. His respect for the man went up.
Xervish swept his hand across the surface, obliterating the marks. ‘But of course we don’t have farspeakers, and even if we did, how would we explain to the other seeker how to sense out Tiaan, one particular person in millions? It is, I’m afraid, quite impossible!’ He stood up.
‘If we were to move our seeker, it would serve the same purpose.’
Xervish sat again. ‘Nice thought, boy, but how would we do it? She’s got to travel a long way, quickly. The sight lines must cross at a large angle otherwise it’s useless. We can’t go fast enough, especially not at this time of year.’
‘What if we put her on a ship?’ Nish said excitedly. ‘In a week we could be a hundred leagues down the coast, if the weather was with us.’