The moment stretched out to eternity. She felt uncounted eyes on her, weighing up her face, her ragged hair, the tattered clothes. She knew what they were thinking.
‘Well, boy? Do you cleave to the wretch, abandoning your own people who hold such hopes in you? Is eternal exile what you want? She’ll be dead in twenty or thirty years. If you live to be a thousand we’ll not take you back.’
Minis looked up at them. ‘What if she were to come with us?’
Vithis looked taken aback, but Luxor and Tirior spoke to him in urgent tones, evidently favouring this way out of the impasse. Vithis turned back.
‘Not as your partner, Minis! She is not Aachim, and you know the sad fate of blending children.’ He spoke with the others again. ‘Very well. She has done us honourably, despite her blunder. You may bring her as your concubine, as long as precautions are taken.’
‘Will you come with us, Tiaan?’ Minis said with pleading eyes. ‘As my lover?’
Tiaan was mortally insulted. That was not what she’d had in mind at all. Concubine was a transaction that reminded her of the breeding factory. But … would it not be better than to lose Minis? She hesitated.
Minis reached out an arm, let it fall, then raised it again. ‘Tiaan …’ He broke off at a movement in the shadows to Tiaan’s left. Something flashed in and out of the rubble. Tiaan had forgotten Haani. What must the child be thinking, hearing all this?
‘Don’t leave me, Tiaan!’ screamed Haani. ‘Please don’t go with him.’
Tiaan recognised the danger too late. ‘No, Haani! Stay back!’
At the movement, the man in the turret swung his weapon around, aimed and released the lever. With deadly accuracy, it fired a club-headed projectile, meant to stun a warrior. As Haani emerged from the darkness the club struck her full in the chest, lifting her off her feet. She fell without a sound.
Tiaan dropped the ring and ran. ‘Haani, Haani!’ She fell to her knees beside the child, who lay on her back like a broken thing. Haani was trying to breathe but her chest was crushed. Liquid gurgled in her lungs.
Haani looked up at her. ‘My chest hurts,’ she gasped. ‘Help me, Tiaan. Sister.’
‘Of course I’ll help you.’ Tiaan could barely see for the tears dripping from her eyes.
‘You won’t leave me, will you?’ Haani choked. ‘Not like my mother and father and aunts did?’ She managed to get a breath. The pain made her shudder.
‘I’ll never leave you, Haani. I’ll be with you until the day I die.’
‘I’m sorry!’ wept Haani, trying vainly to reach into her pocket. ‘I forgot …’
‘What is it, little sister?’
‘I forgot to give you your birthday present.’ Tears poured down her cheeks.
Tiaan was having just as much trouble breathing. ‘It doesn’t matter, Haani.’
‘It’s today, and I forgot!’ she gasped, struggling for breath. ‘I’m sorry, Tiaan.’ Haani fumbled out a folded piece of leather, the last of the piece Tiaan had cut from the bottom of the boat. Inside lay a bracelet made of plaited strips of leather, with flower patterns clumsily burnt into it. ‘Tiaan, I love you,’ it said.
Tears sprang to Tiaan’s eyes as she slipped the bracelet on her left wrist. ‘Thank you, little sister. You didn’t forget at all. It’s still my birthday.’
‘I love you, Tiaan. You’ll make me better, won’t you?’
‘I love you too, more than anyone.’
She kissed Haani all over her little face and did not stop until it was clear that she was dead. The club had driven the broken ribs into her lungs.
Tiaan lifted Haani in her arms, surprised at how light she was. Carrying her out, she stopped in front of the first construct, the child’s little legs and arms hanging limp.
‘She’s dead!’
‘I offer condolences,’ said Vithis. ‘An unfortunate accident.’
‘She’s dead!’ Tiaan screamed. ‘An eight-year-old girl. There’s thousands of you and the greatest army on Santhenar, and you’re so frightened you have to kill a child? Curse you, Vithis. The Aachim are not noble. You are the craven of the Three Worlds!’
Vithis swelled with rage. ‘No one speaks to the Aachim like that, no matter what they have suffered. You are not worthy to be concubine. The offer is withdrawn.’
‘Cowards!’ spat Tiaan. ‘Oath-breakers! Your word means nothing to you.’
Vithis tossed down another bag. ‘Reparation for the child! Move out of the way, if you please.’
‘You can’t buy a child’s life, any more than you can buy me!’ She looked up at Minis. He was staring at her. She could still hope.
He put one foot on the floor.
‘It’s done and can’t be undone,’ growled Vithis, ‘no matter how much we might regret it. Nothing you do can make any difference, foster-son. It’s over. Take your place beside me.’
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.