The door opened and Irisis came in, smiling. The smile vanished when she saw the expression on his face.
‘It was you!’ he said through gritted teeth. He jumped up, knocking over the stool. ‘Gi-Had knows Tiaan was set up and he suspects you. I should call him back right now.’
‘Go ahead. He’s my cousin.’
‘I can’t believe you would smash your own controller!’ he said coldly.
Irisis stared at him in incredulity, then spun on her heel and stalked out. He ran after her, grabbing her by the arm.
She whirled. ‘You do believe it, Nish! You think more of her than you do of me.’
‘You manipulating bitch! How dare you use me?’
‘You love her,’ she sneered. ‘Your brain is addled by the little cow.’
‘I despise her, but not as much as I despise you. Don’t ever lie to me, Irisis. Do you deny that you did it?’
She said nothing at all. He held her gaze but she did not look away. ‘You can’t deny it, can you, Irisis?’
‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, Nish.’
‘You did do it!’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘In that case I must do my prober’s duty and take my evidence to Gi-Had.’
She pulled her arm free. ‘If you do,’ she said coldly, ‘don’t think I’ll go without a fuss. Your father the perquisitor will be told that you talk on your lover’s pillow, and that I bribed you to bring Tiaan down and make me crafter. It’ll be the end of your career too, Ex-Prober Cryl-Nish.’
He knew she would. He might lie his way out of it but his prospects would be badly damaged. His liaison with her was already the talk of the manufactory and she could turn his collaboration into treason. It would be a disaster for them both.
Nish had everything to lose if she went down, much to gain if she did not. Her family was nearly the equal of his own. It would be a good alliance, to say nothing of the pleasures of her glorious body. But if she was behind the sabotage he must denounce her.
He faced up to his duty. ‘I don’t care! I hate Tiaan, but I’ll go to my doom before I help the enemy …’ He tried to look implacable.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I admit that I cut the page from her book and hid it, but only because of what she’d done to me.’
Nish took a deep breath. It did not make things any easier. ‘And the sabotage of your controller?’
‘Don’t be absurd!’ She met his eye, unflinching.
Irisis looked convincing, though Nish knew what a gifted liar she was. ‘Swear it!’
‘I swear,’ she said evenly, ‘on my sacred family Histories, that I had nothing to do with the sabotages. Any of them!’
He was still not absolutely convinced, though he had no option but to take her word. ‘In that case, who did?’
‘Tiaan did!’ she grated. ‘Why won’t you look at the evidence? Nothing I’ve said changes the facts. You heard the guards -there’s no one else it could be.’
‘I still have to tell Gi-Had that you cut out the page.’
Irisis looked as if she’d been slapped across the face. Her big eyes were on him, a single tear quivering on one lash. She took a tentative step toward him, a gliding movement, then up on her toes at the end. Her bosom heaved. The buttons seemed to have come undone. It was the oldest trick of all and he wasn’t going to be taken in by it.
‘Please, Cryl-Nish!’ She held out her arms.
He folded his across his chest, desperately trying to control his body. With an insignificant movement at her waist, her trousers fell to her ankles. She stepped out of them. Ah, but her body was magnificent!
‘Would you let them kill me so cruelly? They would disembowel me, hang up my entrails for the world to see and cut my body into quarters to feed the scavengers.’ With another movement she stood naked before him. ‘Would you do that, to this!’ She held out her breasts, one in each hand.
Nish flung himself on her and they copulated on the floor of Tiaan’s cubicle like beasts. After it was over and they lay panting, slicked with sweat, Irisis opened her eyes. They were so very blue. ‘I think I see a solution to both our problems.’
‘Oh?’ he said.
‘Do you believe Tiaan is innocent or guilty?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said heavily.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think, on the balance of the evidence, that she probably is guilty.’
‘Then help me stop her. If something were to happen to Tiaan …’
He pushed her away roughly. ‘What are you talking about? It had better not be what I’m thinking.’ Though for more of what he’d just had, there was little he would not do, if he could get away with it.
Irisis pulled him back, and he relented. ‘She has betrayed her country, and you, and me! Soldiers have died; clankers have been lost. I know my duty too, Nish. We’ve got to be rid of her for the good of the war.’
She was moving too fast for him. ‘But … the manufactory can’t do without her.’
‘Do you know how many artisans there are, just in this province?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘More than a thousand! If something happened to her, or to me for that matter, either of us could be replaced tomorrow.’
‘I hadn’t thought there could be so many,’ Nish said.
‘Well, there are.’
‘Do you deny she is a good artisan?’ Nish expected her to.
‘Tiaan is very talented. Since I’m being honest with you, she’s better than I am. But she’s using those talents against us, Nish. She’s helping the enemy.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘That’s because you’re in love with her.’
‘I’m not! But …’
‘After what she said to you the other day? No real man would put up with that kind of abuse.’
Still he hesitated.
Irisis stood up. ‘Make up your mind, Nish. Support her and you’ll get no more of me, ever! Which is it?’
‘I hate Tiaan for what she did to me,’ he said. ‘If proof against her can be found – proper proof – I’ll help you destroy her.’
‘And you won’t tell Gi-Had that I cut out the page?’ Those big blue eyes were all over him again.
‘No,’ he said softly.
Nish spent the rest of the day agonising about what he had got himself into. Concealing evidence was a serious crime, and if he was wrong about Irisis, it would mean his doom.
SEVEN
Tiaan returned from the mine, still puzzling over Joeyn’s observation that crystals exposed on the mullock heaps were useless. Oblivious to the furore, she collected a handful of hedron chips and put them at various locations inside and outside the manufactory, to test the effects of exposure. She did not need to hide them since they looked like any other fragments of quartz.
On the way back to her cubicle Tiaan ducked into the library and went to the section where the Great Tales were kept. These books, of which there were twenty-nine, were the highest achievement of the Histories and every child was taught them. The manufactory’s copies were bound in red leather reinforced with brass, and fixed to the shelves with brass chains. She lifted them down, one by one. All of the Great Tales were there save one, the twenty-third. The Tale of the Mirror.
She went to the librarian, an old, old man as bald as a marble, with thin blotched hands and perpetually moist eyes.
‘Hello, Gurleys,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for one of the Great Tales.’
‘They’re all on the shelf.’ He did not take his eyes from his catalogue.
‘No, one is missing. The Tale of the Mirror.’
He looked up sharply, opened his mouth and closed it again. He seemed to be in pain. Moisture leaked from his eyes.
‘There is no Tale of the Mirror!’
‘But … it’s the twenty-third tale. There must –’