‘Yes,’ she whispered, quite overcome. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Could I have another drop of brandy?’
She tilted the flask, although this time he seemed to have trouble swallowing. ‘Joe?’ She clutched his hand.
‘Yes?’
‘Is there any other way out of this mine?’
‘Why?’
‘They’re looking for me. Nish the artificer went down to the village just as I was leaving.’
He said nothing for so long that Tiaan thought he must have slipped away. His hand was a rigid claw, clutching hers. She squeezed it and he spoke.
‘There used to be a way out from the ninth level. A long, long adit that ran south to the Bhu-Gil mine. Its entrance was blocked up a long time ago, though it could have been unblocked since. We miners are a greedy lot; the things we get up to in our spare time, no one knows.’
‘Any other way?’
‘Not that … I know of. Not good, too many entrances to a mine. Gold just turns to air.’ He gave a quiet chuckle. ‘Probably flooded. Long swim, my girl.’
‘Oh!’ She remembered him saying that the other day. ‘No other way out?’
‘Who knows? Some miners are thieves, and the thieves don’t tell the honest ones.’
That was not much help. ‘More brandy, Joe?’
‘Just a taste, to wet my tongue.’
She dribbled a little more into his mouth. It ran out again. His fingers stroked the pick handle, then lay still.
‘Joe!’ she cried. There was no answer. ‘Joe?’
‘Something for you,’ he said in a whisper no louder than a sigh. ‘Help you on your way.’
‘I’ve already got the money belt.’
‘Something else …’ He tried to smile but the breath whistled out of him; Joe gave a little shudder and lay still.
He was dead. Tears swelled under her eyelids. Poor Joe, such a gentle, kindly old man. She kissed him on the forehead, closed his eyes and put his hand on the pick. As she did, something slipped out of his other hand, something that glowed faintly in iridescent swirls, like oil on luminous water.
It was the crystal she’d lusted after when she saw it up the far end of the cavity the other day. It was a bipyramid of quartz, blushing the faintest rose, but inside each end was a radiating ball of needle crystals finer than human hair. The two balls were almost joined down the length of the prism by longer needles, but there was a gap in the middle, a tiny bubble of air partly filled with liquid.
She picked up the crystal and light exploded in her mind, rainbow streamers that went in all directions, coiling, looping and whorling back on themselves endlessly. It was as if she was inside the field, but one unlike any she had ever seen before. Rather, there was more to it than before. Curves and circles and spheres appeared out of nowhere to drift across her view, constantly changing shape and size, disappearing then re-forming differently, as if she was seeing fragments of structures that had the wrong dimensions for this world.
The crystal was already awake – it had to be! It was ecstasy, not least because the withdrawal was gone instantly. It was disturbing too. Her head spun with the effort of trying to make sense of it all.
She had often seen rutilated quartz. It was common in this mine and many of the best hedrons were made from such crystals. But she had never come across anything as perfect or symmetrical as this one. It made her hair stand on end to think what, as an artisan, she might have done with it.
Tiaan wrapped the hedron in a scrap of leather and put it safely in her pack. Kissing Joe’s brow, she took the flask. There was some bread and cheese in his pack. She ate that, sharing one last meal with her old friend, and saluted him with a tot of the turnip brandy. Laying his pack beside him, she took her lantern, leaving his to burn down in its own time, and departed without a backward glance.
PART TWO
ARTIFICER
FOURTEEN
Nish wrote a long letter to his father on the day Tiaan’s indenture was sold to the breeding factory. He told Jal-Nish everything, except for his dealings with Irisis. The perquisitor would expect a full report and he dared leave nothing out that could be heard from anyone else. Inquisitors were also watched. Probers, being no more than prentices in the spying art, were especially subject to surveillance.
Tiaan’s madness and banishment gave Nish rather less pleasure than he had expected. Revenge was less sweet than he had been led to believe and he could not help worrying about Irisis’s part in it. Had she done something to the artisan to bring on crystal fever? There was no way to find out. Irisis now avoided him, and on the rare occasions they did meet she refused to talk, much less lie with him. He’d risked everything and gained nothing. Moreover, he found that he missed Tiaan about the place, especially her trim figure and light step going past the artificers’ workshops.
A couple of days later, on his monthly day off, Nish walked down to Tiksi, giving his letter and the news to Fyn-Mah, the querist there, chief of the city’s intelligence bureau. Fyn-Mah reported directly to his father. A slight, small woman of no more than thirty years, she was young to have such responsibility. Judging by her black hair and dark eyes, her delicate features, not to mention her cool manner, she was Tiksi-born. The querist was an attractive woman, and wore no ring, but Nish did not consider her for an instant. Everything about her shrieked ‘keep your distance’.
Fyn-Mah laid the letter aside. Her eyes met his and he had to look away. ‘I already know about Tiaan,’ she said without expression. ‘A bad business.’
Nish looked down at the table, wondering what she knew.
The querist ran her fingers over the letter, then placed it in a grey satchel. ‘I will send it with the courier this afternoon.’ She nodded. He was dismissed.
Nish turned away from her door with a great sigh. The deed was done and it would take a couple of weeks for the courier to get to Fassafarn, where his father lived. Even if Jal-Nish was angry, as seemed probable, there could be no response in under a month.
On the way back Nish happened to pass the breeding factory. On impulse he went to the grand entrance, to enquire about the new woman, Tiaan. Several silver drams jingled in his pocket, his first wages as a prober, and he had the delicious thought of buying what he’d previously been refused.
‘We don’t do business with boys,’ sneered the man at the door.
‘I’m a man! I’m twenty. I have my rights.’ As it happened he was only nineteen, but the lie could not hurt.
‘The breeding factory is not a right, it’s a privilege. We choose the seed carefully here, as well as the man. And the first thing we do is make sure it’s ripe!’
‘But I’m …’
‘No, you’re not!’ said the guard. ‘And if you were, the fee would be fifty drams. In any case, the woman you mention is ill. Be on your way now, before I call the watch.’
Nish hurried back to the manufactory, smouldering.
A week and a half later he was called to the overseer’s office to receive an urgent package from his father. So urgent, in fact, that it had come by skeet. Nish knew how expensive that was, for the big carrier birds were vicious, difficult to train and in great demand by the army. What could it be?
He unfastened the oilskin wrapper, anxious now. There were two letters inside, one addressed to him, the other to ‘Probationary Overseer Gi-Had’. Nish handed that one to the overseer, wondering what it meant. Gi-Had had been overseer for ten years.
Gi-Had was staring at the envelope in uneasy bafflement. He slit the envelope and turned away. Nish went to the window and sat down. He did not open his own immediately. Something was badly wrong.