There was no point arguing so Irisis did not bother, though she had no idea how to do what the perquisitor wanted. How could she work with Ullii, who shied at light and sound and touch. Who knew not how to communicate what she saw?
Going into Tiaan’s cubicle she sat, head in hands. Someone had lied to her. It was now clear that Tiaan had never been a spy or a saboteur. Irisis had allowed her feelings, and her ambitions, to blind her. She had wronged the other artisan and was going to pay for that folly. The existence she had so carefully constructed was being pulled down around her. After this it could not be put up again.
‘What progress, artisan?’
Jal-Nish’s voice roused Irisis from her despairing daze. She glanced across at the round figure filling the doorway.
‘It’s a different kind of problem,’ she said stiffly. ‘I have to think it through and then come up with a workable design.’ To her ears the lie was unconvincing.
‘It’s urgent!’ he said coldly.
‘There are many problems to be solved: communicating with Ullii; finding how her talent works and how to tap it; making a type of device that has never been made before. These are not tasks that can be done in an afternoon. What you want may never be possible.’
‘It had better be.’
Irisis let her forehead fall on the bench so hard that it raised a bruise. Worse than anything – death, even the breeding factory – would be to be exposed to her family for what she really was.
Irisis hated her family for what they had done to her, yet she craved their approval and desperately wanted to achieve their goals. This news would destroy her mother. Even more horrible, she, Irisis, would go down in the family Histories as the cheat and liar that she was. Her name would be black as long as the Histories endured, and on Santhenar that was a very long time indeed. The Histories were the core of civilisation and the root of everyone’s life, great and humble.
Even illiterate peasants knew their Histories by heart, back ten generations or more. Minor families had written Histories. Those of the House of Stirm went back twenty-six generations; eight hundred and seventy-one years. Years of her childhood had been spent learning them by heart. The greatest families recorded as much as three thousand years and had a personal chronicler at their elbows all the time to remind them. Her family Histories defined who she was. They were, at once, an ocean she was drowning in, and a lifeline.
She went out, locking the door, and stumbled up to Nish’s room. He was still sleeping soundly. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she watched him until the light began to fade. Even Nish, who only weeks ago had begged for her body, had cast her aside. She could not blame him but it had proven unexpectedly painful. She should leave before he rejected her again, but Irisis had nowhere to go.
Kicking off boots and socks, she slipped under the covers. Nish was warm. She pressed her cold body against him, took a little comfort there, and slept.
When she woke it was dark. Nish rolled over carefully, putting an arm across her back. She drew him to her, mindful of his wound.
‘Irisis?’ he whispered.
Feeling the tension in him, she steeled herself. ‘Yes?’ she said in his ear. ‘If you want me to go away, just say so.’
He squeezed her hand, almost as if he cared. ‘You saved my life.’
She did not answer.
‘What are you doing here, Irisis?’
‘It was this or killing myself.’
‘Irisis!’
She let out a choked sob, which she tried unsuccessfully to turn into a cough. ‘I’m undone, Nish. I’m going to be exposed for the fraud I am.’
‘What are you talking about?’
She told him about the blind seeker, Ullii, and what Jal-Nish required of her.
‘A seeker!’ he exclaimed, but the cry turned into a moan and he fell back on his pillows.
She sat up. ‘Are you all right?’ It surprised her that she cared, for in his disgrace he could be no further use to her, but somehow she did care.
‘My neck feels as if someone hacked into it with a sword.’
‘It’s a nasty wound.’ She stared up at the ceiling, invisible in the darkness. ‘You’ve come across seekers before?’
‘I heard mention of them when I was a scribe, though I never met one. It may even have been Ullii that they were talking about.’
‘What did you hear?’
‘Wild theories and hope unsubstantiated, for the most part. My master held that they were the answer to our prayers. His friend, a damned lawyer, thought the whole idea a nonsense and a waste of precious time and money. Father was somewhere in the middle. If an idea works, he believes in it. From what I heard, seekers are strange people, highly unstable.’
‘That’s Ullii! She’s even more flawed than I am.’ Irisis gave a bitter snort.
‘What are you talking about? You’re still an artisan, and could well be crafter again, like your uncle. Some day you may even be chanic. And after your great deeds this morning, who could believe –’
‘Nish!’ She squeezed his arm hard and he broke off. He no longer minded her calling him that. ‘It’s true; I do come from a long line of artisans and crafters. Two reached the very pinnacle of the art and were awarded the honour of chanic. I’m not one of them, Nish.
‘The day my mother knew she was with child she began making plans for me. The first words I heard were not baby talk, but a map of my future, which was no more than a reflection of our past. You think my father and uncle were great achievers because they became crafters? In fact they let the family down. Once we were chanics, now we’re reduced to crafters. What next? Labourers in the pit? It was up to me to restore the family.
‘I was trapped in our Histories. Other children had toys; I was given a tiny set of tools, waste hedrons and old controller apparatuses that had been taken to pieces. I was putting them back together as soon as I could walk. Before I turned six I was making controller parts. By the age of twelve I could make anything: the tiniest part for a pocket chronometer, the most delicate jewellery, perfect lenses for a ‘scope. I wanted to be a jeweller; I knew I had a rare skill for making beautiful things. Even my controllers are works of art.
‘My family would not allow that for an instant. A jeweller? A common craft worker! I might as well have said a brothel madam, the way they reacted. I was to be the greatest artisan of all time, raising the House of Stirm back to the pinnacle it had fallen from. They told me that every day. You can have no idea how I suffocated under their ambition. There was only one problem.’
She stopped there. Nish did not say a word, and after some minutes she continued. ‘I have no talent for tapping the field, Nish. None whatsoever! I’m a fraud.’
He sat up and lit the lantern. ‘But, that’s not possible, Irisis. You make the most perfect controllers I’ve ever seen.’
‘I lie and cheat and manipulate others to do what I cannot do myself. I’ve been doing that since I was four and discovered that I’d lost the talent every member of my family has had for five generations.’
‘What?’ He stared into her eyes.
‘It was my fourth birthday and I was in my party dress and ribbons, the prettiest child there!’ She spat the word out. ‘Everyone else was doing tricks with the family talent, showing off, each trying to top the other.’
‘What kind of tricks?’
‘Oh, you know. The usual stuff.’
‘I have no idea. My family doesn’t have the talent, remember?’
‘Sorry – I assume everyone knows. In our family, people did it as often as the washing up.’
‘Did what, Irisis?’ he said irritably.
‘Pulled energy out of the field to play tricks. Like making snow fall in the house in mid-summer, or cooking the food on our plates at the dinner table. Silly little things that could only amuse silly little people! Anyway, on my birthday Uncle Barkus, the old crafter, put a hedron in my hands and told me to show them what I could do. He boasted that I would be the most brilliant of the lot, though I was the youngest. My brothers, sisters and cousins already hated me, having been told I would be better than all of them put together. You have no idea the pressure I felt, and how I strove to work some wonderful trick with the hedron.