Irisis felt the rock slip beneath her left foot and had to steel herself not to move. Her heart was leaping from backbone to ribcage. Killing herself was not quite as easy as she’d thought. Three times now she’d gone into a crouch, preparing to fling herself over, but found after the crisis passed that she was still standing there.
It was the leap she feared. The fall would be an instant of bliss. She did not want to think what came after that or she would never do it. Inordinately proud of her looks, Irisis dared not contemplate the splattered ruin she would become. She prayed that her remains would be eaten quickly. For people to see her like that …
Again the rock cracked. She wanted it to do the job for her but it refused. Perhaps if she just toppled forward?
Irisis was about to when she heard Nish’s frantic cry and saw him staggering toward her like a white-faced drunk. She tried to jump but her muscles refused. Vanity had beaten her – she especially did not want him to see the aftermath.
She spun on one foot, the rock broke under her and Irisis had to fling herself sideways to survive. She landed hard, just a breath away from oblivion. Before she could move Nish cried out, threw out his arms and skidded over the edge.
Irisis, who had not wept since her fourth birthday, let out a scream of anguish. Rolling to safety, she came to her feet and ran. It was easy to imagine his fate. She could not stop herself.
Where had he fallen from? The icy patch stretched along the curving path for twenty or thirty paces. It could have been anywhere along here. Walking carefully now, she peered over the edge. There was a fall of ten or fifteen spans onto blocky, broken boulders. She could not see him, nor any splash of red, but he might have gone into the shadows between the boulders.
‘Nish?’ she said softly, knowing how pointless that was. ‘Nish?’ Perhaps it had been further up around the point. It was really slippery here. She put her arms out, afraid of falling now. Also ironic.
Coming around the point she saw him, caught in Muss’s air-moss farm. He’d landed on a coarsely woven withy mat, half collapsing the structure of poles and round cross-pieces supporting it. Now he was tangled up in the mat and the poles leaned crazily out over the lower cliff.
‘Nish?’ she whispered.
He groaned and she felt a pang of longing. ‘Irisis? You’re alive!’ The joy in his voice was, somehow, alarming.
‘Of course I’m alive!’ she said sharply. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘I thought you were going to jump …’
‘Don’t be stupid!’ she lied.
Nish jerked around, trying to see her. One of the supporting poles lifted right out of its rock socket. ‘Don’t move!’ she roared. ‘You’ll go right over. Stay perfectly still.’
She looked around. It was a long way to the manufactory – more than half a league. The best part of an hour by the time she got back here with help. If Nish lasted that long in his thin garments, she doubted that the structure would.
‘Muss!’ she roared, cupping her hands around her mouth. ‘Eiryn Muss.’
‘He won’t help!’ Nish said weakly.
‘Oh?’
‘I accidentally dropped a pebble on his head a while ago.’ He had the grace to look ashamed.
‘Bloody idiot! Muss!’
Some minutes later he came blundering up the path, brawny arms hanging loose. Irisis ran to meet him. ‘Muss, help me! Nish has gone over the cliff.’
‘Good,’ said Muss. ‘Very good!’ His halfwit eyes gleaming, he turned away.
‘Muss, please. He’s fallen into your moss farm. He’s breaking it.’
Muss followed her to the edge, looked down and gave an incongruous, high-pitched giggle. ‘Old one. No good now. Build new one.’
‘Please, Muss. I will pay you well.’
His blank face strained to express some emotion. An idiot’s leer appeared. What could she offer that would mean anything to him? ‘Bottle of brandy.’ Irisis held her hand out as if offering him one, then her other hand as well. ‘Two bottles.’
His eyes shone. A trickle of saliva made its way down his bearded chin. He licked his lips. ‘More!’
She could not imagine what he would value. He was some kind of pervert or peeping tom, she recalled.
‘Would you like to see my breasts?’ she said in desperation. She’d even sleep with him if there was no other way to save Nish, though it would be the most squalid transaction of her opportunistic life.
Such a look of disgust mixed with terror passed across Muss’s face as she had never seen before. Nish let out a choked gasp, writhed and the brittle withies broke. He went through head first but a branch end caught in the waistband of his trousers, dragging them down to his ankles.
He stopped with a jerk, hanging upside down, bare bum pointing at them. His shirt fell down over his head, revealing the healing lash marks on his back.
Irisis eyed his stocky body, discovering that she liked the musculature, especially his smooth, pale backside. So, evidently, did Muss, who was giggling and snorting beside her.
No time to waste. As Nish swayed back and forth, several poles lifted from their sockets. It would take little for the whole tangled structure to go over.
‘Come on!’ she hissed, shaking Muss by the shoulder. ‘Four bottles.’
Muss tore his eyes away from the glorious sight. They climbed down to the ledge. Irisis held the poles steady while Muss swung along the rickety frame and freed Nish. It took more time than it should have, but Irisis closed her mind to that. If Muss was taking liberties, she thought unsympathetically, it served Nish right for being so damn stupid.
Finally they were back at the top. Nish was white-faced and shivering. ‘Carry him back,’ Irisis said.
Muss threw Nish over his shoulder, steadied him with a paw on his backside and shambled off. Half an hour later the artificer was propped up on a bench in the refectory, next to the wall warmed by the great ovens, and warmed inside by a bowl of dried fishhead soup. Irisis went around the back and purchased four bottles of brandy from Flyn the miner, who kept an illegal stall behind the practice ground.
She gave them to Muss, who tore the cork from one bottle and poured half straight down his gullet. His eyes crossed, he reeled, giggled and said, ‘Good luck with hunt for crystal lady.’ Juggling his bottles, Muss wandered off.
She stood looking after him, wondering how the halfwit came to know that. Well, he was always snooping around, minding other people’s business.
As she entered the refectory, Nish smiled at her, uncertainly.
‘If you were my slave for the rest of your life you’d never repay what you owe me!’ she said furiously. That he’d saved her from killing herself was another black mark against him.
He sat up straighter, giving a cheerful grin. ‘Oh, I don’t know. While I was hanging back there, and you were letting Muss fondle my bum, I had an idea that may just save us both.’
TWENTY
Ullii crouched in her corner, shivering. The room was cold but she had thrown off her clothes. Her pants and shirt were made of finest lamb’s wool that a baby could have worn without difficulty, yet the fabric felt to be covered in tiny hooks that pulled at her skin with every movement.
She put her fingers in her ears. That kept out the cacophony which made it impossible to think. Even so, sound was everywhere. Ullii could hear the chomping of tiny borers in the floorboards. A mouse skittering in the ceiling was like a man walking in miner’s boots. She could even hear the faint movements made by a spider’s spinnerets, the clacking of its joints as it moved, the subtle twang of silken threads.
The smells were overpowering. Ullii knew when the furnace stokers changed from one pitch bin to another. The stokers did not notice, yet to her it was like the difference between apple and onion. She could even tell which way the wind was blowing from the smell of the air.