Irisis inspected the man again. The disguise, or rather transformation, was miraculous. There was not a trace of the fat, bald, shambling halfwit from the manufactory, nor the least mannerism to give him away. But Ullii did not require such things. She could distinguish every human alive by their smell.
Irisis smiled. ‘I dare say it would take more than a few bottles of turnip brandy now.’
‘Indeed it would, crafter,’ said Muss primly, ‘since I do not touch spiritous liquors.’
FIFTY-SIX
Gilhaelith was led away, still trying to see the amplimet. Tiaan felt betrayed. He did not care a fig for her, and never had. He had wanted the amplimet all along, and everything else he’d said to her had been to make sure of it. She cursed herself for falling into the trap, once again.
Ryll fed her a bowl of what looked like green porridge but tasted like slimy compost. She could not feed herself, since her arms were trapped inside the patterner. She slept as if she had been drugged, waking with a fuzzy head to find a group of lyrinx gathered around the patterner three down from her. They had bowed heads, deferring to an ancient male whose skin bore a permanent red blush. His flaccid crest angled to the left and he wore a pair of spectacles. The small oval lenses only covered the centre of his eyes and were set in thick frames of leathery hide. Tiaan had not seen a lyrinx wearing glasses before. It looked odd.
The old male was speaking lyrinx, and though Tiaan did not know that language, it was clear that he was unhappy about something. Ryll and the other lyrinx had changed their skin to the colour of sand, as if they were trying to disappear against the walls, and their crests sagged.
The old lyrinx limped towards Tiaan, lifted her out and inspected her minutely. It had happened so often that she was hardly embarrassed at all. Her skin, irritated by the jelly, had gone blotchy. Behind the lenses, the pupils of his yellow eyes narrowed to slits. He swung around to Ryll, questioning him in a raspy staccato. Tiaan recognised her name several times, and once, ‘Tiksi’. She supposed Ryll was telling the old lyrinx her history.
The old creature grunted and his wings half unfurled. He snapped them down. ‘What have you done with the flying construct?’ he asked in her language.
Tiaan had been expecting that question. ‘I gave it to Querist Gan’l,’ she lied, making up a name at random. There were thousands of querists and he could not know all their names. ‘It was near a town south of here.’
Ryll muttered something in the old fellow’s ear. He grunted a question. Ryll went out, soon returning with the amplimet on its chain. As the old lyrinx took it, his crest stood up and bright red specks appeared at the tips. He pushed the amplimet away without touching it, his eyes glowing like molten toffee. In Kalissin the lyrinx had not known what the amplimet was. This fellow knew very well, and he was excited about it.
He rapped out a series of instructions in the lyrinx tongue, in which one word, torgnadr, was repeated several times. Ryll jumped. Liett ran down the row of patterners. The old lyrinx adjusted his chest plates as if they irritated him and went out, followed by the rest of his group. Ryll bent and began doing something to Tiaan’s patterner, below the level of her vision.
‘What’s going on?’ she cried.
‘We must begin.’
‘Begin what, Ryll?’
‘Making a torgnadr.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I … may not say. It is to aid us with the war.’
‘It’s not another monster like your nylatl?’ Just the name sent shudders of remembrance up her spine.
Ryll stiffened, closed his heavy-lidded eyes and opened them again. ‘Nothing like that. I have … I am forbidden to do flesh-forming.’
‘Coeland was not pleased with you after the nylatl escaped?’
‘The Wise Mother was furious, and so was Liett.’
‘So you did not get your heart’s desire after all?’
‘I am forbidden to mate, not that it matters now. No female would take a wingless travesty like me. My spoiled line must die with me, for the good of all. Ah, but still … ’ He cast a tormented glance down the row, where Tiaan could just see Liett, bent over and displaying her majestic buttocks.
‘Are you going to take flesh from me again,’ she said, ‘to make your torgnadr?’
‘Of course not! Torgnadrs are not flesh-formed. Besides, that practice is forbidden.’ He bent down to reach something near the floor, then slowly stood up, his eyes ablaze. ‘What do you mean again?’
Tiaan wished she had not spoken, but from past experience knew that the lyrinx would drag the truth out of her, so she might as well tell him straight away.
‘Liett took a small piece of my flesh to make her snizlet.’
‘What?’ At his bellow, Liett leapt up and stared in their direction, but on seeing nothing amiss she bent to her work again. ‘She would not dare. That is forbidden.’
‘I still have the scar,’ said Tiaan. ‘On the inside of my arm.’
In one swift movement, Ryll pulled her from the patterner and sat her on top, glistening with the clinging muck. Tiaan looked him in the eye and held out her left arm.
He felt the small circular scar with a fingertip. ‘This was not here when I saved you from the frozen river.’
‘She put it in her jar to grow the first snizlet. I think she used her own tissue as well.’
Ryll slid Tiaan back into the machine. Without further word he went out, walking proud and tall. Dangerous red slashes seared across his chameleon skin.
What had she done? When Liett came by a few minutes later, Tiaan pretended to be asleep. Shortly the troop of lyrinx reappeared, she was hauled out yet again and the scar inspected.
‘Tllrixi Liett!’ the old male roared.
Liett came running. There followed a furious exchange, the old lyrinx roaring, Liett shrinking down until her colourless wings rested flat on the floor. Her arms were stretched out and the old lyrinx stabbed a finger at a mark in her armpit. Liett was questioned in her own tongue. She answered in monosyllables, head bowed.
Finally the old lyrinx struck her once on each cheek, a ritual humiliation. She lay on her face even after he had gone. Ryll stood by, speaking softly in the lyrinx tongue. She groaned but did not move. He squatted beside her but she turned her head away. He lifted her in his arms, tenderly. As she sagged there, Liett’s eyes fixed on Tiaan, giving her such a baleful glare that Tiaan had to close her eyes.
Liett said not a word to her, though she was always in sight for the rest of the day. Ryll hurried back and forth, carrying containers to one patterner or another. Tiaan could not see what they held. Late in the afternoon, Liett appeared with a pair of barrel-sized glass buckets, which she set on the floor behind Tiaan.
Ryll came in, nodded to Liett, then put his hands on Tiaan’s bare shoulders. ‘We are going to begin the patterning. Don’t be afraid.’
She was terrified. Ryll put the amplimet around her neck and held her head straight. Liett lifted something, resembling an upside-down jellyfish, out of the larger bucket and eased it down over Tiaan’s head. Tiaan thrashed her trapped arms. The cool slipperiness cut off her senses one by one, until all she was left with was touch. Strangely, it was not claustrophobic.
Everything felt stronger, more enhanced, from the slippery muck against her belly and back to the clinging, wet-flesh sensation of the tentacled mask over her face. As Tiaan struggled, the amplimet pulsed between her breasts and she began to see the field.
Nothing else happened. She did not draw power, since there was nothing she could do with it in this blind state. Tiaan sensed an immense flow of power, far more than it took to drive a clanker, though she could not tell where it was going.