‘Mine is the only one?’ she said, wide-eyed.
‘Yes. In three years of patterning here they’ve made thousands of minor devices, but only two torgnadrs, and none in the past year. From what I read of their skin-speech, they have the highest hopes for yours. If it’s not ready in time, Snizort must fall.’
‘And we will surely be burned to death.’
‘Alas.’
To save her life she must hope that the torgnadr grew well and swiftly. But if Snizort survived, the human army might not. In that case it was her duty to destroy or sabotage the growing device.
Tutor fell silent. Tiaan grew uncomfortable, wished he would go, and shortly he did. She started crying again.
In the intervals between patterning she slept or sat staring around her, bored out of her wits. Her appetite came back eating was the only thing she had any control over. The torgnadr grew as quickly as a mushroom and with every passing hour Tiaan thought more about her duty. After fleeing Kalissin and the horrific result of her unwilling collaboration there, she had vowed she would never aid the lyrinx again. Now here she was, still unwilling, helping them in a way that could be a hundred times worse. Her duty was clear. She must try to destroy the torgnadr.
Yet she could not move while in the patterner, and when they took her out she was carried to another room to sleep. She could not influence the patterner either – it took from her what it required and she did not know what that was.
In the next session, Tiaan watched more closely. She saw the patterner reading her and imprinting the growing torgnadr. She saw the ebb and flow of the field, and the brightening of the amplimet as power was drawn through it. It did not take much power but something else must, for the field was fluctuating erratically. The amplimet began blinking furiously, as it had at Tirthrax. Was it speaking to the node again?
What if she were to draw power into the amplimet and try to damage the torgnadr, or the patterner itself? Tiaan tried to, but her talent could not penetrate the mask. The lyrinx had thought of everything. That day, when the mask and the amplimet were removed, she wept the most helpless tears of all.
By now, the growth so filled its bucket that the bulbous head protruded from the top. At night, when the lights were out, it emitted a faint green glow.
The torgnadr disturbed Tiaan. It seemed to be watching her, trying to copy her talent, though she knew that was ridiculous. There was no brain inside it; no intelligence. Ryll had told her that much. It was simply patterned on her ability to sense the fluctuating field and draw power from it. Nonetheless, the sight of it put her on edge.
Tutor came to see her every day. Though Tiaan knew Ryll had sent him, she looked forward to Tutor’s visits. He was cheerful, despite his years of slavery, and talked of places far away and times distant: the Great Tales of the Histories, as well as the minor ones. His presence reminded her of her simple life back in the manufactory. How she yearned for it.
She often saw other humans: prisoners who did menial duties like cleaning, carrying and feeding. Tiaan now recognised a dozen, mostly men, defeated soldiers taken prisoner and afterwards kept because they had some value. They rarely spoke and few knew her language. All seemed beaten down by their servitude.
One was coming now, a slender man of middle age with straight white hair and skin as pallid as a mushroom. He had brought food to her several times, spooning the green muck into her mouth but never meeting her eyes. His left shoulder was missing a chunk of muscle, doubtless an old war wound. The arm hung limp.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘My name is Tiaan. What’s yours?’
‘Not allowed – talk,’ he muttered in an atrocious accent.
‘I’ll talk to whoever I want. Hey, come back.’
That was the last she saw of him, or her lunch.
Liett checked the growth and lifted the glass bucket down. Tiaan was about to remark about her missed lunch but thought better of it. The lyrinx looked particularly ferocious today and Tiaan did not want to get the prisoner into trouble.
Not long afterwards the old lyrinx reappeared, along with his bevy of attendants. The torgnadr was set down next to Tiaan. He adjusted his spectacles, pulled something onto the top of his head that rather resembled Tiaan’s jellyfish mask, and frowned. At least, she interpreted it as a frown.
Abruptly he wrenched the mask off and spoke to Ryll in an imperative rasp. Ryll answered, again in submissive posture.
‘Jjyikk myrr; priffiy tzzukk!’ snarled the old fellow.
Ryll sprang up and lifted Tiaan out, holding her with her legs dangling while the old lyrinx examined them, prodding and poking. He snapped at Ryll, who hefted Tiaan and carried her, dripping muck, along many tunnels before going into a long, narrow room shaped like an amputated finger. He laid her on a central table with a bright light above it, face-down. More probing and prodding went on in the middle of her back. She thought they were probing her legs too, though she could feel nothing down there.
Suddenly the room was empty except for Ryll. ‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered, very afraid.
He looked away.
Tiaan caught at his hand. ‘Please, Ryll. I saved your life, remember?’
‘And I allowed you to escape from Kalissin. The debt is paid.’
‘Not the debt of friendship!’
‘What?’ he exclaimed.
‘We worked together for months, Ryll. I was your prisoner, yet there were times when we were friends, were we not? Or were you just pretending, so as to get what you wanted from me?’
He seemed … she could not quite say what, perhaps a combination of hurt, embarrassment and revelation. ‘You’re right. We were friends.’
‘Then tell me what is going on. Please?’
Again he glanced over his shoulder. ‘The torgnadr has a flaw. Old Hyull, Husband of the Matriarch, believes it has developed wrongly because of your broken back.’
Did this mean she was useless to them, except to be eaten? ‘What is he going to do?’
‘I don’t know. The torgnadr is strong; the best yet, but because of the flaw we cannot use it. He is furious. I cannot say any more.’
‘But what’s going to happen to me?’ she cried.
Ryll shook his head and walked away.
FIFTY-SEVEN
‘Are we going to look for Myllii today?’ The eagerness shone in Ullii’s eyes. She had asked the same question every day for a week, usually at the most inopportune times. She searched her lattice for him every night but found nothing. She thought about Nish too, but had no way of looking for him; he did not show in her lattice.
‘Not today, Ullii,’ the scrutator said in that absent way a parent uses with a nagging child. ‘I’m busy with the war right now.’
Ullii was not a child and resented being treated like one. Something died in her eyes. She gave Flydd a bitter glare and turned up the hall. The door of her room was closed without a sound.
‘She feels betrayed,’ said Irisis. ‘And I feel I’ve betrayed her. I gave her my word.’
‘I understand what she’s going through, but what can I do? I can’t go cruising across Lauralin for a month in the hope she’ll find him. I haven’t time to scratch myself.’
‘I know that, Xervish. Even so …’
‘You’ve walked the streets all week, asking after him. I’ve asked Muss to put Myllii on his list. For the moment, that’s all I can do.’
And Ullii could be most uncooperative when thwarted. Irisis hoped they would not have to rely on her for anything important, before Myllii could be found.
Everyone was so frantically busy that Irisis hardly saw the scrutator from one day to the next. The Council had been moving their forces in for weeks. They now had sixty thousand troops within a few days’ march of Snizort, escorted by seven thousand clankers. Many of these carried better weapons than before, and were more strongly built, but if the node failed they would be worthless. And without clankers, even that army could not match the twenty-five thousand lyrinx known to be at Snizort.