“Alestine Akiv Azkarian,” the woman said, shaking her hand and giving a formal bow. “I was about to stop for lunch,” she went on, sloshing her way towards the far bank. “If you would care to join me.”
“You are the Artisan?” Lizanne asked, voicing a rueful laugh as she laboured through the water in her wake. The trance had seen fit to attire her in a somewhat impractical skirt and jacket of archaic dimensions, making for laggardly progress. “The Artisan was a woman.”
“How observant you are,” Alestine remarked, clambering onto the river-bank and extending a hand as Lizanne struggled to extricate herself from the water.
“I thought you would already know my name,” Lizanne said, hauling herself free of the river and keeping hold of Alestine’s hand. “The Artisan having foreseen this meeting.”
“The Mad Artisan,” Alestine said, her smile now tinged with a mix of sadness and humour. “Isn’t that what they will come to call me?”
“The appellation of madness has faded recently,” Lizanne replied. “Which is strange, given that the world around us grows madder by the day.”
Alestine released her hand and turned, leading her deeper into the jungle. “I did not, in fact, know your name,” she told Lizanne, as they tracked along a narrow trail. “But I have foreseen this meeting, or at least a portion of it. Oddly, I remember you having darker hair, and being markedly less polite. It happens sometimes, the vision’s truth proves illusory. Due, I have theorised, to the relative passage of time. The longer I have to wait for it to come true, the less true it turns out to be.”
“What did we discuss in the vision?” Lizanne asked, aware that her voice betrayed a note of desperation she would normally try to conceal. The shock of actually finding herself conversing with this person after expending so much time and effort to do so made her a little giddy, even nervous.
“You said your world was burning,” Alestine said, coming to a halt as the trail opened out into a broad clearing. She unslung her pack and set it down before casting around with a searching gaze. “We need fire-wood. If you wouldn’t mind lending a hand.”
Lizanne began to comply but found her eyes drawn to a dark shape above the tree-tops ahead, the sides jagged black teeth against the pale blue of the sky. The temple, she realised, recalling one of Clay’s shared memories. “Are we close to Krystaline Lake?” she enquired.
“Oh, Emperor’s Soul no,” Alestine laughed, crouching to gather up a fallen branch. “The lake lies over three hundred miles north-east of here.” She followed Lizanne’s gaze to the bulky silhouette above the trees. “Seen one like it before, I see. Krystaline Lake, eh? I must confess I had no idea there were ruins there.”
“A whole city in fact.”
“One I’ll never get to see, except through your eyes if you’re willing to share.”
Lizanne turned to her, finding the same half-sad, half-amused smile on her lips. It wasn’t unkind, but Lizanne found there was too much knowledge behind that smile for her to like it. “So in your vision I told you my world was burning,” she said. “In reality it has only just begun to smoulder, though I think the flames are about to rise very high indeed. I believe you know how to prevent that, and I would have you tell me.”
Alestine’s smile switched to a grimace, her face clouding in reflective sorrow. “Then I fear you may be disappointed, miss. But”—she dumped the branch she had gathered on the ground and set about searching for more—“let’s discuss it over dinner, shall we? I have an excellent cut of Cerath haunch to share. It’s good meat, but does require proper seasoning.”
She proved deaf to further questions so Lizanne helped her build the fire and a frame with which to spit the haunch of meat. Alestine scored the layer of fat coating the flesh with a knife then rubbed it with salt before sprinkling on some wild thyme. She constructed the frame in only a few moments, crafting two sturdy bipods and a cross-beam from scavenged wood. The swift, unconscious precision with which she went about the task was enough to banish any doubts Lizanne might have as to her identity. She looks like Tinkerer, she realised. Or Father when he’s particularly engrossed.
“The secret is to keep it turning,” Alestine said, adjusting the haunch’s position over the fire before turning to her pack. “Would you care for an aperitif?” She extracted a metal flask and two tin cups, handing one to Lizanne before pouring a pinkish liquid into it. “A local vintage,” Alestine said, raising her own cup to her nose to sample the aroma. “I’m afraid the name is quite unpronounceable. I call it ‘Kilnahria’s Milk.’”
Lizanne sniffed the substance, finding it pleasantly fruity, before taking a sip. “Very nice,” she said. “If a little strong for my tastes.”
“I’m glad you like it. You didn’t in the vision.” She drained her own cup and poured some more. “So, how did you like the music? I assume you unlocked the solargraph; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“A highly accomplished tune, to be sure. The musician I employed to decipher it was suitably impressed, and he is something of an expert in the music of your era.”
“And you, Miss Lethridge? Did you like it?”
There was a weight to Alestine’s gaze that caused Lizanne to conclude her answer was important. A test of some kind? she wondered. Did my vision self hate the music or love it? “It was beautiful,” she said, deciding honesty would be the best course. “But sad. Your musical skills appear to match your flair for things mechanical.”
“I can assure you they do not. I didn’t write the music, you see. I merely captured it for posterity, although it’s nice to know my flair for the mechanical had some uses.”
“A great many uses. So many in fact, people have killed to possess the fruits of your labour, myself included.”
“Such was never my intention.” Alestine took another sip from her cup and turned to the meat, asking Lizanne to help as she adjusted the spit to revolve the haunch above the flames. “Approach every task with care and diligence and you won’t go far wrong,” she said. “Something my mother never tired of telling me.”
“If you didn’t write the music,” Lizanne said, stepping back to waft the thickening smoke away, “who did?”
She saw the sadness return to Alestine’s face, though this time it was not accompanied by any humour. “A lady of my prior acquaintance,” she said. “You remind me a little of her. So much passion and humanity bound up in a tight, controlled package. I think you two would have gotten on quite well. Although, in time she would probably have come to see you as a threat and had you executed. She was prone to such things in later life, so I’m told.”
“Had me executed?” Lizanne asked. “A woman of some influence, then?”
“You could say that. They made her empress eventually, well, Emperor to be strictly accurate. Apparently the title cannot accommodate a change in gender.”
A singular memory sprang to the fore of Lizanne’s mind: one of the many statues adorning the miniature temples that lay outside the Corvantine Imperial Sanctum, a hawk-nosed woman rendered in marble. “The Empress Azireh,” she said. “You knew her? She wrote the music?”
“She wrote a great many things, but music was her passion. And yes, I knew her, but she wasn’t an empress then.”
There was a rustle of disturbed vegetation as Alestine turned towards the far end of the clearing, Lizanne following her gaze to see the foliage twisting and merging to form a new tableau. A young woman sat at a pianola, playing the same tune the Artisan had captured in the solargraph. Although the surrounding jungle remained unchanged, the floor beneath the pianola was smooth chequered marble reflecting a grand, palatial interior. Despite her youth Lizanne saw clearly the resemblance to the stern, commanding woman who would later adorn the temple built in her honour.