Alchymist (26 page)

Flangers
bowed his head. 'It satisfies the soldier but not the man.'

She
seemed to take pity on him. 'No need to kill them,' Fyn-Mah said softly.
'Disabling the air-floaters will do as well. Aim for their rotors.'

Irisis
helped Flangers to the bow and together they lifted the javelard out of its
bracket. It was lightly built, like a large crossbow. They carried it to a
bracket on the port side, halfway down. Flangers picked a wasps' nest out of
the bracket and locked the javelard in. Irisis brought down an armload of
stubby spears. He wound back the cranks and fitted a spear. His face was as
grey as boiled mutton and he could not stand without clinging to the javelard.

'Can
you hit the rotor from here?' said Irisis. 'It's an awfully long way.'

He
wound the crank another notch, and another, sighting at the leading
air-floater, whose large rotor was partly visible behind its cabin. 'I'd say
we're just out of range, though it's hard to estimate in the air.’

The
leading air-floater was furiously signalling them to go down. Flangers's eyes
pleaded with Fyn-Mah They're giving us a direct order. Perquisitor.’

She
set her lips. 'Fire.’

Flangers
wound the elevation crank, sighted on the first of the pursuing air-floaters,
wound again. His hands were shaking. He wiped sweat from his brow and pulled
the lever. Click-thunngg.

After
a good few seconds the spear fell past the front of the leading air-floater.

Flangers
seemed pleased, and Irisis could not blame him. 'Out of range,' he said. 'Only
luck could hit the rotor from here.'

'Try
again,' urged Fyn-Mah. 'Their shooters are getting ready, and they'll be
experts. Inouye, slow up momentarily. As soon as Flangers fires, go full speed.'

The
air-floater slowed, allowing their pursuers to gain fractionally. Irisis held
Flangers up. He gave the elevation crank another quarter-turn and fired.

'Where
did that go?' said Irisis to herself.

'I
think that's Scrutator Klarm in command; muttered Fyn-Mah, staring at the first
machine through a spyglass. 'He's an honourable man, as scrutators go —’ She
bit off the heretical thought.

The
spear, falling at a steep angle, plunged through the top of the balloon into
the roof of the cabin. The impact must have created a spark for the floater gas
exploded, sending fire in all directions. The air-floater turned upside down,
spilling bodies into the air, and fell, trailing flame. The balloon of the
machine beside it collapsed from the Shockwave. The third machine veered away
sharply, fired its javelard then raced back towards the command area.

Flangers
cried out in horror. Irisis clung to the rail, her stomach churning. The fire
had gone out and what was left of the first air-floater was spinning round and
round, the rags of the airbag streaming out behind to break its fall. The
second machine fell past, slamming into the ground hard enough to break bones.
The first also struck and was dragged by the wind into a patch of trees.

Fyn-Mah's
face had gone the colour of mud. Her lips were white, and she had trouble
speaking. 'I've just killed a scrutator and broken my sacred oath.'

And
condemned everyone on this air-floater. Irisis turned away. 'What do your
orders say now, Perquisitor?'

Fyn-Mah
turned to her. 'We run south with all possible speed and don't stop until we
reach the uttermost pole. Or even then.' She covered her face and staggered
into the cabin. Irisis heard retching.

Flangers
lay sprawled on the canvas deck, arms up over his face. Stepping around him,
Irisis went to the stern, where Inouye clung to the steering arm like a
drowning sailor to an oar.

'Where
are we going?' Irisis said, trying to be calm in the face of disaster.

Inouye
was plucking at the hedron of her controller. 'The scrutators will expunge my
family from the earth for this, even my little baby. I've brought doom on
everyone I love.' Her voice broke and she hurled herself at the rail.

Irisis
caught Inouye as she went over, dragged her back and carried the small woman to
the cabin. Inouye began to wail and thrash about. Laying her in a hammock
beside the silent Fyn-Mah, Irisis went out and bolted the door from the
outside.

The
air-floater was curving around in a circle. She wrenched it back on course,
lashing the steering arm so the machine would continue due south. By the time
she'd finished, the rotor had stopped. The air-floater would no more move
without its pilot than a clanker could go with a dead operator.

Irisis
could not use Inouye's controller, which was tailored just to her, without
completely rebuilding it. She replaced it with her artisan's pliance, made from
carnelian, layers of glass and silver filigree. Her pliance enabled her to see
the field and tune a controller to it, and also to draw power. Nowhere near as
much as a controller, of course, but air-floaters did not require much. Setting
the pliance to channel power into the mechanism that drome the rotor, she left
it to run by itself.

The
four dark-faced soldiers stood together at the bow rail. They moved well out of
her way as she approached, giving each other significant glances. Their
muttered talk had broken off as she approached. They were afraid of her
mysterious talent, and bitter that they'd been forced to become renegades.

None
were from these parts, nor did Flangers know the country. That left only one
person and Irisis had been avoiding him. She did not know how to deal with
Eiryn Muss, a man who had reinvented himself so completely that there was no
trace of his former self. He made her uncomfortable because she had no idea who
he was or what he was thinking. He seemed impervious to everything in life,
except the cloak he put on himself to become a different man each time he went
out spying.

She
found him around the other side, sitting on the canvas deck in the shade,
studying a journal roll smaller than his little finger.

'Excuse
me,' she said.

He
looked up. 'You're wondering what to do and where to go.’

Irisis
could not look at him without superimposing the fat, bald, leering halfwit from
the manufactory, yet nothing about him, not even his voice, was the same. He
did not fit. She preferred him as the halfwit.

'I'm
lost,' she said. I have no idea what to do.' She wanted to throw up her
intestines.

'Find
a safe hiding place, then I'll try to contact the scrutator.’

'How?'

'That's
what I do best,' he said simply, and his confidence calmed the roiling of her
insides. 'Keep going south until we're out of sight of the battlefield. No,
continue until after dark, then I'll give further instructions, if Fyn-Mah
isn't capable.'

'She
was told to leave Flydd a message,' Irisis recalled. Swinging around in a great
circle, she drove the air-floater towards the hills north of the exploded node.
'In case he escapes.' Unlikely as that seemed.

That
night they hid in a cluster of ovoid hills, like a nest full of eggs standing
on end, in the forest south of Gospett. It was the best hiding place Muss could
find close by. Without further word, he went into the cabin to change his
clothes and appearance. Emerging scant minutes later as a bent old man, he
walked into the trees.

Three
days passed and nothing was heard from him. They spent the time on full alert.
Though the air-floater was hidden at the bottom of a steep-sided valley between
three of the egg-shaped hills, and concealed from all but a lyrinx or
air-floater going directly overhead, they could never relax.

The
air-floater was so cramped that privacy was impossible, but no one dared go far
from it, in case of an emergency. The soldiers kept to the port side, muttering
among themselves and giving everyone black looks. Fyn-Mah hardly spoke from one
day to the next. She'd risked everything on her loyalty to Xervish Flydd. If he
failed her, or if he was dead, she'd have betrayed her oath and her cause for
nothing.

The
little pilot had gone into a decline. Long periods of silence were followed by
frenzied weeping and wailing for her family. Her only solace was her bond with
the controller. She slept with it in her arms, rocking and humming to it as if
it were a little baby. Without it, Inouye would have turned her face to the
wall and withered away. Fyn-Mah, normally considerate of her inferiors, was
incapable of comforting her.

Flangers
also kept to himself, insofar as that was possible, fending Irisis off whenever
she approached. However, on the third afternoon, as she was taking refuge from
the heat by wading barefoot up a tiny rivulet, she came upon him sitting next
to the water, head in hands. He must have heard her splashing but did not look
up. There was a fresh bandage on his thigh and she was pleased to see that no
blood showed through it. Flangers's sword and scabbard lay on a mossy ledge
behind him, though she though nothing of that. A good soldier always kept tns
weapons nearby.

She
put a hand on his shoulder This bloody, bloody war.'

Flangers
did not look up. I'm just a simple soldier, used to obeying orders. But when
the orders contradict each other, what's a man to do?'

'Follow
your conscience.'

'It's
pulled in two directions, Irisis. The scrutator is a good man and I'd have
followed him anywhere. But Flydd has fallen, so how can his orders be
legitimate? Or Fyn-Mah's, since her superiors have contradicted them? I have
followed her orders, but at the expense of my oath, my duty, my honour. I'm
forsworn, Irisis, a traitor in my own eyes. I killed the people in Scrutator
Klarm's air-floater, betrayed those I'd sworn to protect. How can I live with
that?'

'We
must keep faith with our master/ said Irisis, 'and trust to Flydd's purpose, no
matter how hard the road.'

'You
don't understand,' he said quietly. 'You haven't been forced to choose. A
soldier's oath is paramount. For six years I've laid down my life to defend
those weaker than me. I did my duty and was decorated for it. I was a hero. Now
I'm a vicious traitor who turned on his own and shot them down without
warning.'

'You
followed orders,' said Irisis uncomfortably.

'Can
that excuse any act?'

'I
don't know.' Irisis had never thought about it.

'I
didn't have the courage to refuse Fyn-Mah, but I should have.'

Irisis
could not find any words to say to him.

'All
I ever wanted was to do my duty,' he went on. And afterwards, hard work, a good
woman, children and friends to share my life. That's all lost. There's only one
way out, and it's the coward's way, but at least it'll put an end to it. If you
would leave me now, Irisis.'

He
rose, reaching for his sword. Irisis was slow to realise what he intended until
he had the scabbard in his hand and the sword half out.

'No!'
she cried, barring his way.

Flangers
was a gentle man, for all his trade. He did not thrust her out of the way, but
said, 'Please go, Irisis. It's not a sight for —’

'Will
you hear me first?'

'There's
no point.' Slipping by her, he drew the sword with a silent, practised
movement. In another movement he reversed it and put the tip to his belly.

Irisis
hadn't expected him to be that quick. Surely there'd be some last words or, at
least, a moment of reflection. Without thinking, she caught hold of the blade
with both hands. The keen edges sliced into her palms and fingers.

He
grew distressed at the sight of her blood. For a man of war, that struck her as
strange. 'Let go, Irisis,' he said softly. 'This blade could take your fingers
off in a second.'

'Then
I'll have to live without them, for I won't let go. Put down your sword,
Flangers. Hear me out.'

He
measured her resolve, then, with a little shake of the head, his rigid body
relaxed and he pulled the tip away from his belly. She went with him, not
releasing the blade until he'd laid it on the ledge. She'd been down that road
too.

Taking
her wrists in his, he turned her hands palm upward. Blood was flowing freely
from deep cuts across both palms and six fingers.

'Look
what you've done to your beautiful hands! Why, Irisis?'

Truly
an unusual soldier. 'Because we, and Xervish Flydd, can't do without you,
Flangers.' She raised her head, never more beautiful, and looked him in the
eye. 'And because you and I fought back to back in the tar pits of Snizort, and
I care for you as a comrade-in-arms.'

"Then
you'll understand that I must salve my honour in the only way left to me.'

'You
won't relent?'

'I
can't, Irisis. But first let me see to your hands. You must be in pain.'

She
said naught to that but allowed him to lead her back to the air-floater, where
he cleaned the cuts, smeared them with ointment and wrapped them in bandages of
yellow cloth. When that was done, all with great gentleness and consideration,
he put her hands in her lap. 'Now will you allow me to make my end?'