Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (30 page)

‘No. We’re working on a lot of … secret weapons. If one or two of them come off, it could make all the difference.’

‘What sort of secret weapons?’

‘If I told you, they would not be secret, would they? Think of the ways clankers have changed warfare compared to foot soldiers and cavalry, and apply that Art to everything we do. We could use controllers to power dozens of different kinds of devices – night lights, weapons, pumps, boats. And indeed we must, for we no longer have the labour to do otherwise.’

The thought was less comforting than it seemed. ‘We’re already overusing the Secret Art,’ she said, ‘and seeing nodes drained of their fields. I would be worried about the consequences, were I on the Council.’

‘Thankfully you will never be,’ he said smoothly, ‘so you can leave that worry to us.’

‘The enemy also have secret projects, like their flesh-forming. What if that succeeds?’

‘We’ll need our own devices to combat it.’ He looked away. He did not want to talk about that.

Irisis had a sudden thought. ‘Wasn’t the querist studying their flesh-forming? I haven’t seen Fyn-Mah for months.’ Fyn-Mah, the querist or spymaster for the city of Tiksi, answered to the perquisitor and therefore, indirectly, to Flydd.

‘She was and still is.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Away on Council business. Don’t ask that kind of question.’

‘What about the Aachim and their eleven thousand constructs? Are they with us or against us?’

‘We don’t know. There has been contact with them, though it wasn’t fruitful.’

‘What do you think?’ She held out her glass for more brandy.

‘I’d say they are too bitter to negotiate. Bitter that the Charon kept them as slaves on their own world. Doubly bitter that since the Forbidding was broken their world has become uninhabitable. I hear they blame us, which is a worry. We have no answer to their constructs, and maybe the lyrinx don’t either. We’re both weak after so much war. The Aachim are strong. What they choose to do will decide the fate of the world.’

‘So how important is our work?
Really
?’

‘Finding out what happened to the node is vital.’

‘Then why don’t we do that first?’

‘Because without crystal this entire manufactory, and the others we supply with controllers, are useless. If we can’t produce them, my head will soon be hanging over the gate and a new scrutator will take over. You would be out within a week. You’re tainted, Irisis.’

‘Who would the new scrutator be?’

‘I can’t talk about things like that. However, I can tell you one thing – I was premature to write off Nish’s father. Perquisitor Jal-Nish Hlar has fought back from his injuries. He will always be a horror to look at, he will always be in pain, but that has only hardened his ambition. He still wants to be scrutator and there’s only one way he can get there. Over my maimed and mutilated body.’

She wrapped her arms around herself. It felt as if something had just scuttled over her coffin and was clawing at the lid, trying to get in. ‘Were you ever friends?’

‘No. I was his mentor for a time, but that was terminated by mutual agreement. Jal-Nish is too ambitious, and ambitious people can’t be trusted. They’re always looking out for themselves.’

‘Coming from someone who has been scrutator for thirty years, that’s a bit rich!’

‘I was made scrutator because I was better at what I did than anyone else. I never wanted to be on the Council, though having got there, I cling to it because I know what happens once you let go. I still think I can do the job better than anyone else, in spite of the last few months. Ah, it’s hot in here. You don’t mind if I take off my shirt, do you?’

‘I’ve seen your chest before,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘I don’t expect to lose control.’

He pulled it over his head, revealing a scarred and sinewy torso that looked as though all the flesh had been gouged out from under the skin.

‘I wonder about you,’ she said, fascinated. He was ugly but not grotesque. The scrutator was such a likeable man, once you got to know him, that his appearance became irrelevant.

‘People do.’

‘Who did such terrible things to you?’

He emptied his glass but did not answer.

She held out the bottle. ‘More?’

‘No, thank you. I’ve a job to do later on and I’ll need my wits for it. The Council of Scrutators did this to me. At least, it was done at their command.’

‘Why would they torture their own?’ she said, appalled.

‘I was not scrutator then. I was a perquisitor; a young and handsome one, rising fast. I became too full of myself, and too curious. As you know, the scrutators have the best spy network in the land. We pride ourselves on knowing everything, though of course there’s no such thing as perfect knowledge. I was too clever. I pored over what everyone else had looked at, and saw something no one else had seen. I saw a pattern. People had been a little careless.’

‘What are you talking about?’

He rubbed his chest, pointedly. ‘Do you really want to know?’

She did not. She sipped. He reached for the bottle, drew back, then filled his glass after all. They sat in a companionable silence, listening to the crackling of the fire.

‘It was about our master,’ he said, now slurring just a little.

‘The Council of Scrutators?’

‘No, our real master. The Numinator.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘No one knows who the Numinator is, but be assured, there is a power behind the Council, working to its own purpose. It may not care who wins the war. It may have manipulated everything that’s happened since the Council was formed.’

‘The Numinator?’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Don’t mention that name again! It’s a death certificate. I must have had more brandy than I thought.’ Suddenly he looked frail and rather vulnerable, which she found strangely endearing.

‘I’ve also had more than is good for me,’ she said, moving close. She traced the scars on his chest with a fingertip. ‘You must have suffered so.’

‘I did,’ he said, ‘and would rather not be reminded of it. Besides, you have also felt the lash.’

‘And I have the scars to prove it, though they are nothing like yours.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘Would you like to see them?’

‘As a matter of fact, I would.’

She unbuttoned her shirt, pulled it off and draped it over the back of the chair. Irisis had a magnificent bosom, though the rest of her did not put it to shame.

His eyes passed over her, and again. Finally he said in a hoarse voice, ‘I see no scars.’

She turned her back. The creamy skin was marked across with welts that, even after half a year, had a purple tinge. He laid a hard hand on her back, quite gently. A shiver went up her neck.

‘I’ve seen enough,’ he said.

‘Really?’

‘Of your back, I meant.’

She turned around.

‘Would you like to see the rest of my scars?’ he said.

‘That depends.’

He raised his forehead-wide eyebrow. ‘On what?’

‘On whether every part of you is as emaciated as your chest.’

He took off his trousers.

Irisis considered him thoughtfully. ‘Am
I
the job for which you needed your wits about you?’

‘You are.’

‘You’re not the handsomest of men, scrutator, nor the youngest. What gave you the idea that I would be interested?’

‘I told you. We scrutators pride ourselves on knowing everything.’

W
ell, thought Irisis, smiling to herself after Flydd had gone to sleep. The things they teach you in scrutator school! Easing out of bed, she looked down at him. They must have appeared quite the oddest couple, when they were at it, for he was her opposite in every physical respect. Tucking the blankets around him, she dressed, went to the bathing room and after that to her own room, but not to sleep.

Her room was small, dark and airless, like every chamber in the manufactory, and even after all this time she found it confining. As a child of the wealthy House of Stirm she’d had a room bigger than some people’s homes, with views of meadow, lake and forest. Having been surrounded with beautiful things, the profound ugliness of this place was a drain upon her soul. Her work was, too. Irisis had always wanted to be a jeweller but her family would not hear of it. For four generations they had been crafters or better, and it was her duty to raise them back to the pedestal they had slipped from.

Irisis hated them for it, but with the world at war she had no choice. Family and Histories were everything to her and she could not go against them. She had become an artisan, and was now crafter, but her mother demanded more. She must rise to chanic, the pinnacle of the artisan’s profession. Irisis was going to, though not for herself. She still planned to be a jeweller once the war was over.

Her gaze wandered the walls, which were decorated with things she had made in her spare time, mostly miniatures created of silver, plentiful here, and semi-precious gems. They gave her more pleasure than anything she had done as an artisan. It was a canker in her soul. Many women in the manufactory wore jewellery she had made, which was remarkably fine. But making jewellery did not aid the war, and the war had to come first. She understood that, and accepted it, but it was not enough.

Irisis sighed and turned her mind to duty. The mountain might be full of crystal but not even Ullii could sense it through a league of rock. However, if the miners could get her close enough, Ullii would see the crystals like plums in a pudding, and then it would just be a matter of mining them out.

The failing nodes were another matter. Finding out what had gone wrong with them was vital to the war, and for the scrutator to have given her the job meant that he was unhappy with the work of the other teams.

But I don’t know enough, Irisis thought. I don’t know anything about nodes, except that’s where the field comes from. This is a job for a mancer, not an artisan, and I’m neither. I can’t do it.

It became clear, as the night wore on, that she really only had one option. She must go to the scrutator and confess.

She knocked on his door at six in the morning, carrying a loaded tray.

‘Yes?’

She put the tray on the bed, since his table was littered with work. Flydd laid the pen aside, rubbed his temples and sniffed appreciatively.

‘That smells nice. I’ll bet a bottle of last night’s brandy you didn’t get it from the refectory.’

‘I made it,’ she said. ‘Specially.’

He gave her a keen stare, picked up the tray and placed it on his maps and papers. He took the cloth off to reveal freshly baked buns, a piece of grilled fish, still hot, and a bowl of ginger tea.

‘Will you join me?’ He indicated the other chair.

‘No, thank you. I’ve already eaten.’ That was a lie, but she did not want to share food with him. It would make it even harder.

‘All the more for me.’ He broke a piece of pink flesh from the fish with his eating sticks and ate it with relish. ‘Very good!’ He tore a bun in half. ‘Is there nothing you
can’t
do well, Irisis?’

She did not answer, just sat watching, enjoying his pleasure in the meal. He sipped his tea, stirred honey into it with a crooked finger and looked up at her.

‘Of course I know you want something, crafter. What is it?’

The lump in her stomach felt like a pumpkin. She caught his eye and for once had to look away. She liked the man; they had been lovers. How could she let him down like this? But then, how could she not tell him? He had to know.

‘I want to confess. No, that’s not true. I
have
to confess. I cannot bear it any longer.’

He considered his plate, selecting a choice morsel of fish, and licked his lips. How could he be so casual?

‘Confess, Irisis? You surprise me. What can you possibly have to confess to
me
?’

It burst out of her. ‘I’m a fraud, scrutator. I can’t draw power from the field. I lost the talent when I was a child of four and I’ve never been able to get it back. I’ve been lying and cheating ever since. I can’t do the job and I can’t possibly help you see into the node and find out what’s gone wrong with it.’

‘But you
do
do the job, Irisis. This manufactory produces the best controllers in the east, and more quickly than most. The Council is rather pleased with
your
work.’

‘But …’

‘Besides, we
know
you have drawn power. You did it up on the high plateau when the clanker controllers had to be re-tuned to that strange double node. Fyn-Mah told me so.’

‘That was … Ullii showed me the way, surr.’

‘I don’t answer to “surr” from my lover, Irisis.’

‘Xervish –’ The name felt wrong; she could hardly bring herself to use it. ‘It was Ullii’s doing, Xervish. She showed me the path and power just flooded from the field. I could not have done it on my own.’

‘But I’m sending Ullii with you to the node. Where is the problem?’

‘I’m not what I’m supposed to be.’

‘None of us are what we’re supposed to be. I’m a pragmatic man. It’s the result that counts. You worked well with the seeker so I trust you will again, artisan.’