Ian Irvine - Geomancer

‘I have children in Crandor, surr,’ she said softly.

‘You should never have left them.’ He bit his knuckles. ‘After one year, if the manufactory meets its goals – all of them – I will send you home.’

‘Thank you, surr.’ Tuniz was beaming from one side of her face to the other.

He rotated in his chair. ‘Artisan Irisis. I know everything about you!’ He glared at her so fiercely that Nish thought she was going to be sent to the execution block. ‘Including that you manage your artisans better than anyone. You will be acting crafter, your job to produce controllers as fast as you possibly can.’

‘I’ll need more artisans and prentices,’ she said calmly. Nish admired her self-possession, for she must have been expecting the breeding factory, or worse.

‘You’ll have them as soon as I can march them here.’

‘And better defences for the manufactory and the mine.’

‘Masons are being collected right now, and a detail of two hundred soldiers is on its way. I’ve had a warrant made up for you. Collect it before you leave. Buy whatever you require and be prepared to go back by the end of the week.’

‘What I need is crystal,’ said Irisis. ‘The lyrinx cleaned out our stores. I must have miners who can find the kind we need.’

‘Wasn’t there an old fellow … Joeyn?’ said the thin man.

‘He’s dead, and the others are mere metal miners. They can’t tell crystal from muck.’

‘I’ll have miners sent here, though it may be a month before you get them. Too long …’

‘I have an idea, surr,’ said Irisis. ‘If you’re prepared to listen.’

He raised half of his continuous eyebrow.

‘When we were in the mine,’ Irisis said, ‘the seeker said she could see crystal in the mountain like raisins in a pudding. What if …?’

‘Already you prove your worth, Crafter Irisis. Get to it! She will guide the miners.’

He swung around again. ‘And now for you, Cryl-Nish Hlar. What am I to do with you?’

Nish caught his breath, but this time he held the man’s gaze. It was like looking into an empty shaft – his eyes gave nothing away.

‘Humpf!’ said the man. ‘The reports I’ve had of you are not entirely unfavourable. You have a little project for Fyn-Mah, I understand. Concerning what was found up in the ice houses? And there’s your work with the seeker. Where is she?’

‘In her room at the inn,’ said Nish.

‘Not much damn good there! Send her down for examination. Go back to your bath, boy, while I consider how I can use you. If at all !’

Nish felt piqued that Irisis had been rewarded handsomely while his life still hung by a thread. ‘Ullii requires special handling if you are to get anything out of her, surr. It might be better …’

‘Damn you, boy!’ the man growled. ‘Don’t tell me my job. I’ll fetch her myself. Now clear out, the lot of you!’

They hastily vacated the room, even the master of Tiksi, whose chamber it was.

‘Give me a hand, Nish!’ said Irisis as they went down the front steps. She looked faint.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘These wretched crutches have chafed the skin off,’ she muttered.

Nish gave her a curious glance. ‘No, what’s really the matter?’

‘I’m going to be exposed, that’s what! I can’t do it, Nish.’

‘Of course you can. You’re a brilliant team leader. Who was that, anyway?’

‘You, with all your contacts, don’t know?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘I have no idea.’

‘That,’ she paused dramatically, ‘was the scrutator himself. Xervish Flydd!’

As the boat drifted away from the seeping warmth of Kalissin, the water became progressively colder. Tiaan woke, feeling the chill coming through the leather.

It was dark; just a trace of moon. The craft was rocking wildly and driven sleet stung her cheeks. In this wind the boat must soon fetch up on the shore. Then she had to discover how to get to her destination, preferably without telling anyone where she was headed.

Better stay with the boat, at least until she found a village. It would be easy enough to fashion a paddle. She could even make a scrap of sail, perhaps sailing down a river to the inland sea. The wind was blowing towards the south, roughly the way she wanted to go. She’d head along the shore until she found an outlet flowing in that direction, to Tallallamel, and keep going until she got there.

Wrapping her coat around her, Tiaan drifted, somewhere between waking and sleep. She ached all over and the top of her head throbbed. She probed it with her fingertips. A clump of hair was gone, the skin beneath blistered.

The boat was being banged against something hard, a crust of ice stretching between round rocks. It was still dark and she was freezing.

Easing the craft along the rocks into a cove, she climbed out. The ground was crusted snow. Ahead lay sparse forest, old pines with straggly limbs. Pulling the boat from the water, she marked its position and went towards the trees.

She’d need a fire to survive the night. A little way inside the forest Tiaan began to gather twigs from above her head. It took a lot of effort with flint and tinder to get a fire going, for the wood was damp. Fortunately she had plenty of experience – damp wood was the only kind they had at the manufactory. Soon she was warming her hands at the blaze and making soup from dried fish and lake water.

She did not care what it tasted like; the warmth was all that mattered. Later Tiaan made a second fire, put boughs between the two for a bed and lay down in her sleeping pouch. It was one of the most uncomfortable nights of her life.

The following day she poled along the edge of the lake, searching for an outlet. Tiaan did not find one, though on the morning after she encountered a good-sized river which flowed south. Paddling into it, she let the current carry her along, and shortly passed a hut on the edge of a patch of forest. She kept going, hoping for a village, but before long came around a bend to find ice from bank to bank. The river was probably frozen all the way to the inland sea, and clear upstream only because the lake was warm. What now? She could not walk to Tallallamel. Tiaan poled back towards the hut, taking a small piece of silver from Joeyn’s money belt and putting it in her pocket.

The hut was built on a gentle rise and constructed of wattle and daub, shaped like a squat vase. The walls were thick, the roof rising to a peak. A slanted, pointed cowl kept snow out of the smoke hole.

A miserable dwelling, but the walls were in good condition and a child playing in a tree outside had rosy cheeks and a well-fed face. No doubt the family made a good living from fish. Poling her boat to the shore, Tiaan stepped onto the snow, which crunched underfoot.

The child looked down.

‘Hola!’ said Tiaan.

‘Myrz!’ said the child, jumping off the branch. Dressed in furs, it was a round ball of a creature of indeterminate sex. Its hood fell back, revealing pale skin and long hair a quite remarkable colour, blond with the faintest hint of lime. The child was seven or eight, she supposed. She had heard tales of pale-skinned, green-haired people who lived beyond the mountains, but had never seen one before. There were not a lot of visitors to the manufactory and most were like her – black of hair and olive of skin.

Tiaan had no idea of the language. She knew only the dialects of the south-east peninsula and the common speech of eastern Lauralin, which was not as well known as it might have been. In many places only scholars, tellers and traders knew it. She spoke to the child in the common speech.