Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (10 page)

‘Up there!’ He pointed with a chisel.

Tiaan lifted up her lantern. A massive vein, hollow in the centre, slashed across the middle end of the tunnel. It was bristling with crystals fist-sized or bigger, more perfect than any she had seen. She could feel something too – the field. She wished she had her pliance so she could sense it properly. If she closed her eyes she could almost see it as coloured curls and billows, like tendrils of chromatic fog moving in and out of the three dimensions. All her senses seemed more acute, as if the field was amplifying them. She wanted those crystals. Tiaan darted forward.

Joeyn caught her by the collar as she went past. ‘Stop!’

The shock jerked her off her feet. Tiaan rubbed her throat, which was bruised from the collar. He steadied her.

‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to hurt you. It isn’t safe there.’

The roof above the vein contained a series of concentric fractures as well as cracks radiating from the centre. The pattern was rather like a spider’s web.

Her skin crept. ‘I don’t know why I ran, Joe. I just felt drawn to it.’

‘I can feel it too. I often have, down here, though I was never tempted. I don’t see how we can get to the vein, Tiaan. The roof is much worse than I remember. It’s going to fall. Soon!’

‘Is there no way we could hold it up?’

He eyed the rock. ‘Wouldn’t be easy. Could take days to get enough plates and props in here, and it’d probably come down on us while we were putting them up.’

‘What about making it fall?’

He stroked his jaw. ‘You don’t know what else will come with it. The entire roof could collapse.’

‘Oh!’ She felt her last hope disappearing.

He paced back and forth, examining the roof from various vantage points. ‘Don’t give up yet.’

Sitting on the floor, Joeyn withdrew a roll of cord from his pack and tied a slipknot in one end. Laying the knot over the end of his pick handle, he ran the cord down the handle and crept around the wall until he was as close as he could get to the vein without going under the cracked roof.

He reached up with the pick, as high as he could, but not high enough. He edged forward a bit, just under the shattered zone. Still he could not reach. Going right under, and lifting the pick high, Joeyn eased the handle up to a single crystal, trying to slip the knot over the end. The cord fell down.

Creeping back to the safe area, Joeyn replaced the knot and tried again with the same result. He tried a third time. The cord slipped over the crystal. Putting down the pick he pulled the cord tight and gave it a jerk. The crystal did not move. A harder jerk and the cord broke.

Joeyn cursed, which brought on a fit of coughing. He bent double, gasping and choking.

‘Don’t stand there, please. Get out of the way!’ She imagined the roof thundering down on him. No crystal was worth that risk.

The fit ended. He wiped his mouth, gave her a weak kind of a grin and looked up. ‘It’s not my day yet, Tiaan.’

‘How many dead miners have said that?’ she murmured.

‘Thousands.’ A better grin.

Tossing the cord aside, he slipped along the wall, reached up with the handle of the pick and with a single blow snapped off the small crystal. Unfortunately it fell back among the others. Dust filtered down from the roof. Tiaan caught her breath. Joeyn flipped the pick end for end, caught the handle, stood on tiptoe and flicked the crystal out. He caught it in his other hand, creaked backwards and landed in the safe area. Chips of stone fell from the roof.

As he came across, there was a spring in his step she had never seen before. ‘My lady!’ Holding out the crystal, he bowed.

‘Thank you.’ She embraced him, the hand holding the crystal touched her ear and she went rigid against him.

‘Something the matter?’ he asked, stepping back.

She rubbed her ear. ‘It felt as if something stung me.’ Tiaan took the crystal. It was smaller than the ones she normally worked with, not much thicker than her thumb. It might not do for a hedron but it looked perfect for her sensor helm. Unlike the other crystals it was perfectly clear, save for a hexagon of tiny bubbles midway along its length.

It did not sting her hand but Tiaan could feel the potential in it – stronger than any crystal she’d ever had.

‘
N
ish!’ Irisis wailed, right in his ear. ‘Get up,
quick
!’ Rolling over, he blinked at the bright lantern and tried to pull the pillow over his head. ‘Later,’ he moaned. ‘I’m too tired.’

She poured icy water onto the back of his neck.

Nish shrieked and leapt out of bed. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

‘Look what Tiaan’s done now!’ she said savagely.

He rubbed sleep from his eyes. She was holding out a controller, the most beautiful piece of work he’d ever seen. At least it had been. Several arms were broken off and the others twisted as if someone had jumped on them.

‘What happened to it?’

‘Tiaan smashed it, the vicious little cow.’

‘Why would she do that?’ Nish could not believe anyone would wantonly destroy such a precious thing, least of all Tiaan.

Irisis sat on the bed, holding the controller against her breast. Its broken arms dangled uselessly. ‘I only finished it yesterday!’ Her lip trembled and she turned away, as if ashamed at that loss of control. ‘It’s taken me a month to make and it’s the best one I’ve ever done. I came in early to fit the hedron but the controller was gone. It was behind the door of Tiaan’s cubicle, like this.’

‘There’s a guard down at the offices, night and day.’ Nish rubbed the back of his neck, still throbbing from the ice water. ‘Better speak to him.’

‘I have! The only artisan who’s been in the workshop since I left was Tiaan. She’s in the pay of the enemy. You’ve got to stop her, Nish.’ She moved up close behind him.

Her warm breath aroused distracting thoughts. He turned away. ‘It could be just an accident.’

‘Don’t be stupid! It was in her cubicle, Nish. It didn’t float there. She destroyed my controller, just as she sabotaged the others.’

‘That’s hard to believe.’

‘What does it take to convince you?’ she raged. ‘Will you let her destroy the manufactory?’

‘It takes evidence!’ he said vehemently. He longed to get back at Tiaan but probers must follow the rules. His father would never trust him again if he accused someone who subsequently turned out to be innocent. Especially the best artisan in the manufactory.

‘Go and talk to the guards,’ she said icily.

‘I will.’

‘Bah!’ she snorted. ‘You’re secretly in love with her. You don’t want to find her out.’

Nish went looking for the guards who had been on duty outside the offices overnight. Their post was close to the artisans’ workshop. He found the midnight guard in the refectory and explained what had happened.

‘No one went near the workshop on
my
shift,’ she said, pointedly turning her shoulder to him. He was a lowly artificer, after all.

Nish had to take her word, though the damage could have been done in a few minutes while she was at the privy, or gossiping to another guard, or warming herself by the furnaces. After all, there had been no one watching the guard.

The day guard, who was talking to Foreman Gryste, had seen no one go into the workshop except Tiaan and, sometime after that, Irisis.

‘My door was open,’ said Gryste. ‘If anyone else came past I would have seen them.’

‘Where’s Tiaan now?’ Nish asked Irisis, who was coming out of the workshop.

‘She’s gone out again. Come on!’

Nish followed her towards the front gate. ‘Where did she go?’

‘How would I know?’

They asked old Nod at the gate. ‘She went down to the mine,’ Nod said.

‘She goes there all the time,’ said Irisis as they walked out into the wind.

‘She has to select the best crystals.’

‘You’re a fool, Nish! She’s selling our secrets to someone there. She’s going to meet him.’

‘Don’t call me a fool,’ he said coldly. ‘And don’t ever call me Nish again. My name is Cryl-Nish.’

His anger made her step backwards. Bowing her head, she took his hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you, Cryl-Nish. Please come and see for yourself.’

As they emerged from the forest Tiaan came out of the adit and took the path to the village. Irisis and Nish followed, keeping at a safe distance.

‘Where’s she going?’ Nish asked.

‘To old Joeyn’s place, I’d say.’

They tracked her to a hut above the village. Tiaan went inside, then she and the miner came out and sat on the porch.

‘What are they doing?’ Irisis whispered.

‘Drinking tea.’

After some time, Tiaan and Joeyn headed back up the path to the mine.

‘Come on!’ said Irisis.

Nish went with her to the hut. She slipped inside. ‘Quickly!’ she said as he lingered on the path.

Nish thought it unlikely that there was anything to be found, but humoured her. Shortly, however, feeling under the old man’s blankets, his hand touched a folded piece of paper. He carried it to the doorway.

Both sides of the page were covered in writing in a tiny hand. It was a description of the preparation of a hedron. ‘That’s Tiaan’s writing,’ Irisis said, coming up behind him. ‘The traitorous slut!’

Nish examined the paper, which was rough-cut on three sides, razor smooth on the fourth. ‘Looks as if it’s been taken from a book.’

‘It must be from her day journal.’

They found nothing else. Without saying a word Nish went back to the manufactory, searching Tiaan’s room and then her work cubicle. Her room revealed nothing. Her day journal had a leaf missing, neatly razored out.

He locked the cubicle, put the key in his pocket and went to see Overseer Gi-Had. There he explained that he was a prober, working secretly on his father’s behalf, showed his letter of appointment and told Gi-Had about the ruined controller and the missing leaf.

‘I don’t believe it!’ said the overseer, though he looked worried.

‘Anyone can be corrupted by the enemy.’

‘Not Tiaan. She has no vices, no secrets, no life apart from her work.’

‘Perhaps one of her brothers or sisters is in trouble and she needs money desperately.’

Gi-Had consulted a ledger. ‘She has forty-nine silver drams to her account, more than almost anyone in the manufactory. Twenty-six more and she could pay off her indenture. Unheard of!’

Nish whistled. It was a small fortune. ‘There you are – it’s her wages as a spy.’

‘It’s her pay over the past fourteen years! She’s spent virtually nothing in that time. You can check the entries, prober. Every copper nyd is accounted for.’

Nish did, and found all to be exactly as Gi-Had had said. It shook him. ‘Perhaps you’d better come and see the journal.’

‘I will,’ said Gi-Had, and his face grew even blacker as he matched the leaf to the cut. ‘Anyone could have done this! Why would she cut a leaf from her own journal, incriminating herself, when she could simply copy it?’

Nish was forced to consider the unpalatable alternative, that Irisis had smashed her own controller and planted the evidence to discredit her rival.

‘Do you have anyone in mind?’ Gi-Had rasped. It was clear that
he
did.

‘Me?’ Nish said hoarsely.

‘You
are
supposed to be the prober.’

‘I’m thinking on it.’

‘Then think fast! I want a report today. Tiaan is working on a special project for me and suddenly this happens. It’s damned suspicious! If someone is trying to bring down my best artisan, I’ll hang their head over the front gate and their guts from the flagpole.
Whoever their family is!
’ His eyes flashed. ‘I’m putting a guard on the workshop, night and day! No, two guards.’ He stamped out.

Nish sat down on Tiaan’s stool, shaken. What was he supposed to do now? He was almost sure Irisis had cut the page from the ledger. If she was behind the sabotage too, she must be denounced. She was a liability he could not afford.

The door opened and Irisis came in, smiling. The smile vanished when she saw the expression on his face.

‘It was you!’ he said through gritted teeth. He jumped up, knocking over the stool. ‘Gi-Had knows Tiaan was set up and he suspects you. I should call him back right now.’

‘Go ahead. He’s my cousin.’

‘I can’t believe you would smash your own controller!’ he said coldly.

Irisis stared at him in incredulity, then spun on her heel and stalked out. He ran after her, grabbing her by the arm.

She whirled. ‘You
do
believe it, Nish! You think more of her than you do of me.’

‘You manipulating bitch! How dare you use me?’

‘You love her,’ she sneered. ‘Your brain is addled by the little cow.’

‘I despise her, but not as much as I despise you. Don’t ever lie to me, Irisis. Do you deny that you did it?’

She said nothing at all. He held her gaze but she did not look away. ‘You can’t deny it, can you, Irisis?’

‘I don’t have to justify myself to you, Nish.’

‘You
did
do it!’

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘In that case I must do my prober’s duty and take my evidence to Gi-Had.’