Geomancer (Well of Echoes) (22 page)

Nish’s shaking hand dropped the letter. As he bent to pick it up he caught Gi-Had’s eye. The overseer’s dark face had gone as pale as paper. Casting Nish a look of purest fury, he screamed, ‘Why did you do this, artificer? Guard!’ He threw himself out the door, bellowing so loudly that it shook the flimsy wall of his office.

A brace of guards came running, and more behind them. ‘Take this man to the whipping posts and strip him naked, ready for the lash. Bring
everyone
outside. The entire manufactory will watch!’

The guards dragged Nish away. The bellowing continued behind him. Gi-Had was a most frightened man. What had been in
his
letter?

Outside Nish was stripped and tied to the middle whipping post. Shortly he heard screams, scuffles, and a naked Irisis was bound to the post next to his. He cast her a furious glare. She stared him down. Her pale skin was covered in purple blotches, for it was well below freezing.

‘I curse the day I met you!’ he hissed.

She looked him up and down. ‘I can’t say that you were worth it either,
little Nish
!’

They stood there for an hour while the thousand people in the manufactory were assembled. Nish felt sure he had frostbite in his toes, which had lost all feeling. How could he have been such a fool? Irisis had been behind it the whole time. But why would she betray everything her life had stood for? It made no sense.

Finally Gi-Had appeared. ‘When my father hears of this …’ Nish blustered.

‘He ordered it!’ Gi-Had said savagely. Standing before the assembled workers, he read from the letter:

He choked on the words.

While waiting for the lash, Nish looked across at Irisis, who was still staring straight ahead. ‘My father is coming,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘What evidence is there against us?’

‘The word of one man,’ she said grimly.

‘Who, Irisis?’

Her lovely lips set in a hard line. ‘Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘Can he be blamed?’

‘Only if he’s dead!’ She bared those carnivore’s teeth.

The first lash fell on her creamy back. Irisis writhed, tossed back her head and opened her mouth, but let forth no scream. After that, as the knotted leather tore into his own back, Nish was in too much agony to notice. And agony it was, the humiliation even worse than the pain.

Gi-Had wielded the whip as if he was trying to flay them alive. Nish broke on stroke sixteen. He screamed, and again for each of the remainder, not to mention afterwards when a tar-boy painted the wounds with a bristle brush.

Only then did he realise what a strong woman Irisis was. She had bitten through her lip, her back was a bloody ruin that would be scarred for life, but she had not let out a whimper.

Nish watched, with a thrill of horror, the mixture of tar and blood dribbling down her backside. His own must be the same.

‘I can’t do anything!’ he gritted. ‘I’m bidden to Tiksi with Gi-Had.’

‘Just as well!’ she hissed back. Irisis stood up straight, thrusting out her chest, and at that moment he desired her more than he ever had.

Nish and Gi-Had left for Tiksi immediately, but after an hour were forced back by a blizzard so strong they were in danger of being blown off the path. By the time they struggled through the gates, four hours later, it was growing dark.

The manufactory was abuzz. Apothek Mul-Lym was dead, having committed suicide with an extract of tar. It had been a horrible death that left his lips and mouth blistered, and his corpse with a pungent phenolic reek. There were no witnesses. It was assumed that he was Tiaan’s poisoner, though many wondered why he had taken his life in such a painful way. His drug ledger was open at the next but last page. It showed a tiny vial of calluna to have been used, though no patient’s name had been entered.

A rumour spread that he’d been spurned by Tiaan, had poisoned her in revenge, and then, knowing the deed would be traced to him, had taken his own life. Gi-Had questioned Irisis and Nish closely but of course Nish knew nothing about it. If Irisis did, she gave not a hint of it under a six-hour interrogation, and no witness could place her anywhere near the scene of the crime. Finally Gi-Had dismissed her. The apothek’s death was the best solution for them all.

Nish ran into Irisis in the corridor in the middle of the night and asked her what had happened. ‘I know nothing about it,’ she said, and walked away.

Nish was more worried than ever. She must have murdered the man. Nish was in way over his head and sinking fast.

Querist Fyn-Mah had still not appeared when Gi-Had and Nish set out at dawn. Presumably she had also been delayed by the weather. The snow had stopped but the wind was scouring snow off the path as they hurried down the mountain.

They arrived in Tiksi with red, wind-blasted faces, reaching the breeding factory at midday. The door guard sneered when he caught sight of Nish, who trembled lest the man reveal the details of his previous visit. In Matron’s office they received a most unpleasant surprise. Tiaan had escaped in the night.

Gi-Had let out a monumental groan and gripped his head in gnarled hands, as if trying to squeeze the pain out of it. ‘Where has she gone?’

‘How in the blazes should I know?’ Matron replied. ‘I wish I’d never set eyes on the wretch. The damage she’s done to our reputation won’t be undone in a hurry. I’ve a good mind to ask for the indenture money back, after the damaged goods you’ve sold me.’

‘You knew what you were buying!’ he cried, unwilling to let her get the better of him.

‘You said she was incurably mad!’

‘That was the advice my healers gave me,’ Gi-Had said stiffly.

‘She was sane and cunning when she woke up.’

‘In which case you should have paid more for her, not less.’ Nonetheless Gi-Had was delighted to hear that Tiaan had recovered. ‘Where is she now?’

‘No one knows. She led the entire household a dance for hours, then escaped.’

‘The factory will buy her indenture back,’ Gi-Had said, ‘as soon as she’s found.’

‘Now just wait a minute …’ she began.

‘There’ll be a bonus in it. And, I should warn you …’

‘Yes,’ she said, alerted by his smouldering temper.

‘This comes at the orders of Jal-Nish Hlar, the perquisitor.’

‘Of course we’ll do everything in our power to cooperate,’ she said quickly.

‘Did she have any visitors?’

‘Only a decrepit old miner. Should never have let him in the place.’

They questioned Tiaan’s mother too, but all Marnie could do was complain – about the discomfort, the ingratitude of her daughter, but most of all that her client would not be coming. Next they went to the querist’s house but Fyn-Mah had left Tiksi some days back. By the time they reached the fire-scarred city gate they were no better informed as to where Tiaan might have fled.

‘She could not have gone far,’ said Nish, ‘with no money, clothes or friends.’

‘Perhaps to the coast,’ Gi-Had mused. ‘She has half-brothers and sisters down there.’

At the gate they had their first piece of useful news, for among the guards was the fellow Tiaan had escaped from.

‘Damn near burned the guardhouse down.’ He indicated the charred timbers. ‘And then she fixed the bar so it’d fall closed behind her. I’d never have known, had I not seen it fall.’

Nish was about to make a sarcastic remark about the intelligence of guards. He’d had an awful day and his back was in agony. But he caught Gi-Had’s eye on him and, mindful of the trouble he was in, held his tongue.

‘Do you have any idea which way she went?’ he asked.

‘Straight up the road.’ The guard pointed.

‘She might have doubled back,’ Gi-Had said.

‘I followed her tracks as soon as it became light,’ said the guard. ‘She was going up the path to the manufactory. It’s a wonder you didn’t run into her this morning.’

‘She must have heard us coming.’ Gi-Had gave the man a coin for his trouble.

About an hour later, rounding a hairpin bend in light snow, they came upon two porters and a guard, plodding along, heads down, in a state of exhaustion.

‘Hoy!’ Gi-Had roared.

Their heads jerked up. The guard broke and ran but the others called him back. Gi-Had jogged up to them, stepping high through the snow. Nish hurried after him, which hurt his back cruelly.

The woman cried out, ‘It’s Overseer Gi-Had. Gods be praised. Surr, surr, we’ve been attacked by lyrinx!’

She staggered and nearly fell. Gi-Had held her up. ‘Porter Ell-Lin, is it not?’

‘That’s right, surr! Kind of you to remember.’ Ell-Lin touched one shoulder and then the other, a sign of respect. She was a large, stocky woman with big shoulders and a thick neck. Jet-black hair had been cropped short around a broad, weatherbeaten but not unhandsome face. Her slanted black eyes were narrowed to slits.

‘Tell us about the attack, Ell-Lin. You know Artificer Cryl-Nish, of course!’

‘I saw him at the whipping.’ She averted her gaze. Nish flushed nonetheless. ‘We were coming down Ghyllies Pinch, ten of us and the new clanker. We’d left late because of a cracked front strut. It was the last hour of the morning. As we rounded the corner a boulder rolled down the hill and smashed the clanker in. The beasts came out of the rocks; three, there were. Everyone else is dead. Were we not ahead they’d have got us too.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘Lyrinx were eating Wal, and poor ole Yiddie …’ She put her head in her hands. ‘It ain’t right, is it! Eating folk!’

‘What about the clanker?’ said Gi-Had. ‘Could it not …?’

‘It was destroyed, surr.’

‘What, completely?’

‘The back was crushed, and the people inside. Beasts got the other soldiers too. They fought bravely but it was useless. We dropped our loads and ran.’

‘Cowards!’ sneered Nish, forgetting himself.

‘Shut up,
boy
!’ Gi-Had roared. ‘Or you’ll join them. You did well, Ell-Lin. The goods we can replace, if they took them, but porters are vital to the war. Which way did they come?’

‘Down the mountain,’ muttered the man who had tried to run away.

‘And you didn’t see which way they went?’

‘They were still there, trying to open up the clanker, when we turned the corner.’

‘And you saw no one else? No sign of Artisan Tiaan?’

‘No,’ said Ell-Lin, and the men shook their heads.

‘We’ll go carefully.’ Gi-Had eased the knife in his belt. The others were not armed. There had never been a need for it up here. ‘I don’t like this,’ he muttered to Nish. ‘Lyrinx in these mountains, attacking our caravans – there’s something we’re not being told. And what’s become of Tiaan? We need her more desperately than ever.’

‘Perhaps she came upon the caravan. The lyrinx may have eaten her too.’

‘Better pray they haven’t,
Nish
!’ said Gi-Had.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached the scene; shadows slanted right across the road. A breeze carried the stench of blood and ordure. A snow eagle, its beak and breast feathers tinged red, flapped slowly off as they trudged up to the wreck. The bird went as far as the out-jutting branch of an ancient pine, where it perched, watching them with jealous eyes as if they wanted to share in its feast.

Gi-Had inspected the ruin gloomily. ‘No chance of repairing it, artificer?’

Nish shook his head. ‘Even if we could, you’d never get anyone to operate it. Death Clanker, they’d call it, and you’d have to force them at swordpoint. The hedron would probably pick up the taint of the lyrinx …’

‘Maybe we could salvage some of the parts.’

‘Perhaps.’ Nish put his head in through the opening, but one look at the shambles inside and he hurriedly withdrew. Running to the edge of the road, he vomited up his breakfast. Then, thinking how far he had to go to rehabilitate himself, he hurried back. ‘Sorry! I’ve not seen …’

‘Just get it done,’ Gi-Had said sharply. He seemed to be having trouble with his own stomach.

Nish held his breath this time. The operator and passengers must have died instantly, though the bodies had been further despoiled by the lyrinx. The inside looked like the floor of an abattoir. He finished his inspection and pulled away. The smell lingered in his nostrils.

‘The controller’s gone!’ said Nish.

‘I’m starting to see a story here. First they sabotage the crystals, then my best artisan, and now they’re stealing the controllers. What’s next? And why steal them? Are they planning to use them against us?’

‘I don’t know, surr,’ said Nish.

‘I don’t like this at all. It’s too big for me. For the first time since the letter, I’m wishing your father would hurry up.’

I’m not, thought Nish.

‘Anything else missing?’ said Gi-Had.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘The porters’ boxes have been torn open, but nothing else taken, as far as I can recall from the shipping manifests. Not even the white gold.’

‘Maybe the beasts have no use for it,’ Nish said.

‘I wouldn’t advise you to think of them as beasts. They’re as smart as you or I. We’ll take back what we can and send a salvage party for the rest. Any sign of Tiaan?’ he said to Ell-Lin, who was standing up on the bank, well away from the gruesome scene.

‘None here, surr.’

‘Very well. Come down. Take what you can.’

They loaded up and began the trek, arriving at the manufactory without incident after dark. News of the attack had already reached them. Tiaan had not been seen.

‘She was poorly dressed,’ said Nish, consulting the inventory of clothing the matron had given him. ‘Her feet were wrapped in rags. She’s probably dead by now.’