Geomancer (Well of Echoes), page 49
‘Cryl-Nish Hlar!’ announced the aide, and the small man turned a pair of mild black eyes on him. They were shaded in deep sockets by eyebrows that formed an unbroken black band across the bridge of the man’s nose.
‘About time!’ he snapped. ‘Where have you been, Artificer Cryl-Nish?’
‘I had to settle my father, surr. He is Perquisitor Jal-Nish …’
‘I know your damned father! Sit down! Querist Fyn-Mah has given me an outline of this disaster. Four clankers lost, and forty soldiers, for absolutely no gain. Such incompetence I cannot comprehend. I’ve a good mind to send the whole blasted lot of you to the front-line.’
An audible shiver passed through the room. He let the sentence hang in the air while he glared at each of them in turn. Nish tried to meet his gaze but had to look away. This was a man very much used to dominating others. He had an exceptionally thin and angular face that looked to have had all the meat pared from it, leaving mere bone, skin and sinew. His cheeks were sucked in so far that Nish could see the outline of his teeth. A straggle of beard on the chin emphasised its spade-like quality.
‘Humpf! Useless lot.’ His eye fell on Nish again, who was seated next to Irisis. ‘Especially you pair! What was that fuss all about?’
Neither said anything, since they had no idea what the question meant.
‘Fornication! That’s what! I blame you two for the whole sorry mess.’ The man sighed. ‘In the meantime, there’s work to be done. It’s a tragedy Tiaan is lost to us. A double tragedy that the curious crystal is gone as well. And to cap it all, your clanker operator’s run off with his machine. Who the hell was running the show?’
No one spoke. Fyn-Mah looked stricken. ‘I was, surr, after the perquisitor was injured. I take full resp …’
‘Humpfh! I sent Jal-Nish. The responsibility is mine. Don’t suppose the fellow will get far, anyway. Now, how do we get out of this mess?’
Again no one spoke.
‘You lot don’t have a quile of initiative between you!’ He twirled his whiskers around a finger and pressed the coil in through his lips, sucking on the strands. ‘We can’t give up the manufactory. We won’t be intimidated. It goes back into operation as soon as possible. And the mine. But I need an overseer.’ He considered, sucking furiously.
A chair scraped halfway down Nish’s row. A big, barrel-chested man stood up. ‘I would like to put …’
‘Sit down, Foreman Gryste,’ said the thin man. ‘Artificer Tuniz, you have come out of the excursion with some credit. You will be overseer. I shall give you two weeks to get the manufactory operating again, and then I want a clanker from it every fortnight.’
Gryste rocked back on his chair, dismayed, then angry.
‘It can’t be done!’ said Tuniz flatly.
‘I can do it, surr,’ said Gryste.
‘Good! See you are the best foreman the manufactory has ever had or I’ll have your head. Overseer Tuniz, find a way! You will have the support you need.’
‘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!’
FORTY-EIGHT
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.
‘I would like to buy some food, please.’
‘Myrz?’
Tiaan mimed putting food in her mouth.
The child laughed. ‘Mitsy-pitsy. Flar hyar!’ It trotted off to the hut, looking back at intervals to see that Tiaan was following. At the entrance the child pushed aside a hanging door and slipped inside, calling out.
Tiaan waited. She’d left her pack in the boat and was afraid it would disappear if she let it out of her sight. The child’s head appeared beneath the hanging. ‘Blazy mirr!’ It made hand-signals that seemed to be saying, ‘Come in.’
Casting an anxious glance at the boat, Tiaan crawled inside. It was surprisingly warm. The air had a thick tang of smoke, fish stew and the ripe smell, not unpleasant, of humanity. Three women squatted on the floor, which was considerably lower than the ground outside. A small fire of pine logs glowed in a stone-lined pit. An iron cauldron hung above it on a pole supported on two forked sticks embedded in the floor. A heap of firs against the far wall made a communal bed.
The women might have been triplets, at least to her eyes, for they all had long faces, the same pale lime hair and thin, prominent noses. They got up, fleshy women all, and rather taller than she was. Now Tiaan saw the differences. They must be sisters, the one nearest her older than the others. The second was the youngest and had a round scar on her chin.
‘Hello,’ said Tiaan in common. ‘My name is Tiaan Liise-Mar.’ She pointed to her chest. ‘I would like to buy some food.’ She pantomimed that as well.
The oldest woman, the most plump and buxom of the three, tilted her head to one side, puzzled. She debated with the others then turned back to Tiaan. ‘Vart iss “buyy”?’ Her accent was extremely heavy.
‘It means “pay for with money”.’
They looked uncomprehending. Tiaan fingered the piece of silver out of her pocket, showing it on the palm of her hand. She hoped that was not a mistake.
The oldest woman looked even more puzzled, then took up the piece of silver, examining it in the firelight. She passed it to the others. The middle one tasted it, the other tested it with her teeth.
‘It’s silver,’ said Tiaan. ‘Money for food!’ The smell of the stew was making her salivate.
‘Mun-ney!’ said the older woman, and burst out in a great roar of laughter, displaying a dozen yellow, angled teeth. The other women laughed just as heartily, whereupon the first clapped Tiaan on the back with a meaty hand and tossed the silver back to her.
‘I Fluuni,’ she said. ‘Middle sister iss Jiini; little sister iss Lyssa. Daughter iss Haani.’
Tiaan repeated the names, sounding them in the Tiksi way with extended vowels. From the hysterical laughter, she had got them completely wrong. ‘I am Tiaan,’ she repeated.
They repeated her name, mispronouncing it as badly. Lyssa dipped a wooden ladle in the cauldron, spilled the contents onto a square wood platter and handed Tiaan an implement like a spoon with teeth on the end, also made of wood.
She took it, not knowing what to say. What payment would they require? The plate contained a thick, bright-yellow mess. She could smell fish, though it had long since fallen to pieces. There were long fibrous sections of vegetables that might have been parsnip, dark unidentifiable grains, a hint of onion.
‘Eat,’ Fluuni said.
Tiaan took a mouthful. It was a peculiar combination of flavours, but delicious. She heaped up her implement. The women and the child were staring at her expectantly. ‘Good!’ she said. They did not understand. ‘Very good!’ She smacked her lips, patted her stomach. Still the stares. Had she committed some terrible blunder?
She shovelled in some more, swallowed, and to her embarrassment her stomach gave a great rollicking gurgle. Beaming smiles appeared. Haani clapped her hands.
Tiaan finished the stew. Immediately another ladle was emptied onto her platter. Her stomach was groaning from the first but they were looking at her so expectantly that it seemed ill-mannered to refuse. By the time the second was gone she was bursting, heavy-bellied and drowsy. Fluuni immediately dipped the ladle again. Tiaan leapt up, cried her thanks and bowed from the waist. They did not know what to make of this either.
They offered her tea made from mustard seeds. Its pungency went up her nose. Tiaan sneezed and tears ran from her eyes.
Afterwards she felt really sleepy. It was ages since she’d had a decent night’s rest. Leaning against the wall she closed her eyes, snatched them open again and fell fast asleep.
When she woke it was just as smoky and gloomy and Tiaan thought she’d slept only for a few minutes, though she felt unusually refreshed. The room was empty. She crawled through the door and to her horror discovered that it was near dusk. She’d slept the day away.
Her eye wandered along the river bank. The boat was not there! She hurtled down to the water. No sign of it anywhere, nor of her pack and its infinitely precious contents. Tiaan sprinted back to the hut, crashing into Lyssa, who was carrying a load of wood from the forest. Sticks went everywhere.
Tiaan helped her pick them up. ‘Where is my boat?’
‘Bote?’ Lyssa replied.
Tiaan made paddling motions with her hands. ‘Trall!’ said Lyssa, going around the back of the hut. The boat was leaning against the wall, upside down. Water draining from it had frozen on the ground.
‘What did you do with my pack?’ She tried to say it in sign language. Lyssa led her inside and Tiaan saw the pack not far from where she’d gone to sleep. She went though it while Lyssa looked on with a faint smile. Everything was as it had been before.
Tiaan felt embarrassed at her suspicions. Getting up, she cried ‘Thank you; thank you!’ and threw out her arms.
Lyssa beamed, folded Tiaan in her own arms and gave her a long warm hug. Her doughy flesh reminded Tiaan of her mother, back when Tiaan had been a little girl and Marnie had time for her. Before she’d been rejected for the next child, and the one after.
By this time it was dark. Shortly the two sisters appeared with Haani. They began preparing vegetables, peeling onions and garlic from bunches hung at the ceiling, and a variety of roots which they brought from a cellar whose trapdoor was in one corner.
Tiaan offered to help but they sat her by the fire, the place of honour. Dinner was a slab of husky black bread placed in the bottom of a platter and the liquid from the fish stew poured over it. She ate every scrap and mopped her plate with the crusts.
Following that, Lyssa sang to Haani. It seemed to be a long tale, perhaps part of the Histories, or the Histories of the family. Tiaan did not know the language. It went on for at least an hour, a story full of drama and tragedy, fire and passion, and tender lovemaking too, judging by the wistful look that crept across Lyssa’s face. The older women sat mending their clothing as they listened.
Finally the Histories had been sung. The child sat droopy-eyed while they undressed her, gave her a perfunctory clean with a wet rag and put her to bed in the middle of the furs. Then they laid down their work and looked expectantly at Tiaan. Evidently she had to sing for her supper.
