‘I had news in Fadd, and all was well then, so they’re safe until spring. Tiksi was besieged three times over the last year, and much damage done, but they’ve repulsed several attacks since. Ah …’ He gave her a keen glance from under his continuous eyebrow, now grown back to brown bristles that stuck straight out. ‘In the first attack the breeding factory was burned to the ground.’
Tiaan gave a little cry. ‘Oh, poor Marnie.’
‘I was there soon afterwards in an air-floater. It wasn’t long after you left Tirthrax in the thapter, the first time. As I recall, the women of the breeding factory had been evacuated, and all were accounted for.’
‘Marnie spent her whole adult life there,’ said Tiaan. ‘It was her life. What will she do?’
‘I’m sure it’s been rebuilt. It’s vital work, breeding, and I dare say she’s back at it.’
‘She may be past it by now.’
Again Flydd smiled, and even touched her on the shoulder. He didn’t seem quite as fearsome after all. ‘Then she’ll be having an honoured retirement. Marnie is, after all, one of the richest people in Tiksi. Excuse me, I’d better get back to the governor.’
‘There you are,’ said Malien. ‘I’m sure she’s perfectly all right.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Tiaan. ‘Marnie always did know how to look after herself.’
She wondered, momentarily, if she dared ask the scrutator about the bloodline register, a human stud book she’d seen in the breeding factory the night of her escape. Tiaan decided not to. Scrutators didn’t appreciate people prying into their secrets.
THIRTY-NINE
In another tedious meeting that afternoon, Tiaan found herself involuntarily stroking Golias’s globe. Taking it out of her bag, she surreptitiously inspected it under the table.
The inner spheres revolved with the slightest movement, as if bathed in oil. She squinted at them, trying to see how many there were. One, two, three, four, five … six, seven. She shook the globe and something moved in the depths. Eight – in Gilhaelith’s mathemancy, a perfect number.
She shied away from the thought of Gilhaelith. They’d been more than friends at the end of her time in Nyriandiol, but he’d not been able to take the next step. He couldn’t overcome his troubled past, and in the end greed for the amplimet had outweighed his regard for her. She still felt the betrayal, and Ghorr’s attack on Fiz Gorgo suggested that Gilhaelith made a habit of betrayal. Damn him. She dismissed him from her mind.
Each layer of the globe was different. The outer one was clear glass with, here and there, a few faint swirls of smoky grey, like wispy clouds in a clear sky. The next layer was also clear except for faint lines running around it that shone like silver metal.
The globe was very heavy, heavier than it should be if it were just made of glass. The third layer was faintly swirled with blue, embedded in which was a red band. Copper, she presumed.
Someone cleared their throat and Tiaan looked up. Malien was glaring at her. Tiaan put an attentive look on her face until Malien turned back to the governor, who was still droning on about clasped hands across the world and other such nonsense. It was what people did that counted, not what they said.
The device was a puzzle and Tiaan loved solving puzzles. It drew her in. Each of the succeeding layers was different, but all were combinations of clear, patterned or engraved glass which had been banded, woven or partly masked with metals of different kinds. The outer layers covered so much of the inner ones that she could see virtually nothing of the seventh and eighth layers, at least in this light. And what lay at its core?
A crystal that could draw power from the field? Or one charged by its maker before it had been put into the farspeaker an aeon ago? If charged, its power must have faded long ago, in which case the globe was useless. Each layer of glass was seamless and there was no way to take the device apart without breaking it.
Malien jabbed her in the ribs and Tiaan nearly dropped the globe. One or two people were giving her curious looks. She slid it into her bag and tried to concentrate on what the governor was saying.
‘… we will, of course, do all we can. But as you can see we are hard pressed ourselves …’
‘I’m not asking you to come to our aid,’ said Flydd in his best diplomatic tones. ‘Clearly that’s not possible. I’m asking that we all cooperate. Together we’re strong. Separately, nothing!’
‘Of course.’ The governor spread her arms. ‘But so far away … and skeets are so unreliable.’
‘We may soon have a better solution,’ said Flydd. ‘A faster, secret means of communicating.’
‘Oh?’ The governor half-rose to her feet, her eyes on him.
‘More of that when we have it. But in the meantime –’
Governor Zaeff stared at him, calculating. Even Tiaan could read her expression. What’s in it for me?
‘If you had a thapter, or two, it would make all the difference to your war,’ Flydd said, very quietly. ‘Not to mention the subsequent peace.’
Naked greed flashed in Governor Zaeff’s eyes this time. ‘You only have one, and you’re not giving it away.’ If she could have seized it with no danger to herself, she probably would have.
‘By winter’s end we expect to have several more,’ said Flydd, ‘enough to reward our most loyal allies.’
‘And none more loyal than Crandor,’ she said smoothly. ‘We’ve been friends with the west for two thousand years and that alliance is sacred to us.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ said Flydd, ‘for it means just as much to us.’ Rising, he gave her his hands across the table. Everyone else did the same, to seal the agreement.
Tiaan, who was holding the globe again, didn’t know what to do when the man across the table extended his hands to her. She let it fall into the bag then took his hands, in her embarrassment not meeting his eyes. It was a minor breach of protocol, but forgivable in a foreigner. Everyone bowed to everyone else and they made their farewells.
‘Would you really give her a thapter?’ said Malien once they were safely in the air. ‘When the war is over, Governor Zaeff will use it to enrich herself immeasurably.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ said Flydd. ‘She’s as greedy as anyone I’ve ever met, and therefore a valuable ally. She’ll do everything in her power to protect her wealth, and no one could take better care of Crandor. It’s the richest nation in the world, and the strongest. She’s well armed, her troops well trained, her people well fed. Yulla Zaeff knows that the way to maintain her position is to keep everyone happy, and she does. I have great admiration for her, even though she’s like a sow in the trough. I’d give her a dozen thapters if I had them to spare.’
On they went, heading north-west across jungle, mountain, desert and the unimaginably vast canyons that led down to the bed of the Dry Sea. This terrain was unfamiliar even to Malien. Tiaan stared at the salt-covered desolation in wonder, for its nodes were unlike any others she’d seen.
That night, two-thirds of the way to Taranta, they camped in the drylands far from any habitation, and it was warm enough to sleep under the stars. Tiaan lay in her hammock, with the globe clutched to her chest, rocking gently in the warm breeze. What could be at the core of the globe that powered it and weighed so much?
Tiaan wondered if she might induce some aura in it with the amplimet, in the same way she’d once tested the failed hedrons back at the manufactory. That seemed a lifetime ago. Unfortunately she didn’t have the amplimet. Malien had taken to using it in her flight controller, and at other times it was always kept in the platinum box. Flydd was taking no chances with it, and perhaps not with her either.
The others were asleep, the night still, apart from the swish of wings as a colony of bats streamed in and out of caves in the escarpment just behind the thapter. The globe had been carefully designed and each layer must have a purpose. But how could she tell without seeing the details of each?