‘I don’t understand why the Aachim broke off their plans for conquest,’ said Yggur. ‘With all those constructs they could have swept from one side of Lauralin to the other.’
‘We Aachim have never been empire builders,’ said Malien. ‘Security has always been more important to us. And often, after a setback, instead of fighting back we’ve simply cut ourselves off from the world.’
‘Have you any idea what Vithis is constructing?’ asked Yggur.
‘It’s either a bridge – a gigantic arch – or a building spanning the gulf,’ said Malien. ‘Though I can’t imagine why anyone would go to such an immense labour.’
‘Any building to span the Hornrace would be a mighty one indeed,’ said Yggur. ‘I’d have thought it beyond the capabilities of any civilisation.’
‘We used to be fond of extravagant symbols,’ said Malien. ‘Vithis may simply be putting his mark on Santhenar in the strongest way possible.’
‘Do you think so?’ Yggur wondered.
‘If he is, it masks a deeper purpose,’ said Malien.
‘Such as?’
‘A gate to ferry the rest of the Aachim from Aachan? A device to change the weather and make the desert bloom?’
‘Could it be a weapon?’
‘It could. They are greatly advanced in geomancy. They taught Tiaan how to make a gate, something no one on this world could have done. They built eleven thousand constructs on Aachan in a couple of decades. They may be building a weapon that we cannot even conceive of.’
FORTY-ONE
Nish went back to his room that night, fretting more than usual. Everyone else seemed to have achieved wonders but his students weren’t trained yet, nor the air-floaters ready, through no fault of his own. Now that the thapter had returned he could do some work with his pilots and artificers, but there was nothing he could do about the air-floaters. Ghorr’s air-dreadnoughts had consumed all the suitable silk cloth available in Meldorin, and only silk would do. Nothing else was light yet strong enough for an air-floater gasbag.
Unfortunately, he was in charge and neither Yggur nor Flydd was interested in excuses. They simply expected the problem to be solved, and quickly. Nish could see no alternative but to make a raid on the silk warehouses of Thurkad, dangerous though it would be.
He went to see Flydd and Yggur about it in the morning and asked if they knew which warehouses contained silk cloth.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Yggur. ‘Thurkad had thousands of warehouses. Klarm would know but naturally he’s not here. I’ll put a discreet word around in Hripton, and also up at The Entrance, where all the thugs and pirates dwell. Someone there will know.’
‘And I’ll need to take the air-floater and a crew to Thurkad to steal the stuff,’ said Nish.
‘Klarm’s using it at the moment,’ said Flydd.
‘Is he ever not?’ said Nish. ‘It’s ironic, don’t you think, that I need the air-floater so I can make more of them, and train more pilots, but I can never get access to it.’
‘It’s generally the work done behind the scenes that wins the war,’ Flydd said, ‘rather than the armies slaughtering each other. Very well, put a plan together and, if you locate the silk, we’ll see what can be done. One step at a time, remember?’
Two days later, Seneschal Berty brought a villainous-looking old fellow to Nish’s shed. He had two teeth in the bottom jaw and three in the top, whose purpose seemed solely to hold the blackened pipe that never left his mouth. He certainly never used them to chew his food, his diet being entirely liquid. It was a foul-smelling brew, too, even worse than the turnip brandy the miners used to drink around the back of the manufactory. It smelled as though it had been distilled from the cook’s compost heap, a festering mound of vegetable peelings, food scraps, burnt fat and bones that even the dogs turned their noses up at.
‘This is Artificer Cryl-Nish Hlar,’ said Berty, keeping well upwind. ‘He is known to his friends as Nish. You are not his friend, Phar, and never will be. You may call him Artificer Hlar.’
‘Yerz, Nish,’ said Phar.
‘Hello,’ said Nish. ‘Come inside. No, let’s go out in the fresh air.’
The air in the yard was anything but fresh, reeking as it did of wood smoke and hot metal, sweaty labourers and bubbling tar. All were ambrosia beside Phar, who was small, bandy-legged, red of eye and so foul of breath that it signalled his arrival from five paces away. Nish could not imagine being cooped up in the thapter with him, if it should come to that. Phar’s sandals revealed splintered black toenails and ankles from which the grime could have been peeled with a knife. He was missing two toes, one thumb and half his left ear. He was, in short, the most repulsive individual Nish had ever seen.
Nish had already heard about Phar, who had a single redeeming feature. He had, through more than sixty years of crime centred around the waterfront of Thurkad, developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the warehouses and their contents. He loved the ancient city, in his own squalid and inarticulate way, and nothing would have induced him to leave it. Nothing, that is, but the threat of being eaten by a lyrinx. So Nish gleaned eventually from Phar’s rambling and incoherent discourse, punctuated regularly by slugs from his putrid leather flagon.
You were never in any danger, thought Nish, looking him up and down in disgust. There wasn’t a lyrinx in Santhenar that would have touched him, not even to feed its starving children.
‘I understand that you know the warehouses of Thurkad well, Mr Phar. I wonder if you would be so good –’ He stopped at the seneschal’s slashing gesture.
‘Allow me, Nish,’ said the seneschal. ‘Phar. We want silk cloth. Strong cloth, best quality. Long bolts of it. Where do we get it?’
Nish passed Phar a map of the waterfront which Yggur had given him. ‘Can you read, Phar?’
‘Maps. Not words.’
Nish spread the map on the paving stones. Phar squinted at it, picked his nose then turned the map upside down. He grinned broadly, his wagging pipe spilling clots of tarry ash on the map. Nish brushed it off hastily. The disgusting stuff stuck to his fingers.
‘Here,’ said Phar, pointing with a snotty fingertip. ‘Street of the Sail-makers. All these buildings behind are warehouses. This, this and this, all silk.’
‘You’re absolutely sure?’ said Nish.
‘Bah,’ said Phar, picking the other nostril and parking the residue on the edge of the map.
‘Disgusting brute,’ piped Berty, cuffing him over the half-ear. ‘Wipe that off, you pig.’
Phar smeared snot halfway across the sheet. Snatching the map, Nish rolled it up and said, ‘We’ll go at first light.’
Phar began to shamble off. ‘Not likely,’ said the seneschal. He called a pair of guards over. ‘Look after this fellow for the night, will you? And take good care of him; he’s escaped more times than you fellows have changed your underwear.’
‘Never change my underwear,’ said the first guard, evidently puzzled by the comparison. ‘Only when it falls to pieces.’
‘You’re in good company then. Lock him up tight. If he escapes you’ll be explaining why to Lord Yggur.’
The mission seemed doomed from the first second. When the guards went to the cell for Phar in the morning he wasn’t there; despite all the precautions, he had got away.
‘What the blazes were you doing?’ Nish roared, practically incoherent with rage. It did not matter that Seneschal Berty had given the orders and the guards carried them out. He, Nish, was in charge and there was no excuse for failure.
Berty looked worried too, which was unusual. He was always the picture of control. He hastily roused out the guards and soon a hundred people were looking for the thief.
An hour later Nish was sitting on the step to his shed, head in hands, a position he’d spent a lot of time in lately, when Yggur came stalking out the front doors of Fiz Gorgo, holding a crumpled, twitching object as far away from him as possible.