Muss looked up at him. ‘Betray you? I embarked on this search before I ever heard your name.’
‘You gave me your oath, to serve me truly and me alone.’
‘And so I have, whenever it did not conflict with my prior purpose.’
‘I begin to understand,’ said Klarm. ‘It was you, Muss, who tampered with the node-breaker after the Council gave it to Flydd. It had to be you, for I saw it, tested it and found it perfect, then sealed it under scrutator magic into its case. Those seals weren’t broken until Flydd took the node-breaker into the tar pits of Snizort. No one else could have broken the magic that sealed that case, for no one else ever had charge of it. No one but you, Eiryn Muss, morphmancer or whoever you are.’
Flydd went purple in his wrath and Nish stepped hastily out of the line of fire.
‘You deceitful, treacherous wretch,’ Flydd raged, seizing Muss by the throat and shaking him like a rat. ‘You stinking hypocrite. You changed the node-breaker so that it would destroy the node, and almost certainly the man who had been ordered to use it. Me, Muss!’ He shook him again. ‘You were happy for me to die as long as you achieved your goal, and you dare claim to have served me faithfully. Why, Muss, why?’
‘To create the tears, of course,’ said Irisis. ‘Muss needed nihilium for some purpose of his own, and the only way he could gain any was to destroy a node in a particular manner. But you thought the tears would form at the node-breaker, didn’t you, Muss? That’s what you were searching for so desperately when we met you in Snizort, after the node exploded.’
‘I created them,’ said Muss insistently. ‘The tears were mine.’
‘But you couldn’t find them,’ said Nish, ‘and by the time you realised that they’d been created at the node itself, they were gone. Flydd, Ullii and I saw my father take them, leaving no witnesses alive – at least, none that he was aware of. Father took the tears to the ruinous defeat at Gumby Marth and lost them to the lyrinx.’
‘Jal-Nish was an alchymist,’ mused Flydd, ‘and the tears were an alchymist’s dream. No substance holds the print of the Art more tightly.’
‘Father practised with them every night,’ said Nish, ‘and his mastery grew apace, though not as quickly as his hubris. He led the army into the cul-de-sac of Gumby Marth to lure the lyrinx in after him, planning to boost his alchymical Art with the tears and crush the enemy utterly. Not for the sake of a mighty victory, just to gain a place on the Council of Scrutators.’
‘And had he done so, with all that nihilium at his disposal,’ said Flydd, ‘not even Ghorr could have stood against him. Jal-Nish would soon have dominated the Council, and then suspended it to rule the world in his own name. But, unfortunately for him, his Art was not up to his ambition.’
‘He was a minor mancer, no more,’ said Klarm. ‘And yet he very nearly succeeded.’
‘He came up against a mighty opponent,’ said Nish. ‘The greatest mancer-lyrinx I’ve ever seen. And went within an ell of defeating him.’
‘And that’s why you went to Gumby Marth after the battle,’ said Flydd to Muss. ‘You came looking for the tears, but again you were too late. Jal-Nish was dead and the tears were in the hands of the enemy, beyond even your talents to find.’
‘Ghorr boasted that he’d found them buried in the battlefield,’ said Muss brokenly. ‘He was cock-a-hoop about it.’
‘I’ll warrant he never showed them to anyone,’ said Flydd.
‘He never did. Though once, just before the fleet left to hunt you down, he displayed the sealed cases to the Council of Scrutators.’
‘He was lying to bolster his shattered reputation,’ said Flydd, unable to conceal his contempt. ‘How did he survive so long?’ He swung around to Muss. ‘Tell me, Prober, how long have you secretly opposed me? You were accused even back at the manufactory, as I recall …’
‘It was you all along!’ Irisis almost lost control and took a step towards Muss. ‘You sabotaged Tiaan’s work and put the blame on me. You drugged her, then killed the poor stupid apothek to conceal it, and Nish and I were whipped to the bone for your crimes. We’ll bear the scars until the day we die.’
‘You weren’t whipped just for that,’ Flydd said mildly. ‘You two weren’t entirely blameless. Enough, Irisis. Leave him to me.’
Irisis dropped her fists and turned away into Nish’s arms, tears running down her dirty face, and only then did he realise how deeply the whipping had cut into her soul. She’d pretended it didn’t matter, and had even fought with her scarred back bare during one attack on the manufactory, exposing it to a thousand people. He should have known better. To have her beauty so marred had hurt her far more deeply than the whipping.
Flydd’s face hardened. ‘The only man who recognised you for what you were, Muss, was Foreman Gryste. He threw you into a cell, but no cell could hold a morphmancer. You used your Art to break out, concealed the pieces of platinum in his room that condemned him as corrupt, and fled.’ His voice quavered. ‘And I convicted poor unhappy Gryste on that tainted evidence. I was so sure he was the traitor that I refused to listen. I failed my own standards of justice and executed an innocent man.’ Flydd was shaken. ‘Why, Muss?’
‘You were never going to give me what I was looking for. I had to have an aggressive, ambitious master, one who would do anything to become scrutator. Jal-Nish was the only candidate.’
‘So you decided to undermine the manufactory to discredit and destroy me.’
‘It wasn’t personal,’ said Muss. ‘I liked and admired you, but you just wouldn’t do.’
‘I wondered how Jal-Nish always seemed to anticipate me,’ said Flydd. ‘You were spying on me and reporting to him.’
‘You don’t know what it’s been like.’
‘What is it like?’ Flydd said savagely. ‘Who are you really, Muss, apart from a liar, a murderer and a traitor?’
‘I was a prentice mancer once, here at Nennifer, or rather, a mancer’s prentice – a lesser creature entirely. I was young, handsome and clever, and I thought I had the whole world in front of me. Fool that I was, I didn’t realise what my master really wanted me for. I meant nothing to him. I was no more than a living body to be used and discarded once his Art had ruined me. I wasn’t the first – who knows how many boys and girls were brought to this place, to advance the scrutators’ twisted Art.’
‘He was trying to create a weapon of war from you?’ guessed Irisis.
‘A chimaera.’ Muss nodded in her direction. ‘You think of a chimaera as a phantom: a horrible, unreal creature of the imagination. But there’s another, darker kind of chimaera: a creature made by blending the tissues of two distinct species into one.
‘My master bound me to a drugged lyrinx and used one of the Great Spells, a spell of regeneration, to create a chimaera from us – a human with the strength and chameleon ability of a lyrinx. A bastard creature that could be bred like maggots, grown to adulthood in a decade and trained into an army powerful enough to take on our enemies on the battlefield.’
‘But it didn’t work,’ said Flydd. ‘It couldn’t have.’
‘I survived the transformation but I was no stronger than before, and wracked by pain. My blended tissues, seemingly integrated, were constantly at war with each other. My mind was outwardly human, inwardly a blend of human and lyrinx, and it could never be at peace. I didn’t know whether I was human or lyrinx, but I understood that I was a beast and a monster. And the joke was not yet played out. The failed spell had reproduced neither the lyrinx’s female organs of generation, nor my own male ones. It left me sexless, the worst cruelty of all, and made me useless to my master. He blamed me for the failure of his spell, mocked me for the monster I was, then had me knocked on the head and hurled out of Nennifer onto the kitchen middens for the swine to tear to pieces.’