Just inside the door, Muss gasped, turning slowly and with evident unwillingness, until he faced the eidoscope. The rays expanded to cover his entire body. His clothes faded and were revealed as flesh-formed protrusions of skin and tissue, mimicking the colour and texture of the real thing. They dissolved back into him and Muss stood naked and sexless, a neuter with the body of a human but the massive crested head and toothed maw of a lyrinx.
And then he shifted into two, the images superimposed. One was a weathered man of some sixty years, the other a small, aged female lyrinx. The images separated fractionally, blurred together again then sprang apart. The lyrinx image went into a crouch; the man turned as though to flee, but only managed a couple of steps before the other was on him, attacking him savagely, clawing and biting.
The two images merged, blurred and faded back into Muss, though the battle continued as his body went to war on itself. The skin of his chest bulged out as if pushed from inside. Wounds appeared without any seeming cause – three long tears across his belly like claw marks; a chunk out of one shoulder; a gouge on his lower thigh. A bulge moved down from his diaphragm, pushing his stomach out until the watchers could see the shape of his organs outlined against the stretched skin.
It moved up through his chest while he choked and gagged, then the skin burst at his throat and he was torn apart from the inside out. Muss fell into a bloody heap on the floor, the light from the eidoscope faded and the mirror became reflecting once more.
They looked at one another, their faces taut with horror.
‘What was that?’ said Irisis.
‘The vengeance of the Numinator,’ said Flydd. ‘A mancer of surpassing power and, it appears, one who guards his privacy jealously.’
‘But what –?’ Irisis continued.
‘Do you really want to ask that question here, after what we’ve just seen,’ said Flydd.
‘All things considered,’ said Klarm, ‘I think we should go now.’
He was nearly knocked down in the rush for the door.
Outside and well away from the strongroom, they stopped to splint Nish’s broken arm. Dawn had broken by the time they reached the place where they’d left the injured. Malien had recovered from her aftersickness and volunteered to go and bring back the thapter.
‘Where’s Yggur?’ said Flydd.
‘He recovered suddenly an hour ago and went off, saying he had business to attend to,’ she said.
‘You’d think this was a birthday party,’ Flydd muttered. ‘I suppose we’ll have to drag him out from under the rubble. As if we don’t have enough to do.’
Before he could organise a search team, Yggur came limping in, carrying Inouye in his arms.
‘She had a panic attack when she was left in the cupboard,’ he explained. ‘I could sense her pain from down here.’
He passed her to Irisis, who hefted the slight burden in her arms. Inouye moaned and reached out for Yggur. He laid a hand on her brow, her eyes closed, and with a little sigh she settled into sleep.
‘What about Tiaan?’ said Nish relieved of his fears for Inouye.
‘I locked her in that little room at the back,’ said Malien. ‘She wasn’t rational and I didn’t have the strength to deal with her.’ She went out.
‘Tiaan is in withdrawal,’ Flydd said quietly. ‘Artisans have sometimes gone mad from it. Leave her to Evee. We’ve got work to do. The survivors will be dead within days unless we take command.’
‘We?’ said Klarm.
‘The scrutators were led by a chief with absolute authority, so we must replace him with a different kind of rule. A council –’
‘They called themselves a council,’ said Klarm. ‘If we use the same name, people will think that nothing has changed.’
‘If we change it, we’ll spend years fighting usurpers and opportunists instead of the enemy. I propose that the new council’s members be myself, Klarm, Malien, Yggur and –’
‘I won’t be part of any council,’ said Yggur. ‘And I suspect Malien won’t either.’
‘I’ll do my best to persuade her when she gets back,’ said Flydd. ‘Have the guards taken Fusshte?’
‘Unfortunately he got away in an air-dreadnought,’ said Yggur, ‘along with Scrutator Halie and more than a hundred soldiers.’
‘He would have needed more than one air-dreadnought to carry them …’ Flydd said slowly.
‘Fusshte took them all, including the one moored out front. Seven, I believe.’
Flydd cursed loud and long. ‘I should have cut him down while I had the chance. Why didn’t I?’
‘Because Muss seemed a greater threat,’ said Nish.
‘I suppose he’ll head for Lybing,’ said Klarm. ‘To damage our victory in any way he can.’
‘The truth will out,’ said Flydd. ‘We’d better get to work or there won’t be any survivors.’
It proved a brutal day and a bitter night, as hard as any Nish had ever experienced. He laboured with the rest of them, as best he could with a broken arm, and was still working when the thapter finally appeared overhead around the middle of the following day, towing the dirigible. They’d rounded up more than four thousand survivors, organised them to construct flimsy shelters inside the walls of the air-dreadnought yard and recovered enough rations to feed them, and firewood to keep them warm, for the next few weeks. Only then was Nish able to lie down on a deck made of loose planks with hundreds of other people, as close to a fire as he could get, and snatch a few hours of glorious sleep.
He’d just woken, late that afternoon, when Irisis, who was looking up at the sky, said, ‘I think that’s an air-dreadnought coming in.’
‘Who can it be?’ Flydd said. ‘Flangers, bring a detail armed with javelards, on the double.’
They hurried around to what remained of the parade ground, for the air-dreadnought was coming down in a rush.
‘Looks like it’s been through a storm,’ said Irisis. ‘The rigging is all tangled and one of the airbags has been torn open.’
‘I can’t see anyone but the pilot,’ said Nish.
‘It may be a trick. It’d be just like Fusshte.’
‘Pilot looks half-dead,’ said Inouye, who had limped after them. She shouldn’t have been walking at all, but her professional curiosity had been aroused. ‘She’s going to crash.’
Nish thought so too. The air-dreadnought swept in upon a strong wind, trying to land on the narrow strip of parade ground that remained at the southern end, but the wind swept it sideways. For a moment it looked as though the craft would come down on the precipice and tumble into the Desolation Sink, but the pilot corrected in time and the great craft lumbered towards the collapsed front of Nennifer.
Nish held his breath but she managed to turn it and the keel slammed into the ground with just ells to spare. The pilot didn’t get out. She had collapsed at her controller arm.
‘It’s the air-dreadnought that was shaken free in the earth tremblers,’ said Irisis. ‘The pilot must have been asleep on board at the time. It looks like it was blown halfway across the mountains before she could turn it.’
‘Then she’s the greatest pilot I’ve ever come across,’ said Klarm, ‘to bring that wreckage back without a crew, and no rest in a day and a half.’
‘Flangers, gather a work gang and get it tied down,’ Flydd shouted, hobbling towards the craft.
He lifted the collapsed pilot out and kissed her on the cheeks, left and right, to her bemusement. ‘Thank you, pilot. You’ll make a big difference. Nish, run and find the air-dreadnought artificers. I want this craft repaired by midnight, ready to fly east with as many of the survivors as we can cram into it. We won’t beat Fusshte to Lybing with the news, but we’ll spread it north and south as far as we can. His lies won’t stand up in the face of so many witnesses. And see what other craft were being built, and get them finished. There are a lot of people to be moved and little time.