Then her sense of touch grew monstrously. Her clothes rasped against her sensitised skin and she took to tearing them off. Her mother and aunts beat her for that too, for they could not understand. The beatings made no difference. They were preferable to the coarse fabric against her skin.
Taste was the next sense to swell out of proportion. The pickled fish and smoked meats the family lived on became unbearable to Ullii. She could eat nothing but fruit and raw vegetables, gruel and an occasional piece of raw fish or flavourless baby lamb.
Her sense of smell attacked her. The odour of people, even those who bathed frequently, became revolting. Her family were not frequent bathers; it was not the custom in the cold land they came from. Though she craved to be held, Ullii could not bear to sit on her mother's lap.
Last and worst was sight. First she could not stand to go outside. The bright sun burned her eyes, the light hurt her sensitive skin. Then she could not be in a lighted room. She began to spend the days in the dark under her bed. Her mother and aunts beat her. Ullii screamed and screamed, and would not stop. The whole world was a torment.
She had wept for Myllii and begged her mother to bring him back, but Myllii had been taken far away and no one knew where he was. Ullii went mad with screaming and her mother and aunts, unable to bear it any longer, eventually put her out the door.
Now she dreamed about her brother, not as a child of four but as the young man Myllii must be, nearly eighteen. She saw him in her dreams and he looked just like her, though his colourless hair was shorter, cut straight across just above his ears. He was a hand's breadth taller than she, with broader shoulders and narrower hips, but his beardless face was like her reflection in the mirror.
Myllii, she sighed, knowing it was just a dream. She could never find him, no matter how she had tried. When first she began to develop her lattice, in Flammas's dungeon, it had been in order to search for Myllii. She would have recognised his knot instantly, but had never seen it. Many times since then she had looked for him, but he was nowhere to be found.
Perhaps he had no talent, though she could not believe that. Her brother and herself had been like two sides of a coin, equal but opposite. Neither had been complete without the other.
She would not believe he was dead, for if he was, she must die as well. She could not live knowing that he was gone forever. Most likely he was just too far away, beyond reach of her lattice. She could still hope. She could still search.
The lattice had been her comfort for so long that sometimes she forgot it was there. She had not looked deeply into it for days, not since leaving the manufactory in the air-floater. Now, in her dreams, Ullii did.
The lattice here was profoundly different from the one she was used to. It was almost unfamiliar, being dominated by the geomantic forces that had created the enormous mountains all around, and the sunken land to the north. So much in it was strange that it would take days, even weeks, for her to make sense of it all.
And then there was the might and magic of Nennifer itself, a place dedicated to scrutator magic. Everywhere she looked, Ullii saw the dark knots that signified magical artefacts, devices and implements of war, spying and torment, and the differently shaped knots that represented mancers and other practitioners of the Art. They frightened her. Ullii had suffered at the hands of such people before.
In the maze of knots, lines and other markings, Ullii knew it could take days to find Myllii. She began at once. All through that night she sought him in her dreams, and every minute of the following day. That evening she went to bed early. It was easier to look for him asleep than waking.
Myllii?
Ullii, where have you been? I've been looking for you.
I'm lost without you, Myllii. Ah, Myllii, I nearly died when you were taken away from me.
And so did I. I wept for years.
She did not allow herself to speak, just drew comfort from his existence. Time floated. She felt deliriously happy.
Are you like me, Myllii? Can you go out in the sun, unprotected?
Of course. Can't you?
She felt strangely let down. She wanted them to be alike in everything, even suffering. Especially suffering. She told him how much she had suffered.
Ullii, he said. If only I had been there. If…
She lost him. Ullii spent the rest of the night searching the lattice but found no trace of Myllii. Perhaps it had just been a dream. Flydd was delayed and delayed again, though he would not say what the problem was. All Irisis learned was that something was being hastily prepared for him to take to Gospett and it was taking longer than expected to complete.
She was questioned repeatedly about the way she had killed the unnamed mancer on the aqueduct. She had always known that she had done something unusual that day, but not how unusual. With all her other nightmares, she had not spent much time thinking about that one.
'I've gone over it twenty times already,' she said tiredly on the second night. She was walking out the front of Nennifer, along the edge of the pavement with Flydd. 'There's nothing more I can tell them. Why do they keep on about it?'
'Because you did something that has not been done before,' said Flydd, 'and it tips the balance against all mancers. They, we, have always seen ourselves as being at the top of the pile. Not invulnerable, certainly, but well protected. If we can be bested at our Art by a mere artisan, a wretched craft worker, it turns our lives upside down. What if the enemy learned to do what you have done? No querist, perquisitor or even scrutator would be safe.'
'Unlikely, since the lyrinx cannot use our Arts.'
'Should they have learned to, they would certainly want us to think they were still incapable. Besides, the lyrinx are adept at finding new ways of doing things.'
'I still don't see why it's such a problem.'
'The Council must also look to a future when they have won the war and their power may be under challenge. They must protect themselves. That means discovering exactly what you did, then making sure that you can't teach anyone else.'
She spun around to face him. 'What?'
'They're not planning to let you leave here alive, Irisis, though they'll wait till I've gone to do the deed. They can't afford to let you live. Keep walking. They may be watching us.'
'What are you going to do about it?'
'I don't know that I can do anything. As soon as everything is ready, I've got to go. I have no choice in the matter.'
After their escape, and getting her sight back, she had allowed herself to enjoy life from day to day, without thinking about the future. She had thought she was safe, under Flydd's protection. Poor fool.
'They're going to kill me?'
'They may not,' he said conversationally. 'You can't get away. There's only one path out of here and it's heavily guarded. They have a need for artisans and you're one of the best. And they may want to explore your unexpected talent.'
How could he be so casual? 'They must know that a question mark lies over my abilities. As soon as they discover how I overcame the mancer, they'll have no further use for me.'
'Then you must maintain the secret as long as possible.'
'I've already told them everything.'
'But they haven't been able to reproduce it, so they're sure you're keeping something back. Use it.'
'Look what they did to you, when you did that.'
He rubbed a scarred arm. 'Keeping secrets wasn't my failing. It was probing into their secrets.'