Let there be no guards at the back gate, she prayed, and there were not. She kept going, more slowly now, for she was tiring rapidly. She prayed that the soldiers, lugging those heavy crossbows, were more tired. Irisis could not see out of the injured eye and had no time to pick the bit of grit from it, so she kept it closed.
She scrambled over the pottery pipes and drains, around the corner and across another set of drains coming from the metal-pickling troughs. The acid fumes made her choke. Up between the manufactory wall and the weavers' building, which lay outside. Not far to go, but she had a horrible feeling Jal-Nish would be waiting at the other end.
On she panted, past the stinking slaughterers and butchery, and the barns and stockyards which were nearly as offensive. The stitch grew worse: it felt as though a screw was being twisted in between her ribs. Ahead were the three cisterns and the mouth of the aqueduct, which discharged into the outer cistern. The cisterns were massive, each more than ten spans across. Irisis ran for the outer one and the ladder that led up to safety.
Jal-Nish stood in the way, two soldiers flanking him. They were armed with crossbows, aimed right at her.
'Hold your hands high!' he yelled. 'Move suddenly and they'll fire.'
She should have kept running. A quick death by sword or bolt was preferable to the agony Jal-Nish had in store for her. But having stopped, her legs no longer wanted to move. She waited for the soldiers to take her.
'This is a happy day, crafter.' Jal-Nish was grinning under his mask; she could tell from his voice. 'I've thought about it every minute since you hacked my arm off.'
'I did it to save your life,' she said.
'I wanted to die. You should have let me.'
'Give me your sword. I'll be happy to remedy my error.'
He struck her in the face, intending to break her nose as she had broken his. She took the blow on her cheek and it knocked her sideways.
Irisis forced herself to remain calm. 'Your son, Cryl-Nish, begged me to save your life.'
'I have no son by the name of Cryl-Nish. He's dead, and so will you be, eventually. But first I'm going to take your arm, and then your face, so you can understand what you did to me. Soldiers, hold out her arm.'
The soldiers showed no reluctance. No doubt they were inured to his brutal whims. One held her while the other extended her arm.
Irisis was filled with a bowel-crawling horror. He was going to do what the lyrinx had done to him. Mutilation was the one thing she could not face. She had always been vain about her appearance.
'No,' she pleaded. 'Please don't. I'll do anything you want.'
'I'm sure you would, because that's the kind of person you are. But it's too late, Irisis. The day you struck me down it became too late. Nothing on earth could make me save you.'
T HIRTY
Gilhaelith's smiths proceeded with the repair of the thapter, working methodically, leaving untouched every part that he did not understand. He questioned Tiaan about it every day but since his betrayal of Klarm she had refused to answer him. Why had the little thief stolen it, and why attack the Aachim camp? It made no sense, unless she was just a lovelorn fool.
One day, Gilhaelith's cook was on the outer slope, picking mountain parsley that grew around a seep, when she saw the triplet of constructs gliding up the track. They were taking it slowly, the road being narrow and the hairpin bends exceedingly tight. Cook was too plump to run, and the day was hot and the hill steep. But she did hurry, so they had the best part of an hour to prepare.
Gilhaelith ran, which made him look even more ridiculous, for he lifted his knees above his waist and bounced as if springs were attached to his boots. Bursting into Tiaan's room, where she lay on the bed clad only in a sleeping gown, he cried, 'The Aachim are coming.'
'No!' she gasped. For an instant her striking eyes pleaded with him. She put one arm out but let it fall. Tiaan regained control and her face went blank.
'I've prepared you a hiding place. It's so bound about with spells of concealment that they could tear Nyriandiol down and not find it.'
'Is Vithis among them?'
'The lead construct flies what I understand to be his flag.'
She seemed torn by a terrible dilemma. 'I must see them!' she burst out. Tiaan had tried to eliminate all feelings for Minis, but had not succeeded.
'Why?'
'To see the man who betrayed me!' she choked.
'You would risk everything just for that?'
'Yes,' she whispered.
She was a lovelorn fool, and he could use that weakness against her. Dare he take the risk? If he failed, or she gave him away, all would be lost. But the game was everything and this might give him an advantage.
'And will you cooperate afterwards?'
'Yes,' she said quietly.
'And help me repair the thapter?'
'I will.'
A proven thief and liar, her word meant little. But should she break this promise, he had ways of forcing truth and would use them ruthlessly.
'If you do not, you will rue the day you were born.' Gilhaelith's eyes met hers and she shrank before the fury in them. He intended that. He was not a brutal man but he required obedience.
Gilhaelith slid one arm beneath her knees, the other under the back brace, and lifted her easily. 'Put your arm around my neck.'
Carrying her to the door, he looked out, saw no one and scooted down the hall. He slid into a storeroom, used a rod to pull down a concealed trapdoor, climbed the unfolding ladder and laid Tiaan down on a platform in the ceiling.
'Where am I?' she said.
'Nyriandiol has many hiding places. No one knows this one except me, and it is heavily bespelled. You can see out.'
He crawled to the far side, half-carrying, half-dragging her. There he placed her on her side by a tiny gap in the jasper shingles covering the gable end.
'Don't make a sound.' He crawled backwards to the trapdoor.
Within a minute, the storeroom had been returned to its previous state. The trapdoor was not visible. He checked everything with an egg-shaped scanningstone, then wiped his dusty hands and went to dress for his visitors.
Gilhaelith put on the most extravagant mancer's robes he could find, scarlet and black with diagonal threads of gold. He selected a wide-brimmed hat of the same material, with a crown of crumpled scarlet fabric. With his lanky frame it gave him an air of lofty dignity, but also of harmless eccentricity, the image he hoped to cultivate.
Before he was buttoned up, Gilhaelith had a thought that led him to run all the way to the lowest level, where the thapter lay hidden. It had taken most of one night to lower it down on a pair of winches, ease it in through the window hole and put the window back. He had since paced out the entire path from the forest, checking with his scanningstone and using his Art to erase all trace of the thapter's aura. Now Gilhaelith withdrew the amplimet and the other crystals, slipped them into a lead box and sealed the lid. You never knew what emanations, or auras, the Aachim might be able to detect.
They might also scry for wisps of aura that could indicate the amplimet's present location. He scuttled across to the organ chamber and, selecting a crystal that bore a close physical resemblance to the amplimet, passed it back and forth across the frosty glass sphere, scrying for traces. He found none, nor did the organ sound when he put the crystal into the eighty-one-point star. That did not mean all traces of the amplimet were hidden, but it would take more than casual scrying to find it. At the least, a room-by-room search of Nyriandiol. He had a plan for that contingency too, but hoped he would not have to use it. It involved dead Aachim, the destruction of Nyriandiol and flight through secret forest paths to a distant refuge.
'They're coming,' Nixx shouted.
Gilhaelith followed him to the front terrace. He waited there, restraining the urge to glance up at the gable behind which Tiaan lay hidden.