Chimaera

ONE

Little Ullii, the mildest and meekest person in the world, tested the blade of the pilfered dagger concealed in her coat. She was going to revenge herself on the man who had been her first friend and only lover, and the father of her dead baby. She was hunting Nish, and when she found him she planned to cut out his heart, for that was just what he’d done to her.

‘Seeker? To me!’

Ullii started and looked around guiltily. She loathed Chief Scrutator Ghorr almost as much as she hated Nish, but she feared Ghorr as only the truly helpless could. He was a brute, a monster, and she was in his thrall. She scurried to his side to betray the rest of her friends.

The Council of Scrutators had attacked the ancient fortress of Fiz Gorgo before dawn with overwhelming force and complete surprise, taking most of their victims in their beds. With Ullii to pinpoint them, mancers as powerful as Yggur and as subtle as Malien had been captured within minutes, along with dozens of lesser victims. Now only a few remained, but among them were the two that Ghorr wanted most desperately.

His victory was almost complete and Ghorr was going to finish the rebellion here and now. The trials would be swift, the executions swifter. By the end of the day no one, from the least scullery maid at Fiz Gorgo to Lord Yggur himself, would be left alive. And every detail of the trial and the bloody executions was to be recorded devotedly by the war artists, recorders and tale-tellers. The whole world had to know that there was no escape for traitors, not even those hiding in distant territories under enemy occupation. Every citizen of Santhenar, down to the smallest child, must hear the tale of the rebels’ brutal end, and take the lesson.

But Ullii plotted a different fate for Nish; Nish who had slain Myllii, the beloved twin brother for whom she’d searched since she was four. He had claimed it was an accident but Ullii knew better. She had to take retribution with her own hands. Without it, neither Myllii nor her son Yllii could ever find peace in their graves. She was going to carve out Nish’s treacherous heart and feed it to the carrion birds that were already circling above the walls of Fiz Gorgo in expectation of the feast.

Ullii crept down the corridor beside the chief scrutator. Her eyes were masked against the torches of his troops, for Ullii was so sensitive that bright light burned her eyes. Fortunately she did not need to see. Her mental lattice, her unique and, to others, incomprehensible way of viewing the world, told her where she was even in darkness.

Her ears were covered to keep out the clangour of battle and bloodshed, the roars of the soldiers, the screams of their victims, the thud of weapons against armour, flesh and bone. Ullii could not see Nish in her lattice because, lacking any talent for the Secret Art, he did not appear there. But her most sensitive sense was not veiled in any way. She was tracking Nish by his scent. Nowhere he could go, nothing he could do could prevent her from finding him among the myriad of other smells and stenches that threaded the frigid air of Fiz Gorgo.

Fortunately Ghorr was not aware of that talent and, in the afterglow of a victory more complete than he had ever dared hope for, he seemed to have forgotten about Nish. He was not in the same league as the great mancers Gilhaelith, Malien and Yggur. Nish was insignificant compared to the unexpected discovery of Tiaan and the priceless flying construct, not to mention the powerful and enigmatic amplimet, a crystal that drew power from the field without human intervention. Ghorr’s personal guard had already secured all of them and the chief scrutator could not help gloating over it.

He heaved her back by the arm. ‘Stay behind, Seeker. Don’t endanger yourself. We’ve yet to find the arch-fiend, Xervish Flydd, and he could slay you with a single glance.’

Ullii knew that wasn’t true, and moreover Flydd had treated her far more kindly than the chief scrutator ever did. However, she stopped at once; Ghorr took pleasure in inflicting pain, particularly on the weak and powerless.

‘Well?’ he said, pulling off her earmuffs to roar in her ear, though she could hear him clearly through them, and he knew it. ‘Where is the renegade, Seeker?’

Before she could answer, a soldier came running. ‘Two people have barricaded themselves in a chamber down to your left, Chief Scrutator, surr. Mancer Squilp says the place has a strong tang of the Art.’

‘Is it Xervish Flydd, Ullii?’ said Ghorr, crushing the bones in her gracile arm.

She closed her eyes behind the mask, the better to visualise her lattice. The noise hurt and the violence frightened her, making it difficult to concentrate. The lattice was faint again today. It had been fading for weeks now, and that filled her with dread. What if she lost it completely? Ullii had created her lattice as a lost and lonely little girl and, in the desperate years since, it had been the only thing keeping her sane. Her solitary achievement had given her pride in herself. It was now the only crutch she had left.

‘Hurry up!’ hissed Scrutator Fusshte, thrusting his pockmarked reptilian face at her behind Ghorr’s back.

Ullii recoiled. Fusshte was a creeping monstrosity whose nearness brought her out in goosepimples.

Ghorr urged him out of the way. ‘She can’t be forced, Scrutator,’ he said acidly. ‘Won’t you ever learn?’

Fusshte backed off, but Ullii saw his malevolence as a corrosive knot in her lattice. Even Ghorr was preferable to the slithering horror that was Scrutator Fusshte.

‘Well, Seeker?’ said Ghorr.

‘It’s Xervish,’ she conceded. Ullii had once regarded Flydd as a friend and knew she was betraying him to his doom, but she wasn’t strong enough to resist. Even if she had been, Ghorr would happily break her to find his enemy. ‘And Crafter Irisis.’

‘Splendid,’ said Ghorr. ’What are they doing, Ullii? Surely they know that locking themselves in is useless?’

‘Breaking the floor,’ said Ullii with lowered head.

‘Reinforce the mancers just outside the door,’ snapped Ghorr to a messenger, who hurried away. ‘Captain,’ he turned to a hulking officer, each of whose intricately tooled military boots could have accommodated Ullii’s head and neck, ‘lead us to the room below Flydd’s. Bring two squads. Fusshte, take a third squad down the far stairs and cut off the other exit.’

Ghorr allowed his troops to take the lead, then caught Ullii’s arm and hauled her down the stone staircase. As they crossed a landing, a muffled roar shook the building.

‘Quick, Captain!’ said Ghorr. ‘Flydd’s broken through. Take him and Irisis alive and there’ll be a bonus for you.’

The soldiers hurtled down the steps, swords raised. Ghorr kept well back. The chief scrutator guarded his life like a miser his hoard.

They reached the bottom step, rounded the corner and there, in the flickering light of the soldiers’ torches, stood the fugitives. Irisis had stopped dead when she saw the soldiers, then raised her sword. Flydd glanced over his shoulder at the cluster of dancing torches and his skinny shoulders sagged. Scrutator Fusshte and his heavily armed troops blocked the only way out.

Ullii lifted her mask for a moment. Xervish Flydd, a small man of some sixty years, looked more scarred and emaciated than ever. Though it was bitterly cold, he wore just a bedsheet, hastily knotted about his hips. Beautiful Irisis Stirm was dressed in brown woollen pantaloons and a loose shirt which could not conceal her luxurious figure. Her yellow hair was unbound. They were both covered in grey dust.

Ullii pulled the mask down, as if to hide from her former friends, but Flydd had already seen her. He shook his head, a moment of desolation, and Ullii knew she had done a terrible wrong. But what else could I do? she thought plaintively, slipping into the shadow behind Ghorr before Irisis could see her.

‘Xervish Flydd,’ said Ghorr in a treacly voice. ‘Irisis Stirm. I’m so pleased to see you both again.’

Irisis shifted her weight, holding the sword two-handed, but Flydd drew her back. ‘There’s no point, Irisis. Put it down.’

After a long hesitation, she let the sword fall. The soldiers took hold of the pair and swiftly bound their hands.

‘These are the last,’ said Fusshte. ‘Let’s get the trials underway, Chief Scrutator. The executioners grow impatient.’

‘The executioners wait upon my pleasure,’ Ghorr said icily. ‘Take the prisoners out to the yard, Captain.’

Ullii pressed back into a niche in the wall, hiding from herself. Flydd had let her down, certainly, but he’d been kind to her too, and always looked after her. And she’d betrayed him to a monster.

Taking off the mask, she rubbed her eyes, trying to work out where it had all gone wrong. As Flydd was dragged past, his eyes met hers for a second. He knew Ullii had betrayed them; he was looking right into her heart and, worst of all, he understood.

The guard jerked on the rope; Flydd stumbled away. Ullii crouched down in her niche, shivering violently. Cold rarely bothered her but now she felt like a statue carved of ice. She was just as bad as Ghorr.

Irisis was dragged past. Hastily pulling down the mask, Ullii turned her face to the wall until the crafter had gone by. Irisis would neither understand nor forgive.

The troops led their prisoners upstairs, gloating and calculating their shares of the reward, and getting in vicious blows when Ghorr wasn’t looking. Ullii remained where she was. Ghorr took little notice of her at the best of times and, now that he had his enemies at his mercy, would not give her a moment’s thought. It was easy to conceal herself in the darkness, for no one was more skilled at hiding than she.

She slipped into a room that had already been checked while Fiz Gorgo was searched one more time. Finally, the soldiers tramped out into the yard. The scrutators had gone. Ullii tracked the knots they made in the eye of her lattice. They went out through the broken front doors of Fiz Gorgo and up onto the outer wall, from whence they were hauled up in rope chairs to the comfort of the hovering air-dreadnoughts, doubtless to indulge themselves in an orgy of congratulations. The prisoners and their guards were left to shiver in the ice-crusted yard until the preparations for the trial were complete.

Fiz Gorgo was silent now. Ullii put her head out the door. The darkness was comforting and she felt the lattice strengthen a little, but she had lost her purpose. Seeing Flydd that way had thrown her. Then a familiar tang raised bumps on her arms. Nish!

She tasted the air, nose up like a mouse. To Ullii, Nish was his smell, and she could have identified him anywhere. She’d picked him out from sixty thousand soldiers and slaves when he’d been sentenced to haul bogged clankers out of the sodden battlefield at Snizort last summer.

There was a trace of his spoor down here, though the scent was old. On the ground floor it had been stronger. Ullii took off the mask and earmuffs. Her sensitive eyes could see well enough in the dark, not that she needed to. She eased up the farther stair, the one Fusshte had come down. The stench of him drowned out all other smells: stagnant water in the flooded labyrinth below, mould growing on the walls, the faint odour of woodworm and rotting timber, and even the unwashed, sweaty reek of the soldiers. Fusshte had a sour, festering stink that made her nostrils pucker and her toes curl.

It was brighter on the ground floor. A gloomy daylight seeped in through the broken front doors, though it cast little light around the corner to this narrow hall. The breeze was blowing away from the doors and she could not tell if Nish was out there. Dare she look? Easing to the shattered remnants of the great doors, Ullii covered her eyes with her fingers and peered out.

She didn’t see Nish. The prisoners were kept apart, save for Flydd and Irisis, and each was surrounded by burly guards. All the men of Ghorr’s guard were tall and Nish, a small man, would not be visible behind them.

Ullii went back and forth, testing the air for every tendril of odour, and, around the corner, picked up an old scent. She could even tell that Nish had been weary when he’d come this way. He’d plodded down the corridor before stopping for a moment. Why? Ullii smelt Irisis’s fresh, creamy tang and her fists clenched involuntarily. Nish and Irisis had been lovers once, before Ullii had met him. She sniffed the air. He’d gone into her room!

She tracked him to the bed and he’d been in it. He’d lain with Irisis just hours ago. How dare he? Ullii didn’t operate on logic – as far as she was concerned, Nish had been hers ever since they’d made love in the balloon in the treetops near Tirthrax, at the end of last winter. He’d made her pregnant there, and even though he’d killed her brother since then, she would share him with no one.

It firmed her faltering resolve. She tracked Nish to his little room. The bed was cold but a fresher scent led around the corner, into the main hall and up in the direction of the front door. There she lost it.

Ullii crept along the hall on her toes, keeping to the left-hand wall, ready to dart away should someone approach. She could hear the guards talking in the yard, gravel crunching under their boots and an occasional mutter or plea from the bound prisoners, always answered with a jeer or slap.

She headed for the stairs to one of the tower balconies she’d seen from Ghorr’s air-dreadnoughts, so she could look down into the yard. A few steps up, she detected Nish’s spoor once more, and it was fresher. He’d gone this way in the last few hours.

Unfortunately he’d come down again; she smelt him on the other side of the staircase as well. Nonetheless, she continued up to a landing on the second floor, where she went down on her belly and crawled to the edge. The scent was stronger here. He’d spent some time with the tall mancer she now knew to be Yggur.

Ullii looked down into the mist-wreathed yard and made out Yggur easily, as well as the even taller mancer with the frothy hair whose attempt to escape had enabled her to find Fiz Gorgo in the first place. They were bound hand and foot, and tightly gagged to prevent them speaking any spell or word of power. Flydd and Irisis stood together, not gagged but surrounded by a double halo of guards. The old Aachim mancer, Malien, was by the wall, also bound and gagged, and watched by a pair of Council mancers. The other rings of guards enclosed people she could not identify, but Nish was not among them.

So how had he, alone of all the clever people here, managed to escape? Not knowing the answer, Ullii crawled back to the steps and allowed her senses to guide her.

A faint odour led up, though only to chaos that was also her doing. Using her lattice, Ullii had pinpointed the locations of several uncanny devices designed to protect Fiz Gorgo. The top of this horned tower had housed one of them, but it and the other devices had been blasted by amplified sunbeams from the air-dreadnoughts at the beginning of the dawn attack, melting the very stone and destroying everything inside. Nish could hardly be up there now, though she could detect no track coming down.

Nonetheless, the lingering scent trail went up, so Ullii followed. By the next turn of the stair the stone had grown perceptibly warm and she smelled the peculiar dry odour of overheated rock. On the turn after that the steps were sprinkled with ash, charcoal and gritty granules of slag.

It was hard to move silently here for the grit squeaked underfoot, a high-pitched abrasive sound that irritated her sensitive ears. She trod as softly as she could but by the next turn of the stairs the ash and grit were ankle-deep. At the landing after that the stairs were blocked by a crusted flow of melted stone, black on the outside but deeply cracked and glowing within. The crust, resembling dirty glass and slag, was embedded with pieces of charcoal and half-burnt wood. A sagging pewter mug protruded from one edge.

The flow was so hot that it dried out her eyes. Ullii could not find any way through the smoke and heat haze so she went down to the main hall, crisscrossing the building like a mouse hunting for food. None of Nish’s scent traces led out of Fiz Gorgo. The most recent was the one that had gone up the steps to the destroyed tower. Perhaps he’d gone up twice and only come down once.

Climbing an adjacent tower, one that hadn’t been attacked, she peered through an embrasure. The mist was growing thicker and turning to light rain that drifted on the breeze. It was miserably cold and dank but Ullii preferred cold to heat.

From here she had a good view of the ruined tower. She’d led Ghorr’s forces to it, had pinpointed exactly where the defensive devices were, and where to aim their incandescent, rock-melting beams of crystal-boosted sunlight. The horned tower was now bent like a banana, a couple of floors below the top. The beam had burned in through an embrasure, liquefying everything inside that chamber. The thick outside wall had bent like toffee then set again, though the stone was sadly cracked and fretted. Pieces of stone fell as she watched, and the wall steamed gently in the rain.

If Nish had been in that chamber, he could not have survived. Even had he been in the rooms above, the heat must have burned him alive. Not a pleasant death, nor what she’d intended for him. Before Ullii cut out his heart, she’d wanted him to know why.

TWO

After leaving Irisis in the early hours of the morning, Nish had gone back to his cold bed, but had not managed to get to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the morrow. They were due to leave in Malien’s thapter to attack the Council of Scrutators’ secret bastion, Nennifer, and attempt to overthrow them, for the Council was never going to win the war. Indeed, it no longer seemed that it wanted to, for the war kept the scrutators in power. But Nennifer was defended by a thousand crack troops, hundreds of mancers and all manner of uncanny devices, so how could a handful of people, even including Flydd, Yggur and Malien, hope to breach it? It seemed, at the least, suicidal. And why were he and Irisis suddenly being kept in the dark? It hurt, after all they’d done over the past months.

Despairing of ever getting to sleep, Nish dressed in his discarded clothes, which had already taken on the frigid dankness of the room. Pulling on icy boots, he laced them up and stamped his feet, trying vainly to maintain the warmth he’d had from the bed. At the noise, someone muttered angrily from the next room.

Nish shrugged into his coat, pulled a floppy hat down over his neck and ears, and went to the door. With his hand on the latch he thought about going back for his sword, but Fiz Gorgo was the safest place on Santhenar. He left it leaning against the wall.

He had planned to go out the front doors and pace around the outer wall, but as he cracked the door open, such an icy wind coiled in that Nish closed it and headed for the tower instead. This time he did not stop at Yggur’s balcony, but felt his way up the snake-coiled stone stair to the very top. It was pitch black outside – he could see nothing through the embrasures.

On the fourth- and fifth-floor landings, open doors led to black rooms. Nish didn’t look inside; he hadn’t brought a lantern. The rooms on the sixth and seventh floors were locked and, he suspected, sealed with the Art. They held some kind of defensive artefact – Nish had once overheard Yggur telling Flydd about it. He trudged up to the eighth level, a lookout tower that had not been manned during Nish’s time in Fiz Gorgo. Not even the lyrinx, who owned the rest of Meldorin, came near Fiz Gorgo.

At the top he peered out the western embrasure towards the town of Old Hripton, several leagues away around the bay, but the icy breeze made his eyes water and he couldn’t see any lights. Pulling his coat around him, he sat on the stone bench that ran around the circumference of the room. As soon as he sat down, Nish felt drowsy, so he folded up the hood of his coat for a pillow, lay on his back and closed his eyes.

Despair chased the drowsiness away. The world lay in ruins. The Council had failed, the war was in its last desperate stage and the enemy was going to win it. Whole nations had been wiped out, vast regions depopulated as if a great plague had crept across them. Few people had any hope now. They were just going through the motions of fighting and dying. From the lowest peasant to the rulers themselves, hopelessness was all-pervading.

The scrutators attacked despair as they attacked every other crime – with violence – but violence no longer had any effect. A people without hope were glad to die. Human civilisation was going to fall and even its precious Histories would disappear as though they had never been. Nish felt like weeping but his eyes were gritty dry.

And so, Flydd’s mad plan to attack Nennifer. If the corrupt Council could just be overthrown, men and women of stout heart might still be able to hold back the horde and set the world to rights. If anyone could do it, it would be Flydd, who had made the protection of humanity his life’s work. But Nish knew it was folly; no attack could succeed against such defences. They were all going to die, yet somehow it seemed worth it to go out in such a noble, reckless endeavour. Humanity was going to disappear anyway, and falling in battle against the scrutators was better than being eaten by the lyrinx. There wasn’t a person on Santhenar who did not shudder at that thought. It didn’t seem right that all humanity’s greatness should be extinguished in such a lowly, savage way.

Nish was drifting in and out of sleep when he heard a curious squelchy plock, like a hammer being whacked into wet dough some distance away. He thought about getting up to see, but weariness overcame him. Surely it was just a frog jumping onto the stone floor.

Plock, plock. His subconscious must have continued to puzzle away at the sounds, for Nish woke with a jerk. It wasn’t a frog – it was the sound made by a crossbow bolt embedding itself into a human body.

He shot up, heart pounding, and stumbled to the nearest embrasure. It was growing light outside, the sun’s first rays illuminating a layer of mist that blanketed everything below the treetops. Nish looked out and the blood froze in his veins.

There were air-floaters everywhere – no, air-dreadnoughts – gigantic vessels each supported by five airbags, and three or four times the length of Flydd’s air-floater. The sides of each vessel were lined with soldiers and at the prows fluttered the silver pennant of the Council of Scrutators. Nish counted nine air-dreadnoughts, then six more from the other side of the chamber. No, seven – a sixteenth hung high above, on watch. Fiz Gorgo was surrounded.

Nish opened his mouth to roar out a warning, but snapped it closed. They’d already shot the sentries and would do the same to him. Besides, no one in Fiz Gorgo would hear him from here. As he ran for the stairs, eye-searing beams lanced out from cartwheel-sized mirrors on the air-dreadnoughts, converging on the secret chambers of the tower below him.

The floor swelled beneath his feet, grew burning hot and the world exploded in his face. The last thing he saw was a nebulous, shield-like bubble rise through the stone like some phantom created by a master of the Art. A corner of it enveloped him just as his head thudded into the wall.

Nish roused to the odours of burning cloth and smouldering leather. He lifted his head but it hurt. He was lying on what had been the floor of the lookout, but was now a jumble of cracked and broken slabs collapsed onto the domed ceiling of the secret chamber below. An edge of rough stone dug into his ribs. Nish slid off it onto a flat slab, which proved to be uncomfortably warm. He rolled onto a cooler one and looked straight through the wall. A triangle of stone had fallen out leaving a hole he could have put his head through. He moved and the walls appeared to shift before his eyes. No, the top section of the tower was tilted and was surely going to collapse.

The slab under him was growing hotter. Nish rolled off onto the next without checking it first, and pain seared through his back and buttocks. He pulled himself to his feet and picked his way across the rubble, his boot soles smoking. The floor in the centre was burning hot. The blast had made an inferno of Yggur’s secret chambers and the floor could collapse through the dome at any moment. He could feel the stone quivering.

He sprang across to the nearest embrasure, where the floor seemed a little more solid, and began beating at the smoking cuffs of his trousers. A section of cloth the size of a saucer fell out and the skin underneath began to blister. He pressed it against the damp stone, then did the same with his boots until the fumes disappeared.

His calf was really stinging now. Scrambling from slab to slab around the perimeter of the chamber to what looked like a marginally safer position, Nish discovered that seepage had frozen on the inner lip of one embrasure to form grey ice. He broke off a piece and held it to the blistered flesh until the burning eased, though as soon as he took the ice away the pain came back, worse than before.

There was nothing he could do about it. Edging to an embrasure that looked over the yard, Nish peered out, careful to make no sudden movement that would betray him. The sky was full of descending ropes, each bearing a squad of armoured troopers clinging to hand- and foot-loops. Several ropes had already touched down on the outer wall and troopers were running along it, taking charge of the defences and picking off Yggur’s guards as they ran from their barracks.

Another squad, already in the yard, was preparing to storm the front doors. Across the far side of the yard a group of twenty or more soldiers, dressed in the distinctive uniforms of Chief Scrutator Ghorr’s personal guard, were breaking into the shed in which the thapter was stored. How could they have known it was inside?

It was the Council! Fiz Gorgo had been betrayed. Nish slid out of sight as an officer glanced up at the smoking tower. Had he been seen? He couldn’t tell. He heard the thunder of boots as a host of troopers surged through the broken front doors.

They’ll get a shock inside, he thought. Yggur, Flydd and Malien would together be the match of a small army. He looked down again and saw a group of warrior mancers follow the advance guard, staves at the ready, and after them squad after squad of heavily armed men. No, there was little hope; the scrutators were too well prepared.

Smoke began to seep up through cracks in the dome. Tossing away the fragment of ice, Nish snapped off another and pressed it to his burning calf. The stone he was standing on was growing hotter and he couldn’t see any way out. The stair was completely blocked by hot rubble. He couldn’t possibly climb down the wet stone on the outside of the tower. His only means of escape was by jumping out one of the embrasures, though below him the drop was eight floors to the paved yard – certain death. In the other directions, the fall was five floors onto the sloping roofs of Fiz Gorgo, which were tiled with thick slabs of lichen-covered rock. He’d either crash straight through, tearing himself to shreds on the broken slabs, or, more likely, break all his leg bones as he landed.

The yard offered a quick death; the roof, lingering agony. If he stayed here, he’d be either cooked or smoked to death. The stone groaned and the tower lurched, as if a lower layer had become plastic. Falling into the inferno was his other doom. Nish hopped from foot to foot. The soles of his boots were smoking again. There was nowhere to go. Or was there?

The horned roof above him was framed with metal rods that had to be cooler than what he was standing on, and if the tower collapsed, there was a faint chance that the roof might hold together. If the tower stayed up, he might, just possibly, survive up there until the inferno went out. It didn’t seem likely but he had no alternative.

Nish eased a smouldering beam out of the rubble, with much burning of fingers and the soles of his feet, and propped it against the wall. He dragged himself up it, caught hold of an iron rod and pulled himself up onto the roof framing.

It was worse than uncomfortable, for the rods cut into his flesh wherever he perched, but it was safer than where he’d been. Before long a curving crack appeared in the top of the dome. The chamber below had turned the orange-red of molten rock. If the conflagration inside was hot enough to melt stone, his end could not be long in coming.

And why delay it, he thought bitterly, since everyone I care about is going to die. Nish had no illusions about his friends’ fate once they fell into the hands of the scrutators. There were no prisons on Santhenar. Minor miscreants were punished by servitude in the front lines, for men, or the breeding factories for women, or by other forms of slavery appropriate to the needs of the unending war. All other criminals were executed as an example to all, the only variation being in the ironically appropriate manner of their deaths.

Tears pricked his eyes when he thought about Irisis, his dearest friend, being tormented by the scrutators. No – he had to cling to hope, no matter how slender. Surely Yggur and Malien, two of the truly great figures from the Histories, were still at large? Yggur was a mancer of overwhelming power and cunning, a legend who had struggled against Rulke himself, back in the time of the Mirror, and even before that. Yggur was more than twelve hundred years old; had seen everything and survived everything. How could the scrutators beat him?

And yet … the Council had known where Yggur’s secret defences lay, and had destroyed them from afar without being detected. What if Yggur had been targeted the same way, as he slept? If he was dead, all hope was lost.

The tower gave another of those plastic shudders that made his stomach lurch. Nish clutched the rod with both hands. Waves of colour like inverted rainbows shimmered in the air and, suddenly, he saw right through the stone dome, as he had that ghastly night last summer after his father, Jal-Nish, had forced Nish’s hands into those uncanny quicksilver tears distilled from the destroyed node at Snizort.

He was looking into a seething hell – a cauldron of molten stone seemingly suspended in mid-air where the floor of the lower chamber had once been. What could be holding it up? The roiling globe drifted toward the side wall, only to be repelled back towards the centre. It rotated one way and then the other, emitting little bursts of glowing plasma that licked the soot-coated walls clean wherever they touched.

Nish could only imagine that the ferocity of the blast had been contained by some unknown aspect of Yggur’s secret defences. He prayed that it stayed contained, for the radiating fury looked potent enough to consume the walls of the tower.

The fiery globe swelled, contracted, swelled again and burst open, sending an incandescent jet straight up. Burning through the top of the stone dome, it sucked back then blew an orange spurt of molten rock-glass up through the hole. It arched high across the room, solidifying into a glass lance that split down its length as it cooled, forming a pair of curving blades as sharp as a giant’s scimitars.

The strange-sight that had allowed Nish to see the globe vanished so suddenly that he cried out. An attack of vertigo had him clinging desperately to the rods, his sweating hands slipping on the warm metal.

There came another molten squirt, splitting to form another pair of glass scimitars, and then another and another until the chamber was webbed with them. Nish hung suspended above a hundred razor-sharp blades. It had to be a residue of Yggur’s Art – such perfect, deadly blades could not have formed by accident – but it had trapped him as effectively as any weapon of the enemy’s. If he tried to get down, he’d be sliced like a slab of buffalo on a butcher’s block.

Heat billowed up through the hole, streaming directly over him. His eyelids began to rasp when he blinked. After ten or fifteen minutes Nish could feel his skin drying and cracking in the heat. He was desperate for something to drink.

From his refuge he could see part of the yard. A bound and gagged prisoner was led out to its centre, surrounded by soldiers. The prisoner was an elderly woman, one of Yggur’s kitchen servants. Other servants followed, each with an escort of the scrutators’ finest, then several of Yggur’s guard. After them came Malien, heavily bound, Gilhaelith and, to Nish’s despair, a stumbling, bloody Yggur.

Each new prisoner was a further blow to his hopes. Nish counted them down, and when Flydd and Irisis were dragged into the yard, he gave a groan of despair. The scrutators had them all, from the least to the greatest. He was the only one still free. Ghorr had out-thought them. All the time that Yggur and Flydd had been planning their secret assault on Nennifer, Ghorr had been readying his own vastly superior forces. By the time Tiaan and Malien had reached Fiz Gorgo in the thapter, five days ago, Ghorr’s fleet of dreadnoughts had already been on its way. The irony was bitter.

Down in the courtyard the prisoners were still, all but one. Irisis was struggling, ignoring the cuffs and kicks of the guards. She would do so to the end. Irisis was a rebel and could never be anything else, and Nish loved her for it. The realisation shocked him. He did love her and that made it so much worse.

Nish had expected the search of Fiz Gorgo to take some time, but shortly the scrutators emerged, along with the remainder of the soldiers, and were lifted up to the air-dreadnoughts in suspended baskets. The prisoners and their guards remained in the yard, shivering and stamping their feet.

The inferno below him had begun to cool, but the broken beams on the floor were smouldering, coating him with soot and catching at his lungs. Nish shifted on the rods, trying to find a way down without cutting himself to shreds. He could see none. He might have broken one or two glass blades with his boots, but the ones below were out of reach and dropping onto them was out of the question.

He climbed up under the roof, trying to see if any of the rods could be unfastened. They were fixed solidly, but while he was there Nish happened to glance up through a cracked roof slab and saw that the scrutators’ mechanicians were building a vast ropework construction, like a horizontal spiderweb, above Fiz Gorgo.

They had begun by anchoring the air-dreadnoughts to the outer walls with vertical cables as thick as a big man’s biceps. Now, working a good fifty spans above the ground, suspended ropers were hauling across horizontal ropes, stretching them drum-taut and lashing them into a network.

The instant the great rolls of canvas were lowered, Nish understood what they were doing. They were building a suspended amphitheatre, and it could only be to try the prisoners here. Ghorr wasn’t going to give such a collection of great mancers the least opportunity for escape, but he’d not miss the chance to consolidate his power either. The Council of Scrutators loved its spectacles, and the tale of such a trial would spread like wildfire throughout the known world, to bolster its dread reputation.

Nish tried to calculate how long the construction was going to take. Though the ropers worked with such dexterity that they must have practised the operation many times, it would take hours more to adapt their general design to the specific configuration of Fiz Gorgo. He didn’t know what time it was, for a thick overcast had rolled in from the west and not a glimmer of sun came through it. Nish thought it must have been around ten in the morning. The scrutators would want to complete their grisly business well before dark, which was around five at this time of year, so he didn’t have long at all.

Didn’t have long for what? He was trapped in a half-molten tower likely to collapse at any moment, being cured like a ham in a smokehouse, and his arms could barely hold him up. Half dead from dehydration, he had been reduced to licking the sooty condensation off the underside of the roof slabs. He was unarmed, opposed by hundreds of the toughest fighters in the world and dozens of mancers aching to impress their masters. Furthermore, the scrutators, collectively, represented the most powerful force ever assembled on Santhenar. The very idea of trying to rescue his friends was absurd.

But it would not go away.

THREE

The western side of the horned tower had stopped steaming. Ullii hoped it had cooled enough to climb, for there was no other way of getting to the top. Unfortunately it was also the side that faced the yard.

She went up the stair as far as she could go, eyeing the hot rubble in case a way past it had opened up. She could now discern a gap below the under-spiral of the stair, but everything radiated such heat that she could not get near it. Here and there, ribbons of molten metal, shiny as quicksilver where their coatings of grit had cracked, congealed in puddles on the treads.

It had to be the outside. Ullii squeezed through an embrasure that did not face the yard and found herself just above one of the roofs of Fiz Gorgo. She lowered herself to a roofing slab, adjusted her mask so it allowed in just a slit of light, and looked up.

The tower had been built of rough stone and the joins offered many hand-and foot-holds. Ullii was naturally dextrous, so the climb would not have been beyond her, had the tower been dry. Besides, her lattice revealed its secret strengths and flaws in a way that no one else could see. She looked up, closed her eyes and its network of cracks, crevices and stress-points opened up to her.

She pulled herself as far as the next floor, the fifth, but above that the stone was too hot to hold on to. Ullii edged sideways around the tower, one eye on the yard. If anyone looked up she would be seen, for her pale clothing and skin would stand out against the dark stone.

Fortunately the rain had become heavier, and colder, and the soldiers in the yard had their hoods down. Curling her toes around a projection no thicker than her finger, Ullii eased around the curve of the tower until she was directly above the yard. If she fell, she would die.

Above her, at the lower point of the bend, the wall was networked with horizontal cracks. If she could cross above them the worst would be over. She went up, stretched sideways to reach a convenient crack shaped like a lyrinx’s smile, and up again, sliding the fingers of her left hand deep into a crevice. She jerked them out and thrust them into her mouth – the inside was hot. She turned her head from side to side, eyes closed, sensing the heat on her cheek. There, to her left and above, where the rock was cracked like a mosaic, it felt cooler. It didn’t look very stable, though.

Ullii edged left as far as she could go, made sure her footing was sound and reached up. The first piece of the mosaic grated under her fingers and she had to hastily press it back before it dropped on her face. She fingered another, which also moved. The whole area was loose. She would have to go further and hope she could find a way around it.

It proved to be hard, slow work, for Ullii had never regained the wiry strength she’d had before she lost the baby. She edged along a tiny crack, just wide enough to get the tips of her toes inside. A span to her left and a span up she saw an easy path, though she wasn’t sure she could get to it. She felt very tired.

Suddenly her head spun and the lattice vanished. Ullii let out a cry of anguish, lost her grip with her left hand and nearly fell. She clung on with her toes and her right hand, scratching at the rock with her left and breaking her fingernails.

Ullii recovered quickly, though her heart was thundering and her calf muscles screaming. Her toes slipped. She worked them back into the crack but couldn’t find a comfortable position. Her left foot had begun to cramp and panic was eating away her confidence. The lattice was her life, her being, and compensation for all her other frailties. It made her unique and allowed her to survive in this cruel and hostile world. What if it didn’t come back?

She’d lost it before, briefly, after times of extreme stress, but never when her life had depended on it. At such moments it was normally at its strongest. Since Nish had killed Myllii, and Ullii had lost her baby, the lattice had slowly weakened. She lived in dread that it would disappear completely.

Concentrating on her breathing, Ullii let go with one hand and massaged her calf until the cramp was gone. The panic faded but the lattice did not come back. She would have to do without it.

Opening her eyes, she worked out a path upwards and closed them again. Her supersensitive fingers and toes would tell her all she needed to know. Vision would just be a distraction.

After much trial and error she found a way around the cracked area and up onto the bend in the tower, here clotted with glassy dribbles of melted rock that had oozed through cracks in the walls and congealed on the outside. Some knobs were too hot to hold, and others would not have borne her weight, but she found a pair rooted deep in the wall that were as solid as a staircase, allowing her to rest for a while.

Ullii wasn’t thinking about retribution now, for the climb had taken too much out of her. She no longer knew why she was climbing, only that Nish had come up and not gone down again. She didn’t see how he could have lived but she wouldn’t believe he was dead until she saw his body.

The other urge that kept her going was the need to hide from Chief Scrutator Ghorr. Ullii did not know how she was going to survive on her own, but she was never going back to Nennifer.

She was clinging on with her toes and the fingers of one hand, while she wiped the trickling moisture off her forehead, when she heard a glassy crack from inside the open watch-house at the top of the tower. It was followed by a muffled groan or curse.

It could have been the tormented rocks contracting as they cooled, but Ullii did not think so. It had sounded human, and very familiar. She sniffed but could smell only hot rock. If Nish was up there, the breeze was blowing his scent away. She scrabbled up to the seventh level. Her fingers were aching and she’d broken most of her toenails. Ullii needed to rest but drove herself on; she had to know. The wall and the embrasure above her were steaming, and a trickle of smoke issued from a deep fissure to one side of it.

Ullii peered over the lip of the embrasure and was confronted by a network of hundreds of spears and blades of rock glass, arching up like scimitars from a hole in the centre of the floor. The room was full of them. A hole in the jumbled floor was blocked by congealed glass, still cracking as it cooled.

Now she smelt Nish, though it was a strange, baked odour, the arid smell of desiccated skin. Ullii felt for the knife in her pack but did not pull it out. It was enough to know it was there. A trail of smoke drifted across her face, burning the membranes in her nose. She breathed through her mouth, her eyes watering as she scanned the floor. There was no sign of him. She looked up through the network of glassy blades and there he was, his arms and legs wrapped desperately around the iron rods that supported the roof. He looked as if he could barely hang on.

Instinctively she bared her teeth, but the gesture faded as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. He was coated, no, crusted with smoke and soot. His hair and skin were black and the individual hairs of his beard stood out like bristles. Skin was flaking off his nose and lips, the whites of his eyes were like chips of marble on black velvet, and he was shaking so hard that his teeth clattered.

Nish licked cracked lips and Ullii saw blood on his tongue. She pulled herself up onto the sill of the embrasure, staring at him, overcome. Rage warred with a most desperate longing for him to put his strong arms around her and make everything all right.

Nish saw her and let go with one hand, reaching out. ‘Help me, Ullii.’

His agony showed in the crevices around his mouth, the shuddering of his arms, the staring eyes, but that was nothing to her own pain. He’d lost nothing; she had nothing left. He’d torn it all away.

‘Water,’ he croaked, tongue rasping over his lips. ‘Please.’

The begging made her think less of him. Nish had always been strong. Now he was weaker than her and she felt nothing but contempt. ‘Come down.’

‘The blades will cut me to ribbons.’

She hoped so. Ullii wanted to see his blood run free. ‘Jump!’

Nish considered all possible ways down, biting his sooty lip. ‘I can’t.’

Ullii had always resisted using her initiative. In the long years when the only thing she’d wanted had been her brother back, it had been easier to drift. Now the desire for retribution was so strong that it seared her.

She moved around to the next embrasure, out of sight from below. Taking her boots out of her pack, Ullii put them on then climbed onto the sill and hurled her pack up into the middle of the chamber. The fragile glass sang as it smashed and, with a tinkling roar, the central part of the network fell to the floor. She wove between the remaining spears, glass crunching under her soles, and eased her head over the sill on the yard side. Several guards had looked up at the sound, but only briefly. Pieces were falling off the tower all the time.

Nish was staring down at the gap. The pack had carved an elongated scar through the glass spears, though it wasn’t much wider than a human body.

‘Can you throw the pack again?’ he said.

It lay under a network of quivering spears, so precariously perched that a breath could have dislodged them. She shook her head.

Nish pulled himself along the supporting rods, choosing the spot carefully. He couldn’t drop – he had to throw himself through at just the right angle and, even had he been fit and strong, that would not have been easy. His hands were shaking. He rubbed his palms down his trousers, coating them with greasy soot. He tried to rub it off again but only smeared it everywhere. Nish gripped a rod, lowered himself until he was hanging full stretch, and began to sway back and forth.

Ullii could see the fear on his face but it no longer gave her any pleasure. Nothing gave her pleasure any more. She pulled out the knife, just to be ready.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, hanging motionless.

‘You killed Myllii.’

‘Myllii?’ he whispered dazedly.

Surely he hadn’t forgotten? He truly was a monster. ‘I’m going to kill you for that, Nish.’

He closed his eyes, which turned his face into an ebony mask, then opened them with a flash of white. ‘I’m sorry. It was an accident. He just reared back –’

‘It’s too late to say you’re sorry now,’ she whispered, overcome by memories still vivid and clear.

‘Ullii,’ he begged. ‘Please.’

‘Too late. Too late.’ She turned away, the blade hanging down. Ullii couldn’t look at him. Why was he saying it now? Why not back then, when it had mattered?

‘What about our baby?’ croaked Nish. Sooty flakes of skin broke from his lips and drifted upwards in the rising air. ‘Would you kill our little baby’s father?’

‘There is no baby!’ she said in a thin scream. ‘Yllii is dead and that’s your fault too!’

FOUR

Nish’s hand slipped and he flailed about wildly before getting another grip. ‘Yllii?’ he rasped.

‘Your son!’ It was an accusation – how could you not know his name? And an attack – it’s your fault.

‘My son?’ That threw him. His lower lip trembled. ‘Dead? How?’

How could he not know? Having lived Yllii’s death every possible way over the past four and a half months, she found Nish’s ignorance incomprehensible. It didn’t occur to her that he had no way of knowing these things. ‘You killed him!’ Ullii shrieked, half-mad with rage and grief.

Nish clung desperately to his perch. ‘You ran away, Ullii, and I couldn’t find you. I don’t know what happened from that day to this. But whatever happened to our son, I wasn’t there.’

‘You weren’t there,’ she whispered. ‘You were never there when I needed you, Nish. You didn’t care.’

‘I wept tears of blood for what I’d done to Myllii but I couldn’t undo it. Please, Ullii. What happened to our son?’

She swept the blade through the air. ‘Come down.’

‘Put the knife away first.’

She gave a half-hearted slash, screwed her eyes up, then laid the knife on the floor among the shattered glass, within easy reach. Nish would come down. He had to know what had happened to his son and it gave her the upper hand. At least he cares about Yllii, she thought, even if he hates me.

‘Come down, Nish.’

She studied him from under her eyelids. He seemed to be weighing her intentions. Now he began to swing his legs, trying to line himself up with the gap. Ullii could have done it with her eyes closed but he lacked her natural dexterity, and that pleased her selfish little soul. It wasn’t often that she felt superior.

Nish sucked in a breath, swung, and threw himself at the gap.

Before he let go, Ullii knew he’d miss. He’d swung out a little too far, a fraction too hard. His legs went through the gap but his body wasn’t lined up properly and he was heading straight for a pair of razor-sharp blades.

Nish jerked backwards and twisted sideways at the last instant, and his torso passed through safely. He whipped his head back, the blade shaved a clump of hair off the left side, nicking his ear, then he was through, all but his flailing left arm. It went side-on into a blade, cutting a deep gouge in his forearm before the glass broke. Blood spurted up as he slammed into a sloping slab of stone that was mercifully free of glass.

He didn’t move for a second or two. Blood pumped straight up from his forearm, coating one of the blades above him before dripping all over his face. Moving painfully, he got a thumb to the artery and the flow stopped. He looked up at her, the blood still dripping on his face, and across at the knife. She did too.

Ullii still planned to kill him. She took up the knife but Nish didn’t move. Blood welled out under his thumb and he pressed harder. She hated him for all that had happened to her since she’d been taken to the manufactory a year ago. Because of him she was alone in the world. She had no brother, no son, no friends, and now the lattice, her last resort and only comfort, had gone away. She didn’t know how to get it back.

‘I didn’t know Myllii was your brother,’ Nish said quietly, his voice barely audible over the singing of the blades in the wind. ‘I thought he was attacking you. Or holding you so the soldiers could carry you off to the air-floater.’

He looked ghastly, with his face and arm drenched in blood, and the rest of him covered in soot and flaking skin. She wavered.

Nish went on. ‘I told Myllii to stop but he reared backwards and the knife went straight into him. I’m so very sorry.’

Ullii closed her eyes. She was back at the campsite, holding Myllii and feeling his shock as the knife slid into his back. Tears welled out through her eyelids like drops of blood from a wound. Had Nish said that? She couldn’t remember – she’d been too overcome with joy at finding her twin after so many years of searching.

Nish could be lying. He’d used her before and he was, after all, the son of his father, Jal-Nish, the worst man Ullii had ever come across. She’d been a good judge of people once, but Ullii couldn’t tell about Nish any more.

‘What happened to Yllii?’ he said softly.

You killed him too, she wanted to scream while stabbing Nish to the heart. Ghorr had told her so, many times, and so had Scrutator T’Lisp, the wicked old woman who had trapped Ullii with Myllii’s binding bracelet. They’d told her that Nish was evil incarnate and had to be destroyed. Ullii had believed them at the time, and for a long time after, but looking back on her months in Nennifer she began to doubt. Chief Scrutator Ghorr was a monster whose handiwork she’d seen many times in Nennifer, and on the long journey here. He’d ruined Fiz Gorgo, killed dozens of innocent people and planned to torture the rest of them to death. And she had helped him, and betrayed every one of her former friends, so what did that make her?

‘Tell me everything, Ullii,’ he said softly. ‘From the moment Myllii first appeared in the clearing, until now. I have to know.’

She began haltingly, fingering the bracelet that still clung to her wrist, immovable. Just reliving that night of Myllii’s death was torment, and the time after was worse. She could still feel Yllii’s sharp fingernails scrabbling at her insides.

‘She did it,’ Nish said when Ullii had finished that part of the tale. She turned her face up to him blankly, lost in another time, another place.

‘Scrutator T’Lisp killed our baby,’ he went on. He reached out to her, thumb still pressed against his arm, but she pulled away. ‘I did you wrong, Ullii, and I’m sorry, but I’m not the real villain. Ghorr ordered Yllii’s death so you would be free to track down Xervish Flydd for him. No one else could have found him.’

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘No one could but me.’

‘T’Lisp worked her Art so that you’d take Myllii’s bracelet, and the instant you put it on you came under her control. But then you let slip that you were pregnant, and T’Lisp knew that while you carried our baby you’d be no use to her. She directed her scrutator magic against Yllii, through the bracelet. She lied to you and she killed Yllii. And now Ghorr –’ Nish broke off, as if he’d thought better of it.

Ullii sank down among the shards of green glass, not noticing as they dug into her calves. She didn’t want to believe Nish. If what he said was true, in serving Ghorr she’d been using Yllii’s death for an even greater evil.

She thought it through ponderously, for her mind was sluggish and reluctant to face the truth. It had been easier to blame Nish; to think that the agony of Myllii’s death and the grief at his loss had caused the death of her baby. But how could that be? She clutched at her belly, and the knife which she still held in her left hand, pricked her; the memories that T’Lisp had wiped from her mind came cascading back.

Yllii had been all right until the following night, when she’d touched the bracelet – still immovably fixed to her wrist by scrutator magic – and seen that vision of Ghorr and T’Lisp again.

‘Myllii,’ she gasped, clasping the bracelet in panic, but again came that flash of the scrutators.

Come to us, little seeker, mouthed Ghorr. We’ve work for you.

‘Leave me alone,’ she said aloud. ‘My little baby needs me.’

Baby? Ghorr said to the others. She can’t have a baby – it’ll ruin her precious talent.

She must have dreamed that, for the next instant they were gone as completely as if she’d only imagined it; then gone completely, her memories of the moment wiped clean.

Myllii wasn’t there either, but that awful screaming rang in her ears again. She reached out to the baby’s knot, for the screaming seemed to be coming from there. An agonising pain, far worse than the baby’s kicks, sheared through her belly. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to protect the baby, but the pain grew until it was like barbed hooks tearing through her.

Ullii made a supreme effort to reach beyond the pain but the barbs ripped through her flesh and she felt a great convulsion inside her, a bursting agony, as if the baby’s sharp fingernails were tearing desperately at the walls of her womb. Something burst inside her, then water gushed out between her legs, carrying the baby with it.

‘No!’ Ullii screamed, falling to her knees and clawing at the ground, but it was too late.

The baby, a little boy no longer than her hand, lay in a puddle, kicking feebly. She picked him up, staring at him in wonder. He was pink and healthy, and so beautiful that she felt a flush of love, but as she nursed him in her hands, the cord stopped pulsing and her stomach contracted again and again to expel the afterbirth. Ullii lifted the baby to her breast.

‘Yllii. Your name is Yllii,’ she said, as if that could protect him.

She desperately wanted him to live, for it was the only happy link left between her and Nish, the only good memory of their time together, and she loved him so.

Yllii gave one feeble suck, a little sigh, but his head fell away from the nipple and blood from his mouth trickled down her breast. Ullii tried to blow the breath back into the infant but the pink colour faded steadily from his face. The baby breathed no more.

Ullii looked up at Nish, not bothering to brush the tears away. ‘T’Lisp did kill our baby,’ she said at last, her voice as brittle as the glass underfoot. ‘She did it to please Ghorr, using this bracelet.’ She rose, letting the knife fall. Ullii did not look at Nish. Her fingers tore at the bracelet on her wrist, but it didn’t move. She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘And all this while I’ve been serving and helping them. I brought them here so they could kill the only people who have ever been good to me.’

‘You couldn’t have known.’ Nish’s eyes were fixed on the bracelet.

‘I knew what they were doing,’ Ullii said, wrenching at it until it cut into the skin. She didn’t care. It burned her now; it made her Ghorr’s creature. Ullii would cut off her hand if there was no other way to be rid of it. ’And I knew I was doing wrong, serving them. I was afraid of Ghorr; that’s why I did it.’

‘Is that all?’ said Nish, who knew of old how obsessional Ullii could be.

‘I wanted retribution for Myllii and Yllii. No!’ she said savagely, ‘I called it retribution but it was just revenge. I wanted you to suffer. And Flydd too, because he didn’t save Myllii.’

‘What about Irisis?’

‘I didn’t want to harm her,’ said Ullii uncomfortably.

‘But you have, Ullii. You’ve condemned her to die like everyone else. And Tiaan too, who never did anything to you. Not to mention Malien and Yggur, whom you’ve never met, and Inouye, the pilot of the air-floater. She’s such a quiet little woman, not much older than you, Ullii. And she’s so afraid.’

‘Why?’ said Ullii.

‘Inouye is terrified that her man and her little children will be punished because she obeyed Fyn-Mah and helped to save Flydd’s life and mine. She’s afraid that wicked Scrutator Ghorr would even torture her innocent children.’

‘He wouldn’t …’ Ullii said, uncertainly. ‘How old are her children?’

‘Sann, the boy, is nearly four. Inouye’s daughter, Mya, would be two and a half, I suppose.’

‘So young,’ she whispered. ‘Have you met them?’

‘No, but Inouye often mentioned their names. No mother ever loved her children more,’ he said deliberately.

‘I loved Yllii more than anyone else could ever love their baby!’ she wailed, jerking the bracelet up and down her wrist until it scraped off the skin in crumpled strips.

‘I know you did,’ he said, very quietly. ‘But would you let Ghorr kill Inouye … if you could save her?’

‘I don’t know her,’ Ullii said sullenly.

‘Would you allow Scrutator T’Lisp, who murdered our baby, to torment innocent little Sann and Mya?’

Ullii shuddered and pulled the mask over her face, then scuttled between the glassy blades into the darkest cranny of the chamber.

‘Ullii?’

She put her hands over her ears. She had to block him out. She knew what Nish wanted of her, but it was too hard. It was much safer to drift, to hide.

He kept calling. She couldn’t block him out completely, and of course Nish knew that. Eventually she took her hands away from her ears.

‘Yes?’ she said quietly.

‘I need your help, Ullii.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘The gash in my arm is still bleeding. If you can’t fix it I’m going to die.’

‘Good!’ she said mulishly, though Ullii had a shrinking feeling inside. Already she’d taken a little comfort from his presence. She didn’t feel quite so alone. ‘I can’t do anything about it.’

‘Of course you can. You always carry a needle and thread in your pack, to sew up your spider-silk underclothes.’

‘Can’t reach it,’ she muttered.

‘See that long spear of glass, there? Reach under and hook it through the strap of the pack and drag it out.’

‘It’ll cut me.’

‘Wrap your shirt around your hand or something. Don’t you have any initiative?’

It was the wrong thing to say. Ullii simply closed her eyes and scrunched herself up in the corner.

‘Ullii?’

She blocked him out.

He was quiet for a while, and then he said, ‘If I die, you’ll be all alone up here.’

‘I can climb out.’

‘Down to Ghorr and the scrutators?’

She scrunched herself up into a tighter ball. ‘You can’t help me, Nish.’

‘I wasn’t planning to. Ullii, I’ve been a fool. I treated you badly, and hurt you terribly. I’ve done stupid things and I’m sorry for them …’

‘Yes?’ she said when he did not go on. She liked hearing him talk like that.

‘I have to do something good to make up for it …’

She didn’t reply at once. Ullii was no fool – he was trying to lead her somewhere and she didn’t want to follow. But neither did she want to be alone again.

‘What, Nish?’

‘You’ve done wrong too, Ullii. You betrayed your friends. You’ve condemned Flydd and Irisis, and everyone else in Fiz Gorgo.’

‘It wasn’t my fault. Ghorr made me do it.’

‘No, Ullii. You chose to help Ghorr.’

‘He forced me.’

‘You didn’t have to find this place. You could have told him that you couldn’t see anyone in your lattice.’

‘He was too strong. He was going to hurt me!’

‘You could have resisted.’

‘He threatened me with Scrutator Fusshte. He’s the most evil scrutator of all, Nish.’

‘You could have resisted even Fusshte,’ Nish said inexorably. ‘You could have pretended that you’d lost the lattice. They wouldn’t have known any different.’

‘It was as if Fusshte was looking at me though my clothes; even through my skin.’

‘I’m sure that was horrible, but you betrayed your friends and now they’re all going to be put to death in the most awful way. Once the scrutators have killed them, the last hope of the world will be gone. We’ll lose the war and the lyrinx will eat us all, even you, Ullii. And it’ll all be your fault.’

‘No,’ she said in an almost inaudible squeak. ‘No, no, no!’

‘Yes,’ Nish said.

Ullii couldn’t make herself any smaller or any more insignificant. She couldn’t close down her senses to keep him at bay and she couldn’t escape. She had no choice but to take in what he was saying, though she knew he was manipulating her.

She had betrayed her friends and, for the first time, Ullii had to face up to it. She’d known it all along, but had put it out of mind – even those awful sounds as the guards on the wall had been slain without warning.

And how many people were yet to die? Dozens stood in the yard, waiting in the freezing cold for their doom. She looked out the embrasure. The vast rope-and-canvas platform would soon be finished. Two prisoners were being hauled up in a rope net, their arms and legs dangling out through the mesh.

She heard a faint, mournful wail – a young woman’s cry of soul-rending anguish. It wasn’t Irisis, for she would never have given way like that. Was it little Inouye? Was she wailing because she would never see her babies again, or because she knew that even they would suffer for the crime she’d been accused of?

Nish stood up, still holding his thumb over the gash, and looked over her shoulder. ‘It’s nearly midday. The trials will begin as soon as the last prisoners are lifted up to the amphitheatre, and Ghorr will want it well over before dark. He won’t dare stay here after the sun goes down. Air-dreadnoughts are too vulnerable to flying lyrinx.’

His nearness made her uncomfortable, though the scent of him had always calmed her. Ullii tried to rouse her previous fury by thinking about all the things Nish had done to her, but at the look in his eyes, so familiar, so guilty, so vulnerable, she could not. Violence was simply not in her nature. What would be the point, anyway? Myllii and Yllii couldn’t be brought back and the sooner she joined them the better. ‘What do you want from me, Nish?’

‘I want you to help me. We’ve got to try and save them.’

‘They have hundreds of guards,’ she said dully. ‘And dozens of mancers watching over them. I can’t do anything and neither can you.’

‘We have to try.’

‘I’m too scared.’

‘I’m scared too. But look – we’ve both done wrong, Ullii, and this is the only way we can make up for it. We have to atone for what we’ve done.’

FIVE

The operation on his forearm was more painful than it should have been, because Ullii couldn’t bear to look at the gash and insisted on sewing him up with her eyes closed. Each time the bloody needle, trailing its red threads, came at him he flinched and Ullii jumped, then forced it through his skin and flesh as if to cause the maximum of discomfort. Nish gritted his teeth and restrained himself from crying out, though it wasn’t possible to remain silent when she roughly pulled the sides of the gash together and tied the threads.

‘Thank you,’ he said once it had been done and bound with the tail of a spare shirt from her pack. ‘Now we’d better find a way out of here.’

Nish knew it was hopeless. Ullii was too timid; if he’d had his choice of all the co-conspirators in the world, he couldn’t have found someone with less initiative.

He looked out the window and blanched. How had she climbed the tower without ropes or irons? It was beyond him and that wasn’t cowardice. Nish simply didn’t have the skills to climb down that sheer face. If he tried, he’d certainly fall to his death.

The rubble blocking the stair was still too hot to approach. The rods that supported and tensioned the roof were immovable; he’d tried them earlier.

‘Ullii, you’ll have to climb down and find some rope. I can’t get out any other way.’

‘Rope?’ she said, as if she’d never heard of such a thing. ‘I don’t know where there’s any rope.’

He thought for a moment. ‘Do you know where the front door of Fiz Gorgo is?’

‘Yes. I went through it with Ghorr.’

‘If you can climb down –’

‘Of course I can climb down,’ she said, tossing her head.

‘Then go out into the yard. It’s empty now, but be careful. Ghorr might have guards posted. Around to the left, near the wall, there’s a little stone shed that Inouye uses – she’s the air-floater pilot. The innocent one whose little children are going to be murdered,’ he said deliberately. ‘The door won’t be locked, and you’ll find coils of rope in there. Can you bring one back? And make sure it’s long enough …’ He gauged the distance down to the roof. ‘You’ll need about eight or nine spans. Do you know how much a span is?’

She gave him one of her famous looks and climbed out the embrasure on the side away from the yard. Nish watched her go down, amazed at how easy she made it look, and even more amazed that such a timid person could do it at all. But then, Ullii could be surprisingly competent when she had no choice in the matter.

He glanced up. The amphitheatre looked almost complete now. The ropers, who earlier had been swarming like sailors in the rigging of a merchant vessel, were gone apart from a few above a tower on the other side of Fiz Gorgo, who were tensioning lines with a complicated array of pulleys. He couldn’t see what was going on above the deck.

Nish looked further up, to the nearest of the air-dreadnoughts, but immediately jerked his head below the sill of the embrasure. For a moment he’d thought the grey robed mancer had been staring straight at him. He took another peep. The brass spyglass was not pointed his way at all, but at the horned tower to his left. It had also been struck by that initial blast, but whatever the strange energies or magics inside, they had not been completely liberated. The tower was sagging more than this one and glowing redly three floors below the roof. Bladder-like extrusions of molten material were being forced out of the slit embrasures. One burst, filling the air with shards of brown glass which set instantly, glittering in a momentary ray of sunlight, before tinkling to the paving stones of the yard.

The tower slowly tilted as if the stone were made of toffee. One of the horns fell off and plunged through the roof, smashing its thick slabs to fragments. For a few seconds it looked as though the tower would go the same way but it subsided suddenly, twisting like a length of barley sugar, and landed in the yard with a crash that shook the whole of Fiz Gorgo. Residual magics fumed and flickered, then went out.

Nish’s tower shuddered and leaned a little further from the vertical. Ants swarmed in the pit of his stomach, but the tower stabilised. Cries came from the amphitheatre and a wave churned across the canvas, snapping several of the guy ropes. A roper, caught by a lashing end, fell backwards from his perch, plunging head down and arms spread, to his death. Nish lost sight of the man as he passed behind the roof on the other side of the building.

His tower gave another, smaller shudder and rock spalled off the walls. It couldn’t last long. Nish scanned the air-dreadnought, keeping his head below the embrasure. The mancer was watching the drama on the amphitheatre. Nish prayed that he hadn’t seen Ullii climbing down, or she’d have walked into a trap. He couldn’t see her in the yard.

Nish’s thoughts went to his friends. The trials would soon be getting underway and they wouldn’t take over-long. Long enough for the theatre and the lavish spectacle, and long enough for the artists, recorders and tale-tellers to get each victim’s story down, but not long enough for anyone to receive a fair trial. The scrutators did not believe in fair trials.

Come on, Ullii. What’s keeping you? Ghorr might have tried Irisis first, for she’d once discovered a secret that threatened every mancer, and the chief scrutator didn’t want it to get out. If the punishment was carried out after each trial they might be readying her now. Before she was tortured and slain, Irisis would be stripped naked and exposed to the icy wind and the leers of the witnesses. The artists and tale-tellers would be ordered to capture every detail of her magnificent body before the punishment, and afterwards. In this prudish world the human form was rarely depicted unclothed, but where criminals were concerned nothing was left to the prurient imagination. If such a beauty could be brought low, it could happen to anyone, and few people would fail to take the lesson.

And then, the flaying knives … Nish ground his fists into his eyes but couldn’t keep the hideous images at bay. How could they do that to anyone, much less to Irisis?

There was still no sign of Ullii. He paced back and forth in the narrow space between the glass spears. It was as confining as any dungeon cell, though at least the floor was cooling down.

Nish stepped onto a chunk of stone, which ground underfoot. He picked it up and, without thinking, hurled it into the network of glass blades, bringing down a good half of them. It made a colossal racket but he felt better for it. It was good to smash something, and it gave him more space to move in.

The drizzle began to turn to cold rain which would make Ullii’s climb even slower. But it might speed up the trial; the scrutators liked their comforts.

Across he went, and back, having to tread carefully on the tilted slabs, then around the glass-clotted hole in the centre that was still too hot to approach. Nish kept going until, suddenly, his knees gave out. He’d been too anxious to eat dinner last night, and there had been nothing since. He was ravenous, and so very tired. He found a relatively cool perch by the cracked embrasure and squatted down with his back against the wall. Resting his cheek on his arms, he tried to think of a way out.

Nish was continuing to run outlandish schemes through his mind, like a schoolboy daydreaming about being a hero, when a shrill cry rang out. He got up and twisted his head out the embrasure. He saw nothing but the sixteen air-dreadnoughts hanging in the air above the canvas amphitheatre.

He looked down. No sign of Ullii either. She must have been taken, in which case his hopes were gone. He was trapped until the tower eventually collapsed and took him with it.

There was no point waiting tamely for his death. Weaving across to the other side, he climbed into the narrow embrasure and crouched there, looking down. Was there a chance, if he jumped? He didn’t think so. The roof had only a gentle slope below him and, though the slabs were thick, they were also old. Even from here he could see that they were cracked and pieces had flaked off. He wouldn’t slide – the slab would crumble under the impact and he’d go right through.

Nish crouched, then stood up straight. He chose his point, bent his knees and prepared to spring. He straightened up again.

‘What are you doing, Nish?’

He turned hastily, slipped and had to clutch at the edge. Nish’s knees were shaking as he stepped down. He felt a fool. Ullii had a coil of rope looped over her shoulder.

‘What took you so long?’ Nish snapped. He couldn’t help it, but he regretted the outburst at once.

In the olden days Ullii would have curled up and gone into one of her states, and he would have got nothing out of her for hours. Something had changed. She simply said, ‘The shed was locked. I had to search Fiz Gorgo.’

‘I’m sorry. I thought they’d caught you.’

‘Ghorr will never touch me again,’ she said with such intensity that Nish shivered. It was hard to believe that she was the same person as the cringing Ullii he remembered.

‘What do we do now?’ he said.

‘I don’t know.’

Nish hadn’t expected a positive response; he had only spoken aloud because it gave him the illusion of not being so desperately alone.

‘Is there anything you can do?’

She stared at him blankly.

‘With your talent, Ullii?’

‘No,’ she said.

Nish couldn’t, wouldn’t give up his friends. He had to believe there was a way out. ‘Ullii,’ he said carefully. He moved closer, but not so close that she would feel he was using her, though of course he planned to. ‘Do you remember how you got Irisis out of Nennifer?’

She leaned away, almost touching one of the remaining glass blades. ‘How did you know that?’

‘Xervish Flydd told me. And I’ve talked to Irisis about it, too.’

‘What of it?’ she said mulishly.

‘I just thought you might be able to use that talent again …’

‘Can’t!’

‘Why not?’

‘Lost my lattice.’

‘When did that happen?’

Ullii turned away, looking down at the floor.

‘If you don’t tell me, Ullii, how can I help you?’

‘No one can help me.’

She said it with a remote edge of despair that tore at his heart. It was almost as if it didn’t matter any more. He couldn’t imagine what was going on in her mind.

‘Then please, please help me, Ullii. No one else can. Do you want all the good people up there to die at the hands of Ghorr?’

‘No one can save them.’

‘And Scrutator T’Lisp, who murdered Yllii?’

‘Our son,’ she said dreamily. ‘Our son, Nish. How could anyone do such a wicked thing?’

He couldn’t think of anything to say, but he put his good arm around her and held her close. It didn’t help him but it might help her.

Ullii shuddered, a wrenching spasm that shook her from head to foot, then turned his way, staring at Nish with wide, colourless eyes, shiny with tears. The light was hurting her but she would not put on her mask.

‘And she’ll murder other little babies if you don’t stop her,’ he said brutally.

Nish was acting on a hunch that Ullii hadn’t lost the lattice permanently. In the past her talent had come and gone, but it had always been available when she’d really needed it. Could he draw it out of her now? Or if not, could he get her into a situation where she had to use it to survive?

Nish was aware that he was manipulating her again, but there was little he wouldn’t do to save his friends. Time was running out and he’d worry about the consequences later.

The tower shook and pieces of heat-scarred rock crumbled off the walls. ‘Try your talent again, Ullii. Can you see anything in your lattice now?’

She strained, rather obviously. ‘No.’ The word was just a breath. ‘Can’t see past it.’

‘Past what?’

She looked down at the floor. ‘Blocking me.’

Nish scratched his head. ‘Do you mean there’s something down there below us that’s stopping you seeing the lattice?’

‘Don’t know where it is. Could be anywhere.’

He sighed. ‘Perhaps you’d better give me the rope.’

After much trouble – for he had to swing back and forth along the rough stone of the tower and was worried that it would rasp through the rope – Nish caught the edge of an embrasure below the bend in the tower. The stone was warm to the touch. He pulled himself onto the ledge and peered in. He could see the ash-littered stairs and, if he craned his neck up to the left, the point where they were blocked with a glassy slag of melted rock.

They climbed in. Ullii cut off the remainder of the rope and coiled it over her shoulder.

‘We have to get up onto the outer wall without anyone seeing us,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t see how –’

Ullii pushed past him and trotted down to the ground floor, where she crept through the empty halls of Fiz Gorgo.

‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ he said after they’d been wandering for a good ten minutes, apparently aimlessly.

Ullii didn’t deign to answer. Nish followed, more despairing with every step. Irisis’s time could already have run out. Now they were going up again, along a dark and narrow stair that Nish hadn’t known existed. Yggur hadn’t encouraged exploration of Fiz Gorgo. After several turns they entered an open chamber topped with a cupola made of copper crusted with verdigris. Ullii peered out and up. Nish joined her.

They were not far from the outer wall of Fiz Gorgo, a section bordered by swamp forest. Some ten spans to his right, one of the huge rope cables, thicker than Nish’s upper arm, anchored the amphitheatre to the wall. Forty or fifty spans to his left was another, and so they went all the way around the fortress. The cables ran vertically up to the floor of the amphitheatre, a good thirty spans above his head here, then continued to the circle of air-dreadnoughts even further above that.

‘Can you see anyone?’ he said.

Ullii shook her head. Nish stood edgewise at the opening and searched the walls. He couldn’t see a solitary guard, though that wasn’t surprising. Ghorr believed Fiz Gorgo to be empty, and the air-dreadnought guards would see anyone coming from Old Hripton a league before they could get here. There were no lyrinx in this part of Meldorin and, given their fear of water, no risk of an attack on foot through twenty leagues of swamp forest. The only risk was from the air, and the sixteenth air-dreadnought had been placed on high to keep watch.

‘I meant with your talent,’ said Nish. ‘Has it come back at all?’

She didn’t answer. Whatever Ullii was thinking, she didn’t want to share it with him. She hugged her little triumphs to herself, while problems simply made her close down. She was the most frustrating human being on the planet.

He moved away a couple of steps then glanced at her, covertly. The haggard, haunted look was gone. She did have the lattice back, he was sure of it. She just wasn’t going to tell him until it suited her.

‘What can you see, Ullii?’ he said ever so softly, trying to be no more than a whisper in her ear. It took all the self-control he had. He wanted to scream at her – my friends are being tortured up there. Your friends, too. Do something!

Again she pretended to strain, screwing up her eyes, clenching her jaw until the sinews of her neck stood out, knotting her little fists.

He wanted to slap her. Was she mocking him? But it was fruitless to go down that path, and it reminded Nish that he was as much to blame for her state of mind as anyone.

SIX

‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ Nish said, taking her in his arms.

‘No,’ she said, her voice muffled. She went rigid but made no attempt to pull away.

‘Where did the lattice come from, Ullii? It really is the most marvellous thing …’

‘I made it!’ she snapped. ‘It’s mine.’ Then, plaintively, ‘No one else can understand.’

‘Of course they can’t. There isn’t anyone like you in the world, Ullii. You’re unique.’ He wasn’t just cajoling or flattering her. She was unique.

She rubbed her cheek against his chest, not in any suggestive way, but as if it comforted her. In times past she wouldn’t have been able to bear the coarse cloth against her skin. Was she losing her sensitivity as well?

‘When did you make the lattice?’ he murmured to the top of her head.

‘When I was five. To look for Myllii.’

‘And now that he’s gone, you don’t need it any longer.’ Nish could have kicked himself as soon as the words left his mouth, but it was too late to take them back.

‘I don’t need it,’ she said wonderingly, then with resolve: ‘I don’t need the lattice any more. I know where Myllii and Yllii are.’ She pulled away and sat down, her back against the stone wall, staring into some inner space as if Nish didn’t matter either.

Nish knew she meant it. He’d been clinging to the hope that Ullii could somehow perform a miracle, as she’d done to break Irisis out of Nennifer, but it wasn’t going to happen.

He couldn’t take on hundreds of alert soldiers, all those watching mancers and the scrutators themselves, except by dying with his friends in a symbolic act of defiance. And that would only make the scrutators’ victory complete. If they didn’t get him, it would be one tiny flaw in their control of the world, he rationalised. He would devote his life to finishing the job Flydd had started – bringing the Council down.

But it wasn’t any comfort, and the thought of his friends’ approaching torment brought to mind those dying soldiers at Gumby Marth, begging Nish to put them out of their misery. He hadn’t been able to; he simply hadn’t had the courage, if you could call it that, to put a knife to their throats and end their suffering. Just so had his father begged for death after he’d been maimed by the lyrinx, and Nish had failed him too. He couldn’t bear to let his father go, monster though Jal-Nish had become – and look at the misery that failure had produced.

Nish couldn’t save his friends, but he might be able to give them a quick and merciful death, and spoil the scrutators’ victory. Would that be good for the morale of the common people, or a fatal blow in the endless war against the lyrinx? There was no way to tell. He could only try to make the best decision, and leave the world to fate.

Either way, it was something else he’d have to atone for, but it wouldn’t be another reckless folly. Recklessness had been burned out of him. He would coolly plan the deaths of his friends and weep for them afterwards. He would find the courage this time. But how was he to do it, and how much time did he have? He had to know what was going on in the amphitheatre.

Leaving Ullii to her inner contemplation, Nish fastened her rope to the opening, climbed down to the roof and scuttled across to the outer wall. Clots of mist drifted in the air but he could still be seen if an alert guard chanced to look down. Or if they realised he was missing.

Sooner or later, someone must discover that Nish was not among the prisoners, and Ghorr would send a squad into Fiz Gorgo to hunt for him. Nish knew he was, relatively speaking, a minor criminal. Nonetheless, his execution would serve as another lesson to all – not even the son of a scrutator was immune from the justice of the Council.

Nish raised his head. There was no one in sight. Voices echoed down from the amphitheatre, though he couldn’t tell what was being said. Slight depressions in the taut canvas marked points where groups of people were standing to witness the trials. Unfortunately, he couldn’t establish the positions of individuals.

Nish crept to the nearest vertical cable, reached up as far as he could and heaved. He managed to pull himself up a couple of body lengths before his fingers slipped and he slid down again, burning his hands. The cable was thick, taut and smooth, and damp as well; he couldn’t grip it tightly enough to hold his weight. He’d never climb it this way.

He went down the inner stairs of the wall to the yard, thence to one of the equipment sheds for an axe. The edge hadn’t been sharpened for a while but he couldn’t hone it on the wheel without making a racket. It would have to do.

Up on the wall again Nish judged his mark, drew the axe back over his shoulder and swung it with all his strength. The blade bounced off – the cable was as taut as stretched wire. Besides, he realised belatedly, chopping one cable wouldn’t make any difference, since the amphitheatre was held up by fifteen of them, each solidly braced with cross-stays.

If he could collapse one side of the amphitheatre, his friends would fall to a merciful death, though that would require the simultaneous failure of at least three adjacent vertical cables. Once that happened the highly tensioned ropes would spring back, tearing the canvas deck apart or forming a slope too steep to stand on. Quick-thinking people near the edges might survive if they caught hold of the remaining ropes, but all those in the centre would fall to the ground or the roofs of the fortress. Not a pleasant way to die, and it wouldn’t just be the prisoners, either. Hundreds of soldiers and witnesses might be killed as well.

Nish couldn’t dwell on that or he’d never be able to do it. This was war, and there were always casualties. It was the only way to save his friends from their barbaric fate, and at least it would be quick. Neither could he worry about the scrutators being wiped out, leaving the world leaderless at this critical stage of the war. Ghorr left nothing to chance; he’d always have a way out.

How to put his plan into effect? He couldn’t do it from the wall – the instant he hacked through the first cable, the soldiers would shoot him down. In any case, cutting the cables down here wouldn’t collapse this side of the amphitheatre. Since the cables ran up from the deck to the air-dreadnoughts, they would float up, lifting this side of the deck.

It had to be done just below the deck. If he could climb up, soak three or four cables and their accompanying cross-stays with oil, then set fire to them simultaneously, it could work. If the blazes were big enough, the cables might burn through before the guards could put out the fires.

If, if, if. The plan was outlandish and couldn’t succeed. It also left unanswered one vital question – how was he to get away afterwards? Nish gave no further thought to that either. After such a crime, it seemed fitting that he’d given himself no way out.

There was a great roar from above and the amphitheatre deck shook as though hundreds of people were stamping their feet. Were the trials over? Were they torturing Flydd already – or flaying Irisis alive?

Nish forced himself to stay calm, to ignore what was happening up there. All that mattered was what he did down here, and only cool thinking could deliver his friends now.

He ran down to Yggur’s great coolrooms and larders, where the provisions for Fiz Gorgo were kept. In the second pantry, he discovered what he was looking for: a set of meat hooks hanging from a rail. He selected two that looked suitable, then hacked a slab off a ham and tore at it like a savage while he headed for his room. There he strapped a knife to his belt, his crossbow to his back and filled a deep pocket with quarrels. A flint and steel went in as well.

Tearing a bedsheet into strips he thrust them into another pocket, a pair of leather straps in after, then went down to the lower storerooms where the barrels of whale oil and naphtha were stacked. Though Yggur was capable of making glowing globes powered by the Art, the lamps in Fiz Gorgo generally burned oil. Nish filled a silver wine flagon with distilled naphtha which had probably come all the way from the tar pits of Snizort. After stoppering it carefully, he slipped it into a basket made of woven leather and threw it over his shoulder. Lastly he rummaged in the tool room until he found a clamp shaped like a thumbscrew for a giant. Nish spun the screw out and gauged the space. It was just large enough to fit over one of the vertical cables. He tied it to his belt with a length of cord.

Feeling like a wandering tinker with his load, Nish returned to the wall, laid out his meat hooks and straps and considered how best to bind them on.

‘What are you doing, Nish?’

Nish jumped. He’d thought Ullii was still up in the cupola, but her voice came from right behind him. He explained.

Ullii’s eyes, which were still unmasked, grew large. She put her hand over her mouth. ‘You’ll be killed.’

‘I expect so,’ he said more calmly than he felt. ‘But all my friends, save you, are up there. Even if it costs me my life, I won’t let Ghorr torture them to death.’

She looked up at the amphitheatre and the colourless hair stirred on her head, as if she could see right through the deck to what the scrutators were doing there. Nish imagined that she could feel the anguish of the prisoners – Ullii had always been sensitive to that kind of thing.

‘I’ll help you,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he said, astounded by the offer, so uncharacteristic of her. ‘Though I don’t see how you can.’

‘I can climb the cable without hooks.’

Since Ullii never exaggerated, he believed her. ‘Could you give me a hand with these?’

She strapped the hooks to his wrists more securely than he could have done himself. He took a deep breath and turned to the cable.

Reaching up as high as he could, Nish dug the hook on his right wrist into the strands of the cable. He had to force it in. He put all his weight on the hook and it held. He pulled himself up, which made his gashed arms throb, and stabbed the other hook at the cable, half an arm’s length higher. It skated off the taut fibres. He tried again, carefully judging the angle, and this time the hook dug in. Already his muscles were aching and he’d only gone half a span. Twenty-nine and a half to go.

He would never do it. Just hanging by the arms was exhausting and willpower was not going to be enough. He simply didn’t have the strength to climb all that way. Yet, how could he not go on?

With his free hand Nish fumbled at the clamp, tried to get it over the cable, and dropped it. He hauled it up again, wound the screw out as far as it would go and forced it over. One-handed, he tightened the screw and climbed onto the shank, relieving the strain on his wrist at last. Sweat was dripping into his eyes.

Ullii came up the other side of the cable until she was level with him, moving easily. Her eyes met his.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said, fighting back tears of frustration. ‘I simply can’t do it, Ullii.’

Ullii was holding the cable between her thighs and feet, and pulling herself up with her hands. She didn’t seem to be under any strain. She was so slight that he could carry her with one arm, but Ullii was remarkably dextrous.

’I said I’d help you, Nish.’

He couldn’t have climbed halfway without her but, with Ullii’s help to embed his hooks into the ropes while he rested on the clamp, and then to slide the clamp up and hold it while he screwed it tight, Nish managed to inch his way up the cable, span by span. Even then, when they had but five spans to go and twenty-five extended below them, Nish didn’t think he would ever make it. He made the mistake of looking down, whereupon his head spun and his stomach heaved. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights but this was different. He lost his grip and hung by the grace of the right hook while he vomited all down the cable.

Ullii kept her eyes politely averted until his aching belly was empty, then wiped his face on one of his strips of rag and dropped it, fluttering in the damp breeze, into the yard.

‘It’s not far now,’ she said in an overly encouraging voice, like a teacher to a lagging child.

Nish didn’t have the strength to reply. Besides, this close to the deck, they might be overheard. He wasn’t encouraged. There must come a point where, no matter how strong the will, his muscles would simply not be able to respond. He was almost at that point now. Each time he hauled himself up another arm’s length, he had to rest, and the bandage on his left arm was red and soaked.

They went up another laborious span, followed by another. Ullii clung above him, pulling his left hook up as far as it would go and working it into the strands of the cable. Once it was well in, he tried to heave himself up. His muscles refused to move.

‘I’m sorry, Ullii,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’

She looked exhausted too. Her pale face had a grey tinge and her colourless eyes were rimmed with red and yellow. ‘I –’

The shout came straight through the canvas: a man’s voice, nasal, whiny, and not comfortable with the authority he’d been delegated. ‘Quiet, if you please. The executions will now begin.’

Nish’s heart hammered at his ribs. Who would it be? Please, let it be anyone but Irisis or Flydd.

A brief pause before the man continued, ‘We will take them in order of the trial. The first will be Pilot Inouye.’

Nish caught his breath, then let it out in a rush. To his shame he almost smiled with relief. He caught Ullii’s eye, and she looked shocked. She’d identified with the little pilot, of course. How could she not, after Nish’s tragic tale?

‘Come!’ Ullii hissed through her teeth. ‘Quickly.’ Going hand over hand up the cable, more like a monkey than a human being, she hung on with one hand and began to pull at Nish’s arm.

With the last of his strength, his screaming muscles managed to move him up another half-span, more or less.

Someone began shouting up above, a creepy, sibilant voice that had to be the vile Scrutator Fusshte. Nish couldn’t make out what he’d said but shortly he heard the whiny voice again, calling, ‘No, bring her back, lads’.

After a pause he went on, barely audible over the sighing of the wind through the cables, ‘The scrutators bid me execute the greatest criminal and traitor first, in case the enemy should attack. Ex-Scrutator Xervish Flydd,’ he said in tones that were almost respectful, ‘if you would be so kind as to step into the flensing trough.’

‘I’m just in time,’ Nish said to himself. ‘I will get there. I must.’ He hauled himself up another half-span and hung on, panting so loudly that he couldn’t believe the people above wouldn’t hear him.

Ullii fixed his hooks, went down and slid the clamp up the cable. Nish rested on it, trying to still his breathing so he could hear what was going on. Someone was talking in a deep rumble, though Nish couldn’t make out what he was saying.

There came a muffled wail, cut off abruptly as if by a hand clapped over a mouth, or a fist thrust into it. The prisoners were cracking up and he still had to climb two spans – the equivalent of four paces on the ground.

And then Irisis spoke and the sound of her voice, defiant to the last, brought tears to his eyes. ‘Take heart, Xervish. It’ll be over more quickly than you think.’

Flydd laughed, though there was no humour in it. ‘Somehow, that’s not nearly as comforting as when I said it to you.’

‘Begin, Master Flenser!’ Chief Scrutator Ghorr roared like an actor on a stage. ‘I’ll double your fee if you can take this scoundrel’s skin off in one piece – I’ve a special use for it.’

This galvanised Nish’s trembling muscles and he went up half a span, then three-quarters before grinding to a halt. Another man spoke, inaudibly. Perhaps he was talking to himself as he prepared to peel the skin off the living flesh.

Nish kept moving. Only one span to go. His muscles felt as though they were melting and oozing down his arms. He laid his head against the cable, despair washing over him. He was going to be too late to save Flydd.

‘Hold just a moment!’ cried Scrutator Fusshte. ‘There’s something wrong.’

Nish only caught part of what the other man, the whiny one, said. ‘I’ve done everything … in the rituals.’

Nish’s skin crawled, and every hair on his body stood up. He knew what Fusshte was going to say.

Fusshte snarled, ‘I’m not talking to you!’ Nish heard his feet pound across the canvas. ‘One of the greatest villains of all is missing. Where the devil is the arch-traitor, Artificer Cryl-Nish Hlar?’

SEVEN

Above them there was shouting, yelling and the sound of running feet. Ghorr said in low and deadly tones, ‘You bloody fool, Fusshte, why didn’t you check? You begged to be put in charge of the minors.’

‘It’s not my fault. I told Voine to go through the list…’

‘Don’t give me excuses!’ Ghorr hissed. ‘What’s the good of my creating this great spectacle if your incompetence is going to ruin it? Morale is a fragile plant, scrutator. Get your men down there and find him instantly. I won’t have a single blot on this victorious day. Not a smear. Fail and you’ll join the prisoners, scrutator or no!’

Ullii’s mouth opened and she almost lost her grip. Nish reached out to steady her. She wiped her face and climbed higher. Looping her arm around the cable, she dragged up his left hook, slammed it into the strands, and then moved the right.

Above them, orders were roared. Feet pounded across the canvas. ‘What do we do?’ Nish whispered. His mind had gone blank.

‘Up!’ she mouthed. ‘Under!’

He reached up with his weak left arm and forced its hook into the rope. He twisted out the other hook and tried to go again but the left hook pulled out. Nish slipped, clutched at the cable but his sweaty hands couldn’t get a grip. Ullii shinned down to him, grabbed his swinging arm and expertly slid the hook in between the strands of the cable. After doing the same with the other hand she went down and tightened the clamp.

Nish clung there, shaking. ‘I thought I was gone,’ he whispered. ‘I thought everything was lost.’

She touched her cheek to his, repaying him in kind, and it made all the difference. She pointed up underneath the canvas and began to climb to the knots where the horizontal stay ropes were fastened to the vertical cable. He followed carefully, the near-death experience bringing him a little strength. He slid his clamp around a stay rope that ran towards the centre of the deck and tightened it so it could slide along but not pull off. Nish went wearily, hook over hook, along the stay until he was five or six spans in from the edge and not so readily visible in the gloom.

‘You’d better tie on, Ullii, just in case.’

Ullii fashioned a rope harness around her chest, tied it to the stay rope and hung from it while Nish caught his breath.

Shortly, some thirty or forty spans to their left, a series of rope baskets were lowered over the edge, each containing about a dozen soldiers. The baskets were lowered swiftly to the yard. Nish counted them. Nine – more than a hundred soldiers, just for him, and any one of them could take him. It was enough to make him smile and, thinking about what Fusshte had said, he gave a wry chuckle. So they considered him a great villain. He’d better not disappoint them.

‘Don’t move,’ Nish mouthed. ‘If they look this way …’

Ullii scowled. She didn’t need to be told. It was dark under the canvas, but not so dark that an alert eye couldn’t pick them out. And the scrutators’ guards were very alert.

They waited until the grounded baskets had emptied and most of the soldiers had disappeared inside Fiz Gorgo. The remainder spread out through the yard and began to search the sheds and barracks.

‘Now,’ Nish whispered. ‘We don’t have much time.’

He reached back and lifted the flagon of naphtha over his shoulder. With it banging against his chest, he hooked his way towards the edge of the deck, where the horizontal ropes were tied to the cable in a series of complicated knots the size of melons, and carefully poured a measured dose of the clear, pungent liquid over the knots. The fumes made his eyes water. The liquid was quickly absorbed into the fibres, wetting the cable below for a span and wicking up for half that distance.

‘We have to do this to the next three cable knots.’ Nish pointed to each of them so she’d not be in any doubt. ‘Then I’ll set fire to them with flaming crossbow bolts.’ He drew a handful of rags from his pocket, poked them in through the mouth of the flagon until they were soaked, squeezed the excess naphtha back into the flagon then put the rags back in his pocket. ‘As soon as that’s done we go down the ropes as fast as we can, if we get the chance.’

‘What if we don’t?’

‘We die with everyone else.’ He expected Ullii to shrivel, for she’d always had the keenest sense of self-preservation, but she didn’t react.

‘I’m ready to die,’ she said. ‘Give me the flagon.’

Nish saw the sense in that. He couldn’t swing from rope to rope without her help, while she didn’t need his.

‘If there’s any left, reach up and pour it onto the rope that runs around the outside of the deck.’

Ullii nodded, stoppered the flagon, put it over her shoulder and then she was off, swinging hand over hand along the rope, her safety rope dangling below her, unfastened. Nish could hardly bear to watch. One slip, one oily piece of rope or even a place where she couldn’t reach far enough up under the tight canvas to get a grip, and she would fall to her death. He moved along his stay rope towards the centre of the deck, so he’d have a good angle for each shot.

Not far away, Ghorr roared, ‘Continue with the executions. Master Flenser, get the hide off the old villain without delay. If the lot aren’t finished within two hours you’ll be joining them.’

Nish heard a rebellious mutter among the master torturers. Evidently it wasn’t done to threaten their kind. Trying vainly to put Flydd’s torment out of mind, Nish lifted the crossbow off his back and tied it around his waist, in case he needed it in a hurry.

He wrapped a naphtha-soaked rag around one of his bolts, tying it on tightly with threads stripped from the side but leaving a tail of cloth to stream out behind. When satisfied that it would fly true, he slipped it into his pocket and did the same to another handful of bolts. He’d need three to light the three distant knots after he’d set the first one afire, plus a few extras in case he missed or dropped one.

A scream rang out above him – a cry of sheerest anguish – that made Nish’s hair stand up. To wring any kind of reaction out of Flydd he must have been in agony – the man had practically invented stoicism.

Ullii, who had already soaked the second knot and was halfway to the third, went still, rotating on her wrists until she was staring at Nish. He waved her on. Until she’d done the fourth knot and turned back, there wasn’t a thing he could do.

Before she’d got there, Flydd’s screams had become continuous. Nish fitted a bolt into the crossbow, only to discover that he’d lost the flint and steel. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he’d slipped earlier, and without it he had no way to set the naphtha-soaked rag alight.

He felt an urge to throw himself down into the yard for his stupidity. Why hadn’t be secured it more carefully? Ullii waved, telling him that he could fire any time. He beckoned her back.

Was there anything he could make a spark with? The amphitheatre was just rope and canvas with an occasional brass fitting – no help there. His pockets contained nothing except dirty lint. The stock of the crossbow was wood and the fittings brass, though the bow itself was steel. Nish wrapped a spare length of soaked rag around the bow then struck across it with the tip of his knife. It made an audible click but didn’t result in a spark.

He tried again and again, torn between the need for a spark, now desperate judging by the hideous shrieks coming from above, and the need to avoid detection.

Ullii was halfway back now, flying hand over hand along the rope. She stopped to signal him. He held out his hands. She grimaced – or was it a sneer of contempt? Not securing the flint and steel was an inexcusable blunder.

He kept striking, hoping the sound would be muffled by Flydd’s screams, but they stopped suddenly and someone called from the centre of the amphitheatre. ‘What was that?’

Nish froze. The shrieks resumed only to break off in mid-cry, as if Flydd had been struck down.

Ullii had stopped, hanging from one hand, but now she resumed, swinging towards him faster than before. He held his breath. One slip and she was gone.

‘It’s him!’ cried Ghorr. ‘It’s that bloody little bastard Cryl-Nish Hlar. He’s down there somewhere. Find him and bring him to me, alive!’

There was a stampede across the canvas. Nish struck furiously at the metal, but could not produce a spark. An uproar broke out, a horde of people roaring out his name, laughing, cheering and clapping. The prisoners were cheering him on and Nish felt such a surge of encouragement that for a moment he knew he could save them.

Reality crashed down on him as Ghorr roared, ‘Shut them up. The snivelling little coward can’t do anything.’

‘What if he has the seeker with him?’ came Fusshte’s slithering voice.

Ullii had passed the last knot but now stopped in mid-swing. No man terrified her more than Fusshte did. Nish held out his arms to her and she came on, more slowly, her mouth working.

‘Where is the seeker?’ said Ghorr.

‘I haven’t seen her since we took Flydd.’

‘And you didn’t think to check?’ Ghorr’s voice became shrill.

‘She was in your custody, Chief Scrutator,’ Fusshte snarled. ‘She’s your little pet. She must be with him.’

‘Of course she is, but we know how to deal with Ullii,’ Ghorr said. ‘Where’s Scrutator T’Lisp?’

‘Up on her air-dreadnought.’

‘Get her down here right away.’

Nish abandoned his spark-making as hopeless and began sawing at a cross-stay, not that it would make any difference.

No difference at all. His blunt knife made barely any impression on the tough fibres. It would take minutes to cut through, and minutes he didn’t have. As soon as one of the soldiers thought to look underneath the deck, they’d be seen. Sharpshooters could pick them off with crossbows from the ground or through holes cut in the deck, or the mancers destroy them in any number of hideous ways.

Ullii was still about ten spans away when the canvas creaked above Nish, as if someone was creeping across it. He readied the crossbow, knowing that it could make no difference if he shot one soldier, or even ten.

‘There’s a funny smell over here,’ yelled a soldier from near one of the knots Ullii had soaked. ‘Like lamp spirit.’

Nish couldn’t breathe. A hand appeared over the edge, clutching at the melon-sized knot. It was a long time before the other hand appeared beside it. Perhaps the soldier was afraid of heights.

The soldier’s head appeared, bald patch first, looking the other way. Nish readied the bow then froze, hoping vainly that he might not be seen in the gloom, or that the soldier might be careless.

The head turned towards Nish, upside down and red-faced. He did not appear to see him. Nish breathed out, but unfortunately Ullii moved.

Nish fired, but not in time to prevent the soldier’s triumphant cry.

‘He’s down here, surr, underneath the deck. And the seek –’

EIGHT

The bolt struck him in the throat, the soldier lost his grip and fell, head-first, as dead as a stone, the naphtha-soaked tail fluttering at his throat like a necktie. But the alarm had already been raised.

An exultant Ghorr shouted, ‘Captain, call your men back. T’Lisp?’

There came a mutter that Nish could not decipher, just as Ullii reached him. Then came the scratchy, old woman’s voice that sent Ullii crawling into his arms. Nish hooked his way further from the edge and began to reload the crossbow.

‘What is your will, Chief Scrutator?’ the old woman said breathlessly.

‘The seeker is underneath the canvas and I want her, unharmed. Use the bracelet and compel her to you, Scrutator T’Lisp. If you can bring the artificer as well, all the better.’

‘At once, Chief Scrutator.’

‘What are we going to do?’ whispered Nish.

Ullii scrunched herself tighter in his arms, whimpering.

‘Come on, we’ve got to get further from the edge.’

They crept in. Nish clamped on securely, eased himself out of Ullii’s grip and tied her trailing safety line to the stay rope. He had just gone back to striking sparks when Ullii’s eyes rolled up.

‘No,’ she said in a choked whisper. ‘I won’t.’

‘It’s T’Lisp, Ullii, and she murdered our son. Don’t give in to her.’

He took her hand but it just lay limply in his. Ullii didn’t seem to be there at all. Then all at once her grip grew tight and she jerked him towards her, her eyes now focussed and feral.

‘You’ve got to fight her, Ullii.’

She went for Nish as if it was he who was trying to possess her, clawing, scratching and biting. He fought her off, then slapped her across the cheek.

She put up one hand, staring at him. ‘Nish, I’m sorry …’ Her eyes crossed and she went for him again.

He pushed her away, harder this time. Ullii lost her grip and fell until she reached the limit of her safety line. The harness pulled tight around her chest and the shock broke her free of T’Lisp’s compulsion. She hung on the line, slowly revolving, staring into space.

Nish retreated along the rope as quickly as he dared, realised that his hooks were also steel, and swiped at the nearest with his knife, across and back. Not a spark.

A soldier was lowered over the side of the amphitheatre on a line, thirty or forty spans away to his left, followed by a second, a few spans nearer. Nish rotated on his hooks. More soldiers appeared to the right.

Nish struck furiously at the steel. His plan had failed – should he take the easy way out and let go? Suicide wasn’t in his nature, but allowing himself to be caught was also suicide, the only difference being in the excruciations Ghorr would put him through first.

Still trying to make a spark, he didn’t notice the change that had come over Ullii, the sudden calm and resolve. He didn’t see her edging towards him until she was almost within arm’s reach. Her face was a mask that showed nothing at all, though her eyes were fixed on him and her free hand clenched and unclenched. She reached up and unfastened her safety rope.

‘Ullii,’ he hissed, holding the knife out crossways as a barrier. ‘What are you doing?’

Her fingers flexed but she did not reply.

‘Ullii, Scrutator T’Lisp is controlling you. She’s telling you to come after me, isn’t she? Is that what you really want to do?’

She hung there for a moment, one-handed, like an acrobat.

‘T’Lisp is evil, Ullii,’ he went on quickly. ‘As evil as Ghorr or Scrutator Fusshte. You’ve got to resist her.’

‘I can’t,’ Ullii gasped. ‘She’s too strong.’

‘Try with your very heart.’

‘I can’t do it, Nish.’

‘She killed Yllii! Try for our son’s sake, as you’ve never tried before. Look for your lattice and use it against her, or the whole world is dead.’

‘She said that before,’ Ullii whispered. ‘She told me I had to help her or you would destroy everything.’

‘I may be a fool, Ullii, and I may have done some stupid things in my time, but I don’t hold the fate of the world in my hands. The scrutators do.’

‘I … don’t know.’ She had to force it out.

‘Who do you believe, Ullii? Think of all you know about me, the good and the bad. And then think about the scrutators, and decide whom you can trust.’

Ullii really did try, and the struggle was reflected on her face, then she broke and launched herself through the air at him. Her arms went around his chest and her hands locked in the middle of his back, binding his arms to his sides. She bared her sharp little teeth and went for his throat.

‘No, Ullii,’ he cried, ducking his head out of the way. The impact had sent him swinging wildly and Nish was afraid his hooks would pull out. He couldn’t get his hands up to fix them, and if he managed to break free of Ullii she would fall.

She went for his throat again.

‘Ullii, it’s Scrutator T’Lisp controlling you. You’ve got to stop her.’ Out of the corner of his eye Nish could see the soldiers fastening their climbing ropes to the horizontal stay cables, preparing to come after them.

‘Ullii,’ he said, forcing himself to be as measured as possible. ‘Would Myllii want you to do this?’

It was the wrong thing to say. ‘You killed him,’ she screamed, trying to bite his nose. Nish jerked his head sideways and her teeth fastened onto his cheek and sank in through the skin. The pain made him lose control.

‘And you’re killing me, for the scrutators who killed our son! Can’t you get that through your thick skull, you stupid little bitch! You’re killing me.’

Ullii reacted as if she’d been struck across the face. She threw her head back and her eyes focussed on Nish’s bleeding cheek.

He’d broken through, if just for a second. ‘Please, Ullii, if there’s anything left in the lattice, use it. ’

Ullii strained, squeezing him so hard that his ribs creaked. A red mist passed before his eyes, Nish came over all faint and her face began to fade, replaced by the oddest vision.

A black, barbed knot, like a spinning ball covered in hooks, was whirling towards him. Other knots near and far were out of focus. He had to be seeing Ullii’s lattice. So it wasn’t lost after all.

‘If I lose it,’ Ullii said plaintively, ‘I’ll have nothing left.’

It took an effort to reply, for he couldn’t draw breath. ‘You’re not going to lose it.’

‘It’s been fading for weeks. It’s nearly gone. To use it will take everything I have left.’

Nish managed to raise his head and open his eyes. ‘If you give me up to them, how would you explain that to little Yllii?’

Tears welled in her eyes, as pink as if they’d flowed across caked blood. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’

‘When Ghorr takes us, he’ll torture me to death and give you to Fusshte to play with.’

She drew a deep breath and in his vision the spinning knot slowed then stopped. Glowing filaments extended out in all directions, while the centre went from black to orange to blue-white.

Nish’s brain felt as though it had revolved in his head. ‘Ullii?’ he gasped.

The soldiers jerked on their ropes, one man spinning like a spider dangling from a web, another freezing into a rigid spread-eagle. A third lost his grip and fell.

The clamour from above ceased abruptly. Nish felt a swelling pressure and caught a whiff of charred hair. People cried out in horror or disgust; he could hear them running. Someone retched, right above his head. Then, boom-splat, and something heavy thudded onto the deck.

The canvas began to char in the shape of a head and neck. As Nish stared at the blackening fabric, it pinholed and clear fluid began to drip through, followed by a loop of yellow slime that grew ever longer. Droplets of watery blood ran down the dangling thread.

Plop. An eyeball slid through the slowly enlarging hole, dangling from its optic nerve. A red-raw tongue slithered through another hole as the charring spread across the canvas.

Then, to Nish’s disgust and horror, a smoking face, bare of skin, flopped down on its skinless, wattled neck. The canvas parted to reveal the other eye, staring at them, still alive. It was Scrutator T’Lisp, all that was left of her.

Ullii cried out in horror and tried to throw herself out of the way. Nish crushed her to him with his free arm as the blue-lipped mouth opened, the yellow, angled teeth parted in a smile that was mostly rictus. For a moment Nish thought T’Lisp was going to scream a death spell at him, but a revolting sucking gurgle cut off what she had been going to say. Her jaws were forced open, she heaved once, twice, three times, then her intestines oozed out of her mouth, popping and squelching as they came.

Nish’s stomach heaved, though all he brought up was a thin green trickle of bitter bile that burned his throat and mouth. He spat the residue carefully to one side of a now limp Ullii and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

By the time he’d finished, the other eyeball had popped out, but the charred canvas gave way under the ruined creature’s torso and, thankfully, it fell through.

Framed by the hole, not two spans away, was the horrified face of Chief Scrutator Ghorr, spattered with the indescribable remnants of his former colleague. Red-brown fumes wisped from the sable collar of his coat and, to his left, Scrutator Fusshte was doubled over, choking. Behind him a pair of soldiers reeled in circles as if drunk. Whatever Ullii had done, it hadn’t just affected T’Lisp.

‘There – are,’ slurred Ghorr, sluggishly raising his arm at them.

Acting purely on instinct, Nish swung the crossbow up and fired through the smoking hole. The bolt struck Ghorr in the left shoulder, driving him backwards out of sight.

‘Ullii,’ Nish gasped. ‘Get a grip. You’ve given us our chance!’

With eyes screwed shut, she reached up for the rope. Nish fumbled a rag-wrapped bolt out of his pocket, slipped it into the groove of the crossbow and wound furiously. He touched the tails of the rag to the smouldering canvas and the rag flared. Taking careful aim at the nearest of the naphtha-soaked knots, he fired.

The bolt went true, embedding itself in the knot, and blue flame flickered there. Nish fired three more flaming bolts; each hit their target. Fire licked up and down the vertical cables and ran around the circumferential ropes between them. It was done.

The people on the amphitheatre began shouting, screaming and stampeding away from the fire, whose flames were already nibbling at the edges of the canvas. The cables were thick and it would take a good while for fire to weaken their tightly woven cores, though the canvas would burn through in a minute. Flame ran up one cable like a wick, causing cries of panic from the scrutators, rightly terrified of an explosion of floater-gas that would threaten all their craft. Two of the soldiers hanging over the side fell, ropes blazing. The others swiftly pulled back out of sight.

‘Put it out!’ someone screamed.

Across at the nearest knot, cloaks were flapped as the soldiers tried to smother the flames, though after each thump the fire sprang out again.

Someone shouted, ‘Water, quickly!’

Nish didn’t dare stick his head up through the hole, but he put his ear to the canvas and their voices came clearly to him.

‘You can’t put out naphtha with water, fool,’ came Ghorr’s halting voice. Though in much pain, he was still in control. ‘Cut up sheets of canvas … roll it round the ropes … smother it. Guards – carry me to my lifting chair. What’s it doing way up there? Lower it at once. Healer? Where’s my healer, dammit?’

‘Are we to abandon the executions, then?’ said Fusshte. He spoke thickly, as if his tongue had swollen to fill his mouth.

‘Of course not,’ Ghorr snapped, regaining control of himself. ‘The spectacle must go on. The Council has to show that it’s in control. We can’t be driven away by a renegade traitor and a squeaking mouse.’

‘If a spark rises up to one of the airbags and sets off the floater gas –’

‘It won’t if you take control of the fires. Get on with it! Get a squad of soldiers to each fire and check the rest of the cables. And shut that rabble up.’ The prisoners were shouting, cheering and urging Nish on. ‘Where’s my captain?’

‘He’s trying to put out the cable fires.’

‘Take charge here and calm the witnesses. Order must be restored at once.’

Fusshte ran and gave the commands, then came back. ‘And if we can’t put out the fires?’

‘Have the baskets lowered halfway, just in case,’ said Ghorr. ‘Separate out the most important witnesses to go in the first lift. Where’s my healer? My shoulder …’

‘He’s coming down now. What about the others?’ said Fusshte. ‘It’ll look bad if you sneak off and abandon them.’

‘How dare you speak that way!’ cried Ghorr. There was a heavy thump, as if he’d slumped to the canvas, and a gasp of pain. ‘If the cables burn through, the rest of the witnesses will be sacrificed. They’ll be doing their duty. I’ll allow no risk to the air-dreadnoughts.’

‘What about the prisoners?’

‘Let them fall to their doom, all but Xervish Flydd. Without him they’re nothing, and I’ll see the rest of his blood run before the day is out. Bring Irisis Stirm too.’

‘And Cryl-Nish Hlar?’

Nish reached over and lifted the naphtha flagon off Ullii’s back. It gurgled satisfyingly. He whipped out the stopper, folded over a twist of soaked rag and screwed it in so that it was tight.

‘Take him alive, if you can,’ Ghorr said. ‘And if you can’t, I want him dead with a thousand crossbow bolts in him. I’ll not be made a laughing stock by that treacherous little cur.’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ said Fusshte softly.

‘What did you say?’ Ghorr hissed.

‘You wanted all the credit for this victory for yourself,’ said Fusshte in a low and deadly voice. ‘So you must take the blame for the scrutators’ humiliation and failure.’

‘There is no failure,’ snarled Ghorr. ‘We’ve got all we came for, and more.’

‘But you’ve lost more, and that’s what’s going to be remembered. The amphitheatre can’t last ten minutes.’

‘I’ve strengthened the cables with our Secret Art.’

‘Against fire? When it falls, the whole world will know that the chief scrutator has had his nose pulled by a renegade traitor and a squeaking mouse. And won’t they laugh.’

‘Anyone who so much as smiles will be executed on the spot.’

‘Which will only prove that you’ve lost it. You’re finished, Ghorr.’

‘Then why aren’t you doing anything about it?’

‘I’m waiting for you to abdicate.’

‘Be damned! Lower my chair, fools,’ Ghorr roared.

‘Leave it where it is,’ Fusshte ordered.

Nish was astounded. Revolt among the scrutators was unheard of. How could he make use of it?

‘Yesterday you might have destroyed me with a snap of your fingers,’ Fusshte went on. ‘After today you won’t have the authority. The chief scrutator survives only so long as he proves worthy of the office, Ghorr, and you’ve failed in front of your fellows. Without my support you’ll suffer the same fate as Ex-Scrutator Flydd. Scrutators leave office only one way, as you should know. You made the rule, after all.’

‘Where’s my chair?’ said Ghorr. ‘Why isn’t it coming?’

‘I signalled the operator to pull it back up. The chief scrutator can’t flee like a rat from a burning hold. It wouldn’t be good for the dignity of the Council.’

‘Damn you, Fusshte,’ Ghorr ground out. ‘I’ll see you flayed alive for this.’

‘I doubt it,’ Fusshte chuckled. ‘Look! They’ve obeyed my orders, not yours. You’re finished, Ghorr.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

‘Oh, indeed we will, Chief Scrutator.’ Fusshte raised his voice. ‘Soldiers, Cryl-Nish Hlar still lurks below. Take him if you can, but if you can’t capture him before the amphitheatre collapses, kill him.’

NINE

Five soldiers were lowered over the far sides of the amphitheatre, well away from the flames. They fixed their harnesses to the horizontal ropes and began to inch their way across.

Nish slipped the crossbow onto his back and tied the prepared flagon to his belt. A fierce glee spurred him on. Whatever happened now, he and Ullii had given the Council a slap in the face and his friends a chance to die with dignity. Now what? Fall to his death, or see if he could do a bit more? Fight on, and if the soldiers looked like taking him, he’d jump.

‘Ullii!’ he whispered. ‘We can’t stay here.’

She didn’t move and her eyes had rolled into her head. She’d hardly budged since she’d killed T’Lisp. Had the horror of what she’d done driven Ullii mad? He shook her gently by the shoulder. She didn’t react. He shook her harder.

She slowly turned his way and her eyes rolled down. ‘It’s too late, Nish. The lattice is gone this time.’

‘You can worry about that later,’ he said. If you’re telling the truth. She’d said that before so he doubted her. ‘Come on. Up through the hole.’

To his surprise she acted at once, swinging herself up onto the smouldering deck and crouching there. ‘Keep a sharp lookout,’ he said.

‘There’s no one looking.’ Ullii reached down to him.

‘What are they doing?’

She turned her head each way, like a cat. ‘Running around like ants.’

Nish adjusted his hooks and managed to stretch a leg up onto the deck. Ullii caught his arm, the injured one, and pulled him through. ‘Down!’

He lay on his belly beside her, expecting to see soldiers advancing on them from all directions, but no one was looking towards the small hole burned by T’Lisp’s body. He saw only chaos. The vast amphitheatre deck, some hundred and fifty spans across, was wreathed in smoke and drifting mist that concealed swathes of the surface. Fumes trailed up from the canvas in a dozen places. People, or bodies, lay here and there, some twitching and thrashing, others still. Nish assumed that Ullii’s lattice-working had brought them down.

Squads of soldiers had gathered around two of the burning cables and were trying to smother the flames by wrapping lengths of canvas about them. It didn’t seem to be working. At the other two fires the deck had burned through, leaving nowhere safe to stand. Several soldiers were perched precariously on the ropes, beating at the cables, while the others milled around and an overseer shouted orders from a safe distance.

The rest of the witnesses, numbering some hundreds, had crowded onto a crescent at the far edge of the amphitheatre, as far as they could get from the fires. Squads of anxious-looking soldiers roamed back and forth, trying to keep them in order. The prisoners remained in the centre, in a pen walled with barbed ropes. A squad of Ghorr’s personal guard had their crossbows trained on them.

Nish had wondered why the soldiers hadn’t attacked in greater strength. Now he realised that there weren’t enough. Fusshte had sent more than a hundred down to Fiz Gorgo to hunt for him, and just as many must have been lifted up to the air-dreadnoughts after the trials finished. He could see fewer than a hundred on the deck, most of whom were occupied in trying to control the fires, the prisoners or the terrified witnesses.

One of the fires flared up, someone screamed and soon there was wholesale panic among the witnesses. A small group broke off from the mob and ran. The rest stampeded after them, making waves across the canvas. A group of soldiers tried to restrain them but were trampled. The squad behind them began firing into the crowd, which wheeled and stampeded the other way. Fusshte ran out in front of the stampede, holding up his arms. The leaders stopped dead, only to be trampled by those behind, before the mob finally came to a gasping, groaning halt.

The panic spread to the robed mancers, and then to the other scrutators, who were fruitlessly trying to reach their chairs, which had been left hanging from their air-dreadnoughts as a ready means of escape. Unfortunately the once taut deck had sagged under the weight of hundreds of people, the chairs were now beyond reach, and no one on the air-dreadnoughts seemed to be doing anything about it. Thirty spans off, Ghorr was standing on tiptoe with his back to Nish and Ullii, staring up at his chair, which had been lifted even further and now hung a good ten spans above his upstretched arm. The other arm dangled limply, drenched in blood.

‘Lower it!’ he screeched, turning round and round.

‘He’s afraid,’ Ullii said wonderingly. And then she laughed. ‘The chief scrutator is afraid he’s going to die.’

‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ said Nish, who was beginning to think there might be the faintest chance to rescue the prisoners.

Their side of the deck, which was pitted with holes and smoking patches of canvas, was empty apart from the soldiers desperately trying to smother the cable fires. Belching black smoke kept driving them away and at once the fires sprang out anew. Officers ordered them back but the soldiers were becoming more reluctant every second.

The prisoners were crowded together in their pen, some shouting, some jeering, others watchfully silent. Their fate was all too clear once the cables burned through. Nish counted their guards – eleven. Far too many for him to deal with. His greatest fear was that the soldiers would be ordered to slay the prisoners before the amphitheatre was abandoned.

On the far edge, opposite the fires, a large ropework basket was being lowered to the deck. A group of witnesses rushed it and began fighting to get inside. A meagre, snake-like scrutator, probably Fusshte though it was difficult to be sure through the wreathing mist, roared at them to stay back. No one took any notice. Beyond it a lowered net had been commandeered by a group of robed mancers, who might have been able to control the crowd had they not been so intent on saving their own skins.

The mancers’ net rose jerkily into the air, pulling those inside into a compressed jumble of bodies with arms, legs and heads protruding through the meshes. At least Nish no longer had to worry about them. A scrutator was lifted, in a series of jerks, up into the smoky mist in her suspended chair. Nish didn’t recognise her.

The utter confusion gave Nish an idea. He didn’t think he could reproduce Fusshte’s sibilant tones, but he could probably do a passable imitation of Ghorr’s deeper voice and it might make a difference.

Crouching down so that he couldn’t be seen clearly, Nish put his hands around his mouth and roared. ‘Guard! To me. To me!’

The men guarding the prisoners’ pen spun around, searching for their master. Ghorr had his good arm in the air and was still shouting for his chair, though from a distance it might well have seemed that he was crying for them to come and restore order.

‘To me, damn you,’ Nish yelled.

The guards conferred. Eight of them formed into lines, four by two, and marched in the direction of the chief scrutator. Off to Nish’s left, blue flames flared then ran up a cable for several spans. A horizontal stay rope gave with a ping; canvas snapped like a sail in a high wind. A woman shrieked, high and shrill.

Someone sang out, ‘It’s going!’

The beaters at the burning cable abandoned their posts and fled to the safe side of the deck. One man ran across a hole burned in the canvas and disappeared.

There was pandemonium among the witnesses. One of their guards dropped his weapons, ran to the nearest cable, kicked off his boots and went up it like a sailor up a mast. Others moved to join him.

‘Stop!’ shouted Ghorr.

The soldier kept climbing towards the air-dreadnought.

‘Captain,’ raged Ghorr, ‘take him down.’

The mist was thickening all the time and Nish couldn’t see who Ghorr was giving orders to, though he could see the soldier, who was still climbing desperately. The man looked down in terror, tried to pull himself out of the way of the bolt then threw up his arms and fell. Streaming mist cut off the scene, though Nish could well imagine what was going on. Ghorr was still shrilling orders but Nish could no longer make them out.

‘Now!’ Nish said urgently. ‘Ullii, could you –?’ He looked around. Ullii had vanished.

He cursed her under his breath, in a rueful sort of a way, though he should have been used to it by now. Fitting a bolt to his crossbow, Nish flitted from mist patch to mist patch, towards the prisoners’ pen.

Three guards remained, still covering the prisoners with their crossbows. They looked nervous and it wouldn’t take much for them to go on the rampage. How could he overcome them, all alone? He still had the naphtha flagon over his shoulder but didn’t dare use it. Like as not, such a blaze would kill everyone.

A soldier came running through the murk, calling out to the guards. He gasped out an order then turned back. The first guard nodded and returned to the pen, hefting his crossbow as if to shoot.

Nish aimed at the centre of the soldier’s back and fired. The soldier grunted and fell. The others whirled, raising their weapons. Nish lay still, carefully fitting a bolt to his bow but not daring to wind back the cranks, for the sound would give him away instantly.

They were looking in his direction and must know roughly where the shot had come from. The leading soldier saw him, aimed and fired in one smooth, well-trained movement.

Nish threw himself to one side and the bolt carved a painful streak down the outside of his thigh. He came to his knees, frantically winding his cranks as the second soldier brought up his weapon. Nish squeezed the lock but the bolt, which hadn’t been seated properly, shot out sideways and landed on the deck beyond his reach.

Nish looked up despairingly. The prisoners pressed up against the barbed ropes, staring at him. He could sense them willing him on but there was nothing he could do.

‘It’s the artificer,’ said the first soldier. ‘Take his weapon, Ragge. Chief Scrutator Ghorr will pay a fortune for him alive.’

‘But not necessarily whole,’ grinned Ragge.

‘Ghorr didn’t say anything about whole.’

Ragge drew his knife, a long, curving blade that would have been ideal for gutting a buffalo. ‘He won’t mind if I take a little trophy. It’ll go for a pretty price in the markets when we get back.’

Nish slid one hand into his pocket for another bolt.

‘Move your hand again and my friend here will take it off at the wrist,’ said Ragge. ‘He’s the best shot in the Guard.’

Nish palmed the bolt but kept his hand where it was. The soldier could shoot him before he got it out of his pocket. Ragge’s eyes were red-veined, his mouth twisted in a sick kind of malice. Such were the people that Ghorr gathered around him. No man could serve such a monster without having his own hefty dose of evil.

‘Get up,’ said Ragge.

Nish came to his knees and tried to rise.

‘Stay just like that,’ grinned the guard.

‘You like them on their knees, don’t you,’ said the other. ‘Come on – this place could collapse any minute.’

‘It’ll be a while yet. Its strength comes from the cross-stays, not the canvas.’ Ragge came towards Nish, the knife held low. He would strike upwards to maim, and it would be a difficult blow to evade.

Then, from the corner of his eye, Nish saw the most astonishing sight – a tall figure flying over the fence of the prisoners’ pen as if fired from a catapult. Yellow hair streaming out behind her, Irisis came down, hands still bound, and kicked with both feet at the guard with the crossbow.

The blow would have been perfect except that she hadn’t been thrown quite far enough. She didn’t strike the soldier in the back of the neck, as she’d intended, but between the shoulders.

The impact drove him to the deck, where he landed so hard that the crossbow went skidding across the canvas. Unfortunately it didn’t go off.

‘Look out!’ Nish cried, rolling out of the way of the knife.

Irisis landed awkwardly, bounced on her feet and went for the fallen crossbow. Ragge had spun around at the melee. He ran towards his comrade, then turned to Irisis when it became evident she would reach the crossbow first, though it was moot whether she could use it effectively with bound hands.

Nish slipped his bolt into the slot and back-pedalled, winding his cranks. Ragge spun on one foot, looking from him to Irisis. Nish’s crank was half wound, enough to fire though not to do much damage.

Irisis reached the fallen crossbow and snatched at it, but could not pick it up cleanly. She was just raising it when the other guard threw himself at her and tore it out of her hands.

Irisis went down hard. The guard stood up and aimed the crossbow at her face. Nish froze. His weapon was fully wound now but he couldn’t decide what to do. If he shot at Ragge, the other man would surely kill Irisis. But if he fired at Irisis’s attacker and didn’t kill him instantly he and Irisis would both die, for Ragge would gut him before he could reload.

Nish swung the bow from Ragge to Irisis’s attacker.

The man deliberately gave his crank another wind. ‘Put it down,’ he grated, ‘or I’ll shoot her in the face.’

Disfigurement was the thing Irisis feared most. She’d always been vain about her looks. Ragge wore a loutish grin and Nish knew he had no choice. He’d sooner lose his own life than see Irisis suffer so.

He fired without warning, not for her attacker but for the man’s crossbow. It was not an impossible shot for an accomplished archer, as he was, but it was a difficult one, the soldier being a good ten spans away. If he missed, or the soldier managed to fire first, at least Nish wouldn’t have long to regret his folly and Irisis’s ruin.

The bolt struck the soldier’s right hand, then the lock of the crossbow, knocking the bow sideways. The soldier shrieked, jerked it back towards Irisis’s face and squeezed the lock.

At least he tried to, but nothing happened. He looked down stupidly to discover that the bolt had taken off his fingers. That was all Nish had time for. Ragge, taking in the situation at a glance, lunged at Nish with the knife. Nish hurled the useless crossbow at the soldier’s head but he ducked out of the way.

Nish went backwards, fumbling for his small, blunt knife. Ragge laughed when he drew it and slashed the air in front of Nish’s face. Nish went the other way, straight into a left hook that lifted his feet off the canvas. As he hit the deck, Nish realised that he hadn’t even seen it coming.

He landed on his back and the knife went flying. Nish’s head was ringing. He looked up dazedly as Ragge put a large foot squarely in the middle of his chest and reached lower down with the knife.

‘Trophy time, traitor.’

Without further word, or even a change in expression, he fell forward on his face, the huge knife puncturing the canvas beside Nish’s arm. The thick legs knocked the wind out of him.

Nish rolled over and dragged himself out. The bolt had struck Ragge in the back of the neck, severing the spine and killing him instantly. Irisis was on her feet ten spans away, holding the other crossbow in her bound hands. The soldier who’d attacked her was backing away, staring at the bloody stubs of his fingers. She brandished the bow at him and he stumbled off into the mist.

Irisis came across, holding out her hands, and he cut her bonds with the big knife. She set down the crossbow, and Nish saw that the lock lever was bent to the left. It was a wonder she’d been able to fire it at all. Irisis embraced him.

‘You look grotesque. What on earth have you been up to?’

Nish rubbed his sweaty, sooty, flaking cheeks. ‘It’d take too long to tell.’

‘That was a brave thing you did, Nish.’

‘It might have failed. I could easily have missed and then you –’

A shadow crossed her beautiful face. ‘But you didn’t. You trusted your judgment and your skill and they didn’t let you down. Come on, your cables can’t have much left in them. Whose mad idea was it to set fire to them?’

‘Mine. I …’ He hesitated, not knowing how she would react. ‘I thought it better to kill the lot of you than leave you to Ghorr’s brutal mercies.’

‘Quite right. I would have done the same for you.’

‘How did you get out?’ he said as they hurried across to the pen.

‘I stood on Yggur’s clasped hands and he catapulted me over the wall, as if he had the strength of ten men.’

‘Really?’ said Nish. The bound and mostly gagged prisoners were trying to crawl out of the pen. He hacked through the barbed ropes.

Inouye, the little pilot, was on her knees on the deck. He tore off the gag, cut her hands free and she fell on her face. He left her there, for there wasn’t time to look after her.

‘Where’s Flydd?’ Nish was terrified that he’d find him a bloody, flayed corpse, and he wouldn’t be able to deal with it. He couldn’t see him anywhere.

‘He’s over at the flensing trough.’ Irisis jerked her thumb into the throng. ‘But first we take care of the able-bodied.’

She was right. The strongest and the most powerful must be freed first. And the most powerful were Yggur, Malien and the strange mathemancer, Gilhaelith. Nish couldn’t see Malien and didn’t know what to make of tall, woolly-headed Gilhaelith. He found Yggur on the other side of the pen, struggling furiously with his bonds, and surrounded by a halo of uncanny mist that made him difficult to pick out in the hazy gloom. The gag had been pulled down to reveal a corner of his mouth, and that had been enough for him to use his Art.

Nish came up behind and caught his bound wrists, intending to free him. Yggur whirled and Nish gasped ‘Friend!’ as the knee went for his throat, a blow that could well have killed him.

Yggur pulled the blow, which merely thumped Nish hard in the shoulder. Nish ducked behind him and hacked through the wrist ropes, taking off a good bit of skin in the process. Yggur didn’t flinch. Nish slid the knife under the gag, cutting the cloth.

Yggur staggered. He’d been beaten, evidently, and was not at his best, but he flashed Nish a savage grin. ‘Let’s get to them. Free Fyn-Mah and Flydd, if he’s still alive, then the others. But not Gilhaelith. He’s more trouble than he’s worth.’

‘But surely any help is better than none?’ Nish glanced at the tall mancer, whose look of black rage boded ill once Gilhaelith was free.

‘If it hadn’t been for him we wouldn’t be here now,’ Yggur said.

Nish didn’t understand, but there was no time to ask what Yggur meant. ‘What about Malien and Tiaan?’

‘Ghorr has already sent them up to the air-dreadnoughts.’ Yggur was shaking his hands to restore the circulation. Now he raised his fists high, as if calling power to himself, then snapped them down. Mist condensed in a series of crescent-shaped clouds around the pen and Yggur spun it into a smoky brown doughnut around them.

‘There’s not much time,’ said Nish, cutting the bonds of the prisoners one by one. They had formed a line in front of him, and another before Irisis. Yggur’s retainers were nothing if not disciplined. ‘The cables must burn through any time now and, once they go, this side of the amphitheatre will collapse.’

‘I don’t think it’ll collapse from the loss of four cables,’ said Yggur. ‘It should just sag. But once the scrutators have saved their necks, and those retainers they can’t do without, they’ll cut the deck free from above, no matter how many of their loyal servants remain on it.’

Once all the prisoners other than Gilhaelith had been released, which took only a minute or two, Nish handed his crossbow and bolts to one of Yggur’s surviving soldiers and went looking for Irisis.

‘Where’s Flydd?’ he said to Yggur as their paths crossed.

‘He was at the flensing trough.’ Yggur grimaced as he pointed into the mist.

‘I’ll go after him. Have you got a plan?’

‘Fight for our bloody lives!’

‘With two crossbows and a couple of knives?’

‘It’s a whole lot better than we had five minutes ago.’

Yggur began to form the smoky mist into spectres and walking corpses bearing the faces of the witnesses, which he sent drifting across the deck. Someone screamed in horror or despair, others joined in and shortly the witnesses stampeded again.

Putting his hands up to his mouth, Yggur made a series of barking sounds that reverberated across the amphitheatre and back. After a short silence there came, from the slough that surrounded Fiz Gorgo on three sides, the hair-raising cry of a lyrinx. At least, it sounded like a lyrinx. The mist broke, only to re-form more tightly. The soldiers called to one another in voices tinged with fear. The air-dreadnoughts might not fear the lyrinx when high in the sky on a clear day, but they were perilously vulnerable tethered here in poor visibility.

Other lyrinx cries came from all around and suddenly there was uproar. Nish heard the snapping twang of dozens of crossbows as the soldiers fired madly into the mist-shrouded swamps, thinking that the enemy were attacking. Nish wasn’t entirely sure that they weren’t. The scrutators and mancers, no doubt clinging to their escape chairs, were screaming to be lifted to safety.

‘They’re calling the enemy against us,’ came Ghorr’s outraged voice. ‘Kill them! Kill them all. A thousand gold tells for the heads of each of the chief villains, including Crafter Irisis and Artificer Cryl-Nish. A hundred tells for each of the others, dead or alive.’

Nish squinted into the mist. Oh for a crossbow and a glimpse of his enemy. He would have sent a bolt through the chief scrutator with no more thought than stepping on a cockroach.

Dead or alive. He stopped, one foot in the air, then cast a look over his shoulder. A thousand tells was a colossal fortune, more than an officer could earn in ten lifetimes. And all anyone had to do to earn it was kill him.

‘There must be a hundred soldiers out there,’ he said to Yggur.

‘I dare say,’ said Yggur, ‘though most are keeping order among the witnesses or protecting their masters while they scramble to safety. Go across to the edge of the mist, Nish, and – wait!’

Nothing happened for a tense moment; then a soldier, in the uniform of Ghorr’s personal guard, put head and right shoulder through the mist, sighted on the nearest person, Yggur’s elderly cook, and fired. The bolt took her in the ribs beside the heart and she dropped without a sound. The soldier ducked back into the mist before anyone could return fire.

Yggur let out a roar of fury and, thrusting out his fist, he spun in an arc, flailing shards of ice into the mist.

Nish heard a grunt of pain and the thump of a body hitting the canvas. Yggur ran into the mist and came back, dragging the offending soldier by the throat. In a colossal feat of rage, Yggur lifted the man high with one hand.

‘Is this the quality of the chief scrutator’s guard, that you only dare make war on unarmed old women? No wonder the Council is losing the war.’

‘Condemned – criminal,’ gasped the soldier. ‘Price – on head – hundred tells.’

‘You won’t be collecting it, my friend.’ Yggur spun the soldier in the air, caught him as he turned upside down and drove him, head-first, straight through the canvas deck to the hips, where he wedged, caught by his belt, his thick legs kicking.

Avoiding the thrashing boots, Yggur stripped the soldier of knife, sword and bolt bag, and tossed them to two of his men. He kicked the fallen crossbow to another.

Two more soldiers hurtled out of the mist, but at that moment, with an enormous twang, one of the vertical cables snapped. The amphitheatre shook as if it had been hit by an earthquake and a hip-high wave passed across the canvas, tossing everyone off their feet. Before the soldiers could get up, the prisoners had swarmed over them. Red pooled on the canvas.

A smaller wave reflected back from the other side. Nish glanced up at the tethered air-dreadnoughts, which were just outlines in the mist. The one whose cable had snapped shot upwards and disappeared. Ghorr roared imprecations at the sky. Nish could not make out the words but Ghorr’s tone conveyed his alarm. The air-dreadnoughts had been moored so close together that uncontrolled flight was a danger to them all.

‘Any minute now they’ll rush us,’ said Yggur. ‘Nish, take your knife and cut out the canvas on three sides of a long rectangle, like this, but leave a strip at each corner.’ He made a shape in the air. ‘Round there and there.’ He gestured to his left. ‘Flangers, take one of the swords and do the same to the right, around to there. And remember where you’ve cut. Don’t fall through on the way back.’

‘What about behind us?’ said Flangers.

‘We’ll keep watch. Though, with the fires over there, I doubt they’ll attack that way.’

‘I’m sure they want us to think that,’ Flangers muttered.

Nish cut the canvas where Yggur had indicated, so the deck looked more or less whole. The cuts looked obvious to him, but might well trap a soldier charging through the mist, intent on gold and glory.

In the meantime, Yggur set out his other guards on either side of the holes, with barbed lengths of rope stretched on the deck between them. He had dispersed the remaining prisoners behind the pen and wherever else they could find any cover. And then they waited.

‘What if we were to try and climb down one of the cables?’ said Nish, acutely aware that time was running out.

‘We’d fall,’ said Yggur. ‘Climbing down ropes is harder than it looks.’

Nish unfastened the naphtha flask and handed it to Yggur. ‘You may be able to do something with this.’ He had no patience for waiting. Judging by those earlier screams, Flydd could be dying now, or dead.

Nish slid into the swirling mist, keeping low and moving slowly. He wondered where Ullii had got to. Well, she could take care of herself. A pity he hadn’t got a better glimpse of the amphitheatre before Yggur brought the mist down – Nish wasn’t sure he was going the right way. A big man-shape loomed up to one side and Nish flattened himself to the deck. It was another of Ghorr’s guard, sword held out in front of him. The soldier didn’t look Nish’s way and disappeared again.

A sudden whiff of smoke caught in the back of his throat. Surely the remaining cables, tough and tightly woven though they were, must go soon. He moved on, looking around fearfully, only to crash his knee into an elongated object like a metal bathtub with a wide platform around the edges – the flensing trough. The mist was now so thick that he couldn’t see all of the trough at once, though he could see blood spattered on the bottom and stains running down to the plughole.

Behind him there were roars and the clash of sword on sword. The soldiers had attacked. Should he run back? No point – he was unarmed. If Yggur couldn’t stave off the attack, there was nothing Nish could do.

He heard a cry, trailing off. Someone had broken through one of the canvas flaps. Nish rubbed his throbbing kneecap as he edged around the bathtub.

He scanned the deck. He could hear fighting not far away, but couldn’t see a soul. He turned the other way and his eye fell on someone huddled under the flensing trough, wrapped in a bloodstained cloth. The face was so wracked that for a moment Nish didn’t recognise it. And when he did, Nish wished he hadn’t.

‘Xervish!’ he whispered.

The dark eyes turned slowly to him, though there was no recognition in them. ‘I am unmanned,’ he said and closed his eyes again.

Nish put his hands under Flydd’s arms and hauled him out. Flydd couldn’t stand up so Nish hefted the scrutator in his arms. He didn’t weigh much at all. He headed back to where he thought the punishment pen must be, but hadn’t gone far before he was thrown off his feet by another deck-shaking twang. The second cable had gone. If the fire was steadily eating its way around the edges of the canvas, it couldn’t be long before the whole structure collapsed.

The deck wasn’t nearly as taut as before; Nish now found himself walking down a perceptible slope. He carried Flydd back towards the pen, but as he loomed up out of the wreathing smoke, someone leapt for him.

‘Xervish?’ It was the small figure of Perquisitor Fyn-Mah, who looked almost as haggard as Flydd. ‘Is he all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nish. ‘Would you look after him?’

Fyn-Mah took Flydd from Nish’s arms. There were tears in her eyes. ‘No man should have to suffer so, no matter what the crime. What has happened to our humanity?’

‘The scrutators devoured it to keep themselves in power,’ said Nish, and walked away before he wept with her.

TEN

Nish crept back through the brown miasma, moving carefully. He encountered several bodies – two soldiers and one of the prisoners – and then the barbed rope. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he yelled, keeping well down. ‘It’s me, Nish.’

Irisis was out in front of a small band of prisoners, swinging a length of barbed rope. Several more prisoners were armed but there were no attackers to be seen.

‘We’ve got to find a way down, and quick,’ said Nish, running towards them.

‘What if we made canvas slings and used them to slide down a cable?’ said Irisis.

‘Too dangerous,’ said Yggur.

Another cable went with a whip crack; a sinuous heave of the canvas threw bodies in the air and everyone off their feet. He felt as if the deck had smacked him under the chin. Screams from the far side of the amphitheatre trailed away to nothing.

‘They shouldn’t have been so close to the edge,’ said Yggur, shaking his head as the deck stilled; then it sagged beneath them to form a broad valley a couple of spans deep at the bottom. There were shouts of ‘Look out!’ from above, followed by the sound of breaking timbers. Two air-dreadnoughts had collided.

‘What if we cut a couple more cables?’ said Nish. ‘The deck might sag enough for us to slide down it onto the roof.’

‘It’d throw us off.’

‘We could cut holes through the canvas and tie onto the stay ropes. When the deck drops low enough we slide to safety.’

‘If we tie on, we’ll be helpless when they attack.’

‘If the deck’s that steep they won’t be able to come after us,’ Nish retorted. ‘Anyway, they’ll be too busy trying to save themselves.’

‘It doesn’t pay to underestimate the scrutators!’ snapped Yggur. ‘Nonetheless, it’s the best plan we have. Nish, take one of the soldiers’ swords and hack the cable away over to your right, past the last burning one. Flangers, do the same on the other side. If the deck still stays up, sever the one after that, but be quick about it. If the air-dreadnoughts cut us loose first, we’re dead.’

‘Surely they won’t do that while they still have hundreds of soldiers and servants down here.’

‘And still you underestimate Ghorr,’ growled Yggur. ‘Once the Council have been winched to safety, they’ll happily abandon everyone else before they risk their own lives. Tie on securely – and watch for backlash when the cables go.’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ said Irisis, turning to walk with Nish. She slipped her left hand into his, swinging the barbed rope in her right.

They crept through the uncanny mist, which was thicker than ever near the deck, though it did not extend far up. Nish caught occasional glimpses of the air-dreadnoughts through it. The soldiers and crew were hanging over the sides, calling down, and men stood at windlasses to wind the scrutators and important witnesses up, though no one had yet been raised more than a few spans. ‘They seem to be having trouble with the winches,’ said Nish. ‘Is that also Yggur’s doing?’

‘I expect so. He’s an extraordinary man, Nish.’

‘It makes all the difference having you with me,’ Nish said. ‘I don’t feel frightened any more.’

‘Nor should you, with me looking after you.’ She grinned.

‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘Anyway, you’ve got nothing to worry about, Nish. I know you’re going to survive the war.’

‘We’re both going to survive it, Irisis, and live to a grand old age, and be greatly honoured.’

‘I may well be honoured but I won’t be around to see it.’

Irisis was prone to making gloomy statements like that. She had a strong belief in her own mortality, and since Nish didn’t know what to say, he just squeezed her hand.

They were close to the edge now. ‘Careful here,’ she went on. ‘If that last cable burns through you’ll be over the side before you can pick your nose.’

‘I don’t pick –’ he began.

She gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, Nish, you’re so predictable.’

‘Did you predict I’d climb the ropes and set fire to the amphitheatre, just to save your wicked and worthless life?’ he said, nettled.

‘I knew you’d do something. I just didn’t see how it could work.’

‘It hasn’t yet,’ he reminded her.

‘It’s infinitely better than it was twenty minutes ago. I’ll happily die with you beside me.’

‘You might have put that better.’

Nish felt with his boot for one of the stay cables, cut a strip out of the canvas and used it to tie on. Irisis did the same.

‘Better hurry,’ she said, glancing up. ‘Once that lot reach the air-dreadnoughts they’ll cut us loose and go.’

He followed her gaze. Three nets and a basket jammed with people were being hauled up, jerk by jerk. Many other ropes dangled down through the mist. It was well into the afternoon now; surely no more than two hours to sunset. Ghorr must be getting worried.

Though there was just the gentlest of breezes here, higher up the wind was whistling through the rigging of the air-dreadnoughts, shaking them from side to side. Every jerk pulled on the cables, which groaned as they stretched and contracted. Somewhere, not far off, a man was moaning, the same shivery sound over and over.

Nish caught a sudden whiff of blood. ‘Let’s get on with it.’ He put his sword to the cable and began to saw back and forth.

The blade was sharp, but the tough fibres parted reluctantly. ‘It’s as if some other force is holding them against me,’ said Nish.

‘What twaddle,’ Irisis said good-naturedly. ‘You’re just making excuses. Give me a go.’

She took the blade and drew it back and forth a couple of times. One or two strands severed but the rest held. ‘Maybe you’re right; the air does have the tang of scrutator magic. Perhaps they’ve cast a glamour to strengthen the cables.’ She handed the sword back. ‘Go harder.’

He hacked away. A strand parted with a ping, curling out of the weave and running up the cable for half a span.

‘Pull me up, damn you!’ Ghorr’s cry came echoing down in a sudden silence.

‘His struggle with Fusshte goes on,’ said Nish. ‘Without it, I wouldn’t have had a chance.’

‘I suspect Yggur had a hand in that too,’ said Irisis.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He couldn’t do anything, bound and gagged as he was. But once we realised you were free I managed to rub the gag down from the corner of Yggur’s mouth with my shoulder, when the guards weren’t looking. He used his Art to strengthen the mist and create illusions that heightened Ghorr and Fusshte’s distrust of each other. It wasn’t much but it made a difference.’

Nish paused to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, and as he did, something moved in the mist to his left, further around the circumference of the deck.

‘What was that?’ he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Irisis glanced casually to her right, fingering the coil of barbed rope, her only weapon. ‘I can’t see anything. Keep going. You’ve hardly made an impression at all.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ he grunted.

‘Put the sword down and step away from the cable.’

The voice, which was vaguely familiar, came out of the mist. Nish was trying to work out who it could be when a very short man appeared, a handsome dwarf with a leonine mane of dark hair. His short cloak dragged on the deck and he walked with the lurching gait of a drunken sailor, for his left leg was supported by metal calipers. The dwarf’s hand was held out before him, the fist partly concealing a small brass object.

‘Scrutator Klarm,’ said Nish, giving a last hack before allowing the sword to fall to his side.

‘I have a knoblaggie in my hand,’ said Klarm. ‘I’d prefer not to waste it, but I will if you force me to. You’d never cut it anyway. Come with me, please. You too, Irisis Stirm,’ he said as she backed into the mist. ‘If you run, I’ll make Nish suffer for it.’

‘Run anyway,’ said Nish, casting a frantic glance at her. Irisis stayed put, as he’d known she would.

‘You know what they’ll do to us, Scrutator Klarm,’ said Nish. The dwarf scrutator was reputed to be a fair man.

‘The law is the law and you are traitors,’ said Klarm, ‘tried and convicted under the code of the scrutators. We can’t afford to be merciful, no matter how much we might wish it. And I do – you’re a brave man, Nish; a legend in the making. As for you, Irisis Stirm –’ he bowed in her direction and Klarm had such presence that it didn’t seem a ridiculous gesture ‘– I acknowledge both your courage and your loyalty. And I’ve always admired Xervish, but division at such a time must be fatal.’

‘Flydd cleaved to his oath even after the Council had cast him out and condemned him to slavery,’ said Nish. ‘Do you know what finally caused him to rebel?’

‘There’s no time – very well, be quick.’

‘It happened at Snizort, after my colossal stupidity put Tiaan into the hands of Vithis the Aachim. Ghorr demanded that my father prove his worthiness to be a scrutator by passing sentence on me for my folly. Or, as Ghorr saw it, my treachery. And father did. Jal-Nish condemned me to a brutal, shameful death, not to mention the knowledge that I would be expunged from our family Histories. Scrutator Ghorr was so pleased that he made my father a full scrutator on the spot.’

Nish met the dwarf’s eyes and went on. ‘When Flydd heard what he had done – and I remember his very words, for I’ve never seen him so shocked and disillusioned – Flydd said, For the chief of scrutators to encourage such a deed, to demand it as proof of worth to become scrutator, shows that the Council is corrupt to the core. At that very moment, Flydd repudiated his oath and swore that Ghorr had to be brought down, and the Council with him. And that he, Xervish Flydd, would devote the rest of his life to doing so. It was a moment I will never forget.’

It shook Klarm too. Nish saw it in his face. ‘Surely you knew that, surr?’ he went on.

‘I wasn’t there,’ said Klarm. ‘I knew only what I was told. I’m not a member of the Council, and the Council does not publicise its doings.’

‘But you do believe me?’

Klarm let out an age-weary sigh. ‘I can read men, Cryl-Nish. I know truth when I hear it. Nonetheless, this is the only council we have and the world can’t survive without it. Put down your blade, untether yourselves and come with me.’

Nish could no longer see the knoblaggie concealed in Klarm’s hand, and didn’t want to find out what it could do to them. Klarm might well be an honest man but he was as hard as any of the scrutators, and they didn’t bluff.

‘Pull me up now! You’ll pay for this, you fools.’ Ghorr’s voice was perfectly clear this time.

They all looked up but Yggur’s mist had come in again and Nish could only see the cables disappearing into brown.

‘That’s Ghorr!’ said Irisis. ‘I’ll never forget that voice if I live to be a hundred. It echoes in my nightmares.’

‘What congress have you had with the chief scrutator?’ said Klarm.

‘Not the kind you’re thinking of,’ she snapped. ‘He beat me black and bloody in Nennifer, a dozen times at least.’

‘Ghorr beat you?’ Klarm said incredulously.

‘He was too clever to let it show, but after each visit I couldn’t stand up for a day, or sit down. He inflicted all manner of excruciations on me and enjoyed every moment of them.’

Klarm frowned. ‘I –’

The mist parted up above as if Yggur had blown it away and Nish saw the remaining air-dreadnoughts straining at their cables like party balloons in a gale. They were swinging back and forth in the wind, their multiple airbags bouncing against each other and the rigging in mortal danger of tangling. Their motions jerked the cables and rippled the deck, and sent the ropes of the hanging chairs and baskets swinging in wild arcs.

‘There’s Ghorr,’ said Irisis. ‘They’re finally pulling him up.’ The chief scrutator was swaying in the air halfway between his air-dreadnought and the deck.

‘I wonder what the matter is?’ said Nish. ‘They started hauling him up ages ago.’

‘Get on with it, you fools!’ screamed Ghorr, his face purple with rage.

‘The windlass has jammed,’ said Irisis, who had exceptionally keen eyes. ‘Or broken. Looks as if they’re trying to move his rope to a hand winch.’

‘Surely they’d have to lower him first,’ said Nish, whose artificer training had taught him that much. He tried to see across to where Flangers was cutting the other cable but mist still clung to the deck.

‘You’d think so,’ said Klarm. The rope dropped sharply, whereupon Ghorr screamed at the operators. ‘But … he’s afraid!’

‘Afraid?’ Nish glanced down at the dwarf scrutator. There was a strange light in his eye. Revelation? Could they sway Klarm in so little time?

‘The chief scrutator has failed in front of the witnesses he was trying to impress.’ Klarm shook his head in disgust. ‘This whole spectacle – the attack on Fiz Gorgo, this marvellous amphitheatre, the trial and punishment – was designed for one purpose. To impress the artists, recorders, tale-tellers and witnesses with Ghorr’s power, reach and implacable resolve to extinguish all opposition. But he overreached himself and the failure only reveals his folly.’

‘The air-dreadnoughts had to be close together to hold up the amphitheatre,’ said Nish.

‘Which shows what a vainglorious notion it was. The Council advised him against the scheme,’ Klarm said quietly. ‘I suggested a less extravagant trial, but Ghorr had spent too long planning this spectacle and would not be dissuaded.’

‘Why didn’t he take us back to Nennifer or Lybing, for public trial?’

‘I cannot say. I –’ Klarm broke off as something else occurred to him. ‘Can Ghorr have been afraid of Flydd?’

‘Perhaps he was,’ said Irisis.

‘And now he’s failed in front of his own witnesses,’ Nish added. ‘And he knows the penalty for failing the Council.’

‘Not to mention losing his carefully constructed place in the Histories,’ said Irisis.

‘There’s nothing he can do about that,’ said Klarm.

‘Unless …’ Nish looked Klarm in the eye and knew that he’d reached the same conclusion. ‘Unless Ghorr should be the only one of the Council to return.’

‘He wouldn’t go that far,’ Klarm said unconvincingly. ‘Ghorr is a man who knows his duty.’

‘All the witnesses would have to die as well,’ said Nish.

‘Just the artists and recorders,’ said Irisis. ‘His own people from Nennifer won’t dare talk.’

High above, Ghorr’s rope had been looped over the side of the air-dreadnought while the artificers unwound it from the partly dismantled windlass. They fed the slack onto a hand windlass, which spun under the load, tearing the handles out of the attendants’ grasp. Ghorr dropped a couple of spans before being brought up with a tooth-snapping jerk. He squealed in fright, then roared at his officers to take personal charge. A pair of burly captains hurled the attendants out of the way, took hold of the winch and began to wind furiously. Ghorr rose into the windy zone, where a gust sent him swinging through a long arc. He yelled at his officers, who wound harder, but he swung the other way into the path of three witnesses who were being lifted in a rope basket from the other end of the air-dreadnought.

‘Get out of the way!’ he shouted, but they could do nothing to avoid him. Ghorr smashed into the basket, his chair began to spin, came back the other way, and the basket and chair whirled around and around each other as their ropes spun together.

The chief scrutator tried to rotate his rope chair the other way but it wouldn’t go. The amphitheatre gave a convulsive heave that snapped the cables as taut as wires and pulled Ghorr’s air-dreadnought down by a good span and a half. Nish, Irisis and Klarm were thrown to the canvas.

‘It’s going,’ Ghorr cried. ‘Pull me up, then cut the cable.’

Nish picked himself up. Ghorr’s captains were trying to heave the twisted ropes apart but they wouldn’t budge.

‘Cut them loose!’ said Ghorr.

A shiver went through everyone on the air-dreadnought, as well as the witnesses crowded on the amphitheatre. The officer in charge of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought drew himself up. ‘Those are the recorders, Chief Scrutator,’ he called frostily.

‘And doing their duty to the end,’ Irisis said softly. ‘Look, the blonde one is writing her record even now.’

Ghorr’s reply could not be heard, though his stance said it all. There would be a penalty for that defiance. He threw his cloak off, followed by the securing rope harness, and climbed onto the sides of his rope chair, which swayed dangerously back and forth.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Nish.

‘He’s trying to untangle it himself,’ said Scrutator Klarm. ‘It can’t be done one-handed. He’ll fall.’

Ghorr stood up, hooking his injured arm around the rope with a gasp of pain, and reached up.

‘He’ll never get enough leverage,’ said Klarm. ‘Not on a moving chair.’

The wind was whistling through the rigging of the air-dreadnoughts, whose sides were crowded with staring people. The witnesses on the amphitheatre deck were equally silent and still.

The twisted ropes, with their human cargo, began to swing like a pendulum. It had grown very cold. Ghorr reached up, again and again, and his hand went back and forth. He wasn’t trying to free the ropes – he was sawing at the rope holding up the recorder’s basket.

The recorders realised it at the same moment but none of the women screamed or pleaded. They stood up, holding their scrolls with simple dignity, and kept writing.

‘There’s an image that will live in the Histories after we’re gone,’ said Irisis soberly.

Their end wasn’t long in coming. The ends sprang out of their rope, which began to untwist under the weight, before pulling free.

‘If they hit the deck they may still survive,’ said Irisis hopefully.

Nobody contradicted her, though Nish knew that such a fall, a good thirty spans, must kill them. The basket fell, the three women still standing and recording all the way down. It plunged through the mist, hit hard near the edge of the amphitheatre, the women crumpled into a mess; then basket, rope and contents went over the side.

‘Up!’ said Ghorr in a hollow voice, sliding back into his chair and fastening the ropes about him.

The crew of his air-dreadnought did not move.

‘Up, damn you, or you’ll all taste a scrutator’s quisitory.’

They remained as silent and still as the figures on a painted jug. The crew must have been as shocked as those on the deck.

‘He crossed the line,’ said Irisis. ‘He’s finished.’

‘Not if he reaches his craft before the other scrutators do theirs.’

Klarm turned a strained face to them. ‘I’ve served Ghorr for many years, and he would not go against the best interests of the Council. It’s all that’s kept us alive, the past dark decade.’ He didn’t sound as though he believed it any longer.

‘His actions give the lie to that argument,’ said Nish.

‘The chief scrutator knows much that we do not. He always has the interests of the world at heart. He must have had a reason. He must…’ Klarm closed his eyes as if in pain.

The mist on the amphitheatre was almost gone now, revealing five suspended baskets and another eight nets bursting with people, crammed together like fish in a trawl net. All hung in mid-air while the shocked winch-hands waited to see what was going to happen.

Nish noticed a hanging chair moving slowly, almost furtively, up behind one of the nets.

‘Is that Scrutator Fusshte?’ Nish squinted at the meagre, dark-clad figure in the chair.

‘It is.’ Irisis shuddered. ‘Hello?’

Ghorr was jerked down, then up. He stood up in his chair, cloak trailing in the strengthening wind, and began shouting up to his air-dreadnought. He pointed at Fusshte.

‘What’s he saying?’ said Nish.

‘I can’t make it out,’ Irisis replied.

‘He’s called Fusshte a traitor,’ said Klarm. Then, as if he could not believe what he was hearing, ‘Ghorr has ordered his men to shoot him.’ He knuckled his eyes with his big hands and stared up at the drama, disbelievingly. ‘Oh, oh, oh!’

‘Ghorr knows what will happen to him if Fusshte takes over,’ said Irisis. ‘And surely Fusshte must take over, now.’

‘It doesn’t do to predict the will or the ways of the Council,’ Klarm rasped.

Fusshte signalled to his people to stop lifting. He stood up in his hanging chair and bared his meagre chest, offering himself as a target to any soldier who dared shoot down a member of the Council. Looking up to the soldiers in his air-dreadnought, Fusshte held out his arms, as though addressing them in the speech of his life.

‘He looks so calm; so measured,’ said Irisis. ‘The loathsome little worm.’

‘But not a coward,’ said Klarm. ‘The prize is within his reach and he’s risen above himself to grasp it. Any one of Ghorr’s loyal guard might well shoot him down, and Fusshte knows it. Yet he dares to defy his chief. He risks all to gain all.’

‘To be chief scrutator when Ghorr falls,’ said Nish.

‘Aye. Fusshte has always wanted that. He’s served as a loyal deputy for a decade, and even now he won’t cut down his chief, or repudiate him. He simply offers the contrast to the Council and the witnesses, and allows them to make their own choice. Sometimes a champion will fail at the highest hurdle while the underdog rises to it. Fusshte, it seems, is such a man.’

‘Yet a worm nonetheless,’ said Irisis, ‘and no more worthy of the honour than Ghorr, for all Fusshte’s courage. What’s going to happen now?’

No one fired. Ghorr’s men began hauling him up, furiously. Fusshte closed his shirt and sat down while his attendants did the same, as if it were a race and whichever of them reached their craft first would win the Council as well as the day. Nets fell from the air-dreadnoughts and the remaining soldiers and witnesses fought to get into them.

‘You’d better get to your work, if you have a plan to save yourselves,’ said Klarm. ‘The instant those nets lift off, they’ll cut the cables from above.’

Nish slashed his blade across the cable, again and again. A few more strands gave but that was all. The fibres were so resistant they must have been ensorcelled.

‘And risk taking half the baskets with them?’ said Irisis.

‘If the amphitheatre collapses while the air-dreadnoughts are still cabled to it, there’ll be a conflagration not seen since the enemy burnt the naphtha stores of Runcimad,’ said Klarm.

‘You’d better run, Scrutator Klarm,’ said Irisis. ‘If you’re going …’

Klarm turned to her, his handsome face troubled. ‘You cannot imagine how hard it was for one like me to rise to scrutator. When you’re only the height of a child, your peers cannot take you seriously. I strove harder than anyone to become scrutator, and now I wonder why. Flydd was right. The Council is corrupt; I can serve it no longer.’

‘What will you do?’ panted Nish, hacking furiously but fruitlessly.

‘I don’t know. Give me that.’

Nish handed him the sword at once. Despite his words, Klarm did have a natural authority that was hard to resist.

‘The cables were strengthened with scrutator magic at the beginning,’ said Klarm. ‘That’s why they resisted the fire for so long. Check your straps.’

They did so. He drew the blade back over his shoulder, sighted on Nish’s meagre gash and swung the blade with all his strength, muttering words under his breath as he did.

The blade went a third of the way into the cable. He wrenched it out and swung it again. It passed the halfway point this time, the cut strands unravelling and spiralling up the cable for at least a span, and with a groan the remaining strands stretched and snapped.

The cable lashed up; the deck whipped away from beneath their feet. Nish was thrown down, crashing hard into Irisis. Klarm went up in the air and Nish thought he was going to go over the side, for the scrutator wasn’t tethered.

Klarm fell near the edge. Nish caught him by the hand and the dwarf’s grip crushed his fingers. The deck snapped back, the precipice beneath them reverting to a gentle slope.

‘One more cable should do it,’ said Klarm. ‘Run! They’re getting ready to cut us free.’

The slack on the baskets and nets was slowly being taken up, for the weight of people in them was immense, but the air-dreadnoughts weren’t planning to wait for them to be lifted all the way. Already burly men stood by the cable capstans, each with a great two-bladed axe over his shoulder, just waiting for the word.

Most of the mancers, officers of the guard, and the most important artisans and artificers had been saved. Many more were now being lifted to their craft. Almost two hundred witnesses remained on the deck, however, and for them there was no way of escape. The nets and baskets would not be lowered again. The air-dreadnoughts had to be cut free before the amphitheatre collapsed, and those remaining would be sacrificed to save the rest.

Flame licked spans up another cable – Yggur must have used the last of the naphtha on it. Half a dozen witnesses attempted to climb the life ropes, but all fell to their deaths as the ropes were plucked like gigantic strings, or were cut loose by those on the air-dreadnoughts. A gaggle of witnesses, knowing they were going to die, ran back and forth, screaming or wailing. The remainder simply stood where they were, staring up, out or down.

‘Kill the prisoners!’ Ghorr yelled as he was lifted into his air-dreadnought, but the last soldiers on the deck, knowing they had been abandoned, were concerned only for their own survival.

Nish and Irisis raced to the next cable, Klarm close behind. They fastened their safety ropes. Klarm buried the blade deep into the cable.

‘Again,’ cried Irisis. ‘They’re cutting.’

Klarm laid a hand on the cable, spoke words of scrutator magic to unbind the spell and gave the cable three mighty blows. It was now under such tension that the blade made little impression. He hacked again then tossed the blade to Nish.

‘Have a go. I’m spent.’

Someone was shouting at them. It sounded like Yggur but Nish, chopping furiously, had neither the time nor breath to work out what he was saying.

Hack, hack, hack. ‘It’s nearly through!’ Nish said.

‘If this works,’ said Irisis, ‘the deck will fold in that way.’ She pointed. ‘We won’t have much time.’

Nish hacked again. The cable seemed as tough as ever.

‘Come on, come on!’ said Irisis.

Nish gave up his chopping, which didn’t seem to be doing much good, and sawed the blade back and forth, the fibres pinging apart as he worked.

‘It’s going,’ said Irisis. ‘Get ready!’

Nish gave a final hack and the cable tore apart. The deck pulled inwards, Irisis yelled, ‘Jump!’ but the deck went from under Nish, who found himself flying over the edge on the end of his safety line.

He was hurtling through the air on the wrong side of the deck. Up above, the soldiers were chopping furiously, coordinating their strokes so as to sever each of the cables at the same time. Nish jerked to a stop in mid-air, then tried to pull himself up the swinging strip of canvas, but it was hard to hold on. He would never get there before they cut loose the amphitheatre.

Klarm came over the side, hanging onto the rim of the canvas with one immensely strong hand. Reaching down with the other he gathered in Nish’s safety line, jerked it up, up, up until Nish was within reach, then dragged him over the edge.

‘Go!’ he grunted as he slashed Nish’s tether.

Nish threw himself into the U-shaped canvas valley that now ran down towards the slab-covered roofs of Fiz Gorgo. He couldn’t tell if Klarm had followed, though Nish did see the soldiers hack through the last supporting cables, one, two, three, four, five, and then six. Only two to go.

And as he gathered speed and the cables fell towards him, Nish saw something else. A tarpaulin covering a net hanging below the keel of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought had slipped, exposing a curve of dark metal. It was the thapter.

Ghorr had it and Tiaan, as well as Malien and, presumably, the amplimet.

He’d won after all.

ELEVEN

The lucky ones who had made it to the hanging chairs, baskets and nets were being drawn up towards the air-dreadnoughts, swinging back and forth, crashing into one another and, where they could, fending each other off to avoid their ropes tangling. They were not always successful. A pair of nets became hopelessly tangled and, despite the screams of the occupants, the smaller was cut loose. It had to be, for the nets were attached to different air-dreadnoughts and threatened them both. Incredibly, the small net did not pull free but hung upside down from the larger net as the air-dreadnought rose to safety.

Terror made the occupants of the chairs and baskets irrational. A brief duel flared between a mancer and a lesser scrutator, sending bolts of fire across the sky and ending with the mancer blackening in his chair. The scrutator, alive but lacking clothes or hair, was jerked up to safety.

Irisis jumped the instant the cable went, expecting Nish to do the same. She fell into the canvas valley and felt it deepening under her. Across the valley the other prisoners were also jumping. Yggur was standing by Gilhaelith, as if uncertain what to do about him, then with a swift movement he slashed the mathemancer’s bonds. Gilhaelith jumped. Irisis wondered why Yggur had such a set against the geomancer. For a moment it had looked as though Yggur would leave Gilhaelith to his fate.

Her feet caught in a fold in the canvas and Irisis went tumbling head over heels down the deepening valley, now sliding on her chest, now her left side, friction burning through her clothes. She felt the skin go from her hip and tried to throw herself the other way. She was moving too fast. The deck seemed to be falling as quickly as she was, and she was going to hit the roof hard.

The canvas stopped with a jerk that tore a great rent along one side. Irisis kept sliding, on her back now, and she could smell her hair smouldering. She lifted her head and pressed her heels against the fabric to break her fall.

Now her backside was burning but there wasn’t far to go. The canvas valley had looped down to within a couple of spans of the roof, forming a dip at the bottom. She shot down it, slowed rapidly at the dip then toppled over the edge onto the sloping roof slabs, landing hard enough to wind herself. She slid into one of the roof gullies, rolled over and came to her knees.

Something flashed towards her. Reacting instinctively, Irisis threw herself to one side as the flensing trough hurtled past and smashed through the roof. She didn’t have time to think about her narrow escape; the valley above her was full of falling, sliding and toppling people, though she couldn’t see Nish among them. Someone small came flying down ahead of the rest, rolling and cartwheeling and emitting a thin, moaning cry. It was Inouye.

Hitting the dip faster than Irisis had, the little pilot shot into the air and came flying out. Irisis dived, caught Inouye and fell with her, wrenching her shoulder as they landed in the gully. Before she could get up, a clot of witnesses came sliding down, locked together, and hurtled over the dip.

Irisis scrambled up to them on hands and knees, heaving them out of the way before they were crushed by the next bundle of humanity. Most seemed to have suffered no more than bruising or minor broken bones, though one unfortunate lad had landed on his head with a dozen others on top of him and died instantly of a broken neck. Irisis let his body slide away down the slope. There wasn’t time to think about it, for the next group of people were already on her. Where was Nish?

‘I need help,’ she gasped, dragging men and women out of the tangle and flinging them left and right. It was exhausting work, and several times she was knocked off her feet as people rushed down more quickly than she could clear them out of the way. All the other debris came down as well, including dead bodies, abandoned weapons, torturing tools and lengths of barbed rope.

Flangers shot off the end, landed on his feet and immediately set to. A pair of Yggur’s guards arrived and did the same, though not even four of them could deal with the deluge of human jetsam that now filled the lower section of the canvas valley.

Irisis rolled under the end of the slide as about thirty people tumbled down together, landing so hard that their combined impact cracked the roofing slabs. There would be broken backs and necks among that lot.

She still couldn’t see Nish but didn’t have time to worry about him – people were pouring down faster than they could be moved out of the way. The dead and injured formed a fleshy mat which at least broke the falls of the later arrivals, though the groans as they took the impacts were bloodcurdling.

‘Help us!’ she shouted at the able-bodied witnesses, who stood in dazed, silent clots around the end of the slide. One or two came forward; the rest remained where they were, too shocked to move.

Two more of Yggur’s guard landed, followed by a body, the elderly cook who’d been shot early in the fracas. Flangers heaved it to one side without ceremony. Then came Yggur’s seneschal, his under-chef and maid-of-all-work. The seneschal had broken both legs but the others started dragging the injured out of the way with disciplined efficiency.

Yggur slid down on his backside, though he managed to stand up just before the end, sprang right over the fallen and landed on his feet. One of the last to jump, he’d come down in a grey streak, passing some of the other prisoners on the way.

‘You’ve done well,’ he said, surveying the scene in a single glance before taking his turn with the injured.

The amphitheatre didn’t completely collapse, for the air-dreadnought crews had not been able to cut the last two cables. Part of the deck was now draped over the roofs and towers of Fiz Gorgo, while the rest stood up at an angle as the two remaining craft were pushed away on the wind. The canvas was jerking and snapping under the strain.

They worked for several minutes without speaking, until the bulk of the sliders had been moved to safety further down the roof. When they were only coming down in ones and twos, Yggur drew Flangers and Irisis aside.

‘Arm yourselves. We’re not out of danger yet. The air-dreadnoughts haven’t gone far, and the hundred-odd soldiers who were sent down to look for Nish are still here somewhere. They may not stay loyal once they realise that the scrutators are going to abandon them. But then again, they may.’

They armed themselves with swords and crossbows that had collected in the roof gully.

‘I don’t see anyone out in the yard,’ said Irisis. ‘They may not realise that we’ve survived.’

‘Someone will signal them. Look out!’

It was Fyn-Mah, cutting a curving path down the slide, still holding a bloody Flydd as tightly as before. Irisis and Yggur stood together and caught the pair as they came over the edge.

‘How is he?’ Irisis said.

Flydd’s eyes were closed, his fleshless lips blue and he sagged in Fyn-Mah’s arms. He looked as if he’d been dead for a day.

‘He may survive,’ Fyn-Mah said, ‘if he can regain the will to live.’

Yggur jerked his head and Fyn-Mah carried Flydd down to the bottom of the roof gully, refusing all offers of help.

‘Where’s Nish?’ said Irisis, looking up anxiously. ‘That seems to be everyone.’

‘I thought he was with you.’

‘I jumped first. I haven’t see him since.’

Yggur frowned. ‘I don’t see anyone coming – ah, there he is.’

Nish came skidding down, shot off the end of the dip and Yggur plucked him neatly out of the air. The seat of Nish’s pants was smoking and he’d lost skin off his left arm, but he was beaming.

‘We did it!’ he cried, though his euphoria faded when he saw the pile of dead, and dozens more with broken bones.

‘A lot of those were dead before they came down,’ said Irisis. ‘We didn’t lose many from the collapse.’

Nish stood up, beating out his backside as he looked back up the slide. One last figure came rolling down the now gentle slope as the amphitheatre collapsed, draping itself over the towers. The burly little man hit the dip, bounced high, tumbled in the air like an acrobat and landed on his feet.

Yggur lunged at him but Nish cried hastily, ‘He’s a friend! Klarm – Scrutator Klarm – cut the cables and saved my life.’

‘Did he now?’ Yggur said dubiously. He scrutinised the dwarf, then nodded. ‘You’re with us, then?’

Klarm bowed low. ‘After seeing Ghorr’s craven display, how could I do otherwise?’

Yggur thrust out his hand and Klarm took it. ‘I’m glad to have you.’ Yggur called his soldiers and household to him. ‘The struggle is far from over. The scrutators have more than a hundred soldiers below, not to mention the soldiers and witnesses here, and we can’t count on them aiding us. We must watch our backs and be prepared for anything.’ He called out in a commanding voice. ‘Come this way, everyone. We can get in through the roof down here.’ Yggur lowered his voice. ‘Though after that we must prepare to do battle – what is it, Nish?’

‘See that?’ A canvas-shrouded net was slowly being winched up to Ghorr’s air-dreadnought. ‘It’s the thapter.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Yggur.

‘Yes. The tarps slipped just before I came down. And they’ve got Tiaan, too.’

‘And Malien,’ said Yggur. ‘So we have no choice. We must go after the thapter. The air-floater is still sound, is it not?’

‘It was, the last I saw of it,’ said Irisis. ‘But if they get the chance I’m sure they’ll destroy it.’

‘Then we’d better get to it first. Fyn-Mah, you’re in charge here.’ He deputed a number of his household staff to assist her. ‘Nish, Irisis, Flangers and Klarm, come with me. Vance, Mayl, Bowyer and Menny,’ he said to his surviving soldiers, ‘you too. As soon as we’re inside, go to the armoury and get your light armour, crossbows and weapons for close-in fighting, then meet me at the west door. Inouye, I need you too.’

‘Has anyone seen Ullii?’ said Nish.

‘She didn’t come down the slide,’ said Irisis. ‘I’d say Ghorr has taken her back.’

They broke in through the roof and ran all the way down the steps. Yggur’s troops headed for the armoury. Everyone else followed Yggur into his workshop where, after some deliberation, he took a glassy spiral and a rock-crystal orb out of locked cases and thrust them into pockets in his cloak. They met the soldiers by a side door that led into the yard.

‘We’ll run into Ghorr’s troops before too long,’ said Yggur. ‘Leave the initial confrontation to me – we can’t afford to be tied down in a battle against such odds. We can’t survive it.’

‘What’s your plan?’ said Flangers.

‘Any resistance to be met by obliterating force, after which we offer the rest a chance to make an honourable surrender.’

‘And if they don’t?’

‘Ask me then.’

As they went around the corner they encountered a pair of Ghorr’s guard. Yggur kept walking, and shortly he was confronted by eighty or more soldiers.

Yggur put up his hand and looked the leaders in the eye. ‘You have all seen what we saw,’ he said, not loudly but in a carrying voice. ‘Chief Scrutator Ghorr, a craven cur if ever I saw one, criminally slew three innocent recorders – women of childbearing age – and has run like the dog he is. After this day he will no longer be scrutator. Ghorr will be replaced by Scrutator Fusshte, who cannot compel the loyalty of his fellow scrutators. By the end of the week the members of this Council, who abandoned two hundred witnesses to their deaths, and will soon abandon you, will be at war with each other.

‘And so I ask you: do you cleave to your oath to these contemptibles, or will you put down your weapons, make an honourable surrender, then follow me? Surrender or death: those are your choices. Choose swiftly. I’m in no mood for delay.’

The soldiers looked uncertain. One of their captains spoke to another, they nodded then cried, ‘Attack: we outnumber them ten to one.’

They raised their swords and surged forward. Yggur didn’t hesitate: he drew the glassy spiral from his pocket and tossed it to the ground at the feet of the two captains. It burst like a miniature sun and the incandescence swelled to envelop them both, before shrinking just as quickly. The light winked out and the captains were not men any more.

Yggur allowed the soldiers to stare at the smouldering remains for a good minute, then said, ‘Well?’

They laid down their arms. ‘Raise your right hands and take my oath,’ said Yggur and, to a man, they did.

Yggur ordered them to go up to the roof, assist the injured, then recover the bodies.

He waited until they had passed through the doors before letting out his breath in a groan. ‘Ugh!’ he said. Yggur staggered for a few steps but kept on, limping. He scowled, as if it wasn’t the pain that troubled him so much as being affected by it.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Nish said quietly to Irisis.

‘Aftersickness. Using power comes at a cost and he’s drawn an awful lot from himself today.’ She ran to catch up to Yggur. ‘Can we count on them, surr, or will they attack us once our backs are turned?’

‘Should the scrutators flee, I expect they’ll serve faithfully enough. But if the fleet comes to ground after us, as it may, I dare say they’ll turn again.’

They reached the air-floater, which was tethered in a corner of the yard, without further incident. It had not been touched.

‘It’s a wonder Ghorr didn’t order it destroyed,’ said Nish.

‘He probably planned to take it with him.’

After checking that they weren’t visible from above, they climbed into the air-floater. Yggur, now limping badly, had to be helped over the side. He leaned against the ropes for a moment before heading into the cabin. At the door he turned. ‘If you would come with me, Scrutator Klarm? To your positions, everyone. Inouye, stand by your controller but don’t draw power until I give the word.’

Nish scanned the sky. The air-dreadnoughts were all over the place. Four maintained their station, high above. Two, one of them being Ghorr’s, were still trying to cut their cables. Three others had been driven downwind over the swamp forest. Another three had become hopelessly tangled and were drifting sideways with the wind, spiralling around each other. The remainder were out of sight.

Klarm followed Yggur inside and the canvas door slapped closed. After a series of rumbles, a rather tenuous mist formed in the yard, enveloping the air-floater.

The door opened. Yggur was panting. ‘That’s the best I can do. Inouye, rise up over the wall, then head south for Ghorr’s craft. Take it slowly or you may pull out of my concealment.’

‘I can’t see Ghorr’s machine,’ she said.

‘The lookouts will tell you which way to go.’

Flangers went to the bow, while Nish and Irisis hung over the rail on either side, staring into the mist.

‘I can’t say I like this plan,’ Nish said quietly.

‘What plan?’ said Irisis.

‘Precisely.’

They rose slowly. Nish couldn’t see anything but mist, swirling and coiling at the lower levels, streaming across the deck as they rose into the stronger winds at altitude. A little way above the towers, the mist parted below them and he looked back to where the amphitheatre had been.

It had completely collapsed, apart from a triangle of canvas sticking up, like the fin of a shark, where it had draped over one of the towers. Two cables ran into the sky at an angle of thirty degrees, taut as wires. They were still attached to the two air-dreadnoughts, which had been driven out over the forest.

‘Run in the direction of that cable,’ said Yggur, pointing to the nearer. ‘But stay at this height.’

‘How come they didn’t cut those cables?’ said Nish.

‘I used the Art on them,’ said Yggur with a grim smile. ‘No blade can cut them, no fire burn them for as long as the spell holds. To untether themselves they’ll have to take apart the winch drums. It took quite a bit out of me, but it was worth it.’

The taut cable angled up into streaming mist. Yggur had a minute-glass in one hand and was watching the sands run as he estimated how far they’d gone. ‘We should be past Ghorr’s craft now,’ he said to Inouye. ‘Go up and turn to face the other way.’

She did so and he extended his arm, chanting under his breath. The mist spun into a narrow, dark funnel in front of him, like water swirling down a plughole. The funnel extended horizontally, stretching, thinning and wavering back and forth as if searching for something.

Yggur strained, and through the opening Nish caught a glimpse of a section of rigging, then part of an airbag.

‘Too high,’ grumbled Yggur, who seemed to be having trouble holding his arm up. He directed the funnel, whose opening wasn’t much bigger than Nish’s head, down and across and back, then tracked up the port side of the vessel. ‘Is it the right one?’

‘It’s Ghorr’s,’ said Nish. ‘I just saw the top of the thapter hanging below it.’

The funnel was directed up and towards the stern, and there Ghorr stood, issuing orders. A pair of soldiers were hacking fruitlessly at the cable holding his air-dreadnought to the collapsed amphitheatre. The craft was shaking in the wind.

A gust caught the air-floater, heeling it over. Inouye spun the rotor up to full power and slipped the craft expertly up into the lee of the airbags of Ghorr’s much bigger machine. The mist funnel closed over.

‘I can’t hold the concealment much longer,’ said Yggur, clinging to the door. ‘Nish, see if you can see what they’re doing.’

Nish got down on his belly on the deck and put his head over the side. Another wavering tube opened up through the mist below him, though his view was so restricted that it took a while to work out what he was looking at.

‘Ghorr has just whacked the mirror operator over the head. He’s shouting!’

‘He’s been doing a lot of that lately,’ said Irisis, hanging onto his legs as the air-floater lurched one way and then the other.

‘He’s dragged the big crystal-powered mirror around. That must be what they blasted the defences with at dawn.’

‘I dare say,’ said Yggur. ‘Has anyone seen us?’

‘They’re not looking this way,’ said Irisis.

‘He’s pointed the mirror at the cable winch,’ said Nish.

‘It won’t do him any good unless he gets some sun on it,’ said Irisis.

‘If I can make mist, he can break it. He’s getting ready to flee,’ said Yggur. ‘Inouye, take us down.’

‘What’s the plan?’ said Irisis.

‘We board the air-dreadnought from the bow and take it while they’re distracted down at the stern. Flangers, what’s the matter?’

‘He’s got at least ten soldiers against our five,’ said Flangers. ‘Plus a mancer or two. Not to mention the other air-dreadnoughts.’

‘Then we’ll just have to fight all the harder,’ said Yggur. ‘The other machines won’t trouble us. They won’t dare come close enough to board, in case the airbags tangle.’

‘They’re close enough to fire their javelards.’

Yggur waved his hand and the mist obscured everything. ‘Take us down, Inouye. Once Ghorr blasts that cable he’ll be off and this little craft won’t catch him. If we lose the thapter we’ve lost our only chance.’

TWELVE

‘Drop us down to the bow, Inouye,’ said Yggur. ‘Can you do that in the mist, or should I –?’

‘I can do it,’ she said.

‘Klarm and I will attack from behind,’ Yggur went on, ‘and then we rush them. Soldiers, follow me. Flangers, stay back with your crossbow and keep watch. Irisis, get into the cabin and free Malien and Tiaan. Once we’ve secured the air-dreadnought, escort them down into the thapter. Nish, go down the ropes, cut through the canvas and open the hatch of the thapter. Don’t fall off.’

‘Very funny,’ said Nish, who was beginning to sweat. The odds were too great, the plan foolhardy in the extreme. It relied too much on Yggur, who was already exhausted, while Klarm, despite what he’d done earlier, was an unknown quantity. When confronted by Ghorr, might Klarm decide that his oath to the scrutators still bound him? A turncoat might turn again.

‘What if Malien and Tiaan aren’t here?’ said Irisis. ‘We won’t have anyone to fly the thapter.’

‘I’m sure Ghorr would have kept them close by.’

The air-floater dropped so suddenly that Nish’s stomach was left behind. He clutched the rail with one hand and eased his short sword in its sheath. His palms were damp. All that had been saved with such agony could be lost even more quickly. How could Inouye tell where to go anyway? He couldn’t see a thing.

She brought her craft out of the mist and up against the bow with the barest bump. Yggur clambered through the rope rails, limping more than before. Klarm put his hand on one of the stanchions and leapt the ropes, landing lightly on the deck.

‘Let me go first,’ whispered Klarm. ‘He may wonder how I got here, but he won’t think of me as an enemy. It’ll get me a span or two closer. Stay back, around the curve of the deck out of sight. When you hear me use my Art, rush them down the other side.’

Yggur frowned, as if he too had his doubts, then nodded. ‘Go.’

Klarm headed down the port side, moving sure-footedly on the lurching deck despite his caliper. Yggur remained where he was, gnawing at his lower lip, before waving an arm at his soldiers. They followed him, hugging the curved canvas wall of the main cabin.

Irisis caught Nish’s eye and mouthed, ‘Good luck!’

He nodded stiffly. She put her head around the corner to look down the starboard deck. ‘It’s clear, Flangers.’ Weapons at the ready, they went forward into the mist, which had begun to thin just when they didn’t want it to.

Nish turned to his own task. The thapter hung in its nets some five or six spans below the central keel of the air-dreadnought. He could just make it out. It was a long way to go down a rope, though not far enough below the keel for the air-floater to approach it directly. He fingered the coil of rope over his shoulder. He’d already lashed it into a harness at his waist, so it was just a matter of tying it to the side rail and going down.

Once he had done that, Nish checked his knots carefully, slipped through and hung on with hands and feet while he judged his approach. It wasn’t going to be easy; the thapter wasn’t directly below him, but in under the vessel by several spans. He’d have to lower himself a bit further than that, then swing in, catch hold of the net ropes and go down them.

Suddenly the mist parted, the sun shone through and a torrent of white light was followed by the ear-piercing screech of metal being torn. Ghorr must have blasted the winch apart. The deck was thrust upwards so hard that Nish lost his grip and fell. High above, he could hear the airbags thrashing as the big craft was torn free from the cable. The ragged cable end, attached to the torn remnants of the winch drum, lashed past below him.

Reaching the limit of the rope, Nish was brought up with a jerk that made him bite his tongue. The harness pulled so tight that it felt like a noose cutting him in half, and he could only draw in half a breath.

The freed air-dreadnought began to drift over the walls of Fiz Gorgo towards the swamp forest. Nish was trying to loosen his harness when a thudding boom made him look up. Someone was blown over the side, trailing blood and smoke. It was one of Yggur’s soldiers, the stocky man called Bowyer. Wide eyes met Nish’s momentarily as he fell.

Swords clashed on the deck; there were grunts and cries of pain. Nish put it out of mind and began to swing his legs. He’d need quite an arc to reach the top of the thapter from here.

He swung back and forth, slowly building up momentum, until the air-dreadnought lurched sideways, sending him headlong towards the top of the thapter, which was exposed where the tarpaulins had been folded back to allow entry. He threw out a hand and managed to catch hold of the hatch handle but was moving too fast to hang on. He kept going, now spinning on the end of the rope, swung around the other side and collided with a black, crunchy object suspended from another rope.

The ropes tangled and began to orbit around each other. Nish and the black object spun in together and he came face to face with a charred corpse, fumes still rising from its empty eye-sockets. With a strangled gasp, Nish tried to push it out of the way. Ribs cracked and the mouth fell open, revealing startlingly white teeth surrounded by charcoaled lips.

Close to panic, Nish fought down his terror. It was just a dead man in a hanging chair, the mancer who’d lost that airborne duel earlier. All he had to do was spin the body the other way, the ropes would untangle and he’d swing back towards the thapter.

Nish was about to do so when something made him glance up. Ghorr was standing at the rail, watching him.

Nish should have gone for the thapter but his presence of mind had deserted him. He hung there, staring at his enemy.

Ghorr drew a knife and with a single slash cut through Nish’s rope.

Irisis waited until Klarm had passed round the curve of the cabin, then slid along the starboard wall, pressing hard against it. Flangers followed, his crossbow at the ready. Reaching the forward door, a lath frame covered in canvas on leather hinges, she pulled gently on the latch. The door opened inwards and she slipped into a gloomy, cramped room about four spans by three. It was the crew’s cabin, their gear and sleeping hammocks neatly stowed, canvas trestles strapped against the walls. There was no one inside.

‘Must be the next one,’ she said, easing out again.

The next room turned out to be the galley and larder; the one after that, the officers’ quarters. ‘There isn’t an upper floor, is there?’ she said over her shoulder to Flangers.

‘I wouldn’t think so.’

She edged round the curve. Ahead, some ten spans away, just visible through the rapidly thinning mist, stood a group of uniformed soldiers in the colours of Ghorr’s personal guard. They had their backs to her, watching something being done at the stern.

‘Then it’ll have to be this door. It’s the last.’

She pulled on the latch but it did not move. ‘It’s held fast, though I can’t see a lock.’

‘Must be Ghorr’s quarters,’ said Flangers. ‘Cut the hinges.’

She slit the bottom hinge with her knife and pulled the door out enough to slip through. Flangers followed.

‘Guard the –’ she began, but Flangers had already taken up position.

This chamber was as large as the first, though darker, and only served two or three people. Broad hammocks were still slung in position. The floor was covered in silk carpets, and the walls in tapestries and hangings. She turned her head this way and that, trying to pierce the darkness, and suddenly the faintest pattern of the field appeared in her inner eye.

Her eyes pricked with tears. Her artisan’s pliance, which enabled her to see the field, had been taken from Irisis soon after she’d been captured. She hadn’t seen the field since, and for her to visualise it at all now, her pliance had to be almost to hand.

Irisis closed her eyes momentarily, the better to see.

Something rustled in the darkness. ‘Tiaan?’ she whispered, opening her eyes.

‘Mmpfh!’

As her eyes adjusted, Irisis made out a bowed figure tied to a strap attached to the wall. It wasn’t Tiaan but a much older woman with grey in her hair.

‘Malien!’ Irisis ran to her, cut the gag off and freed her wrists and ankles. ‘How are you?’

‘Parched. It’s been a long day,’ Malien said in a dry croak. She shook her numb hands. White marks were scored into her wrists.

Irisis lifted a wine skin from a hook, jerked out the stopper and passed it across. Malien couldn’t hold the wine skin, so Irisis supported it while the older woman took a couple of hefty swigs. ‘That’ll do. We’re going to need our wits –’

A blast followed by the shriek of tearing metal jerked the floor so hard that Malien’s knees buckled. Irisis was thrown against the lath-and-canvas wall. The flimsy structure of the air-dreadnought creaked and groaned. The craft jerked twice more, not so hard this time.

‘Yggur laid a spell of durability on the mooring cable,’ said Irisis, hanging onto a swaying tapestry. ‘Ghorr must have blasted the winch apart.’

‘And your plan?’ said Malien, on her knees and unable to rise.

What am I going to do with her, Irisis thought. ‘Nish is opening the hatch of the thapter, which is hanging below us. Yggur and Klarm – he’s on our side now, at least I hope he is – were going to take on Ghorr and his mancer.’

‘Just Nish?’ said Malien. ‘Does he realise there are guards inside?’

A deadly chill spread through Irisis’s innards. ‘This attack was planned in some haste.’

‘I can well imagine,’ said Malien dryly. ‘We’d better get after him.’

‘My artisan’s pliance is here somewhere. I sensed it as I came in.’

Malien turned her head back and forth, three times, then pointed. ‘Try that cupboard.’

It was locked so Irisis levered the lacquered wood apart with her blade. A number of objects fell out, gems and jewellery. She felt among them and as soon as her fingers touched her pliance the field condensed around her. Again that prickling of tears in her eyes – an artisan who’d lost her pliance could go mad with longing for it. Irisis wasn’t emotional, as artisans went, but as she put the chain over her head she felt the tension smooth away.

Swords clashed; men grunted and groaned outside the door on the far side of the room. A bloody blade speared through the canvas wall and was withdrawn again. A man screamed in agony.

Malien cast a glance that way, before turning back to Irisis. ‘I assume you plan to escape in the thapter?’

‘That’s right.’ Irisis had her own sword out and her head cocked, listening to the swordplay and footwork outside. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘Ghorr has my controller crystal. I can’t operate the thapter without it.’

Irisis cursed under her breath. ‘Any idea where he might keep it?’

Malien closed her eyes and put her hands over them. This time she didn’t turn her head. After some seconds she said, ‘Is there a metal box under that cupboard?’

Irisis tilted it and looked beneath. The brass box was locked and chained to the floor, though it was just an ordinary lock and she was expert at picking them. She had it open in a moment and held out the blue-green crystal. ‘This it?’

Malien nodded and tried to stand up but her legs still wouldn’t support her. She grabbed for the cupboard, her wrist gave and she collapsed again.

‘Do you know where Tiaan is?’ said Irisis. ‘Or the amplimet?’

‘They were taken to one of the other air-dreadnoughts. I don’t know which one.’

Outside, the sounds of battle grew louder. Something burst with a loud pop and, momentarily, a brilliant green light illuminated the weave of the canvas. Objects fizzed in all directions, leaving fuming trails that Irisis could see in her mind’s eye. The canvas walls flapped in and out like the skin of a drum. Someone cried out; it sounded alarmingly like Yggur. If he had fallen …

The port door burst open and a pair of soldiers pushed in. Irisis struck at the first, whose eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the gloom. Her sword point crunched into his wrist bones, the weapon fell from his useless hand and he stumbled backwards. Tearing down one of the silk carpets one-handed, Irisis tossed it over the head of the second soldier.

As it obscured his vision she leapt for the starboard door, but before she got there it was forced open. Flangers kicked the door shut but a long sword came through it, touching the fabric of his trousers. With one hand he wrenched the door sideways, trapping the sword for a moment, while with the other he thrust through the gap.

The point of the long sword flipped up, as if its owner had dropped it. Flangers wrenched the door off its remaining hinge, hurled it at the soldier outside and sprang at him, sword flailing.

The first soldier stumbled and was shouldered out of the way by a giant of a man carrying a long sword in one hand and a curved scimitar in the other. He feinted at Flangers with the scimitar, then pinked him in the shoulder with the point of the sword, though Flangers had leapt backwards so quickly that the blow did little damage. He turned towards the far door but more soldiers appeared behind the first. They were trapped.

Irisis tried to come to Flangers’s aid but there wasn’t room to get past him. Leather squeaked and she looked over her shoulder. Another soldier was pushing through the far door. He flexed his arms and came at them. Now soldiers advanced from both sides, slowly driving them into a corner. There was nowhere to go. Irisis glanced at Malien, who was still flexing her numb hands, but she shook her head as if to say, ‘I can’t do anything yet’.

Irisis moved in beside Flangers and prepared to die. ‘I had a feeling it was going to end this way,’ she murmured.

‘I’m sorry, Irisis – you deserve better. But for myself, I’ll be glad to go.’

Flangers had never got over the time when, fleeing from Snizort in the stolen air-floater, Fyn-Mah had ordered him to attack Klarm’s machine. Its gasbag had exploded, killing everyone except Klarm, and maiming him. Flangers still regarded that as a treasonous act for which, honourable soldier that he was, he could only atone with his life.

‘Hold!’ The order came over-loud, as if the man who gave it was no longer sure of his authority. The voice was hoarse, cracked but still recognisable – Ghorr.

He pushed through the doorway and the soldiers gave way. Ghorr’s costly garments were torn and spotted with burn marks, his left arm hung limply and his shoulder and side were stained with brown blood. His hair was greasy, face soot-stained, eyes red, and his formerly dark complexion had gone the green colour of bile. Clots of yellow material in his beard could have come from mouth or nose.

‘Cut their hamstrings so they can’t move,’ said Ghorr. ‘Then bind them and bring them to the bow. This is going to end right now.’

THIRTEEN

‘Well, well, well,’ came a throaty, amused voice from the doorway. ‘What have we here?’

Ghorr turned. It was Scrutator Klarm, limping so ostentatiously that he had to lift his calipered leg with both hands. He looked up at the chief scrutator, who stood more than twice his height, grinning broadly. ‘How did you catch these wretches? I saw them escape the collapse.’

Irisis looked from Ghorr to Klarm. Had he been pretending all along, so as to bring them here and ingratiate himself with the chief scrutator? If not, and he was still on their side, his acting was worthy of the Master Chroniclers’ Medal.

‘They’d have to be mighty clever to escape my vengeance,’ said Ghorr. ‘Where did you spring from? I thought you were dead.’

‘No man climbs ropes as well as I do,’ Klarm lied in turn. ‘I trust you’re going to dispatch them right away?’

‘The instant all the air-dreadnoughts are free, I’ll order my shooting squad onto the front deck. Once they’ve taken a dozen bolts each, I’ll personally sever their heads from their bodies and toss them into the bogs of Orist like the vermin they are. Take care of these two, would you, Klarm? I must attend to Yggur.’

‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ Klarm said with a savage grin, but Ghorr was already on the way out.

The troops advanced on Irisis and Flangers. Irisis was readying herself to attack the leading soldier, the giant, when Klarm spoke.

‘What are you doing, fellow?’ said Klarm.

‘Chief Scrutator ordered us to hamstring them, Scrutator Klarm, surr,’ replied the giant, reaching for Irisis. ‘So they can’t escape.’

‘Not in here, you damn fool,’ said Klarm. ‘The blood will ruin the carpets. I’ll take care of them. They can’t escape.’ Sounds of fighting came from outside and above. ‘Go! The chief scrutator needs you.’

They went at a run, though not without a backward glance. Irisis eyed Klarm warily. Was he for them or against them? ‘What’s going on?’

‘The battle went against us,’ said Klarm. ‘Ghorr had three mancers and they proved too strong for Yggur –’

‘I thought you were supposed to be helping him?’

‘A change of plan,’ Klarm said blandly. ‘He kept me back, just in case, and it was lucky he did. My skills wouldn’t have shifted the balance.’

‘Is Yggur –’

‘His men only took out five of the guard before they were cut down. He felled two of the mancers and injured the third, but Ghorr forced him up into the rigging.’

‘Is he all right?’ said Irisis.

‘I don’t think so. It took a lot out of him.’

‘Well?’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Are you for us or against us?’

Klarm looked disconcerted. ‘I’ve given my oath.’

‘Precisely,’ she said savagely. ‘Which oath do you hold to – the one to Ghorr or the one to us?’

‘If I’d been against you, you’d be hamstrung by now. Come on.’

Irisis gave Malien her arm. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘My age, doubled and redoubled,’ said Malien, pulling herself up, ‘but the circulation is coming back. What’s the plan?’

‘I’ll see what I can do for Yggur,’ said Klarm. ‘You’d better go down to the thapter. Flangers, guard the rail while they do.’

Ghorr slashed the rope and turned away. Nish fell hard until he was brought up, swinging wildly, by the other end of his rope, which was still twisted around the dead mancer’s. He rotated below the charred feet of the corpse as the windings began to unravel.

Nish whirled around, swinging his legs to increase momentum, and shot past the side of the thapter, not close enough to grab hold of anything. He went around again, one eye on the nets, the other on his rope, which had only a couple of windings to go before it pulled free. There was no chance of making the top of the thapter. All he could do was try for the side of the nearest net.

As he swung by, Nish threw his arms out as far as he could reach. Three fingers of his right hand slid between the meshes and the lower curve of the thapter. He closed his fingers on the net, knowing he wasn’t strong enough to hold his swinging weight with such a meagre grip. He flailed with his weak left arm just as his rope pulled free, but missed.

The jerk almost tore his shoulder out of its socket and Nish felt a stretching, burning pain there. The net began to rip through his fingers. He flailed again, got his left hand and arm through the meshes, and locked his wrist around the net. It eased the strain, just enough, though fresh blood began to seep through the stained bandage.

Taking a better grip, he pulled himself through a mesh, resting between it and the tarp while he kneaded his throbbing shoulder. He untied the dangling rope and climbed up the net underneath the tarpaulins, which had come loose and were flapping in the wind of the air-dreadnought’s passage.

At the top, the tarpaulins had shifted again, partly covering the hatch, and he had to feel for it, then hack through the canvas. He looked up to see if he’d been observed, but saw no one at the rails.

Nish lifted the hatch carefully and, seeing nothing to trouble him, crawled inside. He was just going down the ladder when he was seized from below.

‘That’s one,’ said a rough voice, binding him and whipping a dirty gag over his mouth. ‘Now for the others.’

Irisis put her head around the remains of the door, where a hot tarry odour reminded her unpleasantly of Snizort. Something was burning off the bow, yellow flames and flashes lighting up the remnants of smoky mist. The deck was empty. She flattened herself against the outside wall and motioned to Flangers and Malien to follow.

Stealthy creaks came from above the cabins – people creeping across the roof framing, hunting Yggur. She couldn’t do anything for him. Their first priority was to recapture the thapter, no matter who or what had to be sacrificed to get it. Irisis hadn’t been able to see that before, but it was clear to her now.

She tiptoed to the rail and saw a world in chaos. A long way behind, smoke trailed up from the canvas-draped towers of Fiz Gorgo. To her left the ghostly outlines of three air-dreadnoughts, locked together by their airbag cables, spiralled slowly around each other. As she watched, the cabin of the lowest craft rolled onto its side, spilling people over the rails. A few clung desperately to the ropes but a sudden lurch of the doomed craft shook them free.

She dismissed everything from her mind but what she had to do. The thapter hung below the keel of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought in its slings of nets, and the canvas no longer covered the hatch, which suggested that Nish had made it inside.

‘Are you ready, Malien?’

Malien lurched along the rail, her knees wobbling. ‘I can’t get down by myself.’

‘I’ll do what I can. But once we’re inside, how do we disable the guards?’

‘I don’t know,’ Malien said limply.

Irisis had never seen her so listless. ‘Do you know how many there were?’

‘Two, maybe three.’

‘Can you fly the thapter?’

‘In the direst extremity, I can draw on a deeper strength for a minute or two.’

‘You might have to, to take care of the soldiers.’

‘If I do, I’ll collapse before I can fly the thapter.’

Irisis hadn’t realised Malien was in such bad shape. ‘Can you climb down the rope?’

‘Not in ten lifetimes,’ Malien said.

Irisis thought for a moment, then rigged up a line to the nearest stanchion, ran a couple of turns around it and tied the other end carefully around Malien’s waist. ‘This is the best I can do. Can you manage?’

Malien had gone white. ‘You’d better be quick.’

Irisis helped her over the side, holding the rope taut. Malien leaned out, her feet on one of the ribs of the keel. ‘Ready?’

Malien nodded stiffly.

Taking a firm grip on the rope, Irisis checked that the thapter was below them. It was swinging gently in its nets. ‘All right. Step off.’

Malien pushed off with both feet and the rope jerked as her weight came on it and slipped around the stanchion. She was heavier than she looked. Bracing herself, Irisis allowed the rope to run and Malien dropped sharply. One arm shot into the air but she regained control and it fell to her side. Irisis couldn’t see her face – Malien was looking down.

A scuffle broke out behind Irisis. She glanced over her shoulder. Flangers, his back to the rail, was fighting two of Ghorr’s guards. The line jerked again and Irisis turned away. She had to rely on Flangers to hold them off long enough to get Malien down. And herself.

A brilliant flash lit up the rigging, followed by a hollow, echoing boom – an air-dreadnought exploding not far away. The airbags wobbled back and forth and the vessel followed more sluggishly, its cables creaking and groaning. The heavy thapter barely moved and, consequently, appeared to stand out from the vessel at right-angles before swinging back.

Malien went whirling around on her rope. Another explosion sent the airbags dancing the other way. The ropes thrummed, pulling so tight that Irisis felt sure the craft was going to tear apart. Malien’s head came up and her mouth was wide open – she thought she was going to fall.

Irisis gauged the swing of the vessel relative to the thapter, paying out Malien’s rope as fast as she dared. Malien was going to pass over the top of the thapter before swinging far out the other way. The vessel began to move again. There were only seconds to act.

Irisis recalculated the trajectories and, just before Malien’s swing passed over the hatch, let go the rope. For one ghastly moment she thought she’d got it wrong and dropped Malien to her death. The thapter moved precisely as she’d thought it would and Malien landed hard on the top of the thapter, next to the hatch.

Her knees collapsed but Malien caught the handle of the hatch with one hand while she looped a bight of her line around it with the other. She raised her hand to Irisis, lifted the hatch and slipped through.

A youth fell past, his mouth open in a silent scream, so close that Irisis could see the spots on his chin. One second he was there; the next, gone to oblivion. She looked up instinctively. A length of smouldering rope came by, spinning end over end. It had just missed the gasbag above her. Should another burning fragment land on a gasbag, exploding floater-gas would blow the craft apart.

Pieces of wood rained down, shreds of canvas and other unidentifiable debris that had once been a majestic air-dreadnought. It began to snow, though the flakes were black as soot. A little whirlwind spun through the air, split into two, rejoined and disappeared.

Shadows moved up in the rigging; beams flashed and flickered. Yggur must still be alive, though how long could he last under such an attack? He’d been exhausted before they began it. Flangers had disappeared. He’d probably been killed and heaved over the side while her back had been turned.

The thapter’s hatch had fallen closed so she couldn’t tell what was going on inside. Better get down to Malien’s aid. Irisis had one foot over the rail when the outline of another air-dreadnought appeared, straight ahead. It was hanging in the air in their path, buffeted by the breeze but not moving. Why not? Its dangling cable appeared to have tangled in one of the forest trees and the crew were struggling to cut it free.

Ghorr’s air-dreadnought was drifting straight towards it. Why didn’t the pilot turn or climb? If she didn’t act soon they were going to collide. Irisis ran down to the stern, where she discovered the pilot’s chair empty. A woman in a pilot’s uniform lay unconscious against the wall – she must have been knocked down in the fighting.

Irisis raced through her options. If she didn’t go to Yggur’s aid he was probably going to die, though if Malien was in trouble Yggur would expect Irisis to help her first. But at the rate the air-dreadnought was drifting, it would crash into the other craft before she could reach the thapter.

There was no help for it. She’d have to try and take the controller, though Irisis wasn’t sure she even knew how it worked.

FOURTEEN

Before he’d realised what was happening, Nish had been grabbed and held fast. A second guard took his weapons, bound his hands, and pushed him down through the lower hatch of the thapter. He bounced off the metal ladder and landed hard on his backside on the floor below.

Stifling a groan, Nish looked up. The lower hatch remained open, suggesting that they expected to be dropping other people through it. Ghorr must have assumed that Yggur would try to recover the thapter. Perhaps he’d hung around Fiz Gorgo to lure the escaped prisoners back.

He rolled over, looking around. The egg-shaped interior was empty and the guards would have removed anything that could be used as a weapon. However, they didn’t know the machine the way Nish did. During his time in the service of Minis the Aachim, and since then with Yggur, Nish had spent many weeks learning about the workings of constructs and thapters, honing his artificer’s skills on them. He could have taken this machine apart blindfolded, so surely he could create some opportunity to escape.

Nish levered himself to his feet, which was awkward with his hands bound. He eased out one of the drawers, careful not to make a noise. It was empty. The thapter rolled like a ship in huge seas. He hung onto the handle until the motion eased, then opened one drawer after another. All had been emptied. The cupboards and other storage spaces were likewise bare. The guards had been thorough.

Sitting down with his back to the wall, Nish tried to think of any concealed compartments that the guards might not have discovered. None came to mind. The thapter rolled so far to the right that he was dropped onto the side wall. He braced himself as it went back the other way. Above, the soldiers were swearing, uneasy. Well they might be, in such an uncanny and alien craft so precariously suspended in mid-air.

Thump. It sounded like someone landing on the top of the thapter. Irisis? He crawled across to the ladder and looked up as Malien slid through the hatch, one hand raised as if to cast some kind of charm against the occupants. She did not get the chance, for one of the guards whipped a bag over her head before she could speak. They bound and gagged her too, but laid her on the floor out of the way, partly closed the upper hatch and waited.

When Irisis came they would take her just as easily. Ghorr would have his public executions after all and, with the thapter, the victory might be enough for him to keep the chief scrutatorship. Yggur’s half-baked plan had turned a kind of victory into ruinous defeat.

Not if I can help it. Nish grasped at a desperate idea. Edging into the far corner of the egg-shaped space, he crouched down and twisted the concealed, recessed knob above the thapter’s driving mechanism. Its hatch sighed open. Nish couldn’t make the mechanism work to drive the thapter, of course. No one could but specially trained Aachim, and Tiaan, wherever she was.

And no one but Malien or Tiaan could make the thapter fly, for Malien had modified this one in a way that employed her own unique talent for the Secret Art, and she’d taught that to no one but Tiaan.

But he did know enough to carry out the series of tests that Aachim artificers employed when maintaining and repairing constructs, and perhaps one of those might be used to good effect. Nish considered the tests in turn. One caused the ceramic thyrimode to rotate in an orbital fashion, producing eerie squeaks and squeals that might alarm the guards and bring them down to investigate. No; it wouldn’t be enough. He had to shock and terrify them.

Another test heated the muncial gyrolapp, a series of thick-walled glass tubes connected in a spiral like a string of stubby sausages, until its metal case glowed red hot. What if he smeared grease all over the case, then ran the test? The grease would produce a lot of smoke and a horrible smell, and the guards might flee, thinking the thapter was on fire. It wasn’t much of a plan, and yet, the soldiers didn’t sound at ease. It might create an opportunity, though he would have to be ready to act the moment one occurred.

He wriggled to the opening and reached in with his bound hands. He closed his eyes, the better to sense his way in through the maze of tubes, coils, globes, wires and crystals mounted above the reciprocating mechanisms. Had he been sitting in the dark with it in front of him, Nish could have identified any part by feel. Here it proved difficult to get his arms into the tightly packed space, and when he tried his gashed arm hurt abominably.

Nish went back to the centre and peered up the ladder. The soldiers were watching the upper hatch. Returning to the opening, he identified the case of the muncial gyrolapp, which was at the very furthest point he could reach. Scooping grease from a receptacle just inside the hatch, he smeared it all over the case, then set the gyrolapp to heat. Nish wiped his hands on the floor and, just as he was about to close the cover, noticed a prise-bar in its bracket on the wall of the compartment.

Snapping it out of its mounting, he slid it under his coat. On a whim, Nish set the ceramic thyrimode to rotate as well. The eerie noises couldn’t hurt. He quickly closed the hatch, though he didn’t fasten it, and rolled to the other side of the cabin.

The thyrimode gave a gentle whirr then began to run, almost silently at first. The thapter wallowed like a round-bottomed tub in a heavy swell, whereupon the mechanism emitted a brief, mournful squeak. Nish came to his knees, staring in the direction the sound had come from, waiting for a response from upstairs.

‘What was that?’ said one of the soldiers.

‘Just the prisoner whining,’ said the other. ‘He’ll do better than that when the master disemboweller gets his hooks into him.’ He snorted with laughter.

The thyrimode emitted another squeak, longer and more shrill.

‘Didn’t sound like a man,’ said the first. ‘Go and have a look.’

The squeaks rose and fell, died away and began again until they swelled into an eerie, continuous moan. The soldier came running down the ladder, took in Nish on the far side of the room, his mouth open and eyes wide, and turned towards the source of the sound. It took him some time to find the hatch.

‘Larg? Come down here. The Aachim bitch must have made it go.’

‘Not allowed to leave my post,’ said the other. ‘You know that, Aln. The prisoner might have done it.’

‘Him?’ Aln’s voice was a sneer. ‘Remember what Ghorr said? Only Aachim can operate the cursed thing. And Tiaan the artisan.’

‘See what the matter is,’ said Larg, ‘and get a move on. There could be others coming.’

Aln fiddled with the latch, trying to discover how it worked. The moaning from the thyrimode grew louder, as if it were grinding itself to pieces. He glanced over his shoulder at Nish, who hadn’t moved.

‘I can smell something burning,’ Aln called.

Larg did not answer. Aln lifted the hatch of the mechanism, releasing thick clouds of brown, acrid smoke. The shrilling grew so loud that it made Nish’s ears ache.

‘Larg, Larg, we’re afire!’ Aln was on his knees, staring into the hole, but made no attempt to lower the hatch. He had no idea what to do.

Larg came thumping down the ladder and ran across the chamber. He took one look into the cavity, which was still belching fumes, then banged the hatch down.

‘What are we supposed to do now?’ said Aln. ‘If it’s destroyed, Ghorr will blame us. We’re dead men, Larg.’

Larg paled. He stared around the chamber, his larynx working. ‘We’ll have to put it out. See if you can find some water –’

The room was thick with smoke. Nish slowly rose to his feet, trying to appear frightened. Neither of the soldiers took any notice.

‘Water’s no good,’ said Aln. ‘We’ll need to smother it with sand or something.’ He began to pull out the drawers, feverishly.

‘Sand will ruin the mechanism,’ said Larg, heading towards the ladder. ‘See if you can find a rug or a blanket.’

Aln stared at the fuming hatch despairingly, then followed, evidently unwilling to remain below on his own. Nish tensed. This might be the only chance he got. When Aln came by, Nish rotated on the ball of one foot, swinging the heavy prise-bar hard and low with his bound hands.

It struck the soldier on the kneecap with a nauseating crack, he went down and Nish fell on him from behind, driving his knees into the fellow’s back. As Aln hit the floor, Nish managed to fumble the knife from his belt.

He went backwards, trying to manipulate the blade with his bound hands so as to cut his bonds. It was an awkward operation, almost impossible.

‘Larg!’ cried Aln. ‘Help.’

Nish slipped the knife through his fingers until he could touch his wrist ropes with the tip of the blade, though he couldn’t exert much force. He pushed the tip across his ropes, pulled it back then pushed it again.

Larg appeared, feet first. He drew his own blade and began to come down, one step at a time. Nish pushed again and again. The ropes did not give. He forced harder and the point of the blade dug into his wrist, drawing blood.

‘Drop it!’ said Larg, reaching the bottom of the ladder.

Nish pushed too hard and the knife slipped from his fingers and skidded across the floor. He looked up at the soldier in desperation. He didn’t bother to go after the blade – Larg could cut his throat before he reached it and, with bound hands, he couldn’t possibly attack an able-bodied soldier armed with a knife.

Larg smiled evilly, sprang onto the floor and kept going down. What was the matter with him? A thread of blood began to ooze from the side of the soldier’s neck, where a tiny knife had been embedded to the hilt.

Nish went to the ladder. Malien stood at the top, the gag around her throat, swaying.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘How did you do that?’

‘I used the control levers to tear off the gag, then employed my Art to loosen my bonds. Take his knife and come up.’

Nish did so. She freed his wrists and he carefully fastened the lower hatch. Cracking the upper hatch, he peered out through the gap.

‘I can’t see anyone on the air-dreadnought.’

‘That’s bad. They must all be dead.’

Nish blanched.

‘Or round the other side,’ she added hastily.

He opened the hatch a fraction more. ‘No, I can see Irisis, at the controller. It looks as though she’s trying to pilot the air-dreadnought. Trying to turn it.’

‘Find out why,’ said Malien, polishing a blue-green striated crystal on her sleeve and inserting it into its socket. ‘She was supposed to follow me.’ Gripping the controller levers with both hands, she strained until her face went red. Nothing happened.

Nish climbed up through the hatch and let out a yelp. ‘Malien, we’re heading directly for another air-dreadnought. Its rope is tangled in the trees.’

‘The thapter doesn’t want to go,’ she said calmly.

‘Do you think it could be because I put the mechanism into test mode?’ said Nish.

‘You did what?’

He explained. ‘It was all I could think of to distract the soldiers.’

‘Run down and stop it, quick as you can!’

He hurtled down the ladder and leapt the body at the bottom, not even thinking about the second soldier.

Nish lifted the cover, reached in through the fumes and shut off the thyrimode and the gyrolapp. The shrilling groans stopped at once. He was rubbing his stinging eyes when Aln fell on him, beating him about the head and shoulders with his fists.

Had the soldier been armed, Nish would have died. He went down but managed to roll out of the way. The soldier lurched after him on his battered knee, his face contorted in agony. Nish couldn’t feel sorry for him – Aln had been happy to joke about Nish’s fate. He kicked out, caught the soldier in the side of the knee and he collapsed next to the dead man, crying in pain. Nish scrambled to his feet.

‘It’s done, Malien!’

‘I heard. Come up, quickly!’

He pulled himself up the ladder and fastened the hatch again. The mechanism groaned then roared to life.

‘Put your head out of the hatch,’ Malien snapped, taking a firm grip on the levers. ‘Get ready to cut the ropes holding us in the nets. But not till I say so.’

Larg’s keen blade in hand, Nish cracked the hatch open and looked forward. The other air-dreadnought loomed up, directly ahead.

‘We’re getting very close,’ he cried.

‘I know. Ready?’

He caught hold of one of the main ropes. ‘Yes. Go, quickly!’

Malien jerked the levers. The thapter didn’t move. She began muttering to herself.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nish said, watching the air-dreadnought come ever closer. He could hardly bear to look.

‘Ghorr must have locked the controls. Now, how would he have done that?’

‘They use scrutator magic, a special form of the Art …’ he began.

Malien knew that, of course. She had closed her eyes and was passing her hands across the controls, moving them in circular sweeping motions. Shaking her head, she began checking the glass plates, on which patterns moved in coloured lines and swirls.

Cocking her head to one side, she said ‘Ah!’ Her long Aachim fingers danced on the glass, then she jerked out an agate knob, banged in several others with a sweep of her hand and spun an insignificant thumb wheel below the binnacle.

‘We’re going to hit!’ Nish cried. ‘Do I cut?’

She didn’t answer. Malien was too engrossed. Her other hand caressed the knob that made the thapter fly but she still didn’t move it.

The two air-dreadnoughts merged with stately inevitability. The leading airbags touched, flattened against each other and slid past with silky hisses. The port and starboard airbags of Ghorr’s craft struck their counterparts full on, pushed by, and their support cables tangled. The cables thrummed as they snapped taut, stopping the airbags within a few spans. The suspended vessel of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought kept moving, curving in an arc towards the side of the other machine.

‘Malien, can’t you do anything?’

People on the other craft were screaming and running from the point of impact, though the pilot stood at her controls, her face frozen into a mask of horror. Her precious air-dreadnought, the mainstay of her existence, was going to be destroyed.

Malien’s eyes remained closed though her fingers were still dancing. Now her eyes snapped open. ‘I have it,’ she said softly. ‘Cut the ropes.’

She pulled up on the flight knob and the thapter jerked. Nish had just put his knife to the first rope when the bow of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought drove right through the side of the other vessel amidships, snapping its keel and breaking it in two. One of the rope slings broke above his head and before he could cut the other the thapter rolled in the remaining net until it was tilted on its side.

It began to slide down.

FIFTEEN

After a desperate couple of minutes during which the two air-dreadnoughts came ever closer, Irisis was forced to abandon the controller, which was too different from the kind she’d spent her life crafting. She had no doubt that, given time, she could make it work, but time had run out.

With only twenty or thirty seconds to impact, she ran along the port deck, looking down at the thapter. It still hung in the nets but she was relieved to hear the sound of its flight mechanism, and to see Nish reaching out of the top hatch. He had a knife in his hand and looked set to cut the ropes. They’d done it.

He had his back to her. Irisis didn’t call out, not wanting to distract him in those last vital seconds. She took a firm hold of the ropes and held her breath – why didn’t they go? What was the matter? She braced herself for the impact, which was not as bad as she’d expected – at least, not to Ghorr’s craft. The other vessel was smashed in two, hurling its crew everywhere.

Irisis hung onto the side ropes while Ghorr’s craft came to a shuddering halt, the airbags lashing about wildly. She expected them to tear open, or even one to explode in a cataclysm that would spread to all the airbags and send the flaming wreckage into the swamp forest. It didn’t happen. The airbags held and so did the ropes. The cable of the wrecked vessel, still tangled in one of the swamp forest trees, anchored them in place.

The thapter was gone, though Irisis didn’t remember hearing the song of its mechanism. Had Malien got it moving in time, or had it fallen into the mist-wreathed swamp? Irisis couldn’t tell.

Malien and Nish were beyond her helping, one way or the other, which reduced her options to one. She headed back the way she had come, looking up for Flangers, Klarm or Yggur. It occurred to her that they might all be dead and she’d be more usefully employed saving her own life. Irisis didn’t give that any further consideration, for it wasn’t in her nature, though she didn’t see what she could do where the mighty had failed.

She circumnavigated the outer deck without seeing a soul, apart from a few battered survivors clinging desperately to the dangling wreckage of the other air-dreadnought. One, a woman Irisis could not see, called out piteously, ‘Help me.’

Irisis turned away. She was still seeing an occasional flash from above, which meant that either Yggur or Klarm must have survived. She clutched at her pliance, a momentary comfort, then tucked it back inside her shirt. Best if no one knew she’d recovered it.

‘Help me, please help me.’

She climbed onto the roof of the cabin, tied a length of rope to the rigging and swung across the gap onto the stern section of the other air-dreadnought, which now hung vertically from a single airbag.

The pilot, a little woman who rather resembled Ullii in her pale hair and blanched skin, had her arms and legs wrapped around the steering arm of the vessel and was crooning softly to herself. She didn’t look up as Irisis landed catlike just above her. The cry must have come from further down.

Irisis fastened her line to the rail so she could get back to Ghorr’s vessel, and went down the vertical side, using the meshed rails like a rope ladder. The woman who had cried out was lying on what had been the rear wall of one of the cabins, and she had two broken legs. She was middle-aged, thin, with lank dark hair and a cast in her left eye.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Irisis, making her as comfortable as she could. ‘The best thing is for you to stay here until it’s all over.’

‘Don’t leave me,’ the woman screamed, throwing her arms around Irisis’s neck in a crushing grip.

‘I can’t get you to the other craft by myself. You’ll be safe here.’ As safe as anyone else, she added silently.

The woman began to wail. Irisis disengaged herself as gently as she could and went out the now horizontal door, closing it behind her. The cries followed her all the way back up the rail. Coming across had been the wrong thing to do. She should have kept on with her own work.

The pilot was now standing up on the stern, wild-eyed. She’d removed her precious controller from the steering arm and hung it around her neck.

‘It’ll be over soon,’ Irisis said, trying to sound reassuring as she unfastened her rope from the rail.

‘It’s over,’ said the pilot, and stepped out into space.

Irisis was so shocked that she had to hang on to the rail for a moment. She looked down and wished she hadn’t.

Get on with it, she told herself. Yggur and Klarm may need your help. Ignoring the cries from the wreckage, she swung back onto the roof of Ghorr’s cabin.

Down the other end a series of ladders and knotted ropes led up to the four main airbags, which were distributed at the points of a diamond, and to the smaller central airbag high above them. They were held in place by a vast network of ropes, and it was no wonder the craft needed a crew as big as a sailing ship. The airbags and ropes became blurry outlines halfway up – Yggur must have carried his mist up with him. Irisis touched her pliance and could see power being drained from the field up there. Yggur and Ghorr were still at it.

She unfastened her line and looped it around her waist, then rested her foot on the forward cabin roof while she caught her breath. The roof, which was about fourteen spans by four, was stacked with rolls of canvas and airbag silk, barrels of tar, coils of rope, and boxes, chests and barrels of supplies, all tightly roped down. The supplies were covered in tarpaulins but spaces between them made ideal hiding places for guards who could shoot her in the back as she climbed.

Don’t be paranoid, she told herself. The guards are dead or up attacking Yggur. But where were the crew? It was like a ghost ship. No doubt some hadn’t been lifted from the amphitheatre, and others had been killed in the fighting, but she couldn’t see a soul. Irisis eased into the first alley, probing ahead of her with the tip of the weapon, lifting the tarpaulins and feeling between the crates and barrels.

She didn’t discover anyone, but as she went aft Irisis realised that what she’d thought was another crate was in fact a square cage. She could see the bars through the stretched canvas. She tapped on the canvas and heard a faint, mewling cry, a very familiar sound.

‘Ullii?’ she said, carefully cutting across and down, then peeling the canvas away.

The little seeker lay on the floor of the cage, though not scrunched up into a ball, as was her wont when distressed. She lay stretched out with her hands gripping the bars in front of her and her toes clenched onto the bars on the far side of the cage. Her colourless hair was a wild tangle, her eyes red and staring.

Crouching down, Irisis reached through the bars. Ullii did not like to be touched, as a rule, but she didn’t react when Irisis’s hand met her bare shoulder.

‘Ullii, what has Ghorr done to you?’

Ullii made no reply.

‘Why didn’t you free yourself?’ said Irisis. ‘The way you freed me that time in Nennifer.’

Ullii turned those tragic eyes on her. ‘Lattice gone.’

‘It’ll come back,’ Irisis said lightly. ‘Now, let’s get you out of here.’

‘Gone forever,’ said Ullii. ‘Nothing left. Want to die.’

‘Nonsense,’ Irisis said briskly. She couldn’t deal with that after the pilot’s shocking suicide. She smashed the lock off with the butt of her sword and wrenched the door open. ‘Come on.’

Ullii followed lethargically, evincing no curiosity, though Irisis was used to that. She turned to the rope ladder that led up into the rigging. An occasional flash still came from the nebulosity above, though weaker than before.

She climbed up into the mist, which thickened until she could only see a few of the rungs of the ladder above her, and just the top of Ullii’s head below. There was something up here, more than mist and smoke. She touched her pliance. Power was being drawn in dozens of places, though Irisis could not tell what it was being used for.

She began to sense a structure to the mist. It was like a series of scalloped platforms connected by stairs and ladders, though that could hardly be a part of the air-dreadnought. It was a creation of the Art, but Irisis couldn’t tell whether it was Yggur’s strange Art or Ghorr’s scrutator magic.

As they reached the level of the four main airbags, the air-bags appeared transparently in the distance, as if this place were only partly of the real world. Rigging ran between them, holding them in place, though here it appeared like strands drawn out of cloud or webs spangled with dewdrops. Tenuous paths led down and up, into nebulous cloud chambers. Between them, staircases ran to airy pavilions, arches and gates that had no part in an air-dreadnought’s rigging.

The flashes, now blue and red, came from higher up. Irisis put one foot out towards the first of the staircases.

Ullii snatched at her arm. ‘Not there!’

Irisis stepped back onto firmness then probed ahead with her sword. It went straight through what had appeared to be solid matter. The staircase was a deceit. Were any of the stairs and pavilions real, or was it a snare as cunningly designed as a spider’s web?

‘How did you know?’ she said, shaken.

Ullii let go of her arm. ‘I can still see,’ she said with that all too familiar hint of scorn that made Irisis smile. Ullii wasn’t as deep in despair as she made out.

‘Perhaps you’d better lead the way.’

Ullii went up, across and up again, stepping sure-footedly, always seeing the true paths among the traps and deceits Yggur and Ghorr had set for each other, which Irisis could not detect even with her fingers wrapped tightly around her pliance and the field streaming through her inner eye.

Up here she encountered deck upon deck, terrace upon terrace, pavilion upon pavilion, all linked like a misty maze, but one step off the unseeable path and they would fall fifty spans into the swamp forest.

‘Dwarf!’ said Ullii as they rounded a mist bank surrounded by a shimmering rainbow in shades of green and yellow.

A span or two off the path, trapped in a cell shaped somewhat like a pumpkin, the little man clutched at the bars. Klarm looked at Irisis, she at him.

‘Should I set you free or leave you here where you’re safe?’ said Irisis.

‘If you don’t free me the right way, the cell will simply dissolve into bottomless air,’ said Klarm.

‘And if I leave you here?’

‘If Ghorr is defeated, or victorious and so chooses, the cell will simply dissolve into bottomless air.’

‘Then I’m not taking much of a risk. But just in case, tie on to this.’ She passed one end of her line through the bars, tied the other around her hips, took Klarm’s hand and braced herself.

‘Ullii?’ said Irisis, acting on a hunch.

Ullii cursed Irisis under her breath, but put her hand to the lock and the cage melted into empty air, giving the lie to her earlier words about losing her lattice. Irisis, with some effort, swung Klarm up onto a solid footing.

‘Where’s Yggur?’ she said.

‘He was up there, earlier,’ said Klarm, pointing between the topmost airbag and the starboard one, where a gauzy path branched into three. The middle path passed through a triumphal arch, though nothing could be seen beyond it but blue-black emptiness. The right path terminated at what appeared to be a stone garden seat, while the left one wound off into mist. ‘But this labyrinth changes all the time. I don’t know where he is now. Ghorr may have him already.’

‘How did it get here?’ Irisis said as they mounted a stair like airy crystal.

‘Ghorr hunted Yggur up here and Yggur created this place as he went – it was the only defence he had the strength for. Even here, at the seat of Yggur’s power, it was the one shelter he could make without the aid of crystals or artefacts.’

‘But it didn’t work.’

‘It saved his life but he can’t escape it. Ghorr is the father of scrutator magic and he’s got a whole air-dreadnought full of crystals and devices to store and channel his power. Every deception Yggur creates, Ghorr sees through it. And now Ghorr is starting to take control of the labyrinth, and turn its traps and deceptions back on its maker.’ A dull red flash carved slices off the sky above them. ‘See how weak he is. In a few minutes it’ll be over.’

Ullii led them to another cell, this one a cube of glassy nothingness not unlike the steps they were standing on. A bloodstained Flangers, with minor wounds in a dozen places, had been imprisoned inside it, spread-eagled. Ullii freed him as she had Klarm and he hobbled after them.

They mounted a bifurcating ramp to a higher level, a sheer white plane on which rolled two enormous spheres. The nearer one was three or four spans across and made of smoky glass with a metallic lustre. A smaller sphere moved inside the larger, though Irisis could not see what it contained. The distant sphere was even bigger, completely transparent, and contained innumerable smaller spheres, all rolling about inside the larger one.

‘That’s Yggur,’ said Ullii.

A feeble red flash lit up one of the small spheres and they saw a tiny figure inside, staggering from one rolling, tumbling sphere to another like a rat trapped in a maze. The red light silhouetted the occupant of the nearer sphere and it was unmistakably Ghorr.

White light jagged out from Ghorr’s hand, illuminating Yggur’s outer sphere and licking around the outside until it found a way in. One of the inner spheres glowed green, went dark and disappeared. Shortly Irisis heard a faint tinkle, like glass smashing. Looking more closely, she saw that a number of the small spheres had already imploded, leaving just transparencies as tenuous as soap bubbles.

‘If Ghorr catches Yggur inside one …’ said Irisis.

‘With a thousand shards of glass driven through his body, it’ll be the end of him,’ said Klarm.

‘He’s doomed anyway, surely?’

‘As long as there were lots of spheres he could outguess Ghorr. Once there are only a few, sooner or later Ghorr will pick his destination at the same time as Yggur jumps.’

‘It’s not Yggur’s way to be trapped like that. He’ll come out first and attack head-on.’

‘He’s too weak. Ghorr would annihilate him.’

‘Then we’ve got to stop Ghorr.’

‘What if I were to attack his sphere from behind?’ said Flangers. ‘I could take Irisis’s sword.’

‘The sphere was created with the Art,’ said Klarm. ‘You couldn’t break it with a sword, and as soon as you tried he’d roll right over you.’

‘It might give Yggur the chance he needs,’ said Flangers.

‘And you might be throwing away your life for nothing,’ said Irisis. ‘No, Flangers – sword against sword but the Art against the Art. What can we do, Klarm?’

‘Ghorr still holds the keys to the chief scrutator’s chest and, despite his earlier setbacks, he’s still the strongest of all the Council. If he can overpower Yggur, or take him alive, the other scrutators will support him. They worship power – it’s the very meaning of the Council’s existence. Although Ghorr stands revealed as a coward and a vicious thug, if he has the power he holds the Council in his hand.’

Ghorr’s sphere rolled the other way, emitting a double flash that burst two of the glassy bubbles inside Yggur’s sphere. It spun crazily and wheeled off, wobbling across the floor, the figure inside staggering like a drunk.

His options were shrinking to nothing, and Irisis couldn’t let that happen. ‘Ghorr has to be overcome. He must fall.’

‘He stripped me of my scrutator magic before he put me in that cell,’ said Klarm. ‘I can’t stop him and I don’t think anyone can.’

They were above the mist here. Irisis looked back at the survivors of the air-dreadnought fleet, which had gathered over Fiz Gorgo and were turning towards them. ‘What about Fusshte?’ His craft was heading in their direction and she could see him at the bow.

‘By the time he arrives, Yggur will be dead.’

Irisis felt an overwhelming urge to attack blindly, in the hope that something would happen that she could use to her advantage. She was at her best when she acted instinctively. ‘Then it’s up to me.’

She ran towards the middle of the white plane. ‘Ghorr!’ she cried, waving her arms. ‘Chief Scrutator Ghorr.’

A triple flash imploded three globes. ‘Ghorr!’ Irisis waved her sword over her head, but as soon as his sphere turned in her direction she tossed the weapon onto the floor and put her hands in the air.

‘Ghorr!’ she screamed. ‘I’ll tell you my secret. I’ll tell you everything.’

He sent another flash towards his opponent, who reeled off, then spun in her direction. The sphere came right up close, looming four times her height above her. It carved circles around her, though Ghorr never took his eyes off his wounded opponent.

‘You’ll tell me how you, a mere artisan with no talent for the Secret Art, killed Jal-Nish’s mancer on the aqueduct at the manufactory?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘And how you really escaped from your locked cell in Nennifer.’

Good. He didn’t believe that Ullii had done it.

‘Yes, yes,’ she said. ‘That too. I’ll tell you everything if you’ll just spare Yggur.’

‘Why do you care? Is he your lover too?’

Yggur was not, but Irisis lowered her eyes and said nothing. Let him think what he liked. All she knew was that, with Flydd so brutalised, perhaps beyond recovery, Yggur was their last hope.

‘Disgusting!’ he said, for that was not his vice. ‘Well, spill it.’

She looked over her shoulder. ‘Do you want them to know too?’

Ghorr spun the sphere, directing a spear of light at Yggur’s bubble, then another and another. All three hit their target. Yggur was still moving from one of the remaining globes to another, but very slowly.

The front of Ghorr’s sphere shimmered to transparency. ‘Step through.’

Irisis had been hoping to entice him out but, clearly, with Yggur still at large, that was a vain hope. She stepped reluctantly towards the transparency.

She felt no resistance, though the instant she was through, the wall began to harden behind her. Irisis panicked and tried to throw herself out again, but it was too late. She put her hands against the wall of the inner sphere. It was just as impenetrable. She was trapped and Ghorr was safe.

Irisis beat on the glass. He simply sneered and turned away. ‘Did you really think I’d be taken in that easily? I’ll crush him like the roach he is. I’m not going to give him any chances.’

‘What about my secrets?’ she said plaintively.

‘I’ll have all the time in the world to devote to you, Crafter Irisis, once I’m back in Nennifer at the head of the Council and you’re hanging upside down on my dungeon wall.’

SIXTEEN

Nish hung on desperately as the thapter rolled. The note of the mechanism rose a little, then fell again. The machine slipped through the nets before stopping with a jerk that threw him halfway out of the angled hatch.

‘What’s the matter?’ he yelled.

Malien took a while to answer. ‘Ghorr has a lock put on it that I’m having trouble breaking. I can get the thapter to lift, though not enough to make it fly.’

‘Better work fast. We’re slipping through the nets.’

‘I can feel it!’ she snapped over her shoulder. ‘I’m doing all I can, Nish. If that doesn’t work, then falling to our deaths is our fate.’

‘I don’t believe in fate,’ he muttered.

She gave him one of those looks that implied he was speaking above his station. Even Malien, the gentlest and most broadminded Aachim he’d ever met, was not entirely free of the legendary Aachim arrogance.

The thapter slipped further, the mechanism roared and the machine lifted against the meshes before falling back.

‘Still locked?’ said Nish.

Malien didn’t look up. ‘No, but I’m having trouble drawing power.’

‘Ghorr must be using it,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I see it now, and he’s using colossal amounts of power.’ She stood up straight and gently lifted the flight lever; the thapter rose and, with a delicate wriggle and a shake, slipped free of the meshes.

It immediately dropped sharply and she struggled to hold it as she clutched the flight controller with both hands. The mechanism roared and faded. She directed the thapter towards a mud island in the swamp, landing with a thump that splattered mud and reeds everywhere.

‘Are you all right?’ said Nish.

She leaned against the side for a moment, then slid down to the floor. ‘I’m weaker than I thought. Should be able to do this in my sleep.’

Nish stared up at the air-dreadnought. The mist had dissipated everywhere except among the tangled airbags, where it was thicker than ever. A flash made it glow milkily. Something was going on up there.

Malien sat with her head on her knees. Nish tried to curb his impatience as her breathing slowly returned to normal. Ghorr was close to victory, Nish knew it.

‘Malien, we’ve got to help Yggur.’

‘What can I do, Nish?’ she said softly. ‘I can’t force strength where there is none.’

‘Ghorr has Yggur trapped. And Irisis. He’s got them all.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I don’t know, but I am sure.’

‘Where are they? I can’t tell.’

‘Up!’ Nish said urgently. ‘They’re up among the airbags. You’ll have to –’ He broke off, expecting another flash of arrogance.

Malien got up, lifted the thapter and turned towards Fiz Gorgo, shaking her head. The mechanism faltered; the thapter dipped and her fingers worked furiously to bring it back up again. She put the nose down, travelling slowly between the trees. ‘I can’t take him on. I can barely keep this thing in the air.’

‘But …’

‘I know,’ she said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Nish, but I simply can’t do anything about it. We have to retreat while we can, and hope to take him on later. There’s a right time for every battle and this isn’t it.’ She turned the thapter away.

‘There won’t be a later,’ he said bitterly. ‘They’ll be dead!’

‘Just give me an hour … or two.’

‘We don’t have that long. Ghorr won’t dare linger once it starts to get dark. He’ll kill them straight away, or take them with him to torture them to death at his leisure.’

The thapter dipped again. Malien swerved in through the branches of a swamp forest giant. Nish ducked instinctively.

‘I must rest, Nish. Just give me an hour.’

‘What if you were to let me try?’

‘Try what?’ she said forbiddingly.

‘Just take me up there. I’ve got to do something, Malien.’

‘He’ll crucify you, Nish, then flay you alive. If you could have heard the things Ghorr said about you earlier, you wouldn’t go within a thousand leagues of him. He blames you for everything that has gone wrong today, and rightly so.’

‘I know, and I’m terrified of him, but I still have to go. He hates Irisis even more than he loathes me, Malien, and if he keeps her alive it would only be to wring such torments out of her that the very ethyr will echo with her agony. I have to go to her aid, no matter what the cost. I can do nothing else.’

She took one hand off the controller to grip his shoulder. ‘You’re a true stalwart Nish. I was quite wrong about you when we first met, back in Tirthrax.’

‘I was such a callow, selfish fool then that I can’t bear to remember it.’

‘I’ll drop you up top but after that it’s up to you. I won’t risk the thapter.’

‘If he wins, he’ll be back for it in the night.’

‘And we’ve precious little strength to resist him. But we all must do what we can.’

By the time the thapter hovered just above the white deck, Malien was close to collapse. Nish stepped out onto the surface, whose foundations seemed tenuous in the extreme. Should it fail, or the Art that supported it be withdrawn, none of them would have to worry about the future.

The surviving air-dreadnoughts now began to draw in around Ghorr’s, cutting off any escape, though they made no effort to intervene. They would see the conflict through to the end, and only then would they strike. Or bow to the victor.

Klarm duck-walked Nish’s way, Flangers limping beside him, carrying Irisis’s sword but so worn out that he could barely hold the tip up. Ullii came two steps behind, peering around at Nish as if expecting him to be angry with her. He didn’t have the energy.

‘Where’s Irisis?’ said Nish.

‘Ghorr has her.’ Klarm indicated the closer sphere, presently rolling towards another whose seething inner globes were mostly shattered-glass grey, though a few were transparent. ‘Yggur is in that one, but he’s failing rapidly and I’m powerless to help him.’

Behind them the thapter lifted, almost soundlessly, sideslipped into the mist lower down, and was gone. Ghorr’s great globe rolled around them, rotating slowly, though the inner globe remained in the same orientation no matter what the motion of the outer. Irisis was trapped between the two. The globe stopped, leaving her spread-eagled upside down, staring despairingly at Nish. She waved her hands as if to push him away.

The globe stopped while Ghorr inspected the new arrival, then whirled away to orbit Yggur’s limping, failing sphere. White light forked out, once, twice, and two more inner globes exploded. Ghorr raised his good arm and a treacly brown fan of light touched Yggur’s outer sphere, which dissolved from the base like sugar in the rain. The last surviving globe, with Yggur still inside, fell to the milky floor where it stuck fast in the gooey remnants of the sphere.

Nish ran towards it, pulling out his sword as if he could break the sphere and free Yggur from his magical confinement. As he came close Yggur sagged against the wall, then stood up straight and forced out his arm, sending a final blast at his nemesis.

Had it been a ruse to lure the chief scrutator close? Nish allowed himself to hope so. Surely Yggur had been playing with Ghorr, just waiting for this moment, and was now going to destroy him.

Red lightning forked out from Yggur’s fingers but a counter-blast turned the surface of his globe into a mirror, outside and in, that reflected the blast back on him. Nish didn’t see what happened inside, though he could imagine the effect on human flesh of so much power expending itself in such a tiny space. The mirrored sphere turned black, then white and silver again, only to burst around its equator, emitting a circumferential blast of steam.

It fell in two halves, which spun like tops across the floor. The empty half went whizzing by Nish. The other spiralled directly towards Ghorr’s sphere, stopping just a few spans away.

Ghorr stepped through his inner sphere, then the outer, though the opening closed behind him at once, leaving Irisis trapped inside. He walked up to the slowly rotating hemisphere, which was still steaming.

Nish ran, though he knew it was all over. Even had Yggur survived that terrible back-blast he would be helpless against Ghorr, who seemed to be growing stronger as the battle went on. He would reassert control over the Council, attack Fiz Gorgo a second time and regain the thapter as well as all the prisoners. Victory was within his grasp.

Nish skidded to a stop beside the hemisphere. Yggur lay inside, his long frame clenched into a ball, his hair a frizzy mass of black. His clothes had been turned to char while his exposed skin was coated with soot. He lay unmoving.

Ghorr prodded Yggur with the platinum-shod tip of his staff. Yggur did not move. Ghorr jabbed it hard into his ribs. Nothing.

‘A pity,’ Ghorr said dispassionately. ‘A great man and a great mancer – probably the greatest of all, before me. I could have learned much from him. But, like many a great mancer down the aeons, hubris was his downfall. He fought me all the way but neglected to protect himself against his own power.’

He turned to Nish. ‘My guards let me down last night, in failing to ensure that you were taken. They will pay for it.’ He raised his hand.

Nish’s sword grew too hot to hold. He dropped it and it fell straight through the white floor. Nish rubbed his burning palm.

‘But not nearly as much as you, Cryl-Nish. Oh, how you’re going to suffer.’

Irisis had watched despairingly as Yggur’s defences were broken, globe by globe, but she plunged to the depths of the abyss when Nish suddenly appeared on the edge of the platform. Why had she been so reckless? How could she have imagined she could overcome Ghorr? She’d assumed, because he’d previously fled like a craven cur, that he was a broken man. A cur he undoubtedly was, but he was still the strongest and best-equipped mancer on Santhenar.

Yggur was beaten, broken and probably dead. The burning sword fell from Nish’s fingers and disappeared through the floor. Ghorr had everything except the thapter and soon he would have that as well. Oh Nish, why didn’t you stay away? She couldn’t bear to think of Ghorr torturing him. She’d sooner take the pain on herself.

She felt all hot and congested; her face was bloated from hanging upside down. Irisis pushed against the wall and found that she could move a little. She heaved and thrust until she got herself right way up, but could go no further.

Irisis couldn’t hear what Ghorr was saying, though she’d spent enough time in his hands to imagine it. He would be treating Nish to a picturesque description of the excruciations to come. Ghorr would torture Nish on the spot to discover the whereabouts of Malien, the thapter, and his last remaining enemy, Xervish Flydd.

And Nish couldn’t hold out, for he felt pain keenly. Then, as Ghorr gestured over his shoulder in her direction, Irisis realised that Nish’s torture would only be the first act. He’d soon switch to torturing her in front of Nish, and Nish would snap. He’d tell Ghorr everything rather than be the cause of a friend’s agony.

There had to be a way out. If Ullii had been stronger-minded, she might have saved them, but even at the best of times Ullii could only perform her wonders to save herself. She’d rescued Irisis back in Nennifer purely because Ullii had felt so threatened. Unfortunately, Ullii wasn’t directly threatened now.

And then a possibility popped into her head. What if she, Irisis, were to attack Ghorr the way she’d killed Jal-Nish’s mancer on the aqueduct a year ago?

Under the most desperate duress, Irisis had constructed a concealed packet of pure force and manipulated it to the place from which Jal-Nish’s mancer had been drawing power from the field. The power had been too much for the mancer to bear. It had blown her to pieces and Ghorr had been so threatened by what Irisis had stumbled upon, all unwittingly, that he’d tortured her in fruitless attempts to uncover the secret. Fortunately Ullii had spirited her away from Nennifer first.

Yet Jal-Nish’s mancer, strong though she had been, could be no more than a novice compared to Ghorr. Moreover, Ghorr could have gleaned enough from Irisis’s tormented ramblings to fashion a protection for himself. If he had, attacking him this way was tantamount to suicide. But she had to try.

Taking her pliance from around her neck, Irisis clasped her hands around it, careful not to let Ghorr see that she’d recovered it. Hands in front of her as if begging, or praying, she sought for the field. It was all around her, and very strong here, swirling in threads and streaks of red and blue, plunging into fringed sinkholes, and arching out again. The sinkholes were the draw points that supported this whole phantom architecture in the sky.

Nish cried out. Irisis couldn’t hear it through the wall of the sphere, though she saw his face contorting in agony. The field vanished and she couldn’t find it again. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look upon his torment and do what she had to do. Wrenching the field back into her inner eye, Irisis scanned it for the place from which Ghorr was drawing power.

Ah, he was clever. Yggur had created this phantom labyrinth, but Ghorr maintained it by drawing from five or six parts of the field at once. That would make it difficult to do what she had done before – perhaps impossible. Moreover, he did not draw power through a simple object like a crystal or pliance, as all mancers she knew did. Ghorr used a myriad of such devices linked together on a belt studded with crystals and linked by threads of wire. It spread the load throughout his body and protected him from overloading – though, in truth, he was such a powerful mancer that it might not be possible to overload him.

Defeating him was as far beyond her as reaching to the moon. Irisis unclenched her fists, opened her eyes and Nish doubled up in such agony that she could feel it. How could that be?

Nish fell forward and Irisis saw Ullii contorted behind him. Nish’s pain was hurting her and she was broadcasting it throughout her lattice. So Ullii hadn’t completely lost it.

It gave Irisis heart. Reaching into the field, she began to weave its tiny threads into a lozenge shape, representing one of the crystals on Ghorr’s belt. Following the patterns of the power he was drawing, she linked the lozenge to another, then another, continuing until she had made a crude representation of the nine crystals on his belt. Irisis then shuttled back and forth, weaving linkages between the lozenges and checking to make sure that they were as close as possible to the linkages of his belt. It was just like making her jewellery, really, and she’d been doing that since she was little.

A multicoloured fan flashed into her mind, then vanished. Though Irisis hadn’t seen it before, she knew what it was – it was the way Ullii saw her lattice. Ullii’s despairing broadcast must be sending it to her. The fan was clustered with knots, near and far, representing the surviving scrutators and mancers on the air-dreadnoughts, as well as Malien, Gilhaelith, Flydd and any other person who could use the Art. Other shapes denoted every crystal and artefact within leagues of Fiz Gorgo.

But the lattice was dominated by one gigantic knot, a globe clad with poisoned flails. It was the way Ullii saw Ghorr.

Another silent scream from Nish, though this time Irisis managed to divert it so as to protect her ethereal weaving. When it was as precise a representation as she could manage, she passed a spindle through each of the lozenge-crystals and spun the field around it until it was tightly concentrated there. Lastly, she wove a concealment around each lozenge. Unless Ghorr was scanning the field constantly, he wouldn’t realise what she had done.

Now! she thought, as Nish arched up again. Irisis moved the ethyric belt so that the positions of its lozenges of pure force matched the places Ghorr was drawing power from, via the crystals on his belt. She withdrew from the field carefully, lest he become suspicious.

She opened her eyes to see Nish doubled over again and Ghorr raising his arms to strike. But Ghorr did not strike. He froze and her heart began to hammer. Ghorr looked around uneasily. Irisis did not meet his eye, afraid that he would be able to read what she had been up to.

A movement in the distance caught her eye. Scrutator Fusshte stood at the bow of his air-dreadnought, a spyglass to his eye, waiting like a jackal for his chief to fall. Or like a sycophant, should Ghorr succeed, to pledge allegiance anew. Either way, success or failure, Fusshte would emerge the stronger.

She looked back to Ghorr, who squeezed one fist. Nish cried out, arching his back and forming his fingers into hooks. Come on, Ghorr, she thought. Take the power, now.

Ghorr did so, then suddenly doubled over, gasping and clutching at his chest. Flecks of red sprayed across the white floor. He retched, coughing something red out onto the floor that looked for all the world like a piece of lung.

Yes! You stinking swine, take that. Irisis rose to her feet, brandishing one fist. You’re not as clever as you think.

He snapped upright and she realised that it had been a ruse to identify who was secretly attacking him. Whirling on one foot, Ghorr flung out his arm, his thick middle finger pointing at her throat.

The outer sphere split like the segments of an orange, frigid air buffeted her, then the inner sphere crashed into her back, knocking Irisis off her feet. Before she could move it rolled up her spread legs, over her buttocks and settled in the hollow of her back, where its base seemed to flow and mould itself to her contours. It was so heavy that she could not budge it, and her chest was pressed against the floor so tightly that she could hardly draw breath.

The base of the sphere flowed up her back, spread around both sides of her neck and began to draw tight. She threw out her arms before it trapped them too, and forced her fingers up in front of her throat, trying to hold back the invisible straps that were close to joining into a noose.

Ghorr had known what she was doing all along, yet felt so confident that he’d allowed her to continue. Perhaps he’d been hoping to discover her deadly secret. And now he had it.

The straps joined to form a belt, an analogue of the one she’d woven and powered by the same spindles of force. He had a keen sense of irony. The belt pulled tight, cutting off her breath in mid-gasp, and Irisis was not strong enough to hold it back. Her fingers were trapped, the knuckles digging into her throat and crushing her windpipe. In two or three minutes she would be unconscious, and two minutes after that, dead.

A choking minute went by. Ullii’s fan-shaped lattice appeared and suddenly, instantly, Irisis knew what she had to do. She focussed on that flail-covered sphere, the seeker’s unique rendering of Ghorr, and remade it.

She turned the flails to drooping, overripe bananas, the black sphere into a rotting pumpkin covered in blowflies, with fat white grubs crawling out of oozing holes in the skin. It was all she could think of to do. Not enough, surely, though Ullii’s sense of humour was rustic in the extreme.

The belt snapped tighter and she felt the bones of her neck shift. She wondered if she’d die of a broken neck before she suffocated. Time slowed right down and the last thing Irisis saw, before all went opaque, was Ullii suddenly convulse with laughter.

For an unknown time, seconds or hours, the field swirled in stately patterns more beautiful than any she’d ever seen. Dying wasn’t so bad after all.

The patterns vanished, the pressure eased and cold air rushed down her throat, and then the world went insane. Her eyes flicked open, though what she saw could not be happening. The ticking rotors of the surrounding air-dreadnoughts emitted tortured groans as they spun up beyond their maxima. There were cries as the great craft lurched in all directions, colliding and tangling with each other. Two exploded in a colossal fireball that seared her exposed cheek.

The phantom labyrinth sagged underfoot before going hard as crystal, flinging Nish and Klarm in the air. The deformed sphere on Irisis’s back crumbled like week-old bread. Pieces of the floor broke away and once again black snowflakes drifted down, while red wisps of acrid vapour, like the fumings from an alchymist’s cauldron, condensed in mid-air.

Ullii’s lattice fan was stretched like a rubber sheet, as if she’d taken it in her hands and pulled it. The knots on it were drawn out to black streaks, all but one. Ullii let go of the lattice and Ghorr’s rotting sphere went flubbing up above the fan as if she’d fired it from a catapult. It came down again and splatted against the lattice, which snapped back and wrapped itself tightly around Ghorr’s knot, squeezing it into a tighter and tighter ball until, finally, with a burst of light, both knot and lattice vanished.

Ghorr shrieked as he fell halfway through the floor. His clothes exploded into rags, revealing a wattled, sack-like belly bulging between a pair of tightly laced corsets, fat-marbled upper arms, the left one stained with old blood, and wobbling fish-belly thighs. The illusions he’d maintained for decades evaporated. His lips shrank, displaying yellow, corroded teeth and retreating gums, and jowls saggy enough to contain a handful of marbles each. The mane of hair vanished apart from a few dingy straps dangling over his ears.

The tightness around her throat was gone. Irisis sucked in a breath, rubbing her bruised throat as she tried to work out what Ullii had done. She’d destroyed Ghorr’s knot, an analogue of his mancer’s self, and her lattice in the process. She’d damaged Ghorr, stripped him of much of his mancer’s power, but had she destroyed it utterly? Surely not, or this phantom world would have vanished and they would all have fallen into the forest. So something still remained. What would he do with it?

She got up and limped across to join her friends.

SEVENTEEN

‘You haven’t finished me yet,’ said Ghorr. ‘But I can finish you.’

‘Your power is broken, Ghorr,’ said Klarm, making no secret of his derision. ‘You’ll never get it back.’

‘There’s more than one kind of power,’ Ghorr choked, trying to pull the rags over his sagging, repulsive frame.

‘You needn’t bother,’ said Irisis. ‘It’d take a sail to cover that up.’

Ghorr shot her a venomous glance, took three steps to the collapsed remains of his sphere and from inside lifted an unusual multiple crossbow. Irisis hadn’t seen one like it for ages. A massive device that only a strong man could use, it fired five bolts at once. Jal-Nish had designed the bow as a lyrinx killer long ago, though it had proved too unwieldy in the battlefield. Before anyone could move, he had its five bolts trained on them.

‘Come out, Yggur,’ he said.

Nails scratched on glass, then a blackened hand flopped over the nearer side of the hemisphere. A frizzy head and ebony face rose up above the side, frost-grey eyes brilliant against the soot.

‘Out!’ Ghorr jerked the crossbow at him.

Yggur climbed out and staggered across to the others, charred pieces of clothing flaking off him like the black snow of a few minutes ago. He could barely stand, but at least he was alive.

‘Five with one blow,’ Ghorr said. ‘It’ll have to do. Any last words, my friends? A simple acknowledgment of my mastery will do.’

Klarm began to speak but Ullii, who was standing beside Nish and Irisis, said quietly, ‘Do you love me, Nish?’

After a long pause he replied, ‘Ah, Ullii, I’m sorry. I thought I did, once and … I’ll always care for you. But no, I don’t love you. I can’t.’

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. Turning to Nish, she took his hand in her little hands.

‘What for?’ he said numbly.

‘You’ve set me free. My lattice is truly gone this time and it will never come back. There’s nothing to keep me now.’

‘I don’t understand.’

She let go of his hand. Klarm was still speaking.

‘Enough!’ snapped Ghorr. ‘You never did know when to stop, Klarm. That’s why you were never admitted to the Council.’

‘For which I’m mightily glad, as it’s turned out,’ said Klarm.

Ullii took a small step forward. She looked little and frail, her skin was practically transparent, but her back was straight and her head held high.

‘What pathetic last words,’ said Ghorr to Klarm. ‘Anyone else have anything to say?’ He took no notice of Ullii. Ghorr had always held her in contempt. Run away, little mouse, he’d sneered in Nennifer. ‘Cryl-Nish?’

Ullii kept moving, and all at once Irisis did understand. ‘No!’ She reached out for the seeker.

Ghorr swung the crossbow at Irisis, struggling to keep it steady, and Ullii sprang.

He fired just as she reached him, knocking the crossbow to one side. Four of its bolts tore through the snowy floor but the fifth struck Ullii in the chest, felling her instantly.

Ghorr let the useless bow fall. As Flangers and Irisis threw themselves at him, he tore one of the crystals from his belt, formed a circular section of the floor into a slide, leapt into it and disappeared.

Nish fell to his knees and lifted Ullii’s head into his lap. There was a neat hole in the centre of her chest, hardly bleeding at all. ‘Why did you do that?’ he wept. He kissed her on the forehead and then on the mouth. ‘Dear Ullii, you didn’t –’

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Yggur stood there, looking down sombrely.

‘I didn’t want to be here any longer. I’m going to Myllii and Yllii,’ she said with a joyous smile. Ullii squeezed Nish’s hand, closed her eyes and died.

‘Come on,’ said Klarm. ‘As soon as Ghorr gets to the bottom he’ll dissolve this place, and then we’re done. I’ve got a little power back but not enough to maintain all this.’

Nish picked up Ullii’s body, cradling it in his arms. There was no point to it, for she was gone, but Irisis would have done the same. Ullii had, despite all her frailties, been one of them for a long time now. The spirit might be gone but the mortal flesh demanded a dignified completion.

‘We’ll never get down in time,’ said Flangers. ‘He must be nearly there now.’

‘Look!’ cried Irisis, pointing to a rope ladder that ran up to the high central balloon. ‘That’s real.’

They ran, and Irisis could feel the floor becoming more insubstantial with every step. Pieces fell out, leaving ragged holes that she had to dart around, or try to leap, and hope that what lay beyond was solid. She reached the ladder just ahead of Klarm, whose dwarfish scuttle could be surprisingly fast, considering the caliper.

‘Up!’ he snapped. ‘Give them room.’

Irisis went up a span. Klarm remained where he was. Flangers laboured across, his feet sinking into the floor and clouds of its failing material pulling up every time he lifted his feet. Yggur lurched a few steps behind. Patches of red skin were exposed where his charred clothing had flaked away.

The phantom world shook; chunks of floor fell away on all sides. Flangers came up the ladder. Klarm helped Yggur to the rope. ‘Go down!’

Yggur began to do so, mechanically and painfully.

Nish was still several spans away, making slow progress, but would not lay Ullii’s body down. In the circumstances, Irisis began to think he was being excessively noble. ‘Come on!’ she snapped.

Klarm stepped onto the floor, thrust out an arm and jerked him to the rope ladder. Nish clung to it with one hand.

‘She’s gone, Nish,’ Irisis said. ‘She doesn’t care.’

‘But I do,’ said Nish. ‘She loved me and I couldn’t repay her by loving her in return.’

‘Love doesn’t work that way,’ she said waspishly. ‘I should know.’

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘And, despite everything I did to her, she gave her life for me.’

‘Ullii was glad to go,’ said Klarm. ‘There was no longer anything to keep her here. We need not weep for her, Nish – only for ourselves.’

‘I intend to bury her with my own hands, and then to honour her,’ said Nish. ‘I let her down – that’s why she’s gone.’

Irisis gritted her teeth but said nothing.

The ladder shook and slowly began to move through the mist.

‘Well spoken, lad,’ said Klarm, ‘but first we must get out of here. We’re still on Ghorr’s air-dreadnought, do you realise, and judging by its motion the pilot has come to.’

‘Ghorr will start shooting at us soon,’ Irisis muttered.

‘He won’t want to, for fear of hitting the airbags,’ said Klarm.

‘What’s left of his crew will come out of hiding, and he can recruit others from the survivors of the other craft,’ said Irisis. ‘If he hasn’t already cut it free.’

‘Is there any way we can signal Malien?’

‘She’s probably too weak to come for us,’ said Nish, unable to conceal his resentment at her earlier abandonment, as he persisted in seeing it. ‘She couldn’t help before. She could barely fly the thapter when she left me here.’

‘She may have recovered by now. I’ll do what I can.’ Klarm scuttled up the rope ladder as far as he could climb, and a green light flashed and flickered there. As he was making his way down again, a crossbow bolt whistled through the rigging, not far away.

‘Already they attack,’ said Flangers. ‘And we’re weaponless. We must go higher.’

‘What’s the point?’ said Nish, hefting Ullii’s body on his arm. ‘We can’t defend ourselves.’

Irisis moved up. Flangers climbed around Nish and followed. Even Yggur, beaten though he seemed, ascended half a dozen rungs. ‘Are you coming, Nish?’

Nish clung to the rope with one hand. His shirt was smeared with Ullii’s blood. ‘I can’t climb and carry her too.’

‘Pass her to me,’ said Flangers.

‘She’s my burden,’ Nish replied, looking down at her face. Ullii was at peace. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

Another bolt whipped through the rigging, clipping a rope in half and sending the severed ends dancing. The air-dreadnought lurched suddenly and jerked upwards. Irisis looked down. Someone had cut free the broken bow section of the other air-dreadnought, though its airbags were still tangled in the rigging of Ghorr’s machine, giving it extra lift at the expense of control. Two men were now sawing at the ropes from which the stern section was suspended.

‘No!’ she yelled, remembering the woman in the cabin with the two broken legs. You’ll be safe here, Irisis had told her.

The last ropes were severed and the stern section, still hanging vertically, fell towards the swamp. Irisis tried to console herself. Perhaps Ghorr had taken the injured off first, unlikely as that seemed. The stern section struck a tree, tearing off branches and smashing to pieces. Objects that looked like people fell out. Ghorr’s craft gave another lurch and lifted out of the mist into the light of the setting sun.

‘The bastard has managed it,’ said Nish. ‘After all he’s done, Ghorr is going to get away.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Klarm. ‘Here come the jackals.’

Irisis looked the way he was pointing. The surviving air-dreadnoughts, led by Fusshte’s brown-nosed craft, were heading in an arrowhead formation directly for them.

‘Faster, pilot!’ Ghorr cried in a cracked voice.

The sound of the rotors became more shrill, though the air-dreadnought went no faster. The drag from the tangled airbags meant that he could never outrun his pursuers.

‘Cut those airbags free,’ he shouted at his crew. ‘Then bring down the prisoners.’

Three men began to run up the rigging. The first airbag was released, then two more. The air-dreadnought leapt forward. One man headed for the fourth airbag, while the second and third angled across to where Nish and the others clung to the rope ladder.

Irisis was preparing to fight them bare-handed when, with a swoop and a whoosh, the thapter rose out of the swamp forest, wove expertly through the rigging and hovered next to the ladder. Two strong-armed guards lifted Nish, Ullii’s body and all, in through the hatch. They took Yggur next, the others followed and the thapter darted away. Nish went below. Yggur did too, aided by the guards.

Irisis stayed up top with Klarm and Flangers. ‘Perfect timing, Malien.’

‘It was sheer good luck,’ said Malien, ‘and it’s about time we had some of it. I came as soon as I could summon the strength. Twenty minutes ago I couldn’t even stand up.’

‘You arrived in time and that’s all that matters.’

‘It’s been an endless day; a day of continual reversals. But now I think we’re going to see the end of it.’

‘I hope so,’ said Klarm. ‘Though I wouldn’t put it past Ghorr to have one last ace up his sleeve.’

‘He no longer has a sleeve,’ said Flangers prosaically.

Malien circled out of range of the scrutators’ javelards, keeping a wary eye out for signs of activity at the crystal-powered mirrors, though so far there had been none. With spyglasses they watched the drama unfold. Ghorr’s air-dreadnought had risen slightly above the fleet, fleeing as quickly as its rattling rotors could take it, but Fusshte’s was steadily overhauling it.

‘He’s failed in front of all the scrutators,’ said Irisis. ‘Surely not even Ghorr can overcome such a reversal.’

‘Let’s just watch and see.’

Scrutator Fusshte’s crew manoeuvred his craft up beside Ghorr’s. His soldiers were arranged along the side, their crossbows and javelards pointing at the other vessel.

‘Would they shoot him down?’ said Flangers. ‘A chief scrutator?’

No one answered. Fusshte was seen to shout orders to Ghorr’s craft. Ghorr’s depleted crew were also spread along the sides, holding their weapons, though they did not point them in the direction of Fusshte’s air-dreadnought.

Ghorr’s craft jerked forward, making one last desperate attempt to get away. Smoke rose from the rotor mechanisms. Fusshte’s air-dreadnought matched his pace. More orders were shouted and, as far as Irisis could tell, ignored.

Fusshte called his captains to a brief conference, after which they hastened back to their troops. Fusshte’s pilot manoeuvred the vessel a fraction closer, and the men at the javelards pointed their weapons upwards and fired. Floater gas rushed out of one of Ghorr’s airbags, it collapsed, and the craft dropped sharply.

Ghorr’s operators worked the floater-gas generators but the vessel continued to lose altitude. Other air-dreadnoughts moved in to the sides and one shadowed him from below.

‘That’s it. It’s got to be the end,’ said Irisis.

Malien moved the thapter a little closer, the better to see.

Ghorr raised his arm and directed a fiery blast at his tormentor, but it fizzled out long before it reached him. Fusshte was laughing as he moved in for the kill.

‘He’s finished,’ said Irisis. ‘He’s lost his power.’

‘Ghorr’s a hyena,’ Klarm replied. ‘He could be trying to lure his enemy into range.’

Fusshte didn’t deign to reply to the attack, but his javelard operators shot out another of Ghorr’s airbags. Fusshte’s craft moved closer.

‘Is he planning to board Ghorr’s vessel in mid-air?’ said Flangers.

‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ said Malien. ‘I can’t tell what he’s up to.’

Ghorr, his hideousness now enveloped in a black cape, climbed onto the ladder above the rotors, as if to get a better shot at his enemy.

Yggur came up from below, wincing with every step. He’d cleaned himself up, washed the soot off and was wrapped in a blanket. His skin was swollen and blistered, both eyebrows had been singed off and the frizzy hair at his right temple was already beginning to crumble.

‘Ah, the endgame,’ Yggur said thickly, as if even his tongue was blistered.

‘What’s Ghorr holding?’ said Malien sharply.

‘Looks like his scrutator-magic belt,’ said Irisis. ‘Surely he can’t be planning to –’ She’d once seen an operator call power directly into his crystal, and the result had not been pretty. She couldn’t imagine the cataclysm if a master mancer did it with all his crystals at once.

‘I’d better move out of range, just in case,’ said Malien, and the thapter veered off sharply.

Fusshte must have recognised the danger, too, for his vessel also turned away, though slowly. Such huge craft were not capable of rapid manoeuvring. The other craft followed his lead. The one below Ghorr’s vessel went hard to port but Ghorr’s pilot matched the movement, dropping towards it.

‘Is Ghorr deliberately trying to crash into it?’ said Irisis.

No one answered. Fusshte shouted an order and one of his javelard operators fired a warning shot above Ghorr’s head.

At first it appeared as though Ghorr had tried to duck out of the way, but slipped and fell. Irisis clenched her fists as he plunged towards the swamp, thinking it was over. However, as soon as he was clear of his own craft, Ghorr flung out his cape, which formed a scalloped curve like a great batwing. He swooped one way, then the other, curved around in a circle and landed gently on top of the port airbag of the air-dreadnought below his own.

‘He’s got the luck of a thousand men,’ said Klarm. ‘I couldn’t have done that if I’d practised it all my life.’

‘What’s he planning?’ said Malien.

‘To climb down the rigging and seize control of the air-dreadnought before the other scrutators can manoeuvre back into range.’

‘And he’ll do it,’ said Flangers. ‘He’s going to get away after all.’

Ghorr was struggling across the top, having difficulty moving across the spongy surface in the wind, though he was steadily making his way towards the rope rigging that ran down the side.

‘I’ll be blowed,’ said Klarm. ‘The man’s unstoppable. I think he might do it after all.’

Irisis thought so too, for the other vessels, having turned away with the wind, were having trouble forcing their way back against it. They wouldn’t get within firing distance in time. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her fists tight with rage at the thought of him getting away. Fall, you swine, fall.

Ghorr was just reaching for the ropes, while the paralysed crew watched from below, when a gust of wind caught his wing and lifted him into the air. He wrenched at the wing, which collapsed, and landed so hard that one of his boots tore through the fabric of the airbag. His leg went in, all the way to the hip. Ghorr thrashed madly, trying to extricate himself, but only succeeded in tearing a larger hole.

He raised his arms as if trying to use his Art to stop his fall, but disappeared inside.

‘He’ll hold his breath while he tears a hole through the bottom,’ Irisis said. ‘He’s indestructible. He’ll come out, slide down the rigging and be off –’

She was cut off by a gigantic explosion of floater gas that sent tongues of flame fifty spans into the sky. It was followed within seconds by other explosions as the remaining airbags went off. What was left of the air-dreadnought plunged into the swamp, making an enormous muddy splash.

No one spoke. The remaining air-dreadnoughts circled the spot twice, but as Malien moved in their direction they turned away and headed for the eastern horizon at high speed.

Irisis let out her breath and unclenched her fists. Her nails had dug white crescents in her palms.

‘Well,’ said Malien after a considered pause, ‘I very much believe that it’s over. We won’t be seeing them in Fiz Gorgo again.’ She turned the thapter down towards the crash scene, in case there were any survivors.

They found none, but as they were lifting off again, Klarm said, ‘What’s that?’

‘What?’ said Flangers.

‘That horrible red rag hanging in that tree.’ As they came alongside the bloody, gruesome object, Klarm began to laugh. ‘Trust Ghorr to go out in his own unique way. This is truly an end for the Histories, though not one he’d want to be remembered for.’

It looked like some kind of elongated membrane, waxy on the outside but red within, with strands of hair on one end and a grey thicket in the middle. Irisis recoiled. ‘It’s his skin,’ she said, disgusted. ‘The explosion blew Ghorr right out of his skin.’

‘An entirely appropriate ending,’ said Klarm, ‘considering the number of victims he ordered to be flayed alive. I’m sure Flydd will appreciate it even more than I do.’ He frowned at that thought, rubbed his chin and cast a glance down at the swamp. ‘I wonder if Ghorr could be down there now, his heart still beating?’

‘Not even Ghorr could have survived the fall, even if he did live through the explosion and the skinning,’ said Malien. ‘A great mancer can do a lot with the Art, but he can’t protect himself from a fall of fifty spans.’

‘We’d better make sure,’ said Klarm. ‘If he landed in a thick bed of reeds it might have saved him, and he could then use his Art to fashion some kind of substitute for his skin.’

‘I don’t see how,’ said Malien. ‘Oh, very well. I’d like to make sure of him too.’

After some searching they found the body, which had landed on the upraised branch of a fallen tree and burst open. There was no doubt that it had once been the chief scrutator, and none that he was now dead. They left the corpse where it lay for the scavengers to feed on, and headed back to do what they could at Fiz Gorgo.

‘Swing by the skin again, Malien,’ said Klarm. ‘I’ll have it tanned and stuffed and keep it in the corner of my workroom. And in the difficult days to come, whenever someone tells me that things were better in the time of the scrutators, I’ll bring Ghorr’s skin out to illustrate the tale I plan to write, of his life and death, and his evil regime.’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ said Irisis. She had never hated anyone, not even Jal-Nish, the way she’d hated Ghorr, but she could not countenance that.

‘It’s not worthy of you, Klarm,’ said Malien. ‘Let’s get back and see to the living.’

‘If you plan to overthrow the Council, and prevent them from ever rising again,’ Klarm said carefully, ‘first you must destroy them in the eyes of the people. Ridicule is the best way to do that, and there’s no better symbol than this.’

‘Oh very well,’ said Malien, and brought the thapter close while the gruesome object was retrieved. ‘Can we go now?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Klarm, still chuckling as he rolled the skin up carefully and packed it away.

Malien turned the thapter back to Fiz Gorgo.

‘Does anyone know what happened to Tiaan?’ Irisis wondered.

‘She was taken up at the same time as I was,’ said Malien. ‘But to a different craft.’

‘Do you know which one?’

‘No.’

‘I hope it was Fusshte’s,’ said Irisis.

‘Why?’

‘The Council came here with sixteen air-dreadnoughts and they’ve left with seven. The others exploded or crashed and I doubt if anyone would have survived.’

‘Where’s Gilhaelith?’ Yggur asked his captain in charge the moment they trudged through the broken doors of Fiz Gorgo.

Everyone looked at everyone else. No one had seen him since they’d come down the slide, hours ago.

‘Search Fiz Gorgo,’ Yggur said grimly. ‘He must be found and safely secured.’

‘But surely …’ Malien began.

‘Ghorr didn’t find this place by accident,’ said Yggur. ‘I had a protection around the entirety of Fiz Gorgo and I don’t see how the Council could have seen through it, even using Ullii’s talents. Gilhaelith definitely had a hand in it. I’ve just been to his cell and found the proof.’ He displayed a handful of rock-salt crystals. ‘They’ve got the print of the Art all over them. Gilhaelith made a working, down in his cell, which allowed Ullii to look through my protection.’

‘That doesn’t mean he deliberately betrayed us,’ said Nish.

Yggur gave him a cold glare from beneath frizzled, soot-stained brows. ‘But it does reinforce my initial opinion of the man, that he’s unreliable, untrustworthy and completely lacking in judgment. Find him!’

They hastened to do his bidding, all except Irisis, who fell in beside Yggur as they went down the corridor.

‘He’s gone, hasn’t he?’

‘I’m afraid he has,’ Yggur said grimly. ‘And he’s going to cause us no end of trouble unless we find him quickly.’

He organised his remaining soldiers into search parties and sent messages to the nearby towns and villages, to hold Gilhaelith at all costs. They did not find him, though his trail was not difficult to discover. He’d taken advantage of the chaos when everyone had come down the slide to slip away into Fiz Gorgo. There he’d gathered weapons, a sackful of provisions and as much gold as he could carry. Avoiding the guards, he had slipped out through the gates into the mist and headed up the track for Old Hripton. He’d chartered a boat, making no secret of his destination. Then he’d set sail around the northern end of the island of Meldorin, thence heading down the Sea of Thurkad.

Yggur put his head in his hands when his messengers came back with the news. ‘I can only assume that he is heading back to Alcifer.’

‘To do what?’ said Nish.

‘Betray us to the lyrinx?’

‘Well, it’s out of our hands. What happens now? There was a plan …’

‘To attack Nennifer and overthrow the scrutators?’ said Yggur.

‘Yes,’ said Nish. ‘Has Gilhaelith betrayed that as well?’

‘Ghorr gave no sign that he knew, and it would have been included in the charges against us had Ghorr known of it. But …’

‘The longer we delay, the more likely it is that the Council will learn of it,’ said Irisis.

‘Flydd was the key to the attack,’ said Yggur. ‘It’s going to take time for him to recover … if, indeed, he does.’

‘Do you mean …’ Irisis began.

‘Oh, I’m sure he’ll live, but the damage goes deeper than that. I hardly dare mount the attack without him, though I’m equally reluctant to wait until he recovers.’

‘Either way it’s going to be a bigger gamble than the one we’ve just been through, and less likely to succeed,’ said Irisis. ‘But let’s worry about that tomorrow. I’m going to cook a victory dinner.’

‘Better to call it a survival dinner,’ said Yggur. ‘I’m not yet sure that we’ve had a victory.’

‘Coming, Nish?’ said Irisis, taking him by the arm.

‘I’m not really in the mood just now,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll go for a walk.’

She stared at him for a moment, then suddenly she understood and gave him a quick hug. ‘All right then. I’ll see you later.’

Nish watched her go, not sure whether to pray for Flydd’s quick recovery or to hope that his convalescence would be a lengthy one. Then he went outside to walk along the track that ran around the edge of the swamp forest. He had to think through the loss of Ullii, not to mention the son he’d never known, and never would. And then, find a suitable place to lay Ullii to rest. A quiet, pretty spot, as far from grim Fiz Gorgo as he could carry her.