Geomancer

N INETEEN

That night a despatch came from the scrutator, by skeet. What it contained was not revealed though it appeared to be more bad news about the war. Jal-Nish, pallid and uneasy, held a hasty conference with Fyn-Mah, after which she sent out search parties in all directions.

In the morning Nish learned that Gi-Had had taken a troop of armed men into the mine in pursuit of a lyrinx. Not even the bravest soldiers wanted to venture into the maze of shafts, drives and unstable tunnels, but duty must be done.

Irisis appeared at the door around eight in the morning. 'Nish, your father bids you come to meet the seeker.' She went out at once, her back very straight.

'Wait!' he called but she took no notice.

Nish dressed as quickly as he could. His neck was nicely scabbed over, front and back, though so painful that he could not turn his head. He felt utterly drained.

Going via the refectory, he collected a handful of millet cakes. Slabs of boiled pork lay on a platter, the thick layers of fat like grey jelly. The thought of eating it was nauseating.

He found Irisis standing outside the seeker's door. Jal-Nish was not there. 'Irisis…?'

She cut him off, briefly explaining what the seeker was like and how she must be treated. Nish followed her in. Irisis carried a lantern but kept it fully shuttered, so the room was lit only by scattered rays from under the door. There was no furniture apart from a wooden chair with high arms.

The seeker crouched in a corner. The light was too dim to see her clearly, only that she was hunched right over, enveloped in a shroud-like cloth and rocking back and forth. At Nish's footfall she started, then began to rock furiously.

Irisis plucked at Nish's sleeve, drawing him out and closing the door. They went looking for the perquisitor. He was not to be found, however Fyn-Mah was working at a table in the overseer's office. A pair of carpenters had the smashed door up on a trestle in the hall and were tapping new timbers into place.

'Jal-Nish has gone down to the mine,' Fyn-Mah said without looking up.

'Oh!' replied Irisis.

'There is a difficulty?'

'It's the seeker,' said Nish. 'She's just sitting in the corner, rocking.'

'You'll get nothing from her this morning then. If ever!'

'What do you mean?'

'I've seen it too many times!' With a sigh, Fyn-Mah laid down her quill. 'What you're trying to do is impossible. I told Jal-Nish that before he began.'

'Why impossible?'

'The poor child is too sensitive. A whisper is like a shout to her; silk feels like sandpaper; a candle flame hurts her eyes like the noon sun.'

Nish tried to imagine it but could not. 'A wonder she didn't go insane.'

'Her family tried to beat it out of her, then abandoned her to a cripples' asylum. The things that went on there – well, she doesn't trust anyone, now. You're wasting your time.'

'I might as well go straight to the breeding factory,' said Irisis.

'It's an important duty,' snapped the querist. 'Not a punishment.'

Irisis glanced at Fyn-Mah's ringless fingers. 'Really?' she sneered. 'That's not how the workers here see it.'

Fyn-Mah went rigid. 'How do they see it?'

'One rule for them, another for the powerful. People like you.'

A red flush crept up Fyn-Mah's face. She closed her eyes for the count of three but when she opened them she was icily calm. 'The scrutator is furious that Tiaan has not been found. He has a special job for her. Now, if you'll excuse me?'

They went out. 'Did you see how she reacted?' said Irisis to Nish. 'I was right. She must be taking a preventative.'

'To prevent children? But that's a crime.'

'And I'll use it against her if I have to.'

He stared up at her. 'You would dare attack a querist?'

'What have I got to lose?'

'Give me a hand,' he said before they had gone much further.

'Why?' she responded listlessly.

'I can't stand up any longer.'

She offered him her shoulder. Nish held on, she caught him about the waist, and they made their slow way down to the refectory, where they sat at a long bench furthest from the door. The room was empty, breakfast having finished long ago.

'It's not like you to give up so easily,' he said.

'This job is impossible, so I'm resigning myself to my new life in the breeding factory. Or a swift extinguishment, should it come to that.'

'No!' he cried.

She smiled sadly, touching him on the arm. 'Enough of that. If you like I could find you a replacement lover. It won't be easy, with the stigma you bear, but -'

'I don't want another lover, you stupid bitch!' He hurled himself off the bench, swayed, the blood ran from his face and he fell down. As she ran around to him, Nish regained his feet and staggered out like a drunken man, waving her away.

He got as far as one of the warm niches around behind the furnaces, dragged a sweeper lad out by the ear and fell into the deliciously warm space. Someone cried out. Beneath him, a girl frantically adjusted her garments. Nish cursed the pair of them, though he should have looked first. Such places offered the only privacy most lovers got.

Crawling out, he lurched back the way he had come. He made it as far as the door of Ullii's room, caught the handle and fell through the door as it opened. As it swung shut he swooned on the floor. Opening his eyes Nish saw a shadow behind his head. What was Ullii doing? He tried to turn his head and felt such a stabbing pain in his neck that he groaned aloud. She backed away. He raised his hand to the bandage. It was wet with blood.

The seeker crouched nearby. She was curious about him. He watched her from slitted eyes, wondering if he might use the incident to his advantage. She might feel empathy. Or contempt that he groaned at what she had suffered in silence.

Ullii came creeping back, a little shadow from which, occasionally, those big eyes reflected a stray gleam of light coming under the door. She crouched not far away, hands on the floor but head in the air, sniffing like a dog. If she could smell as well as a dog there would be plenty to read off him: blood; tears; sweat; the scent of Irisis.

Nish lay so still that he could hear his heartbeat. She came closer, sniffing around the back of his head. Something touched his hair – a fingertip. He did not move, sensing that she was ready to spring away at any provocation. Fingers touched his hair, shaping his head as gently as a sigh.

Nish held his breath. The fingers traced his cheek and the other hand joined them: eyes, nose, mouth, ears, chin. At his infinitesimal movement she drew back. He heard the faintest sound, like an inrushing of air. And again. She was sniffing her fingers, imprinting his smell on her memory.

She edged forward and her fingers slid down the curve of his face from either side. Her hand struck the wound. Nish cried out; it was torment.

Ullii scurried to the corner and curled up into a ball. He came to his knees, enduring the shooting agony. She began rocking furiously, perhaps scared he would beat her. An interesting experiment, though it was over for the moment. When the pain became bearable Nish went out, as quietly as he could.

He walked between the furnaces, where stokers were shovelling slabs of pitch into the fire pits. The blast was so intense that they wore suits of woven rock fibre, with goggles of black glass to stop their eyes from drying out. The heat made him feel dizzy. Another worker was drawing out samples of molten metal with a cup on the end of a long rod. He was similarly garbed and goggled, and wore earmuffs, for the roar of the furnaces up close was deafening.

Nish went out the back gate, desperate for a gasp of clean, cold air. In the distance Irisis was walking along the edge of the ravine. He turned the other way, which led him to the slag and ash piles. Beyond he was brought up by the breath-snatching whiff of ammonia and a corrosive reek of phenol from the effluent drains. A group of workers, supervised by Foreman Gryste, were busy clearing tar-choked drains.

'It's no use,' said Gryste, tossing his spade-tipped probing pole to one side. 'We'll have to go up. Glyss, are you ready?'

Glyss was a large man, big in the upper body but with thin legs and a meagre bottom. He was clad head to foot in a waxed canvas suit, booties and cap. They greased his face, his hands and every speck of exposed skin. He donned goggles, slipped plugs up his nose and went down on hands and knees. Taking half a dozen deep breaths, he scuttled up the drain as fast as a cockroach. A rope unreeled behind him. Thumping went on for a couple of minutes then stopped.

'Pull!' Gryste roared. Two labourers, holding the rope, hauled Glyss out again.

He was gasping, and his hands and lips were blistered. Glyss plopped on the ground, spitting bloody sputum.

'Ready, Glyss?' Gryste said after a few minutes.

A look of terror crossed the man's face, then he gave a spasmodic jerk of the head. Nish resumed his walk. There were worse lives than being a soldier. Nish paced back the way he had come. The air near the sewer drains reeked so badly that he wished for a pair of Glyss's noseplugs. Further on, he diverted from the path that led to the front of the manufactory, not wanting to go inside. Instead he wandered along the edge of the gully, here a broken slope that plunged steeply into the gorge. Further along, the slope became a cliff.

Feeling faint, Nish sat near the edge, scowling at the leaden sky. The air was clean here but deathly cold and it was looking as though it would snow. How he hated the manufactory. It was the filthiest place he had ever been. Every plant back there was dead, while the river into which their wastes flowed was a reeking cesspit. Moreover, the place had the most miserable weather on Santhenar and it prevailed all three hundred and ninety-six days a year.

Weighing an egg-shaped pebble in his hand, Nish tossed it idly over the cliff.

'Aah!' came a cry from below.

Nish looked down to see a big man scowling up at him, rubbing a completely bald pate. It was Eiryn Muss. The halfwit eked out a living growing air-moss on a ramshackle structure of poles and withes on the upper edges of the ravine. Air-moss was a superlative wound dressing, though the war had used up all accessible natural supplies. It grew naturally only on tree trunks on the upper parts of escarpments near the coast, where up-draughts maintained the moist air it required. The trees here had been burned long ago, fuel for the insatiable furnaces, hence Muss's dangerous yet poorly paid occupation.

A touch of sulphur in the air resulted in premium-quality moss, but the growth rate was so low that no normal man could have survived on the earnings, even from such an extensive array of structures as Muss had built. Fortunately Muss was no ordinary man. He was happy to eat wood grubs and beetles if he could get no better, and after each sale rewarded himself with a flask of turnip brandy and an hour of watching the sweeper boys through a crack in the wall of the bathhouse.

But Muss had sold no moss in a month and someone had plastered over the peeping hole. He was desperate for turnip brandy, had no money to get any and wanted someone to suffer for it.

Catching sight of Nish, Muss growled and began to scramble up the slope.

'It wasn't me!' Nish lied instinctively.

'I'll kill you and eat your brains,' Muss roared, hurling a rock at him. Nish ducked. 'It's Little Nish, isn't it, the overseer's bum chum! Enjoy your flogging the other day, Nish-Nash?' Muss clawed his way up. 'I'll whip your fat little backside so hard…'

Nish fled up the path in the direction of the cliff, then darted off among the boulders. Peeking out, he saw the fellow come panting and gasping up over the edge. Muss looked around wildly, cursed and ran up the road toward the rocks, his great belly wobbling. He stopped, panting, baffled, then shambled back the other way, swearing blood-black oaths.

'Stupid old fart!' Nish squatted until his head steadied before continuing the other way. He had to rest every few minutes now. Must have lost more blood than he realised. He was leaning against a boulder, its frosting of wind-driven snow steadily melting, when someone appeared on the cliff edge several hundred paces further on. Yellow hair flew in the wind. It was Irisis. He thought it best to creep away, even at the risk of running into Muss again.

Something stopped him. It was the way she was standing right on the brink, staring down. Didn't she realise how dangerous that was? What if the edge crumbled…?

Of course she realised! Maybe she was daring the cliff to hold her up. Or fling her down!

Irisis tensed, then went into a crouch. Nish's heart turned over. She was going to jump.

He began to run. It was so awful he could not contemplate it. Her beautiful body, her lovely face, smashed on the rocks. Not brave, bold, fearless Irisis. Not even Irisis the liar, cheat and possibly murderer. It must not happen.

He lost sight of her as he pounded down into a little dip in the path. Let her still be there, he agonised as he laboured up the other side. His legs felt like wet string. Her image shivered, body and legs seeming to move separately. Nish's neck wound pulsed; wetness ran down his chest. He felt faint. As he gained the top she was still there, trembling on the brink.

'No, Irisis!' he screamed. 'Don't jump!'

Wobbling down the slope, he hit an icy patch where the path was in shadow and his feet went from under him. 'No!' Nish said faintly, fell forward, landed on his knees and skidded over the edge. His head struck something and a black overcast blocked out the sky. Irisis felt the rock slip beneath her left foot and had to steel herself not to move. Her heart was leaping from backbone to ribcage. Killing herself was not quite as easy as she'd thought. Three times now she'd gone into a crouch, preparing to fling herself over, but found after the crisis passed that she was still standing there.

It was the leap she feared. The fall would be an instant of bliss. She did not want to think what came after that or she would never do it. Inordinately proud of her looks, Irisis dared not contemplate the splattered ruin she would become. She prayed that her remains would be eaten quickly. For people to see her like that…

Again the rock cracked. She wanted it to do the job for her but it refused. Perhaps if she just toppled forward?

Irisis was about to when she heard Nish's frantic cry and saw him staggering toward her like a white-faced drunk. She tried to jump but her muscles refused. Vanity had beaten her – she especially did not want him to see the aftermath.

She spun on one foot, the rock broke under her and Irisis had to fling herself sideways to survive. She landed hard, just a breath away from oblivion. Before she could move Nish cried out, threw out his arms and skidded over the edge.

Irisis, who had not wept since her fourth birthday, let out a scream of anguish. Rolling to safety, she came to her feet and ran. It was easy to imagine his fate. She could not stop herself.

Where had he fallen from? The icy patch stretched along the curving path for twenty or thirty paces. It could have been anywhere along here. Walking carefully now, she peered over the edge. There was a fall of ten or fifteen spans onto blocky, broken boulders. She could not see him, nor any splash of red, but he might have gone into the shadows between the boulders.

'Nish?' she said softly, knowing how pointless that was. 'Nish?' Perhaps it had been further up around the point. It was really slippery here. She put her arms out, afraid of falling now. Also ironic.

Coming around the point she saw him, caught in Muss's air-moss farm. He'd landed on a coarsely woven withy mat, half collapsing the structure of poles and round cross-pieces supporting it. Now he was tangled up in the mat and the poles leaned crazily out over the lower cliff.

'Nish?' she whispered.

He groaned and she felt a pang of longing. 'Irisis? You're alive!' The joy in his voice was, somehow, alarming.

'Of course I'm alive!' she said sharply. 'Why wouldn't I be?'

'I thought you were going to jump…'

'Don't be stupid!' she lied.

Nish jerked around, trying to see her. One of the supporting poles lifted right out of its rock socket. 'Don't move!' she roared. 'You'll go right over. Stay perfectly still.'

She looked around. It was a long way to the manufactory – more than half a league. The best part of an hour by the time she got back here with help. If Nish lasted that long in his thin garments, she doubted that the structure would.

'Muss!' she roared, cupping her hands around her mouth. 'Eiryn Muss.'

'He won't help!' Nish said weakly.

'Oh?'

'I accidentally dropped a pebble on his head a while ago.' He had the grace to look ashamed.

'Bloody idiot! Muss!'

Some minutes later he came blundering up the path, brawny arms hanging loose. Irisis ran to meet him. 'Muss, help me! Nish has gone over the cliff.'

'Good,' said Muss. 'Very good!' His halfwit eyes gleaming, he turned away.

'Muss, please. He's fallen into your moss farm. He's breaking it.'

Muss followed her to the edge, looked down and gave an incongruous, high-pitched giggle. 'Old one. No good now. Build new one.'

'Please, Muss. I will pay you well.'

His blank face strained to express some emotion. An idiot's leer appeared. What could she offer that would mean anything to him? 'Bottle of brandy.' Irisis held her hand out as if offering him one, then her other hand as well. 'Two bottles.'

His eyes shone. A trickle of saliva made its way down his bearded chin. He licked his lips. 'More!'

She could not imagine what he would value. He was some kind of pervert or peeping tom, she recalled.

'Would you like to see my breasts?' she said in desperation. She'd even sleep with him if there was no other way to save Nish, though it would be the most squalid transaction of her opportunistic life.

Such a look of disgust mixed with terror passed across Muss's face as she had never seen before. Nish let out a choked gasp, writhed and the brittle withies broke. He went through head first but a branch end caught in the waistband of his trousers, dragging them down to his ankles.

He stopped with a jerk, hanging upside down, bare bum pointing at them. His shirt fell down over his head, revealing the healing lash marks on his back.

Irisis eyed his stocky body, discovering that she liked the musculature, especially his smooth, pale backside. So, evidently, did Muss, who was giggling and snorting beside her.

No time to waste. As Nish swayed back and forth, several poles lifted from their sockets. It would take little for the whole tangled structure to go over.

'Come on!' she hissed, shaking Muss by the shoulder. 'Four bottles.'

Muss tore his eyes away from the glorious sight. They climbed down to the ledge. Irisis held the poles steady while Muss swung along the rickety frame and freed Nish. It took more time than it should have, but Irisis closed her mind to that. If Muss was taking liberties, she thought unsympathetically, it served Nish right for being so damn stupid.

Finally they were back at the top. Nish was white-faced and shivering. 'Carry him back,' Irisis said.

Muss threw Nish over his shoulder, steadied him with a paw on his backside and shambled off. Half an hour later the artificer was propped up on a bench in the refectory, next to the wall warmed by the great ovens, and warmed inside by a bowl of dried fishhead soup. Irisis went around the back and purchased four bottles of brandy from Flyn the miner, who kept an illegal stall behind the practice ground.

She gave them to Muss, who tore the cork from one bottle and poured half straight down his gullet. His eyes crossed, he reeled, giggled and said, 'Good luck with hunt for crystal lady.' Juggling his bottles, Muss wandered off.

She stood looking after him, wondering how the halfwit came to know that. Well, he was always snooping around, minding other people's business.

As she entered the refectory, Nish smiled at her, uncertainly.

'If you were my slave for the rest of your life you'd never repay what you owe me!' she said furiously. That he'd saved her from killing herself was another black mark against him.

He sat up straighter, giving a cheerful grin. 'Oh, I don't know. While I was hanging back there, and you were letting Muss fondle my bum, I had an idea that may just save us both.'