Geomancer

T WO

It reminded Tiaan that she had not seen her mother for nearly a month. She did not look forward to it, but it was another sacred obligation. Besides, after Gi-Had's threat she could hardly think straight so she might as well visit Marnie, who did not think at all.

'I'm going down to Tiksi,' she said to Nod at the gate. 'To see my mother.'

This time he did not ask for her permission chit. 'I hope you're coming back, Tee?' Nod tucked his beard into his belt anxiously, then took it out again.

Nod still held to the old view that men and women were equal, but not everyone did these days. In olden times a woman could do whatever she was capable of, the same as a man. However, the war had taken a heavy toll of humanity. The population was falling and, before anything else, fertile women were expected to breed. Tiaan's mother was a champion. In twenty-one years she had produced fifteen healthy and surprisingly talented children.

Tiaan did not want to think about that. 'I'll be back, don't worry.' She buckled her coat, pulled a cloak around her and set off on the long walk down the mountain to Tiksi, thinking about Gi-Had's words.

The scrutator of Einunar, the great province that included this land, was a shadowy figure, spymaster, head of the provincial secret marshals, adviser to and, word had it, power behind the governor. He was one of a dozen on the Council of Scrutators, which was said to run the affairs of the eastern world. No one knew how the council had come into being, or if it answered to a higher power. Certainly it knew too much ever to be disbanded. That was all she knew, and more than she cared to. No one wanted to come to the notice of the scrutator. Tiaan shivered and walked harder.

The manufactory lay in rugged Glynninar, a minor state of Einunar at the end of an eastern spur of the Great Mountains. That chain of unclimbable peaks ran from beyond Ha-Drow in the icy south, encircling Mirrilladell and Faralladell and disgorging glaciers to the points of the compass, then on to the tip of the fiord-bound peninsula of Einunar, a length of eight hundred leagues. Northward, a mountain chain almost as large ran up the eastern side of the continent of Lauralin to fabled, wealthy and gloriously subtropical Crandor.

With a sigh at the thought of warmth, she trudged on. This was poor, granitic country, no good for anything but growing trees. From spring to autumn it drizzled, when it was not pouring. Cold mists sprang up from nowhere overnight, while the rare warm days ended in clinging fogs that blew up the range from the sea. From autumn to spring it froze – gales, snow and sleet for week after week.

She passed quite a few people on the track, for Tiksi supplied most of the manufactory's needs. Though Tiaan knew many of the travellers she did not stop to chat. No one had time these days. The best anyone got was a friendly hello, the worst a curt nod. The land bred dour folk hereabouts; the war had made them even more taciturn.

Tiaan was shy and uncomfortable with people. She found it hard to make friends, for she never knew what to say and felt that people judged her, not for what she was, but because she had no father and had been born in the breeding factory. Not all the propaganda of the war could erase that stain, least of all from her own mind. She felt alone in the world.

It began to drizzle. After an hour or two Tiaan sat down, just for a minute. Any longer and the cold would creep into flesh and bones. She contemplated the sombre pines, wreathed in moss and trailing lichens that stood out like banners in the wind. They had a certain stark beauty. Taking up a piece of decaying granite, she crumbled it in her fingers, allowing the grains to spill onto the slush of last night's snow. Better go. No point putting it off.

Another hour and more passed before Tiksi began to emerge from the grey, a collection of tall but narrow buildings capped by yellow tiled roofs. The doors and window frames were faded blue. Everyone thought alike in Tiksi. With twenty thousand inhabitants, it was the largest city for a hundred leagues.

Even from here she could pick out the breeding factory. The official name was The Mothers' Palace, but 'the breeding factory' was what everyone called it, and the others like it that had sprung up along the coast over the past thirty years. Its yellow stone walls contrasted sharply with the dingy grey of the surrounding buildings. In a hard world it was supposed to symbolise reward for a job well done, the most important work of all. For Tiaan, who had lived there until she was six, the place had a rather different meaning. It epitomised a world that was trying to take away her rights.

Beyond and below Tiksi she caught occasional glimpses of the steel-coloured ocean. Out to sea an iceberg squatted in the water like a snowy plateau. More dotted the surface all the way to the horizon. This year there were more than usual.

There was a fuss at the gates because she had forgotten to bring her manufactory pass. The guard allowed her through, after much debate, though Tiaan knew it would go on her record, again. Inside the city gates, she checked passers-by, as always, looking for one particular face, her father's. Without knowing what he looked like, or even his name, Tiaan was sure that she would recognise him instantly.

As she wove through the markets an elderly matron hissed at her, 'Go home and do your duty!' Others cast accusing glances at her slender waist, her ringless fingers. Flushing, Tiaan tried to ignore them. She was prepared to do her duty, but not just yet. Turning in at the gates of the breeding factory, she passed through the front door, nodding to the guard. Inside, the place was luxurious, even decadent. Ornately corniced ceilings were painted in a dozen colours. The walls were beautifully papered, while costly paintings and fabrics, and gleaming furniture, were everywhere. A tray of pastries sat neglected on a table. It would probably be thrown out, uneaten. She salivated.

The breeding factory was the most visible propaganda of all, a sign of a future when women might be valued only because they produced the next generation of fodder for the battlefields and maternity wards.

With a heavy sigh she pushed open the door of her mother's rooms and went in. As one of the best breeders in the history of the place, Marnie had the largest suite with the most luxurious furnishings.

Her bed was larger than Tiaan's living cubicle in the manufactory. The silk sheets were crimson, the cushions velvet. Marnie lay asprawl on the tangled sheets, a sleeping baby on her belly. A satin nightgown, which to Tiaan's prudish mind looked positively indecent, was hitched up to the top of her plump thighs. One enormous breast, milky from the baby's attentions, was fully exposed.

Marnie opened her eyes. 'Tiaan, my darling!' she beamed. 'Where have you been? I haven't seen you in ages.'

Tiaan bent down to kiss her mother's cheek. She looked like a pig in a wallow, and neither covered her breast nor drew down her gown. Tiaan could smell her lover on her and was disgusted. Pulling the chair away from the bed, she sat down.

'I'm sorry, mother. We've all been working seven days a week.'

'Don't call me mother, call me Marnie! What are you doing way over there? Come closer. I can't see you.'

'Sorry, Marnie. I just don't get any time to myself.'

Marnie's eyes raked over her. 'You look awful, Tiaan. Positively thin! Why won't you listen to me? It's no life for you, working day and night in that horrible manufactory. Come home. Any daughter of mine can have a position here tomorrow. We'll fatten you up nicely. You can lie in bed all day if you like. You'll need never work again.'

'I like to work! I'm good at it and I feel that I'm doing something worthwhile.' As always, Tiaan could feel her temper going. She tried to rein it in.

'Any fool can do what you do, fiddling about with dirty bits of machinery!' One chubby hand found a box of sweetmeats on the bedside cupboard. Tipping the contents onto her ample belly, Marnie sorted through them irritably. One disappeared into her navel. 'Damn it! All the best ones are gone. Would you like one, darling?'

'No thanks!' Tiaan said, though she was starving. Her temper began to flood. Marnie, despite her image as the wonderful earth mother, was as selfish a person as ever lived. She loved her children only while they were infants. Once off the breast she sent them to the creche, and at six indentured them to whoever offered the most for their labour. Marnie was one of the wealthiest women in Tiksi, but her children saw none of it.

Tiaan changed the subject. 'Marnie, there's something I've always wondered…'

Marnie bristled. 'If it's about your wretched father…'

'It's not!' Tiaan said hastily. 'It's about me, and you.'

'What about me, darling?' Marnie picked fluff off a chocolate-coloured delicacy and tasted it with the point of her tongue. She settled back on her cushions. No subject was dearer to her than herself.

'It's about where I got my special talent from – of thinking in pictures. When I think about something I see it in my mind as clearly as if I was looking at it through a window.'

'You got it from me, of course! And I got it from my mother. The fights we had when I wanted to come here.'

Tiaan could well imagine them. Marnie's mother had been a court philosopher, a proud and feisty woman. Her mother had been scribe to the governor, her sister an illusionist of national repute. How Marnie had let the family down!

Marnie, of course, did not think so. She closed her eyes, smiling at some particular memory. 'Ah, Thom,' she whispered, 'I remember every one of our times together, as if you lay beside me now…'

Tiaan rose hastily. In this mood Marnie was prone to go into raptures about past lovers, describing intimacies Tiaan had never experienced and certainly did not want to hear from her mother's lips. Whoever Thom was, he definitely wasn't her father.

'I have to go, Marnie.'

'You only just got here,' Marnie said petulantly. 'You care more about your stupid work than about me.'

Tiaan had had enough. 'Any fool can do what you do, mother,' she cried in a passion. 'You're like a sow at the trough!'

Marnie rolled over abruptly, scattering sweetmeats across the carpet. The baby began to cry. She put it to the breast in reflex. 'I'm doing my duty the best way I know!' she screeched. 'I've produced fifteen children, all living, all healthy, all clever and hardworking.'

Tiaan's anger faded. 'I never see them,' she said wistfully. She longed for a proper family, like other people had.

'That's because they're out doing their duty, and not whingeing about it either. I've done all I could for you. You have the best craft I could find, and don't think that was easy.'

'Ha!' Tiaan muttered. Her mother twisted everything. Not only had she not gotten Tiaan her prenticeship, Marnie had fought against it.

'Maybe you do love your work, Tiaan, but it doesn't feed you.'

'Better hungry freedom than pampered slavery!'

'You're free, are you?' Marnie shouted. 'I can leave this place today and be honoured wherever I go. You can't even scratch yourself without getting permission from the overseer. I hear your work isn't going so well, either. Don't come whining to me when they cast you out! I won't let you in the door.'

That was too close to the bone. 'I'd sooner die than live the way you do!' Tiaan yelled.

'You wouldn't have the choice! No man would want to lie with such an ugly, scrawny creature as you.'

Tiaan rushed out and slammed the door. Every visit ended in tears or tantrums, though it had never been as bad as this before. The people hurrying by gave her knowing looks or, occasionally, friendly smiles. Everyone knew how it was between her and her mother. Had something else upset Marnie?

Tiaan sat on the front step, trembling. She was not ugly or scrawny, just hungry and afraid. The rest of the insult passed over her head. Repelled by Marnie's greedy sensuality, Tiaan could not imagine lying with a man, even to aid the war. Never! she thought with a shudder. I'd rather die a virgin.

Unfortunately, she was hungry for love. Brought up on a diet of her grandmother's romantic bedtime stories, she dreamed of little else. The women in the manufactory all had husbands or lovers, mostly gone to the war, and talked of them constantly. Tiaan did so yearn for someone to love her. She had no friend but old Joeyn.

Realising that she was shaking with hunger, Tiaan felt a copper coin out of her purse and trudged down to a barrow boy. There she bought a long spicy sausage baked in pastry and set off for home, nibbling as she walked. The sausage was delicious, hot and with a strong peppery flavour. Just half of it filled her stomach and made her feel better. It was a slow, slippery climb back up the mountain in the rain. Darkness, which at this time of the year came before five o'clock, was already falling before she saw the lights of the manufactory high above. Tiaan toiled up the last distance, went inside and sat down in her cubicle. The hedron lay there accusingly on the bench. Since she was no closer to a solution than before, Tiaan went looking for Overseer Gi-Had.

'He's gone up the mountain,' said Nod the gateman. 'Trouble in the tar mine. Poisoned air, I think.'

'Then he won't be back today,' said Tiaan. It was four hours' walk to the tar mine, each way. 'Have you seen Gryste?'

'He's unblocking the waste drains.'

Going left out the gate, Tiaan followed the earth track around the outside of the manufactory wall. She turned the corner, taking a shortcut between huge stone cisterns excavated into the rock to prevent them freezing solid in the four-month winter. In the space between them she glimpsed a couple locked in passionate embrace. There were so many people in the manufactory, and so little privacy, that even the most inhospitable places were in demand.

The discharge flume from the aqueduct had a curtain of icicles hanging from the lip. In the distance a creche-mother was instructing twenty or thirty of her young charges in the use of a sling. They were firing pebbles at the outline of a winged lyrinx, painted on one of the pillars of the aqueduct.

The path wound past stockyards, barns, slaughterhouses and a butchery. The smell was frightful. Tiaan hurried by a cluster of outbuildings where the weavers and other non-essential tradespeople worked. Around the back, piles of furnace ash were eroding into a gully. A series of stonework pipes dripped noxious fluid over the edge.

She found the foreman by a stand of blazing torches, shouting at a group of blackened navvies hacking tar from one of the pipes. They could only work for a few minutes before the fumes drove them out. Their hands and arms were blistered, their red noses dripping.

'Excuse me?' she said hesitantly.

'Yes?' snapped Gryste, smacking his sword on his thigh.

'I need to talk to you. About the cont -'

'Not here!' He hauled Tiaan away.

Pulling free, she rubbed her throbbing wrist.

'You can't talk in front of the navvies, artisan!'

'Why not?'

'Morale is bad enough as it is. They'll get it wrong, and gossip. Where were you this morning?'

'I had to go to Tiksi to see my mother.'

'You did not seek my permission.'

'I – I'm sorry.' He would not have given it so Tiaan had not asked, though she was due the time off.

'I've had it with your slacking and your refusal to obey the rules. I'm adding a month to your indenture. If it happens again, six months,' he growled. 'What do you want?'

Tiaan could not speak. The punishment was all out of proportion to the crime. It did not occur to her to challenge him; to ask if he had that power.

'Well, artisan? Don't waste my time.'

'I need to know how the controllers failed,' she said in a rush. 'Did they go suddenly? What other signs were there? Did anything unusual happen at the same time?'

'I've had a report from the battlefield but it doesn't say much. The controllers started acting erratically. The field came and went. Some of the clankers' legs had power, the others not. Then the field failed completely.'

'Has it happened with clankers built by other manufactories?'

'No idea. They're scattered across half a thousand leagues and we don't have enough skeets to send messages back and forth. The armies have priority.' With a curt nod, he went back to the drains.

Feeling obstructed at every turn, Tiaan went inside and unlocked the old crafter's rooms. Everything was exactly as it had been the day Barkus died. The new crafter, when appointed, would take over his offices, but though Tiaan was the senior artisan she had no right to use these rooms. The hierarchy must be maintained. She still laboured in the cubicle she'd had as a prentice.

Tiaan spent hours going through the crafter's journals, trying to find out if controllers had ever failed this way. Barkus turned out to be the least methodical of men, which was surprising since he'd checked her workbooks and journals every day of her eight-year prenticeship. Nothing was organised, much less indexed or catalogued. The only way to find out if he'd worked on a particular problem was to read everything he'd ever written. That was frustrating too, for he often broke off in the middle of an investigation and never resumed it, or continued in the blank spaces of whatever journal he'd happened to lay his hands on at the time.

She went through the bookshelves, cupboards and pigeonholes crammed with scrolls, but found not a mention of her problem. The desk contained nothing of interest – everything secret had been locked away after Barkus's death. However, as she pulled out the lowest drawer, it stuck.

It took some time to free it, after which Tiaan removed the drawer to see what was the matter. She was used to fixing things. Probably the runners needed waxing. As she was rubbing them with the stub of a candle, she noticed that the drawer was shallower than its external dimensions indicated. That could only mean one thing.

It did not take her long to find the secret compartment. Inside lay a slim book made of rice paper, with soft leather covers. She picked it up. The title page simply said: Runcible Nunar – The Mancer's Art.

No wonder Barkus had hidden it. The penalty for having an illegal copy of any book on mancing would be horrific. Nunar's treatise was justly famous and many copies had been made, though such books were guarded jealously. Why had Barkus, a humble crafter in an obscure manufactory, obtained an illegal copy?

At a footfall outside the door, Tiaan thrust the book into her coat and pushed the drawer in. A cold voice broke into her thoughts.

'Just what do you think you're doing?'

'I beg your pardon?' Tiaan said. The intruder was Irisis Stirm, a fellow artisan slightly Tiaan's junior, although Irisis did not think so.

She stood in the doorway, tapping an elegant foot. Irisis knew her worth. Tall and lavishly endowed, with corn-yellow hair and brilliant blue eyes, she stood out in the manufactory like a beacon. Tiaan had never met anyone with hair that colour, and no one around here had blue eyes, though the old crafter's may have been when he was young.

'You have no right to come in here. These are the crafter's rooms. He was my uncle!' Irisis pointed that out at every opportunity.

'I answer to Gi-Had, not you! Look to the quality of your own work!'

That was a mistake. Irisis was much better at managing the other artisans than Tiaan was. Moreover, she made controllers of rare perfection and extraordinary beauty – works of art. Her use of crystals, though, was timid, and she was peculiarly sensitive to criticism about it.

'At least my controllers work!' Irisis sneered.

'Only because we all help you tune them.'

'How dare you!' Irisis cried. 'If Uncle Barkus was still alive he'd put you in your place.'

'He did! He put me above you. Now he's dead and I am responsible for your work.'

'Unless,' Irisis said reflectingly, 'you're sent to the breeding factory to do your duty.'

Tiaan had no comeback. Irisis did her duty enthusiastically and often, though so far with no sign of success. Perhaps she used a preventative. That was a serious crime, though not an uncommon one. Heading for the door, Tiaan laughed nervously. 'I think I'm more valuable here than there!'

Irisis's blue eyes flashed. 'You couldn't manage a dung fight in a pigsty! I'll be crafter here one day, over you! Then you'll know it.' She stood by the door as Tiaan went out. There was no chance to put the book back.

Returning to her bench, Tiaan watched Irisis across the room as she donned goggles and mask and sat down at her grinding wheel. It began to whine and the artisan took up a crystal. Soon the air was full of drifting specks.

Tiaan worked fruitlessly for hours, until her head drooped. She laid it on the bench, then realised that the manufactory was silent. It must be midnight. Plodding to her room, she washed in a basin of cold water and fell onto her straw-stuffed pallet.

As soon as her head hit the pillow, Tiaan's worries returned and, though exhausted, she found herself wide awake. She went over her problems again and again, quite uselessly. Finally, knowing she was never going to get to sleep, she lit a candle, locked her door and took out the forbidden book.

She did not open it immediately. Tiaan was not sure she should look at it at all, but if she took it back to the crafter's workshop, Irisis's spies would tell her at once. If she handed it in to the overseer after this delay there would be suspicion that she'd read it first. The scrutator had watchers in the manufactory and little escaped their attention. She would be marked for life.

She considered hurling it into one of the furnaces when no one was looking. However, if the book was protected by a spell, as such things often were, anything might happen. Besides, books were precious, sacred things and Tiaan could not imagine burning one. She could hide it, but what if someone unsuitable found it? What if it fell into the hands of the enemy?

Tiaan opened the book. The paper had a lovely silky feel. The text was written in a number of different hands, no doubt a copy. The language was the common speech spoken throughout the south-east, so she could read the words, though they made little sense. That was not surprising. Her day book, which contained details of her work on controllers, would be equally incomprehensible to most people. Then, as she was flipping through, a heading caught her eye. Application of the Special Theory to the Powering of Mechanical Contrivances My Special Theory of Power describes the diffuse force, or field, that surrounds and permeates the fabric of nodes. It is this force that mancers have drawn upon since the Secret Art was first used, at least seven millennia ago. However, mancing has always been restricted by our inability to understand the field: where it comes from, how it changes over time and how it can safely be used.

Furthermore, all drawn power must pass through the mancer first, which causes aftersickness, and the greater the power the worse the effects. Too great a drain of power will be, and has proven many times, horribly fatal.

The traditional solution has been to enchant an artefact, such as a mirror, ring or jewel, and simply trigger the device when needed. This also has problems: artefacts are notoriously difficult to control, may become corrupted over time (witness the Mirror of Aachan) and once discharged are useless until they can be recharged.

Yet we know the ancients used devices with the capacity to replenish themselves. We do not know how that was done, but how else can we explain such long-lived devices as the Mirror, Yalkara's protected fortress of Havissard, or contrivances that used such prodigious quantities of power as Rulke's legendary construct?

The field, the weakest of the five elemental forces, is the only one we mancers have ever been able to tap. Nonetheless, much can be done with it. My Special Theory enables us to understand the diffuse force, and perhaps create a controller apparatus to tap it safely. Instead of all power being drawn through the mancer, with its limitations of frail flesh, the mancer simply senses the field and draws just enough power to channel the flow, via the ultradimensional ethyr, directly into the controller. The controller can then transmit it to power the contrivance, whether this be a mechanical cart, a pump or any other mechanism required.

Being a humble theoretician, I will leave the design of such devices to those with the aptitude and interest in such things. Suffice it to say that any such device should comprise the following components…

Tiaan knew all about such devices; that was her work. She skipped forward a few paragraphs.

The process may generate a shifting aura about the crystal powering the controller, perhaps mimicking the aurora-like field about the node from which the power was drawn. A nearby sensitive might be able to detect this aura, though in normal use it is expected to be insignificant…

Tiaan put the book down. This was the very document wherein Nunar first set down the principles of controllers, nearly a hundred years ago. Her theory had enabled the construction of clankers and certain other secret devices, without which the war would have been lost long ago.

She ploughed on. Nunar went on to speculate about a General Theory of Power, which would deal with nodes themselves, the several different strong forces they were expected to be made of, how they related to each other and, finally, how such prodigious forces might be tapped. Nunar noted, however, that nodal forces might never be tapped safely. She also mentioned the holy grail of theoretical mancers, the Unified Power Theory, which would reconcile all the forces mancers knew of, weak and strong, in terms of a single field. Nunar closed the section by stating that such a theory seemed as far off as ever.

Tiaan hid the book behind a loose brick in the wall, under her bed. It seemed no use at all. She dozed briefly, her head crackling with fractured crystal dreams, to wake with the answer in her mind. She must design a device to test the faulty hedrons and read what had happened to them. Only then could she find a way to solve the problem. Sitting up in bed, Tiaan reached for slate and chalk and began sketching.

She had just completed a rough sketch, and blown out her candle, when Tiaan heard the rattle and groan of a clanker coming up the road. It had to be Ky-Ara returning. Since it was practically dawn, she dressed and went out.

A sleepy attendant with a lantern was opening the side gate as she arrived. Gi-Had was there too. He must have returned in the night. Tiaan watched the monster emerge from the dark. The clanker had covered lanterns on the front, a broad, segmented body made of overlapping plates of armour, and four pairs of mechanical legs driven by ingenious gearing. It was large enough to carry ten people and all their gear, though in bone-shaking discomfort. The shooter's platform on top, with its mechanical catapult and javelard, was empty.

The clanker clumped into the shed and stopped. The mechanism creaked and groaned, then there was silence save for the whine of the twin iron flywheels that stored power in case the field was interrupted momentarily. The flywheels would still be going at dinnertime, slowly running down.

The back hatch opened. A slim young man climbed out, pack in one hand, a satchel in the other. He stretched, gave the machine an anxious pat on the flank and turned around.

Ky-Ara was not overly tall. His lean, handsome face was marred by a weak jaw. A shock of wiry hair stood out in all directions. His dark eyes were red-rimmed. There was a smudge of black grease across one cheek. Despite all that, Tiaan rather liked the look of him.

'It's good to have her whole again,' Ky-Ara said to Gi-Had, avoiding Tiaan's eye. 'After the controller died… I thought I'd never drive her again.'

His face crumbled. The bond between clanker and operator was intense, almost like that between lovers, and a threat to it had been known to cause mental breakdown. Ky-Ara looked close to one now. Tiaan felt for him.

'It's been hard work getting used to the new controller,' he continued. 'I've got a shocking headache. Despatch for you, surr!' He handed the satchel to Gi-Had.

'Thank you.' The overseer turned away to open it. He began to read a document, frowning as he did.

'What happened when it failed?' Tiaan asked Ky-Ara.

The operator's top lip quivered but he mastered himself. 'We were heading up the coast from Tiksi. Everything had gone perfectly. We were passing out of the aura of the Lippi node towards the Xanpt node. That's a really strong one…'

'So I believe,' said Tiaan. She liked the shape of Ky-Ara's mouth. A wonder she hadn't noticed him before.

'I had the controller helm on, sensing out the Xanpt field in advance. Sometimes it can be tricky shifting from one to another, and I didn't want to get stuck between fields. The flywheels won't drive her weight for that long.'

He looked sideways at Tiaan. She nodded.

'The Lippi field began shifting wildly: sometimes strong, at other times hardly there at all. The fields grew harder and harder to visualise; I couldn't tune either of them in.' His voice cracked as he relived the awful scene. 'I began to think that the Lippi field was going, though the two clankers ahead of me seemed to be having no trouble.' Ky-Ara went pale and had to sit down.

'What happened then?' Gi-Had prompted after a long silence.

'I lost it. Both fields were gone! The hedron was dead and there was nothing I could do about it. If it had happened in battle…' He shivered. 'I took the controller out, got a lift back to Tiksi on a cart and sent the controller up the mountain.'

'I have it in my workshop,' said Tiaan. 'I can't work out what's happened. The crystal is completely dead.'

Ky-Ara looked distressed, like a lost boy. 'If that's all,' he said, cradling the controller in his arms, 'I'll go to my quarters. I haven't slept for two nights.'

'Yes, thank you, Ky-Ara,' said Gi-Had. 'I know you've done your best. It must have been difficult for you.'

The young man went out. Tiaan's dark eyes followed him thoughtfully.

'You're wondering if he might be the one?' Gi-Had's rumble broke into her thoughts, startling her.

Tiaan flushed. She had been thinking exactly that. Also thinking that, if she must mate, why not with a clanker operator? There were many similarities in their lives and work, and if they did not get on, he would be away most of the time. If nothing came of it, no one could say that she had not done her duty.

'Yes,' she said softly.

'Strange folk, clanker operators. Their machines always come first – you know that.'

It didn't require an answer. He shook out the rolled despatch, scowling ferociously. 'Bad news?' she asked.

'Another problem. A worse one.'

'Oh?' said Tiaan warily.

'More clankers wiped out, on the coast well north of Xanpt. Each time, the enemy knew just where to find them.'

'Clankers are pretty noisy,' said Tiaan.

'Not these ones.' Gi-Had looked over his shoulder. The attendant was a long way away but the overseer lowered his voice anyway. 'They were using a new development, a Sound Cloaker! You can't hear them move. And no one knew where they were going.'

'But that means,' said Tiaan, 'the enemy has a way of finding them. Using the Secret Art -'

Gi-Had spun around. 'Oy, you, clear out, now!'

A large bald man touched his brow then slouched off. It was Eiryn Muss, a halfwit who had a lowly place at the manufactory. He was always shambling about, peering over people's shoulders.

Gi-Had turned back to Tiaan. 'And if they can do that, they will destroy them all. And us! Find out how they do it, Tiaan.'

'Is this more important than finding out why the hedrons failed? Or making replacement controllers?'

'They're all important,' he growled.

'I can't do everything. I'm always exhausted as it is.'

'Leave controller-making to the others for the time being. The best artisans from every manufactory have been ordered to work on these two problems.'

Her head jerked up. 'So it's not just my controllers that have failed?'

'Not according to this. But that doesn't mean you're in the clear.'

'Are you happy with my work, overseer?'

'Let's just say that I'm keeping an eye on you. Better get on with it.' Nodding distractedly, Gi-Had hurried off.