Tetrarch

T WENTY-ONE

Ullii was down the mine with Irisis, her only friend now that the scrutator had betrayed her and Nish abandoned her, and even Irisis was suspect. True, she had defended Ullii previously, but she had also been Nish's lover. Ullii resented that with all her jealous little heart, and took pleasure in defying Irisis whenever she could get away with it.

Dandri and Peate, the leaders of the two mining teams, were there as well, to make sure artisan or seeker did not wander into unsafe ground, and also because it was their mine and they did not like outsiders poking around in it. They were accompanied by a pair of soldiers armed with heavy crossbows. The loss of the crystals, and the discovery of that secret tunnel, had been a shocking blow. The mine was no longer their haven from the world, but an unknown and threatening place where at any moment they might find a lyrinx behind them.

They were now completing a survey of the seventh level, working in the section below Joeyn's vein. It was a dangerous area, with many sections out of bounds because the roof was too unstable. It had been a frustrating week and Ullii had found no crystal at all.

Please find something, Ullii, Irisis prayed. Anything! I can't bear to tell the scrutator no again. He's afraid. I saw it in his eyes last night.

'I can't see anything.' Ullii was standing against the wall, her arms and hands pressed to the stone. She had been saying that all day.

'All right,' said Irisis tiredly. When had she last had a decent night's sleep? 'Where to now, Dandri?'

The miner held out her map, on which she had marked in red ink all the places Ullii had been. 'We've finished this level. There's nowhere to go but down to the eighth, if the scrutator permits it.'

'I already have his authorisation,' said Irisis.

'We must have it in writing,' Peate interjected, 'since that level was expressly forbidden by the previous overseer.'

He referred to Overseer Gi-Had, her second cousin, who had been slain in that terrible battle up at the ice houses. Irisis could never forget that. Gi-Had had been a decent man, despite the fact that he'd had her flogged. Her back would bear those scars until she died.

Irisis handed Peate his copy of the letter. The miner placed his mark on it and put it in his pocket. 'Then let's make a start.'

'Tired,' said Ullii, whose sentences grew more abbreviated the more weary she became. 'Can't do any more.'

'Please, Ullii,' said Irisis. 'Just for an hour. The scrutator -' She broke off, realising her mistake.

'Lost the lattice,' Ullii said, pleased to refuse her. 'Going home.' It was not long after dark when Irisis returned to the manufactory, but Xervish Flydd had already retired to his room. She could hardly deny him his report on the grounds of lateness, so she went there directly. The door was ajar, as if she was expected. She knocked once and pushed it open.

The room was warm, for a charcoal fire burned in a corner grate. The scrutator was at his table, clothed this time, surrounded by maps and papers. Flydd had a ruler in his hand and was measuring the distance between a series of red marks on the map, then entering figures into a column on a sheet of paper.

Unusually, he laid down his pen as she entered. 'You don't need to tell me,' he said. 'You found nothing.'

'I'm afraid not, surr.'

He leaned back in his chair and put his battered feet on the table. 'Shut the door. Sit down. Would you like a drink?'

'I can't say I'm that fond of parsnip whisky.'

'That's not what I'm offering.' He selected a green glass bottle, carefully wrapped, from one corner of his chest, levered out the bung with a little silver tool and poured a healthy slug into two glasses. 'This is real brandy; one hundred years old.'

They were proper glasses, made of crystal. Irisis's parents had some at home, but she had never seen any in the manufactory. She warmed the glass in her hands and took a careful sniff. It went up her nose and made her gasp.

'What are you celebrating, surr?' she asked after her eyes had stopped watering. Irisis touched her glass to his and took the gentlest of sips. It was splendid stuff, the best she'd ever tasted.

'I drink this at wakes, not weddings.' He tossed half the glass down his throat. 'You think I'm all-powerful, don't you, Irisis?'

'Er, well, I once did, surr.'

'I too have my masters, crafter, and they are less forgiving than I am. And there is another consideration. The higher you climb, the further there is to fall. I can climb no higher, for which I'm glad, though don't tell anyone I said so.'

'You have had a reprimand from the scrutators?'

'You might say that, though the Council won't couch it so bluntly. The letter begins, Be assured, Xervish, that we are not saying we are displeased with you. Of course, that means they are highly displeased. Furious!' He chuckled, which she found odd.

'What's going to happen to you? And to us?'

'You're worried that when the tower falls, it will smash all the little ants to bits. I suppose it will, if it falls. But I'm a fighter, Irisis, and I'm a way from beaten yet. I have friends on the Council, as well as enemies.'

She relaxed, leaned back and took another sip of the glorious brandy. Irisis seldom drank and the fumes seemed to be floating around her head, inducing a delicious haziness.

'Don't feel too reassured,' he went on. 'Another failure and I may well be done. The war is going worse than ever.'

'You can't be blamed for that!'

'I would be quick enough to take the credit, were it going well. And I can be blamed for the Aachim invasion, as we are calling it. Without Tiaan, it would never have occurred.'

'But you weren't anywhere near here. If anyone should be blamed, it's me!'

'Don't remind me!' he growled, draining his glass and filling it again, along with hers. 'Einunar is my province. I'm supposed to know everything that's going on, and be in control of it.'

'How badly is the war going?'

'Very badly!'

'People have been saying that for a long time.'

'It's been going badly for a long time, but it's going worse now. We've been losing territory for years, but not gaining any. It could be all over in twelve months, and then we'll be in pens, waiting to be eaten.'

'Is it really that hopeless?' She took a sturdy pull at her glass.

'No. We're working on a lot of… secret weapons. If one or two of them come off, it could make all the difference.'

'What sort of secret weapons?'

'If I told you, they would not be secret, would they? Think of the ways clankers have changed warfare compared to foot soldiers and cavalry, and apply that Art to everything we do. We could use controllers to power dozens of different kinds of devices – night lights, weapons, pumps, boats. And indeed we must, for we no longer have the labour to do otherwise.'

The thought was less comforting than it seemed. 'We're already overusing the Secret Art,' she said, 'and seeing nodes drained of their fields. I would be worried about the consequences, were I on the Council.'

'Thankfully you will never be,' he said smoothly, 'so you can leave that worry to us.'

'The enemy also have secret projects, like their flesh-forming. What if that succeeds?'

'We'll need our own devices to combat it.' He looked away. He did not want to talk about that.

Irisis had a sudden thought. 'Wasn't the querist studying their flesh-forming? I haven't seen Fyn-Mah for months.' Fyn-Mah, the querist or spymaster for the city of Tiksi, answered to the perquisitor and therefore, indirectly, to Flydd.

'She was and still is.'

'Where is she?'

'Away on Council business. Don't ask that kind of question.'

'What about the Aachim and their eleven thousand constructs? Are they with us or against us?'

'We don't know. There has been contact with them, though it wasn't fruitful.'

'What do you think?' She held out her glass for more brandy.

'I'd say they are too bitter to negotiate. Bitter that the Charon kept them as slaves on their own world. Doubly bitter that since the Forbidding was broken their world has become uninhabitable. I hear they blame us, which is a worry. We have no answer to their constructs, and maybe the lyrinx don't either. We're both weak after so much war. The Aachim are strong. What they choose to do will decide the fate of the world.'

'So how important is our work? Really?'

'Finding out what happened to the node is vital.'

'Then why don't we do that first?'

'Because without crystal this entire manufactory, and the others we supply with controllers, are useless. If we can't produce them, my head will soon be hanging over the gate and a new scrutator will take over. You would be out within a week. You're tainted, Irisis.'

'Who would the new scrutator be?'

'I can't talk about things like that. However, I can tell you one thing – I was premature to write off Nish's father. Perquisitor Jal-Nish Hlar has fought back from his injuries. He will always be a horror to look at, he will always be in pain, but that has only hardened his ambition. He still wants to be scrutator and there's only one way he can get there. Over my maimed and mutilated body.'

She wrapped her arms around herself. It felt as if something had just scuttled over her coffin and was clawing at the lid, trying to get in. 'Were you ever friends?'

'No. I was his mentor for a time, but that was terminated by mutual agreement. Jal-Nish is too ambitious, and ambitious people can't be trusted. They're always looking out for themselves.'

'Coming from someone who has been scrutator for thirty years, that's a bit rich!'

'I was made scrutator because I was better at what I did than anyone else. I never wanted to be on the Council, though having got there, I cling to it because I know what happens once you let go. I still think I can do the job better than anyone else, in spite of the last few months. Ah, it's hot in here. You don't mind if I take off my shirt, do you?'

'I've seen your chest before,' she said with a chuckle. 'I don't expect to lose control.'

He pulled it over his head, revealing a scarred and sinewy torso that looked as though all the flesh had been gouged out from under the skin.

'I wonder about you,' she said, fascinated. He was ugly but not grotesque. The scrutator was such a likeable man, once you got to know him, that his appearance became irrelevant.

'People do.'

'Who did such terrible things to you?'

He emptied his glass but did not answer.

She held out the bottle. 'More?'

'No, thank you. I've a job to do later on and I'll need my wits for it. The Council of Scrutators did this to me. At least, it was done at their command.'

'Why would they torture their own?' she said, appalled.

'I was not scrutator then. I was a perquisitor; a young and handsome one, rising fast. I became too full of myself, and too curious. As you know, the scrutators have the best spy network in the land. We pride ourselves on knowing everything, though of course there's no such thing as perfect knowledge. I was too clever. I pored over what everyone else had looked at, and saw something no one else had seen. I saw a pattern. People had been a little careless.'

'What are you talking about?'

He rubbed his chest, pointedly. 'Do you really want to know?'

She did not. She sipped. He reached for the bottle, drew back, then filled his glass after all. They sat in a companionable silence, listening to the crackling of the fire.

'It was about our master,' he said, now slurring just a little.

'The Council of Scrutators?'

'No, our real master. The Numinator.'

'I've never heard of him.'

'No one knows who the Numinator is, but be assured, there is a power behind the Council, working to its own purpose. It may not care who wins the war. It may have manipulated everything that's happened since the Council was formed.'

'The Numinator?' she said thoughtfully.

'Don't mention that name again! It's a death certificate. I must have had more brandy than I thought.' Suddenly he looked frail and rather vulnerable, which she found strangely endearing.

'I've also had more than is good for me,' she said, moving close. She traced the scars on his chest with a fingertip. 'You must have suffered so.'

'I did,' he said, 'and would rather not be reminded of it. Besides, you have also felt the lash.'

'And I have the scars to prove it, though they are nothing like yours.'

'I'm sure they are.'

'Would you like to see them?'

'As a matter of fact, I would.'

She unbuttoned her shirt, pulled it off and draped it over the back of the chair. Irisis had a magnificent bosom, though the rest of her did not put it to shame.

His eyes passed over her, and again. Finally he said in a hoarse voice, 'I see no scars.'

She turned her back. The creamy skin was marked across with welts that, even after half a year, had a purple tinge. He laid a hard hand on her back, quite gently. A shiver went up her neck.

'I've seen enough,' he said.

'Really?'

'Of your back, I meant.'

She turned around.

'Would you like to see the rest of my scars?' he said.

'That depends.'

He raised his forehead-wide eyebrow. 'On what?'

'On whether every part of you is as emaciated as your chest.'

He took off his trousers.

Irisis considered him thoughtfully. 'Am I the job for which you needed your wits about you?'

'You are.'

'You're not the handsomest of men, scrutator, nor the youngest. What gave you the idea that I would be interested?'

'I told you. We scrutators pride ourselves on knowing everything.'