Tetrarch (Well of Echoes) (28 page)

Declare himself to the guards at the gate, tell them who he was and where he had come from. Likely result: a merciless beating and being thrown back into the camp, where the powers that ran it could well give him another beating. It didn’t seem worth the risk.

Try to get over the palisade in the night and escape. Colm’s little remark made that into an unpalatable option, though Nish knew that guards were seldom as vigilant as rumour had it. On a dark night, or a rainy one, there must be a chance.

Failing that, let’s see what he could do with the boy. Colm had proven trustworthy but Nish was wary of pressing him too hard. Family always came first.

He spent the whole day under the table. It grew increasingly hot and humid until Nish could think of nothing but cool water. His last drink had been with the scrutator the previous day. Had he really come all this way in only a day? He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. It felt like another year; another life. The scrutator would not be back to the manufactory yet, and Ullii … Poor Ullii. How was she coping? He could still hear her screams.

The hours dragged by. The building stank of unwashed bodies. There was not a breath of fresh air to be had and he felt as if he were suffocating. Nish looked up at the underside of the bench, where the grain of the timber made sawtooth patterns reminiscent of the crest of a lyrinx. He swallowed.

Considering so many people worked here, the workhouse was uncannily quiet. All he heard was the shuffle of feet, an occasional clearing of the throat and the muted tap and click of mechanical parts being put together. Nish manoeuvred an eye to a gap between the boards, looking up along the bench. The workers were putting together small clockwork mechanisms, possibly for something like a clanker.

Thwack
. Someone let out a reedy scream, quickly cut off.

‘Half-rations for three days. Work harder!’ The voice was close by.

Nish made himself as small as possible but felt sure he would be discovered. A thick pair of hairy calves went by, attached to the filthiest feet he had ever seen. They smelled like ordure.

The feet stopped. Something struck the bench above Nish’s head so hard that small objects jumped. He did not dare to breathe. He could hear the heavy breath of the supervisor. The room was completely silent. Everyone else was as afraid as he was. Nish’s nose began to itch but he resisted the urge to scratch it.

‘Get on with your work!’ the man roared and the dirty feet moved away. The clicking and tapping resumed.

Nish endured the day. Should he declare himself, or leave it to the boy? He waited. In the early afternoon the work stopped briefly while lunch was taken at the benches. Nish could smell the water by then and had begun to shake with hunger. He was practically fainting when a thin hand reached below the bench, holding a battered wooden mug.

Nish drained it in a single swallow and immediately regretted that he had not made it last. He put the mug into the waiting hand. Shortly it reappeared with a generous chunk of black bread.

Nish eked that out, taking the tiniest of nibbles, which was just as well since it was full of hard, burnt grain and grit he might have broken a tooth on. After that he pillowed his head on his arms and slept.

When he jolted awake it was dark outside but the work was still going on. What had disturbed him?

‘Don’t start that again,’ Colm’s father hissed. ‘You’re not too old for a beating, boy!’

‘He’s
here
,’ Colm whispered.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The man is right here, under the bench. His name is Cryl-Nish Hlar and his father is a
perquisitor
.’

The silence stretched out, then the man dropped a wooden spanner, bent down to pick it up and stared at Nish.

Nish held his gaze. ‘It’s true,’ he said softly. ‘He is Jal-Nish Hlar, Perquisitor for Einunar, and I have come all this way on scrutator’s business. I beg your help in his name.’

The man ducked away again, forgetting his spanner. Reaching forward, Nish handed it up to him.

‘Which scrutator?’ Colm’s father said out of the corner of his mouth.

‘Xervish Flydd!’

The work resumed on the bench, and only some minutes later did Nish hear any more.

‘You have ruined us, Colm,’ his mother muttered. ‘This will be the end of your family.’

‘Why couldn’t you mind your own business?’ his father said. There was no anger in him now; just despair. ‘Why, Colm?’

‘You taught me to do what I thought was right, no matter how painful.’

‘Those rules don’t apply any more,’ his father said in a low voice.

‘Just look at the poor man! He’s got wounds everywhere but it hasn’t stopped
him
.’

Both mother and father bent down, inspected Nish, then stood up again.

‘Of course you can’t denounce him,’ said Colm’s mother. ‘That would also attract attention.’

‘We have to,’ said the father.

‘He’s not much more than a boy,’ muttered the mother. ‘He doesn’t even have a proper beard.’

‘Tell him to go, boy,’ said Colm’s father.

‘I won’t betray him.
You
tell him.’

Again Nish heard a slap, but thankfully Colm remained defiant.

‘If he is a perquisitor’s son,’ the mother quavered, ‘and on scrutator’s work, to refuse him will mean our deaths.’

A metal cover-plate was knocked off the bench. The father’s face appeared in front of Nish. The mother and son closed up on either side. ‘What business?’

‘I can’t tell you, but I carry information vital to the war. I must find a way to escape and meet a querist or perquisitor. Or failing that, an officer in the army.’

‘Very well,’ said the father. ‘I know my duty. We will be leaving shortly to go back to our quarters for the night. When I give the signal, come out between me and Colm. Walk carefully, looking down. Show me your hand.’

Nish held it out and the man examined the bloody scratches. ‘It
may
do, if they don’t look too closely. We have no friends here, but people know us, and in this camp anyone will betray their neighbour for an extra bowl of fishhead soup.’

The call came. Nish ducked out from under the bench and stood up between Colm and his father, who was a big man, nearly a head taller than Nish. He took a sideways glance. The building had three aisles and a line of people was forming along each of them. There would have been hundreds. Most were as haggard, thin and dirty as the boy. Few looked anywhere but at the earth floor.

The line crept forward. Nish felt a fluttering in his stomach. He had saved himself several times, by his own initiative, assisted by a generous helping of good fortune. Fortune could turn against him just as swiftly, and then he would die.

They approached the door, where each of the workers was delivered a dollop of gruel into their mug, and a slab of black bread. Nish had no mug. He was going to fall at the first hurdle. Panic told him to run but he fought it. He looked back. The father had realised the problem but did not know what to do about it. Nish was going to be discovered with the family and they would all be punished.

It was too late to get out of the way; they were only half a dozen places from the end of the line. Nish leaned forward. ‘I’ve no mug,’ he whispered in Colm’s ear.

Colm passed his own back, picked up a fragment of metal lying on the bench and, with an unobtrusive flick, sent it flying down the row. It struck a hairy man on his protruding ear. He whirled and swung a blow at the man behind him, who struck back.

The fellow serving the slops came out from behind his bench, flailing at the struggling men with his wooden ladle. Colm snatched a mug from the back of the bench and held it out.

The fight was over quickly. No one wanted to attract the attention of the guards outside. The line paced by, Nish received his ration of slops and his lump of bread, the serving man taking no notice of him, and then they were through the door.

He passed the guards and was halfway across the yard when one yelled, ‘Hey you!’

Nish froze, whereupon a hard hand went down on his shoulder and squeezed. ‘Keep going. Don’t look around.’

Nish did as he was told, expecting the soldiers to come running after him, but no one did. As he rounded the corner he saw, out of the corner of his eye, an unfortunate fellow being beaten between three laughing guards.

‘It’s their game,’ said the father. ‘Some poor wretch always turns around, and then they beat him for it.’

It took an anxious ten minutes to cross through the labyrinth of huts, shacks and hovels to the dismal space Colm and his family called home. Built from scraps of timber and canvas, chinked in with grass and mud, it was meaner than the hut of any primitive tribesman.

Inside it was barely long enough for the father to lie down. The earth floor was covered in bracken and reeds. The walls were hand-smeared mud, the roof a piece of rotting canvas smaller than a single bedsheet. They had nothing else in the world.

Two girls crouched within. The older, who might have been fifteen, was a small, unattractive creature, her hair positively dripping grease, her face full of spots and scars, and her teeth horrible black stumps. The younger, no more than five, was pretty, with wavy chestnut hair and green eyes.

‘This is Cryl-Nish Hlar,’ said the father, whose name was given as Oinan. ‘He is an important man. He will stay with us for a little while and we are going to look after him. No one will ever mention his name. Cryl-Nish, this is my wife Tinketil, my older daughter, Ketila, and my other daughter, Fransi.’

Ketila hid her face, and a flush crept up her throat. Poor girl, Nish thought, to suffer such a handicap, especially when her sister is such a beauty. He shook hands with Oinan, with Tinketil and with a solemn, staring Fransi. Ketila would not look at him. Her hands fluttered over her mouth.

‘Ketila,’ said Oinan sternly.

Putting one hand behind her back, she held out the other. Nish took it and she gave him a little shy smile that went all the way up to her eyes. It revealed perfect white teeth, and it quite transformed her. She must have been wearing something in her mouth to make them look so horrible. Perhaps the spots and the scars were fake too.

‘Teeth, Kettie!’ snapped Oinan.

‘They hurt, father,’ Ketila said, soft and pleading.

‘Oh, let her be,’ said the mother. ‘Have you no brains at all, husband? She can put them back if anyone comes.’

Tinketil boiled a tin mug of water over a handful of roots, cleaned Nish’s wounds and covered them with precious lard.

The parents said no more about Nish, nor spoke to him either. After a while Ketila and Fransi settled on the bracken against the far wall. Nish lay on his side facing the entrance. Oinan and Tinketil whispered to each other for a long while, a furious argument for all that they spoke so softly. Nish did not catch a word of it and finally he slept.

He was woken before dawn by a flickering light at the back of the hut. Tinketil was kneeling in front of Ketila, applying the spots to her face with a clump of hair glued into the split end of a twig. The smaller girl was still asleep. Oinan was not there.

Shortly he reappeared, carrying his dinner mug. ‘Hold out your hand, Cryl-Nish.’

Nish did as he was told and Oinan applied white powder to the back with a spoon, tracing out the pattern Colm had scratched the previous day. The mixture immediately began to burn and Nish had to grit his teeth.

‘It only takes a few minutes,’ the man said.

They were all staring at him. He wanted to weep with the pain, but they had gone through it and so could he. He counted down the seconds, then Oinan washed the quicklime off. It had taken most of the skin with it, leaving raw, weeping flesh.

‘You’re one of us now,’ said Oinan.

A gong sounded and everyone hurried to their workhouses. So the day passed, much as the previous one had, except that Nish now had to work. Like everyone else, he was required to assemble the clockwork mechanisms, and for all his years of artificing Nish proved the slowest of all.

Back in the hut that night, as Tinketil mended a shirt by the light of a pithy reed smeared with rancid fat, Nish became aware that Ketila was watching him, though every time he looked in her direction she glanced away. She had washed her face and tied back her hair. She was not as beautiful as Fransi, but she was charmingly fresh and lovely, and Nish liked her.

Six months ago he might have taken advantage of her, had the opportunity come, but he was a wiser and a less selfish man now. Nish was no saint, but he could see her yearning. Not for him, particularly, and certainly not for the kinds of fleshy grapplings he dreamed about. Ketila was becoming a woman and wanted to be seen as one, and to be taken seriously.

‘This land is so different from where I come from,’ he said.

‘Where do you come from, Cryl-Nish?’ Her back was pressed against the wall but Ketila inclined her head towards him. Her mother noted it and smiled.

Nish looked different from the other people in the camp; there was a mystery about him. He had flown into the camp hanging from a huge balloon, and he came from the other side of the world. He had an important father and a powerful master and Ketila knew, because Colm had told them, about his great deeds and heroic struggle with the nylatl. She had seen the tooth and claw marks in his leg, when Tinketil dressed the wounds. To her, he was not short, plain and lacking in a beard. He was fascinating, exotic, bold and brave. And he spoke to her as if she was important.

‘I was born in Fassafarn,’ said Nish, ‘which is almost as far as you can go east from here. It is the chief city of the province of Einunar, at the furthest end of the Great Mountains.’

‘What is it like there?’ she asked softly.

‘There are enormous mountains covered in snow all year round, and valleys so deep you can hardly see the bottom …’

‘I was born in Bannador,’ she said. ‘We also have big mountains.’

‘These ones are so big that when the wind blows they write their names in the sky, and the glaciers …’

‘What are glaciers, Cryl-Nish?’

‘Rivers of ice that flow down from ice caps half a thousand spans thick, grinding out the bottoms of mighty valleys and not stopping until they reach the sea. Sometimes they break into chunks of ice as big as islands and float across the ocean. Many a sailor has seen an iceberg loom up out of the foggy night and knows that his little ship was going straight to the bottom and he with it, never to see his wife and his darling daughters again.’