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