I’m delighted to be rescued from her. What can I do for you, Tiaan?’
‘It’s nothing really,’ she said. ‘It’s just that, I’m worried about my mother … Of course you wouldn’t know her, but she lives in Tiksi …’
‘Marnie Liise-Mar,’ he said. ‘The star of the breeding factory. Of course I know her.’
‘You know my mother?’
‘When I was scrutator for Einunar, which I still feel myself to be, morally, I tried to know about everyone important in my realm.’
‘Oh.’ She could not imagine why her mother would be considered important. There were many breeding factories. ‘Is Tiksi …?’
‘I had news in Fadd, and all was well then, so they’re safe until spring. Tiksi was besieged three times over the last year, and much damage done, but they’ve repulsed several attacks since. Ah …’ He gave her a keen glance from under his continuous eyebrow, now grown back to brown bristles that stuck straight out. ‘In the first attack the breeding factory was burned to the ground.’
Tiaan gave a little cry. ‘Oh, poor Marnie.’
‘I was there soon afterwards in an air-floater. It wasn’t long after you left Tirthrax in the thapter, the first time. As I recall, the women of the breeding factory had been evacuated, and all were accounted for.’
‘Marnie spent her whole adult life there,’ said Tiaan. ‘It was her life. What will she do?’
‘I’m sure it’s been rebuilt. It’s vital work, breeding, and I dare say she’s back at it.’
‘She may be past it by now.’
Again Flydd smiled, and even touched her on the shoulder. He didn’t seem quite as fearsome after all. ‘Then she’ll be having an honoured retirement. Marnie is, after all, one of the richest people in Tiksi. Excuse me, I’d better get back to the governor.’
‘There you are,’ said Malien. ‘I’m sure she’s perfectly all right.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Tiaan. ‘Marnie always did know how to look after herself.’
She wondered, momentarily, if she dared ask the scrutator about the bloodline register, a human stud book she’d seen in the breeding factory the night of her escape. Tiaan decided not to. Scrutators didn’t appreciate people prying into their secrets.
THIRTY-NINE
In another tedious meeting that afternoon, Tiaan found herself involuntarily stroking Golias’s globe. Taking it out of her bag, she surreptitiously inspected it under the table.
The inner spheres revolved with the slightest movement, as if bathed in oil. She squinted at them, trying to see how many there were. One, two, three, four, five … six, seven. She shook the globe and something moved in the depths. Eight – in Gilhaelith’s mathemancy, a perfect number.
She shied away from the thought of Gilhaelith. They’d been more than friends at the end of her time in Nyriandiol, but he’d not been able to take the next step. He couldn’t overcome his troubled past, and in the end greed for the amplimet had outweighed his regard for her. She still felt the betrayal, and Ghorr’s attack on Fiz Gorgo suggested that Gilhaelith made a habit of betrayal. Damn him. She dismissed him from her mind.
Each layer of the globe was different. The outer one was clear glass with, here and there, a few faint swirls of smoky grey, like wispy clouds in a clear sky. The next layer was also clear except for faint lines running around it that shone like silver metal.
The globe was very heavy, heavier than it should be if it were just made of glass. The third layer was faintly swirled with blue, embedded in which was a red band. Copper, she presumed.
Someone cleared their throat and Tiaan looked up. Malien was glaring at her. Tiaan put an attentive look on her face until Malien turned back to the governor, who was still droning on about clasped hands across the world and other such nonsense. It was what people did that counted, not what they said.
The device was a puzzle and Tiaan loved solving puzzles. It drew her in. Each of the succeeding layers was different, but all were combinations of clear, patterned or engraved glass which had been banded, woven or partly masked with metals of different kinds. The outer layers covered so much of the inner ones that she could see virtually nothing of the seventh and eighth layers, at least in this light. And what lay at its core?
A crystal that could draw power from the field? Or one charged by its maker before it had been put into the farspeaker an aeon ago? If charged, its power must have faded long ago,