had been days later, and she had been listening to a group of Aachim argue bitterly. They were carrying her somewhere and had thought she was still unconscious. When was that? Ah! It had been after she’d collapsed from hauling constructs from Snizort to the node, using the amplimet. She struggled to recover the memories, but they were deeply submerged.
‘So it was you made the gate go wrong!’ Vithis was saying to Malien. ‘You tampered with it in Tirthrax. You hurled Inthis into the void to die.’
‘I did not,’ she said, so softly that Tiaan could barely hear her. ‘I was not aware of the gate until Tiaan came to me, days later.’
Tiaan’s memories were unfolding now. Tirior had taught Ghaenis how to use the amplimet. Tirior had been conspiring to get the crystal, so fatally attractive to her clan. Yes, when Tiaan ran through her earliest memories of the Aachim, long before the gate had been made, Tirior had always been there, her voice positively dripping with desire for it. And Tirior had taken Minis into Snizort, hoping he would be killed there, the last hope of Clan Inthis gone.
Vithis caught Malien, lifted her over his head and was about to hurl her bodily into the Well when Tiaan cried out, ‘Clan Nataz is behind your ruin, Vithis. Tirior has been conspiring to get the amplimet for her clan since the very moment I revealed that I had it.’
‘Clan Nataz?’ he said, lowering Malien but not letting her go.
‘Tirior taught Ghaenis how to use the amplimet,’ Tiaan went on desperately. ’She took Minis into Snizort, risking the life of the last survivor of your clan, in direct defiance of your orders. Think, Vithis. Think!
‘Which clan has been obsessed with amplimets since ancient times? Which clan covered up the disaster of the last one found on Aachan, a disaster that led inexorably to the ruin of your world?’ And now Tiaan was guessing, but the train of logic was running away with her and she was sure it was right. ‘And which clan leader stood beside you when the gate was opened, and was the only one who could possibly have tampered with it? It was tampered with, wasn’t it, Malien? You told me so a long time ago, for you checked the port-all after I first left Tirthrax in the thapter, and what you found disturbed you very much.’
Vithis set Malien on her feet. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘It was,’ she said, almost inaudibly. ‘Very cleverly – at the moment First Clan raced up into the gate. And then undone so that the other clans could pass through safely. It took me all night to discover what had been done.’
‘And was it Nataz? Was it Tirior?’
‘I couldn’t tell,’ said Malien.
‘Where is Tirior?’ said Nish.
She was nowhere to be seen. ‘She’s gone for the thapter,’ Tiaan yelled. ‘And the amplimet is inside. She’s got what she wanted.’
Vithis leapt right across the Well, which flared bright as if vexed it couldn’t consume him.
Before he had gone ten bounds, the thapter whined to life. ‘Not just the amplimet. She’s going to abandon us to the same fate as Inthis.’
Irisis bored easily and, despite the gravity with which Vithis sent his people to the Well, after interminable hours of it she’d had enough. She didn’t know them, nor him, nor even Malien all that well. Nish was preoccupied with the ceremony so Irisis seized a suitable moment to slip quietly away.
She walked on the jagged basalt for a while, and climbed a rocky spine to see how far she could see, but a dancing heat haze obscured everything in the distance. She perched behind the spine, in the shade, but the rock was too hot to sit on for long. Irisis headed back to the thapter for a drink from the water bag and discovered that, with the vents open, it was actually cooler than outside.
Not much, but at least she could sit down without roasting her backside. She found the coolest corner, settled back and, in the oppressive heat, drifted off to sleep.
The whine of the mechanism startled her awake. It was screaming, shaking the whole machine, and that wasn’t right. Malien had a delicate hand on the controller and never asked more of the mechanisms than was necessary.
Tiaan used it aggressively when she had to, though that was not often, for she flew thapters with an intuitive grace. Neither would she have abused it the way it was being treated at the moment.