on it,’ said Flydd. ‘Why don’t you go now? Oh, if I could have the field map before you go, Tiaan,’ he said pointedly, so the whole room could hear.
‘I lost it,’ she said at once. ‘Out in the Dry Sea.’
‘Lost it?’
‘I think Tirior must have taken it, before she was sent to the Well,’ Tiaan said hastily. ‘It’s ironic, really, since the Well feeds on fields and nodes, that it should have consumed my map.’
Flydd eyed her sceptically. ‘Well, I dare say I can get enough out of the field controller with the incomplete one.’
‘If you’re going to check on the Well,’ said Gilhaelith quickly, ‘I’d like to come too.’
Flydd followed them outside and spoke quietly with Malien for a minute or two, before going back towards the banquet tent, but then he stopped halfway. ‘Incidentally, Tiaan,’ he called, ‘you should ask Gilhaelith to explain the art of deception.’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Tiaan said, once Flydd had returned to the tent.
Gilhaelith chuckled. ‘The best liars keep their stories simple and keep saying the same thing. At all costs, resist the urge to embroider.’
Malien and Gilhaelith headed for the thapter, the others to their tents to change their filthy clothes. When they were alone, Gilhaelith said, ‘I wonder if you might use your good offices to recover my geomantic globe. Now that the war is over, Flydd has no need to hold it, and it would be a comfort to me.’
Malien considered the request, as if judging whether he was practising the art of deception on her. ‘And you could use it to repair your injuries.’
‘The damage is no longer reparable. But even so, I’d like to have it by me. It was my life’s work, and it’s a thing of beauty that comforts me.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ she said. Malien looked him up and down. ‘You’re a contradictory fellow, Gilhaelith. You brought the lyrinx here to exact revenge on them, and you’ve just argued for their preservation.’
‘So I did,’ said Gilhaelith. ‘But the brutalities of war, and my own mortality, have rendered revenge meaningless.’
‘You can’t lie to me, you know. I read men – even geomancers – the way you read books.’
‘I wouldn’t try. I’d never seen war before, Malien, and I had no idea of the horror of it – bodies torn apart, heads ripped off, thousands dying in agony because some fool ordered them to fight. And to think I put it all in motion.’
‘This battle was coming anyway,’ said Malien. She wasn’t trying to comfort him. ‘But I do believe we’re of a mind.’
‘What I’ve done has made my life more meaningless than ever, and I’m beginning to see only one way out. To take my life before I lose my mind.’
‘There could be another way to give your life the meaning you crave.’
‘How?’ he said indifferently.
‘By helping to undo what you’ve brought about.’
‘It’s gone too far; there’s no way to resolve it.’
‘There may be. Let’s get your globe. Do you know where it is?’
‘In the guarded tent next to the relics from the tar pits.’
‘I’ll take the thapter across while we wait for the others. No one would suspect me. And, Gilhaelith, perhaps you can do something for me …’
Tiaan was pacing across the crunchy salt on the other side of the thapter when Malien came walking towards her. ‘Is something the matter, Tiaan?’
‘I can’t bear to think about what they’re doing,’ said Tiaan in a low voice. She kicked a lump of salt out of the way as if it were Orgestre’s head.
‘They’re afraid, and they see it as a simple answer, though there are none.’
‘I can think of one,’ Tiaan said savagely. ‘If I had the power, I’d destroy all the nodes on Santhenar.’
‘That would be the death of all the Arts,’ said Malien mildly. ‘The good as well as the bad.’
‘If the world keeps on the way it’s going, building ever more powerful devices and taking more and more to operate them, the Art will be the death of Santhenar. Humanity was never meant to have such power, Malien. Look what we’ve done to our world during the brief course of this war, and that’s nothing to what we will do.’
‘Whether our powers are great or small, good and evil apply in the same measure. And if you succeeded, and survived it, what then?’
Tiaan hadn’t thought about that. ‘I suppose I’d just live a simple life without the Art, like everyone else.’
Malien sighed. ‘If only it were that simple. Getting rid