you’ll be an old man …’ He looked up at the sky. ‘What’s that? Irisis, you’ve got the best eyes here.’
She stood up, shading her eyes with her left hand. ‘It looks like an air-dreadnought, though with three airbags instead of five. A big flat one, and two smaller ones underneath.’
A cloud passed in front of the sun and the breeze bit into Tiaan’s bare arms, reminding her that winter, even this far north, was not far away.
‘I wonder who it could be?’ said Nish.
‘More governors coming to carve up the world, now we’ve won it for them,’ said Flydd, again with that hint of bitterness. ‘The news went out by farspeaker as soon as the lyrinx began to go through the gate. They’ll be going to the conclave on the other side of town.’ He filled his mug again and they took up their cutlery.
But Flydd was wrong. The air-dreadnought came up slowly and began to circle the square. Tiaan laid down her fork. The craft was huge, nearly twice the size of the air-dreadnoughts that had attacked Fiz Gorgo. Its airbags came to triple points at the front and were painted vermilion with threatening jags of black. The suspended vessel had triple rotors at its broad, rectangular stern, each more than two spans across.
‘What a racket,’ said Nish, putting his hands over his ears as it turned ponderously into the wind. The rotors made a squealing clatter that grated on the nerves.
‘There’s no badge or insignia,’ said Flydd, putting down his mug. ‘But it came from the north-east.’
Soldiers lined the sides, dressed in the same red with black jags. It was not a uniform that anyone recognised. Red helms covered their heads, the nosepieces extending down to their upper lips.
The air-dreadnought settled in an empty space on the far side of the square, its triple keels crunching on the gravel. The rotors squealed into silence. A board was lowered, like the gangplank of a ship. Everyone was staring now.
A file of soldiers marched down and stood to one side. Each was armed with a crossbow of extravagant design, and a long sword. Another file took their position on the other side.
Tiaan rose to her feet, trying to see. The plank was empty. No, someone now appeared at the top. A man, though not a tall one. He too was masked and clad in red, with a red cape. A golden chain was suspended from the back of his neck, the ends passing over his shoulders. On either end, at breast height, dangled a bag of black silk or velvet.
The man paused at the base of the plank, nodded to the guards and turned across the square. They fell in behind him.
Xervish Flydd dropped his knife. Irisis had gone white. Nish’s hair was standing on end. He looked as if he had just seen the dead rise. He ran out into the open.
‘Father?’
The man turned towards him and the sun flashed off the platinum mask that covered two-thirds of his face. He had only one arm.
‘I thought you were dead, Father,’ Nish said. ‘And eaten.’
‘I dare say you hoped I was,’ said Jal-Nish Hlar.
Xervish Flydd lurched around the left-hand end of the table, trying to look self-possessed but not quite pulling it off. ‘Quite a plan, Jal-Nish. Even I was fooled.’
Jal-Nish stopped twenty paces away. ‘Not the most difficult of tasks, Xervish.’
‘Only my friends call me Xervish.’
‘You’ve told me that before.’
‘And I dare say those are the tears of the node that exploded at Snizort. The lyrinx didn’t have them at all.’
Jal-Nish touched the black bags, which were giving off a humming sound, and it rose in pitch. ‘Do you hear the song of the tears? I don’t bother with the paltry fields – I carry the power of a node with me wherever I go.’
‘It was you who brought down Vithis’s watch-tower,’ said Nish.
‘I needed to test the power of the tears,’ said his father, as if no other explanation was necessary. But then he added, the visible part of his jaw tightening, ‘The Aachim had no right to come here.’
‘And you who flooded the Dry Sea.’
‘To drown the enemy. Would that I had made up for your negligence sooner, Flydd. You trapped the enemy and failed to crush them.’
‘And you directed the Well at us,’ said Nish.
Jal-Nish waved a careless hand, as if none of these staggering achievements were of significance to a man who had mastered the tears.