‘No, Nish.’ She picked him up in her arms and headed for the air-dreadnought as fast as she could go.
Nish looked back. It would be a near thing. The soldiers were recovering rapidly, running now. He looked for help at the air-dreadnought, but Klarm had just cast his useless crystal on the ground and the others weren’t armed. Jal-Nish’s guards had cut down Klarm’s soldiers, and now the air-dreadnought began to lift at the stern.
‘Put me down, Irisis. Please.’
She glanced over her shoulder and tried to run harder, but before they were even close to the air-dreadnought, the guards had their swords at Irisis’s throat.
She clung to Nish’s neck for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Ah, Irisis,’ he wept. ‘Why did you come back? He hates you more than anyone.’
‘Because you’re my dearest friend, Nish,’ she said simply, ‘and I love you as I’ve never loved anyone before. I couldn’t leave you, even at the cost of my life.’
The air-dreadnought rose into the air, turned away and disappeared over the trees.
The guards tied Nish and Irisis’s hands and dragged them back to the middle of the square, where Jal-Nish still swayed inside his protective barrier. He had forced the mask back on over his swollen, raw cheeks. Blood formed congealed drops on his chin. Quicksilver had puddled at his feet and its vapour drifted around the inside of the barrier. He pried his eye open and fixed on Irisis.
‘Put her there,’ he slurred through lips that were bursting apart.
Jal-Nish pointed to the glassy patch on the ground, no longer molten but still hot. They stood her on it.
‘Irisis Stirm,’ said Jal-Nish, allowing the barrier to fade away. ‘Two years I’ve waited for this day.’
‘I’ll bet you have – I know your kind all too well,’ she said with an arrogant lift of her chin.
‘And I know yours. The world was a better place when women knew their place in it. Cryl-Nish’s mother taught me that lesson. She only wanted me for what I had, and once I became this maimed monster, in the service of my world, she cast me out.’
‘You were a monster long before Ryll put his claws in you,’ said Irisis.
‘And you were a liar, a cheat and a fraud, as the record of your trial at the manufactory shows only too well. For fifteen years you’ve been an artisan under false pretences, an offence punishable by death.’
‘I recovered my powers long ago. Besides, the war is over, Jal-Nish. It doesn’t matter any more.’
‘The war is only just beginning, and the first stage is to rid the world of those who betrayed it: you and Tiaan most of all. You destroyed my life, though that matters not. You conspired to save the debauched, depraved, flesh-forming lyrinx, the greatest abominations this world has ever seen. You cozened and coddled and yes, maybe even mated with them –’
‘You’re sick, Jal-Nish. You’re mad.’
‘You set the lyrinx free!’ he screamed. ‘You gave them a world of their own, and one day they’ll be back. For that alone you must die. Beg and grovel all you like –’
Smoke was rising from Irisis’s boots but she did not flinch. ‘Then die I will,’ she said calmly, ‘but it won’t make a jot of difference.’
‘Oh, I think it will,’ he hissed.
‘I go to my death knowing that I’ve fought for what was right and good,’ she said. ‘Whereas you, Jal-Nish, if you live to be a hundred, will always know that you gambled with the lives of your soldiers, lost, then ran like a cur from the battlefield. That’s the kind of man you are, and the Histories will tell of it long after my name is forgotten.’
How Irisis had grown from the petty, mean-spirited woman Nish had once known. She was entirely selfless and noble now, and it threw Jal-Nish’s character into sharp relief.
He knew it, too. He could not meet her eyes for the moment, but then he said, ‘The means is justification enough. I’ve won the world, and he who owns the world writes the Histories.’
‘May you have joy of your victory, you craven dog! I’d sooner die than live in a world of your shaping.’
‘And die you will. The greatest pleasure of victory is revenge, and mine will be unending. Guards!’
The guards dragged Irisis to her knees. Her yellow hair hung over her face, but she tossed her head and looked Jal-Nish in the eye, defiant to the last. To Nish she was the most beautiful sight in