Chimaera (14 page)

‘I expect so. He’s an extraordinary man, Nish.’

‘It makes all the difference having you with me,’ Nish said. ‘I don’t feel frightened any more.’

‘Nor should you, with me looking after you.’ She grinned.

‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘Anyway, you’ve got nothing to worry about, Nish. I know
you’re
going to survive the war.’

‘We’re both going to survive it, Irisis, and live to a grand old age, and be greatly honoured.’

‘I may well be honoured but I won’t be around to see it.’

Irisis was prone to making gloomy statements like that. She had a strong belief in her own mortality, and since Nish didn’t know what to say, he just squeezed her hand.

They were close to the edge now. ‘Careful here,’ she went on. ‘If that last cable burns through you’ll be over the side before you can pick your nose.’

‘I don’t pick –’ he began.

She gave a snort of laughter. ‘Oh, Nish, you’re so predictable.’

‘Did you predict I’d climb the ropes and set fire to the amphitheatre, just to save your wicked and worthless life?’ he said, nettled.

‘I knew you’d do something. I just didn’t see how it could work.’

‘It hasn’t yet,’ he reminded her.

‘It’s infinitely better than it was twenty minutes ago. I’ll happily die with you beside me.’

‘You might have put that better.’

Nish felt with his boot for one of the stay cables, cut a strip out of the canvas and used it to tie on. Irisis did the same.

‘Better hurry,’ she said, glancing up. ‘Once that lot reach the air-dreadnoughts they’ll cut us loose and go.’

He followed her gaze. Three nets and a basket jammed with people were being hauled up, jerk by jerk. Many other ropes dangled down through the mist. It was well into the afternoon now; surely no more than two hours to sunset. Ghorr must be getting worried.

Though there was just the gentlest of breezes here, higher up the wind was whistling through the rigging of the air-dreadnoughts, shaking them from side to side. Every jerk pulled on the cables, which groaned as they stretched and contracted. Somewhere, not far off, a man was moaning, the same shivery sound over and over.

Nish caught a sudden whiff of blood. ‘Let’s get on with it.’ He put his sword to the cable and began to saw back and forth.

The blade was sharp, but the tough fibres parted reluctantly. ‘It’s as if some other force is holding them against me,’ said Nish.

‘What twaddle,’ Irisis said good-naturedly. ‘You’re just making excuses. Give me a go.’

She took the blade and drew it back and forth a couple of times. One or two strands severed but the rest held. ‘Maybe you’re right; the air does have the tang of scrutator magic. Perhaps they’ve cast a glamour to strengthen the cables.’ She handed the sword back. ‘Go harder.’

He hacked away. A strand parted with a ping, curling out of the weave and running up the cable for half a span.

‘Pull me up, damn you!’ Ghorr’s cry came echoing down in a sudden silence.

‘His struggle with Fusshte goes on,’ said Nish. ‘Without it, I wouldn’t have had a chance.’

‘I suspect Yggur had a hand in that too,’ said Irisis.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He couldn’t do anything, bound and gagged as he was. But once we realised you were free I managed to rub the gag down from the corner of Yggur’s mouth with my shoulder, when the guards weren’t looking. He used his Art to strengthen the mist and create illusions that heightened Ghorr and Fusshte’s distrust of each other. It wasn’t much but it made a difference.’

Nish paused to wipe the sweat out of his eyes, and as he did, something moved in the mist to his left, further around the circumference of the deck.

‘What was that?’ he said out of the corner of his mouth.

Irisis glanced casually to her right, fingering the coil of barbed rope, her only weapon. ‘I can’t see anything. Keep going. You’ve hardly made an impression at all.’

‘I’m doing my best,’ he grunted.

‘Put the sword down and step away from the cable.’

The voice, which was vaguely familiar, came out of the mist. Nish was trying to work out who it could be when a very short man appeared, a handsome dwarf with a leonine mane of dark hair. His short cloak dragged on the deck and he walked with the lurching gait of a drunken sailor, for his left leg was supported by metal calipers. The dwarf’s hand was held out before him, the fist partly concealing a small brass object.

‘Scrutator Klarm,’ said Nish, giving a last hack before allowing the sword to fall to his side.

‘I have a knoblaggie in my hand,’ said Klarm. ‘I’d prefer not to waste it, but I will if you force me to. You’d never cut it anyway. Come with me, please. You too, Irisis Stirm,’ he said as she backed into the mist. ‘If you run, I’ll make Nish suffer for it.’

‘Run anyway,’ said Nish, casting a frantic glance at her. Irisis stayed put, as he’d known she would.

‘You know what they’ll do to us, Scrutator Klarm,’ said Nish. The dwarf scrutator was reputed to be a fair man.

‘The law is the law and you are traitors,’ said Klarm, ‘tried and convicted under the code of the scrutators. We can’t afford to be merciful, no matter how much we might wish it. And I do – you’re a brave man, Nish; a legend in the making. As for you, Irisis Stirm –’ he bowed in her direction and Klarm had such presence that it didn’t seem a ridiculous gesture ‘– I acknowledge both your courage and your loyalty. And I’ve always admired Xervish, but division at such a time must be fatal.’

‘Flydd cleaved to his oath even after the Council had cast him out and condemned him to slavery,’ said Nish. ‘Do you know what finally caused him to rebel?’

‘There’s no time – very well, be quick.’

‘It happened at Snizort, after my colossal stupidity put Tiaan into the hands of Vithis the Aachim. Ghorr demanded that my father prove his worthiness to be a scrutator by passing sentence on me for my folly. Or, as Ghorr saw it, my treachery. And father did. Jal-Nish condemned me to a brutal, shameful death, not to mention the knowledge that I would be expunged from our family Histories. Scrutator Ghorr was so pleased that he made my father a full scrutator on the spot.’

Nish met the dwarf’s eyes and went on. ‘When Flydd heard what he had done – and I remember his very words, for I’ve never seen him so shocked and disillusioned – Flydd said,
For the chief of scrutators to encourage such a deed, to demand it as proof of worth to become scrutator, shows that the Council is corrupt to the core
. At that very moment, Flydd repudiated his oath and swore that Ghorr had to be brought down, and the Council with him. And that he, Xervish Flydd, would devote the rest of his life to doing so. It was a moment I will never forget.’

It shook Klarm too. Nish saw it in his face. ‘Surely you knew that, surr?’ he went on.

‘I wasn’t there,’ said Klarm. ‘I knew only what I was told. I’m not a member of the Council, and the Council does not publicise its doings.’

‘But you do believe me?’

Klarm let out an age-weary sigh. ‘I can read men, Cryl-Nish. I know truth when I hear it. Nonetheless, this is the only council we have and the world can’t survive without it. Put down your blade, untether yourselves and come with me.’

Nish could no longer see the knoblaggie concealed in Klarm’s hand, and didn’t want to find out what it could do to them. Klarm might well be an honest man but he was as hard as any of the scrutators, and they didn’t bluff.

‘Pull me up
now
! You’ll pay for this, you fools.’ Ghorr’s voice was perfectly clear this time.

They all looked up but Yggur’s mist had come in again and Nish could only see the cables disappearing into brown.

‘That’s Ghorr!’ said Irisis. ‘I’ll never forget that voice if I live to be a hundred. It echoes in my nightmares.’

‘What congress have you had with the chief scrutator?’ said Klarm.

‘Not the kind you’re thinking of,’ she snapped. ‘He beat me black and bloody in Nennifer, a dozen times at least.’

‘Ghorr
beat
you?’ Klarm said incredulously.

‘He was too clever to let it show, but after each visit I couldn’t stand up for a day, or sit down. He inflicted all manner of excruciations on me and enjoyed every moment of them.’

Klarm frowned. ‘I –’

The mist parted up above as if Yggur had blown it away and Nish saw the remaining air-dreadnoughts straining at their cables like party balloons in a gale. They were swinging back and forth in the wind, their multiple airbags bouncing against each other and the rigging in mortal danger of tangling. Their motions jerked the cables and rippled the deck, and sent the ropes of the hanging chairs and baskets swinging in wild arcs.

‘There’s Ghorr,’ said Irisis. ‘They’re finally pulling him up.’ The chief scrutator was swaying in the air halfway between his air-dreadnought and the deck.

‘I wonder what the matter is?’ said Nish. ‘They started hauling him up ages ago.’

‘Get on with it, you fools!’ screamed Ghorr, his face purple with rage.

‘The windlass has jammed,’ said Irisis, who had exceptionally keen eyes. ‘Or broken. Looks as if they’re trying to move his rope to a hand winch.’

‘Surely they’d have to lower him first,’ said Nish, whose artificer training had taught him that much. He tried to see across to where Flangers was cutting the other cable but mist still clung to the deck.

‘You’d think so,’ said Klarm. The rope dropped sharply, whereupon Ghorr screamed at the operators. ‘But … he’s
afraid
!’

‘Afraid?’ Nish glanced down at the dwarf scrutator. There was a strange light in his eye. Revelation? Could they sway Klarm in so little time?

‘The chief scrutator has failed in front of the witnesses he was trying to impress.’ Klarm shook his head in disgust. ‘This whole spectacle – the attack on Fiz Gorgo, this marvellous amphitheatre, the trial and punishment – was designed for one purpose. To impress the artists, recorders, tale-tellers and witnesses with Ghorr’s power, reach and implacable resolve to extinguish all opposition. But he overreached himself and the failure only reveals his folly.’

‘The air-dreadnoughts had to be close together to hold up the amphitheatre,’ said Nish.

‘Which shows what a vainglorious notion it was. The Council advised him against the scheme,’ Klarm said quietly. ‘I suggested a less extravagant trial, but Ghorr had spent too long planning this spectacle and would not be dissuaded.’

‘Why didn’t he take us back to Nennifer or Lybing, for public trial?’

‘I cannot say. I –’ Klarm broke off as something else occurred to him. ‘Can Ghorr have been
afraid
of Flydd?’

‘Perhaps he was,’ said Irisis.

‘And now he’s failed in front of his own witnesses,’ Nish added. ‘And he knows the penalty for failing the Council.’

‘Not to mention losing his carefully constructed place in the Histories,’ said Irisis.

‘There’s nothing he can do about that,’ said Klarm.

‘Unless …’ Nish looked Klarm in the eye and knew that he’d reached the same conclusion. ‘Unless Ghorr should be the only one of the Council to return.’

‘He wouldn’t go that far,’ Klarm said unconvincingly. ‘Ghorr is a man who knows his duty.’

‘All the witnesses would have to die as well,’ said Nish.

‘Just the artists and recorders,’ said Irisis. ‘His own people from Nennifer won’t dare talk.’

High above, Ghorr’s rope had been looped over the side of the air-dreadnought while the artificers unwound it from the partly dismantled windlass. They fed the slack onto a hand windlass, which spun under the load, tearing the handles out of the attendants’ grasp. Ghorr dropped a couple of spans before being brought up with a tooth-snapping jerk. He squealed in fright, then roared at his officers to take personal charge. A pair of burly captains hurled the attendants out of the way, took hold of the winch and began to wind furiously. Ghorr rose into the windy zone, where a gust sent him swinging through a long arc. He yelled at his officers, who wound harder, but he swung the other way into the path of three witnesses who were being lifted in a rope basket from the other end of the air-dreadnought.

‘Get out of the way!’ he shouted, but they could do nothing to avoid him. Ghorr smashed into the basket, his chair began to spin, came back the other way, and the basket and chair whirled around and around each other as their ropes spun together.

The chief scrutator tried to rotate his rope chair the other way but it wouldn’t go. The amphitheatre gave a convulsive heave that snapped the cables as taut as wires and pulled Ghorr’s air-dreadnought down by a good span and a half. Nish, Irisis and Klarm were thrown to the canvas.

‘It’s going,’ Ghorr cried. ‘Pull me up, then cut the cable.’

Nish picked himself up. Ghorr’s captains were trying to heave the twisted ropes apart but they wouldn’t budge.

‘Cut them loose!’ said Ghorr.

A shiver went through everyone on the air-dreadnought, as well as the witnesses crowded on the amphitheatre. The officer in charge of Ghorr’s air-dreadnought drew himself up. ‘Those are the
recorders
, Chief Scrutator,’ he called frostily.

‘And doing their duty to the end,’ Irisis said softly. ‘Look, the blonde one is writing her record even now.’

Ghorr’s reply could not be heard, though his stance said it all. There would be a penalty for that defiance. He threw his cloak off, followed by the securing rope harness, and climbed onto the sides of his rope chair, which swayed dangerously back and forth.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Nish.

‘He’s trying to untangle it himself,’ said Scrutator Klarm. ‘It can’t be done one-handed. He’ll fall.’

Ghorr stood up, hooking his injured arm around the rope with a gasp of pain, and reached up.

‘He’ll never get enough leverage,’ said Klarm. ‘Not on a moving chair.’

The wind was whistling through the rigging of the air-dreadnoughts, whose sides were crowded with staring people. The witnesses on the amphitheatre deck were equally silent and still.

The twisted ropes, with their human cargo, began to swing like a pendulum. It had grown very cold. Ghorr reached up, again and again, and his hand went back and forth. He wasn’t trying to free the ropes – he was sawing at the rope holding up the recorder’s basket.