The tower shook and pieces of heat-scarred rock crumbled off the walls. ‘Try your talent again, Ullii. Can you see anything in your lattice now?’

She strained, rather obviously. ‘No.’ The word was just a breath. ‘Can’t see past it.’

‘Past what?’

She looked down at the floor. ‘Blocking me.’

Nish scratched his head. ‘Do you mean there’s something down there below us that’s stopping you seeing the lattice?’

‘Don’t know where it is. Could be anywhere.’

He sighed. ‘Perhaps you’d better give me the rope.’

After much trouble – for he had to swing back and forth along the rough stone of the tower and was worried that it would rasp through the rope – Nish caught the edge of an embrasure below the bend in the tower. The stone was warm to the touch. He pulled himself onto the ledge and peered in. He could see the ash-littered stairs and, if he craned his neck up to the left, the point where they were blocked with a glassy slag of melted rock.

They climbed in. Ullii cut off the remainder of the rope and coiled it over her shoulder.

‘We have to get up onto the outer wall without anyone seeing us,’ he said. ‘Though I don’t see how –’

Ullii pushed past him and trotted down to the ground floor, where she crept through the empty halls of Fiz Gorgo.

‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’ he said after they’d been wandering for a good ten minutes, apparently aimlessly.

Ullii didn’t deign to answer. Nish followed, more despairing with every step. Irisis’s time could already have run out. Now they were going up again, along a dark and narrow stair that Nish hadn’t known existed. Yggur hadn’t encouraged exploration of Fiz Gorgo. After several turns they entered an open chamber topped with a cupola made of copper crusted with verdigris. Ullii peered out and up. Nish joined her.

They were not far from the outer wall of Fiz Gorgo, a section bordered by swamp forest. Some ten spans to his right, one of the huge rope cables, thicker than Nish’s upper arm, anchored the amphitheatre to the wall. Forty or fifty spans to his left was another, and so they went all the way around the fortress. The cables ran vertically up to the floor of the amphitheatre, a good thirty spans above his head here, then continued to the circle of air-dreadnoughts even further above that.

‘Can you see anyone?’ he said.

Ullii shook her head. Nish stood edgewise at the opening and searched the walls. He couldn’t see a solitary guard, though that wasn’t surprising. Ghorr believed Fiz Gorgo to be empty, and the air-dreadnought guards would see anyone coming from Old Hripton a league before they could get here. There were no lyrinx in this part of Meldorin and, given their fear of water, no risk of an attack on foot through twenty leagues of swamp forest. The only risk was from the air, and the sixteenth air-dreadnought had been placed on high to keep watch.

‘I meant with your talent,’ said Nish. ‘Has it come back at all?’

She didn’t answer. Whatever Ullii was thinking, she didn’t want to share it with him. She hugged her little triumphs to herself, while problems simply made her close down. She was the most frustrating human being on the planet.

He moved away a couple of steps then glanced at her, covertly. The haggard, haunted look was gone. She did have the lattice back, he was sure of it. She just wasn’t going to tell him until it suited her.

‘What can you see, Ullii?’ he said ever so softly, trying to be no more than a whisper in her ear. It took all the self-control he had. He wanted to scream at her – my friends are being tortured up there. Your friends, too. Do something!

Again she pretended to strain, screwing up her eyes, clenching her jaw until the sinews of her neck stood out, knotting her little fists.

He wanted to slap her. Was she mocking him? But it was fruitless to go down that path, and it reminded Nish that he was as much to blame for her state of mind as anyone.

SIX

‘Tell me what’s wrong,’ Nish said, taking her in his arms.

‘No,’ she said, her voice muffled. She went rigid but made no attempt to pull away.

‘Where did the lattice come from, Ullii? It really is the most marvellous thing …’

‘I made it!’ she snapped. ‘It’s mine.’ Then, plaintively, ‘No one else can understand.’

‘Of course they can’t. There isn’t anyone like you in the world, Ullii. You’re unique.’ He wasn’t just cajoling or flattering her. She was unique.

She rubbed her cheek against his chest, not in any suggestive way, but as if it comforted her. In times past she wouldn’t have been able to bear the coarse cloth against her skin. Was she losing her sensitivity as well?

‘When did you make the lattice?’ he murmured to the top of her head.

‘When I was five. To look for Myllii.’

‘And now that he’s gone, you don’t need it any longer.’ Nish could have kicked himself as soon as the words left his mouth, but it was too late to take them back.

‘I don’t need it,’ she said wonderingly, then with resolve: ‘I don’t need the lattice any more. I know where Myllii and Yllii are.’ She pulled away and sat down, her back against the stone wall, staring into some inner space as if Nish didn’t matter either.

Nish knew she meant it. He’d been clinging to the hope that Ullii could somehow perform a miracle, as she’d done to break Irisis out of Nennifer, but it wasn’t going to happen.

He couldn’t take on hundreds of alert soldiers, all those watching mancers and the scrutators themselves, except by dying with his friends in a symbolic act of defiance. And that would only make the scrutators’ victory complete. If they didn’t get him, it would be one tiny flaw in their control of the world, he rationalised. He would devote his life to finishing the job Flydd had started – bringing the Council down.

But it wasn’t any comfort, and the thought of his friends’ approaching torment brought to mind those dying soldiers at Gumby Marth, begging Nish to put them out of their misery. He hadn’t been able to; he simply hadn’t had the courage, if you could call it that, to put a knife to their throats and end their suffering. Just so had his father begged for death after he’d been maimed by the lyrinx, and Nish had failed him too. He couldn’t bear to let his father go, monster though Jal-Nish had become – and look at the misery that failure had produced.

Nish couldn’t save his friends, but he might be able to give them a quick and merciful death, and spoil the scrutators’ victory. Would that be good for the morale of the common people, or a fatal blow in the endless war against the lyrinx? There was no way to tell. He could only try to make the best decision, and leave the world to fate.

Either way, it was something else he’d have to atone for, but it wouldn’t be another reckless folly. Recklessness had been burned out of him. He would coolly plan the deaths of his friends and weep for them afterwards. He would find the courage this time. But how was he to do it, and how much time did he have? He had to know what was going on in the amphitheatre.

Leaving Ullii to her inner contemplation, Nish fastened her rope to the opening, climbed down to the roof and scuttled across to the outer wall. Clots of mist drifted in the air but he could still be seen if an alert guard chanced to look down. Or if they realised he was missing.

Sooner or later, someone must discover that Nish was not among the prisoners, and Ghorr would send a squad into Fiz Gorgo to hunt for him. Nish knew he was, relatively speaking, a minor criminal. Nonetheless, his execution would serve as another lesson to all – not even the son of a scrutator was immune from the justice of the Council.