Tiaan took her mug to refill it at the barrel outside. On opening the door she was confronted by a dark, wiry man with an eagle beak of a nose. He threw out one arm as if to block her way. His hands were enormous, sinewy, though the rest of him was compact.

‘Overseer Gi-Had!’ She stepped back involuntarily. Though she had been expecting him, his sudden appearance came as a shock.

‘Artisan Tiaan, what progress have you to report?’ Gi-Had’s brows squirmed over those sunken eyes like a pair of hairy grubs. He had a wooden case in his other hand.

‘I –’ she turned back to her bench, where the hedron lay with its spread-out controller apparatus like a disassembled birthday toy. ‘I haven’t found the problem yet. They worked perfectly when I delivered them.’

‘Well, they don’t work now and soldiers are dying.’

‘I know that,’ she said softly, ‘but I can’t tell why. I’ve got to talk to one of the clanker operators.’

‘Ky-Ara is the only one still alive. He should be here tomorrow. He’s been putting a new controller into his clanker. He’s not happy!’

He wouldn’t be, Tiaan thought. The bond between operator and machine was intimate. To have a controller fail on him would be like losing a brother. To then train himself to the idiosyncrasies of a different controller would be gruelling, physically, mentally and emotionally.

‘What have you come up with?’ Gi-Had persisted.

‘There are … t-two possibilities. Either the crystals have invisible flaws or the field has somehow burnt them out …’ She broke off as a third, more alarming possibility occurred to her.

‘Or?’ grated Gi-Had. His heavy-lidded eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Or what, artisan?’

‘Or the enemy has found a way to disable the hedrons,’ she whispered.

‘Better hope they haven’t, or we’ll all end up in the belly of a lyrinx.’

‘I’m working as hard as I can.’

‘But are you working as smart as you can?’

‘I –’

‘I’ve got my orders. Now I’m passing them on to you. If you can’t do the job I’ll have to find someone who can, even if I have to bring them a hundred leagues. You’ve got a week to fix this problem, artisan.’

Opening the wooden case, he placed two controllers on her bench, next to the one she’d been working on. ‘Twenty soldiers died because these failed. Another three died recovering them. A week, Tiaan.’

‘And if I fail?’ she said slowly.

‘Have you given any thought to your other responsibility?’

She stared at him, white-faced. Tiaan could not think what he meant.

‘Your responsibility to mate!’ he said testily. ‘Your foreman spoke to you about it yesterday.’

Was every single person going to remind her of it? ‘N-not yet!’ she stammered. Just the thought of it made her heart race. ‘But I will soon, I promise.’

‘You’ve been saying that for three years, artisan. I’m sorry, but the scrutator is giving me hell and I can’t defend you any longer. If you can’t do your job, and you won’t do your duty –’

‘What?’ she cried.

‘I might have to send you to the breeding factory.’

TWO

It reminded Tiaan that she had not seen her mother for nearly a month. She did not look forward to it, but it was another sacred obligation. Besides, after Gi-Had’s threat she could hardly think straight so she might as well visit Marnie, who did not think at all.

‘I’m going down to Tiksi,’ she said to Nod at the gate. ‘To see my mother.’

This time he did not ask for her permission chit. ‘I hope you’re coming back, Tee?’ Nod tucked his beard into his belt anxiously, then took it out again.

Nod still held to the old view that men and women were equal, but not everyone did these days. In olden times a woman could do whatever she was capable of, the same as a man. However, the war had taken a heavy toll of humanity. The population was falling and, before anything else, fertile women were expected to breed. Tiaan’s mother was a champion. In twenty-one years she had produced fifteen healthy and surprisingly talented children.

Tiaan did not want to think about that. ‘I’ll be back, don’t worry.’ She buckled her coat, pulled a cloak around her and set off on the long walk down the mountain to Tiksi, thinking about Gi-Had’s words.

The scrutator of Einunar, the great province that included this land, was a shadowy figure, spymaster, head of the provincial secret marshals, adviser to and, word had it, power behind the governor. He was one of a dozen on the Council of Scrutators, which was said to run the affairs of the eastern world. No one knew how the council had come into being, or if it answered to a higher power. Certainly it knew too much ever to be disbanded. That was all she knew, and more than she cared to. No one wanted to come to the notice of the scrutator. Tiaan shivered and walked harder.

The manufactory lay in rugged Glynninar, a minor state of Einunar at the end of an eastern spur of the Great Mountains. That chain of unclimbable peaks ran from beyond Ha-Drow in the icy south, encircling Mirrilladell and Faralladell and disgorging glaciers to the points of the compass, then on to the tip of the fiord-bound peninsula of Einunar, a length of eight hundred leagues. Northward, a mountain chain almost as large ran up the eastern side of the continent of Lauralin to fabled, wealthy and gloriously subtropical Crandor.

With a sigh at the thought of warmth, she trudged on. This was poor, granitic country, no good for anything but growing trees. From spring to autumn it drizzled, when it was not pouring. Cold mists sprang up from nowhere overnight, while the rare warm days ended in clinging fogs that blew up the range from the sea. From autumn to spring it froze – gales, snow and sleet for week after week.

She passed quite a few people on the track, for Tiksi supplied most of the manufactory’s needs. Though Tiaan knew many of the travellers she did not stop to chat. No one had time these days. The best anyone got was a friendly hello, the worst a curt nod. The land bred dour folk hereabouts; the war had made them even more taciturn.

Tiaan was shy and uncomfortable with people. She found it hard to make friends, for she never knew what to say and felt that people judged her, not for what she was, but because she had no father and had been born in the breeding factory. Not all the propaganda of the war could erase that stain, least of all from her own mind. She felt alone in the world.

It began to drizzle. After an hour or two Tiaan sat down, just for a minute. Any longer and the cold would creep into flesh and bones. She contemplated the sombre pines, wreathed in moss and trailing lichens that stood out like banners in the wind. They had a certain stark beauty. Taking up a piece of decaying granite, she crumbled it in her fingers, allowing the grains to spill onto the slush of last night’s snow. Better go. No point putting it off.

Another hour and more passed before Tiksi began to emerge from the grey, a collection of tall but narrow buildings capped by yellow tiled roofs. The doors and window frames were faded blue. Everyone thought alike in Tiksi. With twenty thousand inhabitants, it was the largest city for a hundred leagues.

Even from here she could pick out the breeding factory. The official name was The Mothers’ Palace, but ‘the breeding factory’ was what everyone called it, and the others like it that had sprung up along the coast over the past thirty years. Its yellow stone walls contrasted sharply with the dingy grey of the surrounding buildings. In a hard world it was supposed to symbolise reward for a job well done, the most important work of all. For Tiaan, who had lived there until she was six, the place had a rather different meaning. It epitomised a world that was trying to take away her rights.