‘How could you have forgotten that?’ said Nish.

‘I took out the parts that allowed it to fly. It was just another construct then. The original machine might still be there,’ Tiaan ruminated. ‘It was well hidden among rocks and scrub, on a barren hill. There’s no reason why anyone would climb up it. And with one of your assemblies, Irisis, it could be made to fly. Let’s go and see.’

They took the best of the remaining pilots with them, just in case. The construct turned out to be exactly where Tiaan had left it, covered in dust and a layer of leaves, untouched. An hour later they were flying it back.

‘That’s five,’ said Nish. ‘I’m the happiest man in the world. Let’s go home.’

FORTY-SIX

After the air-floater returned with the initial bad news, Yggur and Flydd had been in despair, which redoubled when Tiaan failed to return from her own mission. They held an anxious meeting, and another the following day when there was still no sign of anyone. They were sitting gloomily by the fire when Fyn-Mah came running with the news that a thapter had been sighted, flying slowly and erratically.

Yggur ran all the way along the long hall to the front doors and threw them open. Flydd came scuttling after him. As they went down onto the steps, a thapter wobbled in, to thump onto the paving stones.

‘That’s definitely Tiaan’s,’ said Yggur. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

The hatch was pushed open and Kattiloe’s head appeared, beaming to split her face in two. ‘I did it!’ she cried, capering about dangerously on top of the machine.

‘Report, if you please,’ said Yggur sternly, though it was undermined by the delight he couldn’t suppress.

Before she could jump down they heard the scream of a second thapter travelling at high speed. It shot across the yard and, with reckless insouciance, carved an ascending spiral around one of the horned towers, a descending spiral around the next, then hurtled towards the front door. Yggur and Flydd ducked as it banked sharply just over their heads, spun in a circle and dropped neatly to the paving stones beside the first, so lightly that it would not have crushed a feather.

‘Who the devil is that?’ cried Yggur.

Two guards staggered down the ladder, ashen-faced and holding their bellies. Then Chissmoul, so quiet and shy that few people had ever heard her speak, sprang up onto the open hatch, laughing like a drain. Catching sight of the astonished mancers she broke off at once, though she didn’t look repentant.

Soon two more thapters were scattered across the yard, these rather untidily. The fourth, flown by Kimli, had almost taken off Yggur’s first-floor balcony as it came in. Yggur was grinning broadly now, though he could not relax yet. Finally, a few minutes later, a fifth thapter appeared, shepherding the sixth –Tiaan’s battered machine – though it was evident that she wasn’t flying it. They landed in the middle and Tiaan waved. She had elected to fly the faulty one.

‘The air-floaters are on their way,’ said Nish, springing out after her and grinning as if he’d just won the war by himself. ‘I’m sorry that we only managed five thapters, surr, but we did it without the loss of a single man or woman.’

Yggur was so overcome that he embraced Nish, and then the lot of them, even Chissmoul. There was something suspiciously like moisture in the corner of one eye, though he pretended it was a piece of grit. ‘After the bad news, I would have been happy to see a single thapter,’ he said. ‘This is more than I could have hoped for.’

Tiaan came up beside him. ‘How about you, dear Tiaan?’ Yggur said quietly. ‘Did you get what you went for?’

‘It’s down below, in the lead casket.’

‘Splendid. Leave it there; we’ll retrieve it after dark. And then, I think, the first banquet Fiz Gorgo has seen in a thousand years.’

Nish was hovering, just down the hall. ‘Could I ask a favour?’ he said.

‘Just name it,’ smiled Yggur.

‘It’s Pilot Inouye. She hasn’t seen her little children in a year, and she’s in despair. Could we send her home now? We don’t need her air-floater any more.’

‘Of course,’ said Yggur. ‘She’s served us faithfully and well, and we can do no less for her.’

It was worth all the pain and trouble of the past months to see the look on Inouye’s face when Nish gave her the news.

The next few weeks passed swiftly. Tiaan was away with Malien for most of the time, completing her node survey of Meldorin and subsequently the part of Lauralin lying between the Sea of Thurkad, the Karama Malama and the Great Chain of Lakes.

Flydd raced east in Kattiloe’s thapter, taking two of her sister pilots as well, so as to fly day and night. He’d gone to the manufactory to collect the ten farspeaking globes and hundred slave units ordered from Tuniz, and to order many more. He planned to take half to allies in the east, then bring the remaining sets home for the imminent spring offensive. He returned a fortnight later to be confronted with another problem. The farspeakers did not send as far as Golias’s globe, and were much less reliable. After conferring with Yggur and Irisis, he sent her back to the manufactory to sort out the problem.

And in practice, even Golias’s globe proved not to be quite the panacea Flydd had expected. There were limits to how far a message could be sent, though they varied all the time. One day the governor might be contacted in Lybing, the next Flydd could have trouble speaking to someone as close as Old Hripton. And messages could rarely be directly to farspeakers as far away as Tiksi or Roros. To speak to people at such a distance the message might have to be relayed several times, but often it did not get through at all.

On the first day of spring, Yggur began to mutter about Klarm’s absence. They were waiting for him to return with the latest intelligence so that the offensive could be planned. He was well overdue and they were beginning to fear that he’d been taken by the lyrinx, which would have been a disaster. Klarm knew too much and, tough though he was, the enemy had ways of extracting the truth from anyone.

He arrived with a bang at lunchtime the following day, the air-floater coming in so quickly that it scraped varnish off its keel going over the wall, before skidding across the paving stones between the sheds and piles of timber.

Nish looked up from the thapter mechanism his artificers were repairing, said, ‘Keep at it, you’re doing well,’ and wiped his greasy hands.

Klarm was over the side before it stopped, taking the steps three at a time and crashing through the front door. Nish followed.

‘I’ve got it!’ Klarm shouted up the hall.

‘Got what?’ said Yggur, emerging from his office polishing Golias’s globe with a scrap of airbag silk.

‘I’ve discovered where the lyrinx from Snizort and Gumby Marth have been hiding all this time. The ones who didn’t fly back to Meldorin.’

‘Come in here and tell me about it.’ Yggur took the little man by the arm and began to steer him into his workroom. ‘And you can start by telling us where the blazes you’ve been. You should have been back weeks ago.’

‘Not in there. We’d all like to hear the news,’ said Flydd, hurrying up the hall with his hands still dripping from the washtub. ‘Nish, would you call everyone together?’

Nish collected Flangers, Fyn-Mah and Merryl. Tiaan and Malien were away, mapping, and Irisis was still in the east. They assembled in the dining hall, neutral territory as it were, and Klarm began.

‘We’ve always wondered where the bulk of the lyrinx army went after the battles of Snizort and Gumby Marth. Most of the fliers returned to Oellyll but the others disappeared, as did the armies that had been terrorising Taltid and Almadin since the spring. They simply vanished at the beginning of winter. It was thought that they’d taken ship back to Meldorin, though we could find little evidence for it. I now know that they did not.’