The greatest worry was Jal-Nish. The perquisitor’s shoulder and chest were already healing but his face had not. The rents were hideous, weeping wounds, so ghastly that no one could bear to look at him, least of all his son. Worse, Jal-Nish had caught a brain fever that made him rant, curse and attack whoever came near. Twice, after taking food to his father, Nish had to have the iron fingers prised from his throat. The perquisitor was surprisingly strong, considering the butchery that had been done on his shoulder.

Irisis was his main target. Sometimes Jal-Nish cursed her for hours without stopping, in a gurgling, pus-sodden voice. He blamed her for seducing his idiot son, for what she had done to Tiaan, but most of all for saving his life instead of letting him die.

Irisis seemed unaffected by the abuse. She took her turn changing his dressings until the day the weather turned and they were about to head for home. She limped up, carrying a mug of hot broth for Jal-Nish. He threw it in her face, knocked her off her crutches, and was about to grind his boot into her throat when Nish and Ky-Ara dragged him off.

‘Slutting bitch!’ Jal-Nish screamed. ‘You’re a liar and a fraud, Irisis. I’ll see you in the breeding factory when I get back. You’ll never be an artisan again.

He ranted and cursed, and kept it up for an hour until Ky-Ara, the only one able to get on with him, took him tea doped with nigah syrup. After that they kept him sedated twenty-four hours a day and his good arm was bound to his side.

Three weeks had passed since the battle at the ice houses, before they came in sight of the manufactory, and such labouring days they were in the bitterness of the mountain winter that many times Nish thought they would not get back at all. No one travelled up here at this time of year. Had the clanker not been so well built they would all have perished.

Finally they found their way back over the mountain through which the mine tunnels were delved and looked down to see the grey bulk of the manufactory on the other side of the valley. They had been gone for more than a month.

Irisis levered herself out of the back of the clanker. As Nish handed her the crutches there were tears in his eyes. Everyone stared down at the manufactory. The only one not glad to see it was Ky-Ara. He looked agitated, and though it was as cold as ever he was sweating and casting anxious glances at the querist.

‘Should not the furnace chimneys be smoking?’ Fyn-Mah said, coming up between them.

‘They must have gotten slack while the overseer’s been away,’ Nish replied lightly.

Fyn-Mah held a spyglass to her left eye. It moved slowly across the landscape, then the hand holding it fell to her side. ‘There’s not a chimney smoking anywhere. Not at the manufactory, the galleys, the laundries or dormitories, or even down at the mining village.’ Her voice cracked. Nish caught her eye and her self-control failed. ‘The lyrinx have come!’ Fyn-Mah looked as if she was going to cry. ‘All those children.’

‘Damned hypocrite!’ Irisis muttered.

‘Dangerous ground, artisan,’ said Fyn-Mah glacially.

Irisis yawned in her face. She did not seem to worry. ‘What do you care for the children? I don’t see any evidence of you doing your duty.’

Fyn-Mah crushed one fist into another, then pulled the tall woman to one side.

‘How dare you lecture me on duty, after the crimes you’ve committed?’

‘There is no bigger crime than preventing conception.’ Irisis quoted one of the many regulations that governed their lives.

Fyn-Mah went so cold that Nish, watching from some distance away, could scarcely bear to look.

‘I’m barren!’ she hissed. ‘I’ve been to eleven healers and none can do anything.’ She pressed her palms against her eyes. ‘All I ever wanted was children, and to be mocked by you … you …’ To Nish’s horror, she burst into tears.

Irisis was struck dumb. It was all perfectly clear now: the iron self-control, the impression that she was keeping the whole world at bay. And yet, she recalled, when the manufactory was attacked that first time, the querist’s first thought had been for the children.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Irisis.

Fyn-Mah did not react.

‘I am truly sorry,’ Irisis repeated. ‘How you must despise a cheat and liar like me.’

‘I don’t despise you,’ said Fyn-Mah. ‘I pity you, for you have everything and yet it’s worth nothing.’

Irisis might have done a lot of things, but in one of those rare impulses that turned everything upside down, she threw her arms around the querist and would not let go. After a while the smaller woman stopped struggling and buried her face in the artisan’s coat.

‘We’d better go carefully,’ said Rustina, ‘and be prepared for anything.’

They gathered stones for the catapult, storing them in the metal basket on top. Tuniz sat in the shooter’s seat. Nish climbed up beside her, armed with a spear and his short sword. They went down at normal pace, since the clatter of the clanker could not be disguised, rattled across the frozen stream and up the hillside towards the manufactory, skirting around the forest to meet the road higher up. They would not have much chance in the open, but none at all in a forest ambush.

The clanker thudded up the hill, turning onto the Tiksi road. The gates of the manufactory dangled from their hinges. There was more damage inside, as well as head-high drifts of snow, but no tracks.

‘Looks like it happened some time ago,’ said Tuniz. ‘That drift didn’t get here in a day.’

They went down the central walkway, weapons at the ready. Irisis, hobbling past the cold furnaces, peered in and shook her head. ‘They must have been out for at least a week.’

‘And they’ll be the very devil to get back into operation,’ said Tuniz. ‘This one has a load of iron set hard in the bottom. How are we going to get that out?’

They found no one, nor any great signs of violence inside. There were no bodies and the place had not been sacked or looted, though all the crystal was gone from the artisans’ workshops. Sitting in a courtyard out the back, where a meagre sun just managed to top the wall, they ate a dismal lunch.

‘It looks as if the place was attacked and everyone fled,’ said Nish. ‘Though all the lyrinx came for was the crystal.’

‘Or to put the place out of action,’ said Fyn-Mah, composed again.

‘I suppose you’re in charge here now,’ said Irisis to the querist.

‘I suppose I am. And I’m loath to abandon this place, since it’s the best mine and the best manufactory in this area, but we can’t stay here without a guard. We’ll head down to Tiksi, where I dare say we’ll find our workers and miners. I’ll see what’s happened and seek advice from the scrutator, if I can commandeer a skeet. And there,’ she lowered her voice, ‘we’ll have to do something about our operator.’

‘I don’t know that there’s any proof …’ Nish began. He looked up to see Ky-Ara hurrying out.

‘No proof is needed to put him where he can do no more harm!’ Fyn-Mah said savagely.

They were getting up when they heard the clanker rattling down the track.

‘What’s he doing?’ Fyn-Mah shouted.

Nish ran to the front gate. The machine was already out of sight. ‘He’s gone renegade,’ Irisis said, clacking towards him on her crutches. She began to laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ said Nish. ‘Now we’ve got to walk down to Tiksi.’

‘How else could this bloody fiasco of an expedition end?’ she snorted and, tucking the crutches under her arms, set off down the hill.

They went by the mine and the village. Both had been evacuated. The weather being good, they continued down the mountain and reached the gates of Tiksi at dusk. There they found scenes of confusion and chaos. Spikes were being installed on top of the city walls and a massive new gate constructed outside the old one.

‘That won’t keep lyrinx out for long,’ said Tuniz after they had gone through. She turned to stare at the stonework with a professional’s eye.