The Devoured Earth (27 page)

‘Orma!’ Treya called.

The teenager crawled out of a hole in the machine’s side. His face was smudged black. ‘Yes, Treya?’

‘You thought he could help,’ she said, indicating Skender. ‘Now tell me why.’

‘Because he’s not from here,’ said the boy, wiping his hands and coming forward. His face revealed no sign of duplicity but his eyes were desperate. ‘If we can’t fix the pump, then someone else must. If not him, who?’

‘I’m happy to take a look,’ Skender told Treya, quite sincerely. ‘You don’t have to give me any tools yet, so there’s no damage I could possibly do. Of course it would help,’ he added, ‘if you told me what this thing did.’

‘You can’t tell by looking at it?’

‘Well, Orma did call it a pump so that gives me some idea. But a pump of air, water, oil, or what? From and to where?’

‘Water,’ Treya allowed him, ‘from the other side of the wall into the lake.’

‘
Into
the lake, huh? I’d have thought it full enough already.’

‘You don’t need to know any more. Take a look or go back to your friend.’

Skender shrugged and did as he was told, slipping out of his robes, feeling conscious of the hostile stares of the Ice Eaters watching him. The pump loomed over him as he approached the hatch from which Orma had emerged. Perfectly square and as wide across as his shoulders, it allowed access to the inner workings of the mighty machine. He nervously stuck his head inside and looked around. It wasn’t as dark as he had feared. Tiny crystal-lights glowed in corners, casting multiple sharp-edged shadows everywhere.

Someone pushed his back, and he stepped fully inside. There was a surprisingly large amount of room. Everything was metal and glass, with no wood or bone at all. It was definitely old — perhaps as old as the Cataclysm itself — but perfectly preserved. Screws were oiled and shining in the light; levers waited patiently to be pulled; glass dials gleamed, clean and perfectly transparent. A bank of switches, each labelled a different colour, hung in up or down positions.

What any of it meant, Skender had no idea.

‘Well?’ called Treya after him.

Tempted though he was to flick switches at random and thereby sabotage the Ice Eaters’ plans even further, he decided to do nothing at all.

‘It’s quite beyond me, I’m afraid,’ he said, backing out of the hatch and into the relatively bright light, ‘but it all looks in perfect working order. If the problem isn’t in here, I’d guess you have a blockage on your hands. Is there a way of checking the pipes?’

Treya looked unimpressed by his suggestion. ‘Of course there is. It involves sending someone skinny down them. Are you volunteering?’

‘It’s not my problem,’ he said, hoping she wasn’t about to make it his problem. ‘If you won’t tell me what you’re trying to do with this thing, there’s not much else I can offer you.’

‘Ordinarily there wouldn’t be a problem,’ said Orma, tapping a wrench against his leg. ‘When the lake was frozen, the most we ever had to deal with was a bit of a trickle, but now the lake has melted and the tunnel is completely flooded —’

‘Orma.’ Treya silenced him with a look. ‘A machine is a machine. It works or it doesn’t.’

‘Not if there’s a lot of silt in the water,’ said Skender, ‘or even solid debris. What sort of tunnel are we talking about, exactly? If it goes under the lake, it could have had all sorts of junk flushed along it. That’d be what’s blocking your pipe inlets. The only way to clear it would be to do it by hand.’

‘But we can’t go in there while the tunnel is flooded,’ Orma said, ignoring Treya’s warning. ‘You see our dilemma.’

‘Could it be as simple as reversing the flow?’ Skender suggested. ‘Blow the water back through the pipes for a bit to clear the blockage, then try sucking again. That might help.’

Treya was growing visibly impatient. ‘You’re no help at all.’

‘What you need is someone good with water,’ he said, deciding to play the only card he had left. ‘You know who’s good with water? Sky Wardens. Even better are Sky Warden Engineers.’

‘Is there one in your party?’ Treya’s eyes became tight and narrow like flint axe heads.

‘Do you think I’d be so stupid as to tell you if there were?’ He folded his arms. Both Warden Banner and Tom were qualified Engineers but he wasn’t going to put their names forward to be captured by anyone. ‘You know, you could try asking for help instead of kidnapping people at random. The results might surprise you.’

‘I will not parley with people who plan to violate the Tomb,’ she said, taking his shoulder and turning him around. ‘You will go back to your friend and wait. Your fate will be decided soon.’

That didn’t sound encouraging. ‘We’re honestly here to help, not to hurt you or your precious Tomb. Why don’t you believe me?’

‘Because the word of one of your own tells me otherwise.’ She shoved him in the back. ‘Move.’

Skender shrugged back into his robe and let himself be pushed back into the veil of darkness that protected the wall and its machinery from view. He tried not to let the situation get to him. He had, at least, learned something — that the Ice Eaters were trying to pump water out of a tunnel that had been flooded by the melting of the lake. More puzzling was why Treya thought that Marmion and the others wanted to damage the Tomb. As far as he was aware, that possibility had never crossed anyone’s mind. Until the previous day, they hadn’t even known it existed — so how could the Ice Eaters possibly level such an accusation at them and expect it to stick? Who could have done something so stupid?

The answer leaned against a wall next to Kelloman’s narrow cot, tapping her cane against the cold, hard ground. Shilly looked up as he approached and he saw such a terrible hopelessness in her eyes that all his joy at seeing her evaporated, and he had to fight a powerful urge to turn and run back into the shadows.

* * * *

‘What did you tell them?’ Skender asked her. ‘What on Earth have you said?’

The accusation in his tone almost made her cry. ‘The truth. And it’s nice to see you, too.’

‘But don’t you realise what you’ve done? Bad enough that your stunt with the balloon has left us stranded here, easy picking for this mad mob and their delusions of grandeur. Now you’ve turned them completely against us by spinning some nonsense about wanting to damage the Tomb!’ The guards scowled and the woman who had brought Skender out of the darkness looked as though she was about to object. He ignored them and ploughed right on. ‘The Goddess only knows how we’re going to sort this mess out before Yod breaks loose and eats us all. Nice one, Shilly. Nice one.’

She had never seen her old friend like this before. He could be irritable and tetchy, but never so outspokenly upset. That he was obviously tired didn’t help, nor that he was surely worried about Chu. Shilly was tired too, and the grief of her older self, for Sal, still clung to her. The thought of what might have happened had she not told the truth was still very fresh in her mind.

The Ice Eater called Mannie came unexpectedly to her defence — not Vehofnehu, whose plan it had been all along. The empyricist was still in a state of wordless shock. Tom hadn’t woken and lay on a stretcher next to Kelloman, collared like Skender to prevent him from using the Change, his burned scalp covered in a rough bandage. She felt very much alone in the face of Skender’s bitter tirade.

Nothing and everything
, the Goddess had said.

‘Shilly did what she had to do,’ the Ice Eater told Skender, ‘as anyone would in her circumstances. The Goddess would not blame her, I think.’

‘You believe the girl’s story?’ snapped the woman with Skender. Shilly realised only then that the Ice Eaters had a way of communicating across distances similar to other Change-workers.

‘I do, Treya.’ Mannie inclined his head. ‘It’s easier to accept than the lie it must otherwise be. Who would spin such a fabrication and expect us to believe it? As puzzled as I am by her tale, I think we have to accept all of it — or none of it.’

Treya raised her chin at the hint of challenge in Mannie’s tone. ‘Have you never heard of a half-lie?’

‘Of course I have, but one lies to save one’s life. If we’re to believe you, Shilly lied about the Goddess for no reason at all, but told the truth and put her life in jeopardy. That makes little sense.’

‘Except to confuse or distract us while the others in her party go about their business.’

‘And what is their business, Treya? What have your spies reported?’

‘The winged one is flying across the lake even as we speak. It killed two of us when they tried to approach. The others are on the move. We are watching from a safe distance.’

Mannie nodded cheerlessly as Shilly wondered who or what the ‘winged one’ was. Skender was still staring at her with hot betrayal in his eyes.

‘If the Goddess told you how to open the Tomb,’ she said through a mouth as dry as the desert, ‘it must’ve been for a reason. Have you thought about that?’

‘There are certain conditions,’ Mannie said, and might have said more had not Treya waved him silent.

‘We need explain nothing to you,’ the stern, middle-aged woman said. ‘You are the violators. Your lives are forfeit. While your people continue to kill us and threaten our sacred duty, you can assume only one thing: that your endings will come swiftly the moment you are no longer useful.’

Skender looked shocked at this. Clearly no one had informed him before then of the Ice Eaters’ harsh penalties.

‘You’re going to kill us?’ he asked, gaze dancing from Shilly to Treya and back again. ‘You can’t do that. We’re not the enemy!’

‘You still have value as hostages,’ said Treya, turning away from him. ‘Thank you for bringing her and the others here, Mannah. Their oddness only grows the more we learn about them.’

She was staring at Vehofnehu as she spoke, and Shilly was surprised to see the empyricist react.

‘You don’t know me,’ he said in a weak imitation of his usual bluster.

‘Of course I don’t,’ the leader of the Ice Eaters said. ‘What manner of being are you?’

‘I am inconsequential,’ he said. ‘My forecasts were wrong. The Goddess herself rebuked me. The world has no use for me now.’

The despair in his voice made Shilly’s heart want to break. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. ‘It’s not over yet.’

‘We didn’t just fail,’ he insisted. ‘I will live to see my friends cursed and bereft. Although I might try to stop it, I have no hope of succeeding. I will fail again. What use is a king who cannot act? Any power I might have retained is spent. I am dead to the world.’

‘He’s talking nonsense,’ said Treya.

‘Am I? You don’t understand now, but you will.’

‘I have no time for this. Attend your duty, Mannah, with no more talk of clemency. Dark times are upon us.’

She strode purposefully back into the darkness, leaving Shilly and the others behind. Shilly watched Mannie closely. He was possibly the only hope they had of breaking any future death sentence, either by convincing Treya to rescind it or by outright defying her. The chance of the latter seemed slim, despite his deeply unhappy expression. Shilly would continue to hope.

‘Are they serious?’ asked Skender, coming to stand in front of her and talking in a soft, strained voice. ‘Would they really kill us?’

‘They convinced me of it,’ she said, unable to completely hide the hurt she felt at his poor welcome of her. ‘Why else would I have told them what I did?’

The corners of his eyes tightened slightly. Her barb had hit home. ‘But is any of that true? Did you really try to open the Tomb?’

‘That was the plan,’ she said, feeling infinitely weary. Putting her back against the wall, she let it take her weight. The cold stone sucked heat from her body, even through her many layers of clothing. ‘If we had separated the realms forever, we could have trapped Yod in one timeline of our choosing, thereby minimising the damage. Getting to the Flame was just part of that process, but I didn’t see the Flame when the Tomb opened. I don’t know what went wrong there.’

‘Separate the realms forever…?’ Skender’s forehead crinkled. He was clearly struggling with the thought of it, as she first had. ‘But that would be terrible. We’d lose the Change for starters, and the man’kin too.’

‘Better than losing our lives,’ she snapped, although she hadn’t thought of those particular ramifications. Would the man’kin really have embarked so readily on a suicide mission? Perhaps that was why Vehofnehu had been keen to keep their intentions a secret. ‘It’s not as if we went into it lightly,’ she said. ‘Do you have a better plan?’

‘There was talk of something,’ Skender said, leaning next to her against the wall and placing a hand over his eyes. ‘I didn’t follow all of it. The Tomb was involved too.’ His hand fell away from his face and he stared up into the darkness. ‘Could the Ice Eaters be right? Could going to the Tomb be exactly the wrong thing to do?’

Shilly thought of the Goddess’s words in the balloon. Not all of it had been an admonition.
It’s okay. Honestly. I’m outside where I need to be, and I’ve closed the Tomb safely behind us. It’ll work out if we just keep along this path, right to the end
.

But where was the path and what lay at its end? Without knowing either, Shilly had no reason to feel confident of anything.

Slowly, leaving nothing out she told Skender everything that had happened to her since her kidnap by the man’kin, nine days earlier. She covered her dreams, the glast, the Tomb, and the Goddess. He listened in silence, nodding encouragingly whenever she faltered. He interrupted her only once, when she mentioned the completed charm her future self had created. Still in her pack were the fragmentary sketches she had made. The Ice Eaters hadn’t confiscated them, thinking them harmless doodles. She produced them and lay them on the ground before him.

By crystal-light they looked strange and otherworldly. Skender’s gaze tracked steadily across them, taking in every detail.

‘This is designed to keep the realms apart,’ he breathed. ‘Is that right?’

‘She said it was a map.’ Shilly tried to remember her future self’s exact words, and cursed once again the fact that she didn’t have Skender’s perfect memory. ‘A map of the world as it would be afterwards, when the realms were apart. Metaphorically speaking.’