Geomancer (Well of Echoes) by Ian Irvine Page A

said.
    ‘Well, there are.’
    ‘Do you deny she is a good artisan?’ Nish expected her to.
    ‘Tiaan is very talented. Since I’m being honest with you, she’s better than I am. But she’s using those talents against us, Nish. She’s helping the enemy.’
    ‘I don’t like it.’
    ‘That’s because you’re in love with her.’
    ‘I’m not! But …’
    ‘After what she said to you the other day? No
real
man would put up with that kind of abuse.’
    Still he hesitated.
    Irisis stood up. ‘Make up your mind, Nish. Support her and you’ll get no more of me,
ever
! Which is it?’
    ‘I hate Tiaan for what she did to me,’ he said. ‘If proof against her can be found – proper proof – I’ll help you destroy her.’
    ‘And you won’t tell Gi-Had that I cut out the page?’ Those big blue eyes were all over him again.
    ‘No,’ he said softly.
    Nish spent the rest of the day agonising about what he had got himself into. Concealing evidence was a serious crime, and if he was wrong about Irisis, it would mean his doom.

SEVEN

    T iaan returned from the mine, still puzzling over Joeyn’s observation that crystals exposed on the mullock heaps were useless. Oblivious to the furore, she collected a handful of hedron chips and put them at various locations inside and outside the manufactory, to test the effects of exposure. She did not need to hide them since they looked like any other fragments of quartz.
    On the way back to her cubicle Tiaan ducked into the library and went to the section where the Great Tales were kept. These books, of which there were twenty-nine, were the highest achievement of the Histories and every child was taught them. The manufactory’s copies were bound in red leather reinforced with brass, and fixed to the shelves with brass chains. She lifted them down, one by one. All of the Great Tales were there save one, the twenty-third.
The Tale of the Mirror
.
    She went to the librarian, an old, old man as bald as a marble, with thin blotched hands and perpetually moist eyes.
    ‘Hello, Gurleys,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for one of the Great Tales.’
    ‘They’re all on the shelf.’ He did not take his eyes from his catalogue.
    ‘No, one is missing.
The Tale of the Mirror
.’
    He looked up sharply, opened his mouth and closed it again. He seemed to be in pain. Moisture leaked from his eyes.
    ‘There is no
Tale of the Mirror
!’
    ‘But … it’s the twenty-third tale. There must –’
    ‘There is not!’ he hissed, ‘and if you keep on about it I will have to enter your name in the scrutator’s log.’
    ‘I beg your pardon.’ Tiaan thanked him and went out. So Joeyn had been right. But why
had
the tale been withdrawn?
    Just outside the door, Tiaan was called to Gi-Had’s office. The overseer was sitting behind his table. He said nothing as she came in and shut the door, though he held himself as straight as a poker. He indicated a chair. She sat down.
    ‘What did you want to see me about, overseer?’
    He pinned her with those deeply sunken eyes. ‘This!’ Gi-Had threw a controller onto the table.
    Tiaan started. It was the one Irisis had been working on for the past month, though so battered that it could not be repaired. She picked it up. ‘How did this happen?’
    ‘Irisis accuses you,’ Gi-Had said without expression.
    ‘Me?’ Tiaan swallowed. ‘Why would I do such a wicked thing?’
    ‘Because you and Irisis are feuding? Because you hate her? Perhaps because you are in the pay of the enemy?’ He held his hands out as if offering her a choice rather than accusing her, but all at once she felt desperately afraid. The breeding factory could be the least of her worries. Gi-Had looked every bit as ferocious as that perquisitor of her childhood. And after all, Irisis was his second cousin. Blood was thick in these parts.
    It was hard to control her voice. ‘I – I don’t like Irisis, but I don’t hate her. I’m just trying to do my job and my best for the