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weaken him
further. “I wanted to tell you how she felt in case she hadn’t told you
herself. She was very troubled by something, and I wasn’t sure she had.”
     
    She shifted
away from him, made uncomfortable by the intensity of his reaction, and they
sat without speaking. Meric became lost in watching how the sun glazed the
scales to reddish gold, how the light was channelled along the ridges in molten
streams that paled as the day wound down. He was startled when the girl jumped
to her feet and backed towards the hoist.
     
    “He’s dead,”
she said wonderingly.
     
    Meric looked
at her, uncomprehending.
     
    “See?” She
pointed at the sun, which showed a crimson sliver above the hill. “He’s dead,”
she repeated, and the expression on her face flowed between fear and
exultation.
     
    The idea of
Griaule’s death was too large for Meric’s mind to encompass, and he turned to
the eye to find a counterproof - no glints of colour flickered beneath the
membrane. He heard the hoist creak as the girl headed down, but he continued to
wait. Perhaps only the dragon’s vision had failed. No. It was likely not a
coincidence that work had been officially terminated today. Stunned, he sat
staring at the lifeless membrane until the sun sank below the hills; then he
stood and went over to the hoist. Before he could throw the switch, the cables
thrummed - somebody heading up. Of course. The girl would have spread the news,
and all the Major Hauks and their underlings would be hurrying to test
Griaule’s reflexes. He did not want to be here when they arrived, to watch them
pose with their trophy like successful fishermen.
     
    It was hard
work climbing up to the frontoparietal plate. The ladder swayed, the wind
buffeted him, and by the time he clambered on to the plate, he was giddy, his
chest full of twinges. He hobbled forward and leaned against the rust-caked
side of a boiling vat. Shadowy in the twilight, the great furnaces and vats
towered around him, and it seemed this system of fiery devices reeking of
cooked flesh and minerals was the actual machinery of Griaule’s thought
materialized above his skull. Energyless, abandoned. They had been replaced by
more efficient equipment down below, and it had been - what was it? - almost
five years since they were last used. Cobwebs veiled a pyramid of firewood; the
stairs leading to the rims of the vats were crumbling. The plate itself was
scarred and coated with sludge.
     
    “Cattanay!”
     
    Someone
shouted from below, and the top of the ladder trembled. God, they were coming
after him! Bubbling over with congratulations and plans for testimonial
dinners, memorial plaques, specially struck medals. They would have him draped
in bunting and bronzed and covered with pigeon shit before they were done. All these
years he had been among them, both their slave and their master, yet he had
never felt at home. Leaning heavily on his cane, he made his way past the
frontal spike -blackened by years of oily smoke - and down between the wings to
Hangtown. It was a ghost town, now. Weeds overgrowing the collapsed shanties;
the lake a stinking pit, drained after some children had drowned in the summer
of ‘91. Where Jarcke’s home had stood was a huge pile of animal bones, taking a
pale shine from the half-light. Wind keened through the tattered shrubs.
     
    “Meric!”
     
    “Cattanay.”
     
    The voices
were closer.
     
    Well, there
was one place where they would not follow.
     
    The leaves
of the thickets were speckled with mould and brittle, flaking away as he
brushed them. He hesitated at the top of the scale hunters’ stair. He had no
rope. Though he had done the climb unaided many times, it had been quite a few
years. The gusts of wind, the shouts, the sweep of the valley and the lights
scattered across it like diamonds on grey velvet - it all seemed a single
inconstant medium. He heard the brush crunch behind him, more voices. To hell
with it! Gritting his teeth against