Geomancer (Well of Echoes) Read Online Free PDF

describing intimacies Tiaan had never experienced and certainly did not want to hear from her mother’s lips. Whoever Thom was,
he
definitely wasn’t her father.
    ‘I have to go, Marnie.’
    ‘You only just got here,’ Marnie said petulantly. ‘You care more about your stupid work than about me.’
    Tiaan had had enough. ‘Any fool can do what you do, mother,’ she cried in a passion. ‘You’re like a sow at the trough!’
    Marnie rolled over abruptly, scattering sweetmeats across the carpet. The baby began to cry. She put it to the breast in reflex. ‘I’m doing my duty the best way I know!’ she screeched. ‘I’ve produced fifteen children, all living, all healthy, all clever and hardworking.’
    Tiaan’s anger faded. ‘I never see them,’ she said wistfully. She longed for a proper family, like other people had.
    ‘That’s because they’re out doing their duty, and not whingeing about it either. I’ve done all I could for you. You have the best craft I could find, and don’t think that was easy.’
    ‘Ha!’ Tiaan muttered. Her mother twisted everything. Not only had she
not
gotten Tiaan her prenticeship, Marnie had fought against it.
    ‘Maybe you do love your work, Tiaan, but it doesn’t feed you.’
    ‘Better hungry freedom than pampered slavery!’
    ‘You’re free, are you?’ Marnie shouted. ‘I can leave this place today and be honoured wherever I go. You can’t even scratch yourself without getting permission from the overseer. I hear your work isn’t going so well, either. Don’t come whining to me when they cast you out! I won’t let you in the door.’
    That was too close to the bone. ‘I’d sooner die than live the way you do!’ Tiaan yelled.
    ‘You wouldn’t have the choice! No man would want to lie with such an ugly, scrawny creature as you.’
    Tiaan rushed out and slammed the door. Every visit ended in tears or tantrums, though it had never been as bad as this before. The people hurrying by gave her knowing looks or, occasionally, friendly smiles. Everyone knew how it was between her and her mother. Had something else upset Marnie?
    Tiaan sat on the front step, trembling. She was not ugly or scrawny, just hungry and afraid. The rest of the insult passed over her head. Repelled by Marnie’s greedy sensuality, Tiaan could not imagine lying with a man, even to aid the war.
Never!
she thought with a shudder. I’d rather die a virgin.
    Unfortunately, she was hungry for love. Brought up on a diet of her grandmother’s romantic bedtime stories, she dreamed of little else. The women in the manufactory all had husbands or lovers, mostly gone to the war, and talked of them constantly. Tiaan did so yearn for someone to love
her
. She had no friend but old Joeyn.
    Realising that she was shaking with hunger, Tiaan felt a copper coin out of her purse and trudged down to a barrow boy. There she bought a long spicy sausage baked in pastry and set off for home, nibbling as she walked. The sausage was delicious, hot and with a strong peppery flavour. Just half of it filled her stomach and made her feel better.
    It was a slow, slippery climb back up the mountain in the rain. Darkness, which at this time of the year came before five o’clock, was already falling before she saw the lights of the manufactory high above. Tiaan toiled up the last distance, went inside and sat down in her cubicle. The hedron lay there accusingly on the bench. Since she was no closer to a solution than before, Tiaan went looking for Overseer Gi-Had.
    ‘He’s gone up the mountain,’ said Nod the gateman. ‘Trouble in the tar mine. Poisoned air, I think.’
    ‘Then he won’t be back today,’ said Tiaan. It was four hours’ walk to the tar mine, each way. ‘Have you seen Gryste?’
    ‘He’s unblocking the waste drains.’
    Going left out the gate, Tiaan followed the earth track around the outside of the manufactory wall. She turned the corner, taking a shortcut between huge stone cisterns excavated