Книга - The Strategist

The Strategist
Gerrard Cowan


Ruin is coming.For ten millennia, the Machinery Selected the greatest leaders of humanity, bringing glory to the Overland. But the Machinery came with a Prophecy: in the 10,000th year, it will break, and Ruin will come.Now, the Prophecy is being fulfilled. The Machinery has Selected a terrible being to rule the Overland, an immortal who cares little for the humans she governs. Some call her the Strategist. Others call her the One. Everyone knows her as Mother.Mother will do anything to find the Machinery and finally bring Ruin. But only one creature knows where the Machinery is – the Dust Queen, an ancient being of three bodies and endless power.And if Mother wants the Dust Queen’s help, she must ready herself for a game. A game from older times. A game of memory. A game in which mortals are nothing more than pawns.









The Strategist

GERRARD COWAN













HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk (http://www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2017

Copyright © Gerrard Cowan 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017.

Cover image © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com)

Gerrard Cowan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.

Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008121822

Version: 2017-08-09


For my parents, Marie and Ronnie, and my sister, Rosaleen


Table of Contents

Cover (#u5be4ab8a-0a17-5fa0-8475-f0b27f1d3e92)

Title Page (#u1c8aec69-9fb5-523c-8446-041ae8dd053b)

Copyright (#uc76c9c0b-ad3f-5f2a-8726-6bbe13cd9357)

Dedication (#u5413f423-3f3e-5099-846a-52e88e298c3e)

Chapter One (#u40837cff-6068-5e33-8595-7581fe71ce07)

Chapter Two (#u61a4e52c-6f6f-5d6d-ba8e-a61bd2460ef4)

Chapter Three (#u67372125-a90e-53e6-9652-4abcfe9f7417)

Chapter Four (#u262f60c7-ac7a-55bb-b027-16206b304f89)

Chapter Five (#u502d723f-e4db-5a46-aff8-5a26898cb342)



Chapter Six (#ub2fadae9-09ea-5cbd-abdc-ea3c78a4b8e6)



Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)



Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)



Also by Gerrard Cowan (#litres_trial_promo)



About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One (#ud6eded5f-c42b-5a3b-9075-148af20b11db)


‘What is the Machinery?’ the man asked.

There was silence for a moment, and then a great sigh, somewhere far away.

The man opened his eyes, to a black, starless expanse. He was alone, held up by invisible strings: a puppet in the abyss.

The man flexed his fingers. He reached up to his face, felt the stubble, and confirmed he was what he had always been: Charls Brandione. A physical being. Not a nothing.

He looked into the dark, and searched for her.

The Dust Queen.

‘Ask me another question,’ she said.

It was strange, that voice of hers: three people speaking at once, and one voice from three mouths. He sensed she was impatient, and the thought sent a spasm of laughter through him. How could he hold such power over her?

He turned his head, focused on another stretch of darkness. She had taken him here before, many times. What was this place? It was a void, yet there was something there, in the darkness: a deep intelligence, like that of the Queen, but older even than her, its thoughts stretching across age after age. He could feel it. He could hear the whispers of its greatness. There was a conflict within this unknowable mind; he could taste it.

The darkness changed. Three sets of unblinking eyes appeared before him.

‘Ask me another question.’ The eyes narrowed. He could ignore her no longer. But only one question ever came to mind. It was a question she would not answer, but it mattered more than anything else. Everything was tied up with it: the old world and whatever had taken its place; the rules they lived by, all their fears and dreams.

‘What is the Machinery?’

The eyes blinked.

**

He was back in his tent.

No: not tent. He had been in many tents before, in the wars. The wars, the wars, the endless wars, now a bloody dream. This was a great hall, a monstrosity of flowing silk, dyed into violent shades of red and gold. In the centre stood a magnificent table, covered with maps of the Machinery knew where and bowls of fruit in a riot of colours. Candles burned on thick iron stands, and a gigantic bed dominated one wall. Along another was a series of wooden shelves, groaning with incomprehensible books. Brandione sat at a gleaming mahogany desk, the knobs on its drawers shaped into likenesses of his own face. In a corner was a bust of the Queen, or rather three busts growing from one base, staring at him with wicked intent.

Wayward was standing before him, smiling his usual smile. Tonight he wore a velvet coat of dark purple; shreds of cloth of the same colour were threaded through the braids of his hair.

Brandione turned his gaze to the entrance, a flapping segment of parchment. Outside, the sand was cold and blue in the moonlight. There was a desert, there. Was it the Wite? He did not know. Questions, Wayward, and the tent. That’s all there is. Questions, Wayward, and the tent.

‘You were gone for a long time,’ Wayward said.

His accent was familiar to Brandione, echoing with the heavy cadences of the South. My old home, in an old land. But it could not be so, for Wayward was surely an ancient thing. Perhaps he alters his voice to put his companions at ease.

Brandione shrugged. ‘No longer than usual.’ He looked down at the desk, and saw that his hands were intertwined. There was a small scar on his thumb from some unknown wound. For a moment he was jolted back to reality, to his old self: the commander of the armies of the Overland. But those days were gone, now. He was no longer a General. What are you, then?

‘You are the soldier and the scholar,’ Wayward whispered.

Brandione met the courtier’s eye. Wayward had been there from the beginning. The General had been taken prisoner, accused of murdering the Strategist and three Tacticians, and sent to the Prison. He suppressed a bubble of laughter. I fought to declare my innocence. But in the end, it didn’t matter. I was always going in the same direction: to her.

He had met her in the Prison of the Doubters, in a tower in the sun. She had formed before his eyes, taking her shape from mounds of sand, coalescing into three beings: three women with one voice. He tried to picture her, in his mind, but the image was broken, incomplete, a thing of red and black and grey and white, a thing of glass crowns, a thing of mighty thrones. The Dust Queen.

She had been expecting him. The Last Doubter, she called him. A soldier and a scholar. She had enveloped him, shown him things he could not comprehend, strange things from other places, abandoned cities and broken fortresses. He saw the Strategist, in shadows and towers: the new Strategist, the one that had been prophesied. She had taken the form of a girl he recognised, a girl he had searched for long ago, in that strange museum …

The Queen always told him to ask a question, and threw him back here, to Wayward, when he asked the same one, over and over and over again.

Wayward. What is he? A guide, on this journey. The man who led him through the Queen. The one who steered him in the right direction.

‘Did you ask her the same question again?’ the courtier asked. There was an edge of impatience in his voice.

Brandione looked away for a moment. Outside, in the desert, a person had appeared. It was a man, but it was not a man. It was a creature, formed of sand, wearing a yellow cloak, holding a glass spear. He was one of the Queen’s soldiers, a member of the army Brandione had seen in the Prison of the Doubters. Her army, for him to command, she had said: his army of dust.

There was a gust of dry wind, and the soldier disappeared.

Brandione turned his attention again to Wayward. He nodded at the courtier, who frowned back.

‘What is the Machinery?’ Wayward asked. There was mockery in his words. He turned from the desk, and made his way to a golden sofa, throwing himself down and spreading out his lengthy frame. ‘She will not answer that question. Do you know why?’

‘No.’

Wayward sighed. ‘It is not a good question. It is too … precise. The Queen is old indeed. She thinks in …’ Wayward screwed his eyebrows together, and clicked his tongue in his mouth. ‘How to describe it? How to describe eternity?’ He smiled. ‘She thinks in great, sweeping, movements.’ He accompanied each word with a swing of an elegant arm. ‘Her thoughts are the circuits of the stars. Her wishes are the birth of mountains. She is the sun, hmm? She is the moon.’

Wayward cast a glance at Brandione, who did not attempt to hide his incomprehension. The courtier giggled.

‘I am … what is the word? I am pretentious.’ He giggled. ‘I’m young, you know, very young, compared to the others. I have to make up for it by appearing knowledgeable.’ He grinned.

Brandione nodded. ‘Tell me in small words. I’m just a soldier.’

Wayward grimaced and raised a finger. ‘And a scholar. A soldier and a scholar. The Last Doubter: a man the Queen saw long ago.’ He waved his hands above his head, as if scrabbling there for the right words. ‘The Queen will only answer what she wants to answer, or what is proper for her to answer. However, she does want to answer. The more specific your question, the more precise you are, the less chance there is that she will respond. But if you are nice and general, then she will speak to you, for she can twist your question as she wishes. Hmm?’

Brandione nodded. ‘I think I understand.’

Wayward nodded. ‘Good. I am not surprised. For you are not just a soldier. You are a soldier …’

The tent began to fade away before Wayward could finish.

**

He was back in the blackness.

‘Question.’

The voice filled the void, the word echoing into the blackness. The eyes were no longer to be seen.

The one-time General searched for a question. There was something pathetic about him, this ridiculous animal, suspended in a world of higher beings, scrabbling around in his fleshy brain for something to say. In his days as a scholar – the days before soldiering, the days before the end of the world – he had read about ancient cultures. They were hives of ignorance, he had been taught, where people saw gods in the trees and the rivers. In some of the old stories, these people had met with their gods, conversed with them as equals, and even tricked them. Here he was, now, playing that same role. He was no different to the savages who walked the Plateau in the days before the Machinery.

But we were never any different, were we? The thought burst to life like a black weed. What was the Operator, if not a god? What was the Machinery?

Her eyes were before him again, no longer angry but hungry, waiting for him to speak. A god, and her mortal. But there were no tricks to be played here. Not with her.

Nice and general.

He opened his mouth, and the eyes widened.

‘What comes next?’ he asked.

The eyes widened. The darkness around them was slowly replaced with the outlines of three faces, and in a heartbeat she was before him, shining in her glory. She had taken a youthful appearance, her hair falling in golden curls, her cheeks rosy and unblemished. She wore three silver dresses, lengthy garments of a gleaming material, shining with the light of the stars and studded with tiny black stones. She grinned at him with three red mouths. She seemed more substantial than usual, though streams of dust fell away from the tips of her fingers.

She was beautiful, but she faded from his mind as soon as he turned away from her, like the memories she showed him. He closed his eyes and the image of her vanished, with only the outline remaining, only the sense of her. But when he opened them again, she was there, more terrifying and radiant and impossible than before.

‘That,’ the Dust Queen said, ‘is a good question.’

Smiles broke out across her three youthful faces, and she raised her hands. The dust at the edge of her fingers began to flow more quickly, falling away into the ether. In a moment she had disintegrated into sand. It swirled forward, encircling Brandione, and he heard her voice in his own mind.

A game.

**

He opened his eyes, and the darkness had gone.

They were on a beach, of sorts, but unlike any the former General had ever seen. The sand beneath his feet was black, and the sun in the dark sky was blood red. The water of the sea beyond crashed rhythmically against the shore, over and over, like the movements of a machine. The air here was cold, and still, and deadening.

‘Where are we?’

The Queen was by his side. She seemed smaller, somehow.

‘The Old Place,’ she said. ‘The Underland. Two of the names it has been given, over the long years.’ One of her figures knelt down, and scooped up some of the black sand in a hand. She lifted the sand up, and shared it with the other two. All of them held it in the air, and allowed it to drop from their fingers.

‘Why is the sand black?’ Brandione asked.

A moment passed, before the Dust Queen answered.

‘It is not truly sand,’ she said. ‘It is a memory. Or more than one, perhaps, fused together, and residing here in the Old Place.’

‘Sand is not black. And the sun is not red.’

The Dust Queen raised her eyebrows. ‘Have you seen all sand, my Last Doubter? Have you seen every beach since the beginning of the world?’ She pointed her three right hands at the burning orb above. ‘Have you witnessed every age of that star? Do you know what it was in its youth?’

Brandione shook his head.

‘No,’ said the Queen. ‘But the Old Place does.’ She sighed. ‘Do you know what it is?’

‘The home of the Machinery.’

The Queen laughed. ‘Yes, yes.’ She pinched three forefingers and three thumbs tightly together, and raised them to her eyes. ‘But only for a sliver of its lifespan: the most recent moments in its long years.’

Brandione blinked, and suddenly the three bodies surrounded him, her faces inches from his own.

‘Everything in this place is a memory,’ she said. She gestured at the beach around them. ‘Memories have power, because humanity was made to die, to burn in beauty and flutter out, in wave after glorious wave.’ She pointed to the sea. ‘The creator hated that: how could he not, when he would live forever?’

‘The creator?’ He thought of the endless chasm, and the intelligence he had felt there, that sense of conflict.

She ignored him.

‘He wanted something to remain: something of each of them, something that would not die. He took mortal memories, and gave them power to make them last forever, so he would always have them to play with.’ She smiled. ‘It was his great mistake. The immortal power he placed in memories grew beyond even his control. Something new emerged: a thing that could rival even him.’ She glanced around, with a blend of love and fear in her eyes. ‘This place.’

She sighed. The three young women flickered into something else: old creatures, balding and stooped, their skin lined and fragile. But the moment passed, and the young Dust Queen returned, staring sadly at the sands.

Brandione looked from this creature of three bodies, to the red sun, then down to the black sand at his feet. Thoughts of the past appeared in his mind, unbidden memories rushing through him in a flood. He thought of his days in the College, and then the army. He looked back on his unrelenting ascent to the top of the Overland’s military hierarchy, his role as Strategist Kane’s senior advisor, and all the things that once seemed weighty in his mind. He was a man of many parts, someone had once told him. He was ambitious, but not boastful: popular with those above and below him, but not a craver of adulation. He had seemed a quiet and modest man, but, in truth, he revelled in his complexity. They never saw him coming, because they did not know what to make of him. A soldier and a scholar.

He looked to his left, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of a figure from his past: Provost Hone, the head of the College. The old man was standing far away, beside a towering black dune. He smiled, and Brandione was reminded of all the love he had been shown by men like that, all the counsel they had given him, all the ways they had lifted him up, and propelled him to glory.

But Hone began to fade away, until only his smile was left, hanging ludicrously in the air. It disappeared, and Brandione was reminded that the past was dead, and he was here now, with a three-bodied creature from ancient times, on a beach from a memory, and that none of the things he had accomplished mattered any more.

‘Memories,’ the Queen said. She shook her three heads.

Something new had appeared at the Queen’s side. It was a table, a circular thing formed of a dark green stone, surrounded by great wooden chairs that seemed to have grown straight out of the sand. Brandione approached it, and looked upon its surface. A vortex of shapes and symbols twisted before him, dancing across the stone, laughing at his ignorance in an ancient and unknowable tongue.

Five figurines had been spread across the table’s surface. They were formed of different materials – wood, glass, stone – but they each were shaped into a person. He went through them, one after the other, lifting them up and examining them carefully. One of them was oddly familiar, though he could not think why: a plump woman, wearing a Watcher’s mask that had been formed into the face of a cat. Another figurine meant nothing to him: a young girl, slight, but displaying a kind of defiant bravery. The girl held a parchment, on which tiny letters had been written. Brandione held it to his eye and read the meaningless words: House of Thonn.

‘I saw that girl, long ago,’ the Dust Queen whispered. ‘She is not a citizen of your Overland. She has never set foot on your Plateau. But she will help to reshape your world. She will fall, and she will rise again. The Fallen Girl.’

Brandione studied the figurine for a moment longer, then placed her back on the table, near the plump woman. He knew the other figurines only too well. He lifted one of them, formed of painted glass: a youngish man with narrow features, his hair painted a garish yellow. His hands were steepled, the tips of his fingers resting at the base of his chin. He wore an aquamarine cloak.

Brandione glanced at the Queen, whose eyes sparkled at him.

‘This is Aranfal,’ he said. ‘A Watcher of the Overland.’ He sighed. ‘A torturer, like all the rest of them. But he was the worst.’ He raised the figurine to his eye. ‘In the … olden times, he took me on a journey to a museum in the Far Below. Him and Squatstout.’ The thought of the little man sent a shudder through him.

The Queen laughed. ‘Squatstout!’

Brandione looked up at her. ‘Yes. He’s an assistant to the Watchers. Do you know him?’

The Dust Queen shook her three heads. ‘He is not an assistant to the Watchers. He is a thing of the oldest ages. He is a creature of the shadows, though he longs for the light. He is a glory of the world.’

‘He is like you?’

The Queen favoured him with three faint smiles.

Brandione placed Aranfal back on the table, and lifted another figurine. The marble was formed into the shape of a fat man, clad in a shawl. He was bald, and even in this form, a heavy sadness clouded his eyes.

‘Canning,’ Brandione said, placing the last Expansion Tactician back into his place upon the swirling board. ‘He was always a good man, though he was weak.’

‘A strange man,’ the Queen said. ‘He is complex, though he sees no good in himself. He has been suppressed by others, through his life; the higher he climbed, the worse it all became.’

‘He was not a bad person,’ Brandione said, ‘but he was not a good Tactician.’

Three sets of shoulders shrugged. ‘He was Selected by the Machinery. You all followed it blindly, yet you loathed one of its choices.’

Brandione nodded. ‘Perhaps. But it’s too late now. We will never know what he could have achieved.’

The Queen laughed. ‘Never know? The game has not even begun, Brandione.’ She pointed one of her fingers at the last figurine. ‘Pick that one up.’

Brandione lifted the final piece, and held it before him.

‘I know this man better than all the others,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps I only thought I did.’

The figure of Brandione was carved of wood. It showed the one-time General as he once had been, clad in his leather armour, upright and proud. He thought of himself now, still wearing the rags of a prisoner. Am I still a General, with my army of dust? No. The old Brandione was dead; he had died with the Overland. They all had. He began to long for this person, and for all the things he had worn, all the things he had been, when he was Charls Brandione, leader of the Overland’s armies, at the right hand of the Strategist …

The Dust Queen coughed. The rags disappeared, and his armour returned. A handcannon hung from his left side, and a sword from the other. He nodded at her, but his mind was elsewhere.

‘Question,’ she said.

His mind swirled with possibilities. He could ask her about this game, perhaps. He could ask her what his role was to be in the future. But strangely, these did not seem to matter.

He turned back to the board. ‘What are you?’

He wondered if the question was too specific. But then the Dust Queen smiled.




Chapter Two (#ud6eded5f-c42b-5a3b-9075-148af20b11db)


‘Canning.’

The last Tactician in the Overland sat on a wooden stool, wearing only a ragged smock. He was thin, these days. He lifted his head and glanced at Aranfal, before turning once more to the dirt.

‘Tactician Canning,’ the Watcher said. He wasn’t supposed to use that title. Not any more. But he couldn’t help himself.

Free Canning, if you can. That’s what Jandell had said. The one we called the Operator, before we knew there was more than one.

The prisoner forced his head up and looked at Aranfal again, his eyes dull in the candlelight. He was attempting to control himself. The greatness of the spirit. How many times had Aranfal seen that, here, in the Bowels of the See House?

But never like this. Canning is braver than he looks.

‘Water. Please.’

Aranfal walked out into the corridor, scanning it quickly. Operator Shirkra would not like it if she knew he was helping Canning. She wouldn’t like it at all.

He crouched down, and pulled a stone up from the floor. Inside the hole was a wooden cup of water, hidden on another visit. The liquid looked rancid, but Canning wouldn’t mind. It might keep him alive. And he still wants to live, though only the Machinery knows why.

The Watcher returned to the cell, and lifted the cup to Canning’s lips. The former Tactician drank greedily, dirty water slopping across his cheeks. He gave Aranfal a hopeful look when he had finished. The Watcher had seen that look many times, too, down here. For a moment, memories crowded his vision: the broken rubble of his past.

‘There is no more,’ Aranfal said. ‘It wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. You shouldn’t have too much, in your state.’

Canning nodded. His head fell forward, and it seemed for a moment that he might have fallen asleep. Before long, however, he hacked out a cough, and looked up again at the Watcher.

‘You’re helping me. Why?’

Because Jandell asked me to, in the ruins of the Circus. But it wasn’t Aranfal who bowed to the Operator, back then. Aranfal would have nodded, before running as far as he could. No: Aranfal was fading away, and Aran Fal was returning. That was the boy who went to the See House all those years ago: the boy whose names were forced together by Brightling herself. Not perfect, not by a long shot. But a man who helps another man in the Bowels of the See House.

He studied Canning again. There was something different about the former Tactician, something that had changed fundamentally. The Watcher struggled for the word. Toughness, perhaps? Was he changing, too? Did the end of the Machinery do something to them all – free them to become themselves?

‘Because you’re not allowed to die,’ he said.

‘Ah.’ Canning nodded. ‘Shirkra. She likes having me here. She likes to hurt me.’

Aranfal shrugged. ‘That’s part of it, I suppose. But nothing happens without the Strategist’s say so. Not any more. That’s why you’re alive.’

Canning snorted. ‘Why would she want to keep me alive?’

Why indeed?

‘I cannot begin to fathom …’ He thought, for a moment, of the new power in the Overland. He had not seen her since the Selection; no one had. Still, her presence was everywhere, a purple smoke that clogged the lungs and stung the eyes. ‘Perhaps she thinks you will help her.’

‘How could I help her?’

Aranfal squinted at Canning. They had had this conversation many times, here in the darkness of the Bowels, but Canning never seemed to remember. What has happened to him? Has Shirkra rummaged about in his mind a little too much? Aranfal had seen what the female Operator could do. She played with a person’s memories, and she twisted them until they bled. But no. More than that. She took power from them. It reminded him of a story he had read, long ago, as a child in the North: a story about ancient magic, of gods that toyed with men and women, stole from them and abused them, but who always were defeated, in the end, tricked by the same ploys they used against their victims. Were those just stories, or were they history? He smiled at his own hopefulness: Aranfal laughing at Aran Fal.

‘The Strategist only cares about one thing,’ Aranfal said. He looked into the corners, as if she might be hiding there, the thing that had once been Katrina Paprissi. She would not like me talking about her. Or perhaps she would. How would I know? He sighed. What did it matter, anyway? He never knew how things worked in this new world.

‘The Strategist only cares about the Machinery. That’s all. She’s not been here; she’s been searching for it. Perhaps she thinks you can help her find it.’

Canning coughed a laugh. ‘Me? I thought she was the One, whatever that means? She thinks I could help her? Not even Brightling knew where the Machinery was. No one knows, apart from the Operator, and sometimes not even him, if the stories are to be believed. Doesn’t she think I would have said something by now, to get myself away from her … her …’

‘Shirkra,’ Aranfal said, glancing again at the shadows of the cell.

‘Yes. Her Shirkra.’ Canning trembled, and his head lolled forward again. He lifted it with great effort, making a grunting noise.

‘I don’t know what the Strategist thinks,’ Aranfal said with a shrug. ‘I’m just guessing. Maybe she likes the way you smell. How would I know? We never see her.’

Canning’s face broke into a dark smile. ‘Then who rules the Overland? Shirkra?’

Aranfal shrugged again. He was being too free with his words. What does it matter? Shirkra will kill him soon anyway. Whether the Strategist wills it or not, Shirkra will kill this man …

‘No one rules the Overland. The Watchers do what Shirkra wants, but I’m not sure you could call it ruling. I don’t know what the people are doing. I don’t know how they run their lives.’ By running away, if they have any sense.

‘They look after themselves now,’ Canning said. ‘As it should be. We would have been better off all along, without these gods and their machines.’

For a moment, the Watcher was surprised. Is that how we all think of them now? As gods? But his attention was soon diverted by a noise in the corridor outside: a gate being opened, far away.

‘She’s coming again.’ There was a tremor in Canning’s voice. ‘The woman in the white mask.’

Footsteps came to them, delicate feet padding across cold stone.

‘Have you seen what she does to me, Aranfal? Have you been here, when she … I can’t remember. I can’t remember seeing you here.’

The Watcher did not respond. It was too late, now. Shirkra was among them.

She was the same as always, a thin woman in a green dress, curls of red hair flowing behind her mask, that weird thing that approximated her own face and seemed to shift between expressions. It was strange; the Watcher had seen her many times since the events of the Circus, but he could never quite hold a steady image of her in his mind’s eye. To leave her side was to wake from a nightmare; there was always a sense of something vast, terrible, and untouchable, fading into nothingness.

In Mother’s absence, she had emerged as the dominant force in the See House, and in the Centre at large. Her reign was strange and volatile: she would lock herself away for days, and then appear, ordering the Watchers to burn every second house on an unfortunate street, or poison the wells of an almshouse, or swap the stones in a cemetery. It was chaos. But then, so was she.

Still, it was clear she worked within certain boundaries that Mother had laid down. This was agony for her; she took out her anger on Canning, and the other unfortunates she held in the Bowels.

Aranfal, though, had become something of a favourite of the woman in the white mask. It was not a comfortable place to be; sometimes he would have traded places with Canning.

‘Watcher Aranfal!’ she cried, clapping her hands. ‘What a delight! You have been avoiding me, hmm? You have. I know you have.’

She went to him and reached out a hand, brushing a tendril of blond hair from his cheek.

‘Why don’t you love me, Aranfal? I love you.’

‘Thank you, my lady.’

‘Am I wrong, my Aranfal? Do you love me? Tell me. Please. Tell me if you love me, or if you don’t. I can withstand the blow, Aranfal! I am so old, you must realise. I have seen so many come and go, and very few of them loved me, no, very few indeed.’ She sighed. ‘Tell me. Do you love me, or not?’

The Watcher stretched out a smile. ‘I love you, of course, Operator. I love you more than the stars.’

‘More than the stars!’ Shirkra clapped her hands together and spun on her heel, her green dress billowing through the cell. ‘That is good, that is good!’ She halted, and the eyes behind the mask suddenly narrowed. ‘You will not look at another, will you, Aranfal? I should take your eyes, perhaps, and hide them in my little cupboard, and then you will never look at anyone else, for it will be beyond you, hmm?’

Aranfal bowed. ‘As you wish, madam.’

The Operator’s shriek of laughter echoed off the stone walls. ‘As I wish, indeed! Someone who cares for my wishes, hmm? Mother won’t let me do anything, you know. All she worries about is the Machinery! “No fun until we find its remains! Work before play!” Who would have thought that victory would be so boring?’

The Operator walked towards the one-time Tactician, who moaned as she approached. His eyes flickered, and he looked once more to the floor.

She raised a finger, and began to play with a memory.

They were in some kind of a harbour. Before them was a wall, and below that the grey sea. The cobblestones reeked of fish, rotting before them, dead eyes staring up into nothing. Canning was there, a more youthful version, with a woman at his side. She was younger than him, much younger, barely older than eighteen. The girl reached out to Canning and struck him, before climbing the wall, and falling, down to the sea below.

They were back in the cell. There was a dull glow of reddish light, fading into nothing.

The former Tactician wheezed, and blood fell from his lips. How does she make them bleed? ‘It did not happen like that … I know it did not … you have twisted it.’

Shirkra laughed. ‘No one is ever right about memories, not even the people who own them. What does it matter, anyway? They are so much more than … mere records.’

She leaned forward, and kissed Canning on the forehead. He flinched, but was too weak to move away.

Shirkra laughed. ‘Memories are strange things, you know. They are not just images in the mind.’ She reached out and touched a black wall. ‘This See House of yours – there are memories in the stones.’

‘When will you kill him?’

Canning caught Aranfal’s gaze for the briefest of moments, and the Watcher saw a spark there: the light of life. But it quickly expired, and the former Tactician’s head slumped forward once more.

Shirkra hesitated. ‘Kill him?’ The shadows in the cell grew longer. ‘That would be a kindness. I am not cruel, you know. I like my games, but I am not cruel. Still – I cannot kill him – no, I cannot.’

‘Why not?’ Aranfal stepped towards her. ‘You are the Mother of Chaos. Who can stop you from doing anything?’

Shirkra snatched her mask from her face. She giggled like a young girl, her hand held before her little mouth. ‘You seek to trick me into bringing his death, Aranfal! You think it would be a kindness, hmm? I see through your tricks. If I kill him, you know, I will be in such trouble, because Mother loves him, hmm? She thinks she sees something in this creature, though what it is, I cannot tell.’

She turned upon Canning.

‘But then again – trouble. Hmm. What would happen if I got in trouble? Real trouble? Would it not be a bit … fun to get in trouble with Mother? I haven’t been in trouble with Mother for ages, you know. I’ve been so good all this time. It’s nice when you get in trouble with Mother. It shows she cares, ha ha ha ha ha!’

Aranfal laughed, though he did not know why. The longer you serve her, the more you become her. Everything is a cloud of nothing, and only laughter breaks it.

‘We should do it together, Aranfal!’ Shirkra was beside him, wearing her mask once again.

Chaos is making a plan, making it forever, abiding by it, building the rules, and then twisting in a new direction, a different way, hmm, without knowing where it will take—

She held his hand in hers. ‘Imagine, both of us getting into trouble with Mother! And Jandell would be so angry, too, wherever he may be – you told him you would look after Canning, hmm? I don’t need any powers to know that, ha ha. I know what he’s like. “Oh, promise me, Aranfal, promise me, hmm, won’t you look after my little child, who withers in the den of the vipers, hmm?”’

Aranfal looked to Canning. It’s true, it’s true, she knows you so well.

Children.

Another voice, from nowhere and everywhere.

The Strategist.

Come to me.

**

Aranfal was in the Underhall.

This was the largest room in the See House, as far as anyone knew, a vast cavern of damp stone, broken portraits, and rotten wooden furniture. It was said to be the dining hall of ancient Tacticians, before they grew tired of feasting in the Bowels. But no one came here, now.

Shirkra was at the back of the hall, her ear pressed against a wooden door that festered with mould. She was no longer wearing her mask. She called Aranfal to her, and beckoned him to do the same.

A thin, reedy sound came from beyond.

‘Music,’ he said. He looked at Shirkra, who nodded once, and giggled.

‘Why are we here?’ the Watcher asked. ‘How did we get here?’

Shirkra grinned at him. ‘Mother has summoned us. Didn’t you hear her?’

Aranfal nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘One must come promptly when summoned by Mother.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘It’s stupid to do anything else. Mother is very patient, you know, very patient, but it’s not good to test her, oh no, not good at all.’

The Watcher was afraid. He was Aran Fal.

‘Have you met Mother before, Aranfal, hmm?’

‘No. At least, not in her new guise.’

‘Ah. You knew her host.’ Shirkra giggled. ‘It will be so lovely to see you together! I love both of you so much!’

They walked through the door, and found themselves in a corridor. There were torches along the walls, burning in that strange flame of Strategist purple. As they went, a light grew before them, a tempest in the same colour.

The environment began to change. The corridor faded away, and the air became wet and cool. New sounds intermingled with the strange music: the movement of leaves in the breeze, a dappling of water on rocks, weird chirps and chirrups of animals.

‘Where are we?’ Aranfal asked. ‘It feels like we’ve gone outside. How can that be?’

Shirkra tutted. ‘Your questions are born of the Overland. We are not in the Overland, my Aranfal.’

Aranfal looked up and saw a bright moon, a perfectly smooth and circular body that radiated a cold intensity.

‘That was not here before,’ he said. ‘What is this place?’

‘A memory. Many memories. Woven together, made more beautiful than before, oh yes.’

They came to a garden. Aranfal saw a wide, dark pond up ahead, its surface a perfect reflection of that unnatural moon, its waters utterly still. Black plants surrounded the pond, tall things with dark, glossy leaves and pale, pink flowers. Animal sounds could be heard in the dark, but there was no sign of bird or beast.

Sitting on a rock and staring into the pond was the Strategist. Katrina Paprissi. The One. Mother. Always Mother, always call her Mother. She was dressed in her purple rags, her pale skin exposed to the moonlight, her black hair tied tightly back with an ivory pin. She held in her hands a long, thin, wooden instrument: the source of the strange music. It was a lament. It told a story of a time long gone, though no one sang along to it.

At her side was a mask: the face of a white rat.

Mother cast a glance in their direction, and removed the pipe from her lips. The music died slowly, echoing through the garden. The Strategist tilted her head very slightly, and placed the tip of her tongue on her upper lip, as if tasting something there.

Aranfal bowed to her.

‘The Machinery is broken,’ the Strategist said. Her words had hints of Katrina, but there was something more besides, as if several speakers were talking at once in voices from the past.

Aranfal hesitated. ‘Yes, Strategist.’

Mother did not seem to register his words. ‘The Machinery is broken. It must be. It Selected me, and gave me such powers. But Ruin has still not come. There is more work ahead of me.’ She sighed. ‘I must find what remains of the Machinery. I must shatter it into a million pieces. Only then will Ruin come.’ She placed the instrument to her lips once more, and music filled the garden. After a while she removed the pipe. ‘Ruin is waiting for me.’ She looked directly at Aranfal. Her gaze penetrated him. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘Mother,’ Aranfal whispered.

The Strategist nodded. ‘I am Mother.’ She looked at Shirkra. ‘You sought to disobey your mother.’

Shirkra shook her head. ‘No. No. I would not have killed him. I think I would not have.’

‘You think, but you do not know. You are not the Mother of Chaos. That is the wrong name for you. You are a child of Chaos, and nothing more.’

Shirkra sighed. ‘I am a child. I am a child. I cannot tell what I will do.’

Mother called her daughter to her side, and made her sit on the rock. ‘You stayed with me during many long years. You are more than Chaos. You are … light.’

Shirkra grinned.

‘Torturer.’

Aranfal snapped to attention. Their eyes met again, and all the world was purple.

‘I am glad you have come.’ Something flickered in her eyes; for a moment, the Watcher saw himself standing before the gates of the See House, long ago. Before Aran Fal became Aranfal.

‘Shirkra,’ Mother said, looking away from the Watcher. ‘When was the last time we played a game? The game?’

Shirkra’s eyes narrowed. ‘You know when, Mother. Long ago. Before the Machinery.’

Mother nodded. ‘It is time for another.’

There was a long silence. Shirkra remained utterly still for a long while, before leaping to her feet.

‘Another game?’ she hissed. ‘We swore we would never play again. And we are busy!’

Mother nodded. She lifted her instrument to her lips again, and played a low, solemn tune. When it was finished, she raised her hand in the air. A ball of dark flame appeared there; Aranfal saw things in the darkness, memories that were not his own.

‘The Dust Queen demands it,’ Mother whispered.

She threw the flame to the ground, and it burst into the forms of three identical women.

They were hard to look upon, unnatural creatures, formed of a substance somewhere between sand and dust, fine and flowing and alive. They were tall and thin, their limbs weird and long, their eyes dark, the skin of their faces in constant flux, grey like the sand from which they had formed. They wore crowns upon their heads, made of glass, though even these seemed to change, flickering with a strange light. Their dresses shimmered in a thousand colours, dancing around them like cat’s tails.

Dust, dust, dust.

As Aranfal looked upon these women, a realisation dawned. These were notthree women at all, but one, a singular creature. The Watcher had seen many strange things since the fall of Northern Blown, but here was something new. Here was something beyond even Mother. He was utterly insignificant as he stood before this thing of three parts. He felt compelled by her, madly attracted; he wanted to throw himself into her and become a particle, a speck of dust, flowing with her, within her, and she within him.

Mother coughed, and the women disappeared.

‘She has spoken to me in the night,’ Mother said. ‘She wants to play a game. A last game, before Ruin comes.’

Shirkra made a strange sound. A growl. ‘We cannot trust her. She betrayed us before. She helped Jandell build the Machinery. It is a trick.’

Mother sighed. ‘Her motivations cannot be understood. But we will play.’

Shirkra stomped a foot. ‘Mother! Why must we always dance to her tune? Say no! Tell her we don’t have time for games!’ She bent down, and touched the Strategist’s shoulder. ‘You could resist her, you know. Your powers are growing again.’

Mother smiled. ‘There is no resisting her. Not until Ruin comes. And Ruin will not come, until we find the Machinery. Do you understand?’

Shirkra shook her head. For a moment, she was nothing more than a child, her eyes wide and innocent. ‘What are the prizes?’ she whispered.

‘If we play with her, she says she will take us to the Machinery after the game: no matter who wins.’

‘It is a trick, Mother! She sees some advantage in this. It cannot be otherwise.’

Mother shrugged. ‘Either way, we will play the game. If we refuse, she could simply compel us. And how long would it take us to find the Machinery without her guidance? I do not want to wait on Ruin for a moment longer than is necessary. If we accept, she will take us to whatever remains of the Machinery, and I will bring Ruin. We will accept.’

‘Do you think she is telling the truth?’

Mother nodded. ‘I have known her for longer than almost any of us. We will play the game, and she will show us the Machinery. Why? That, I do not know. Perhaps she wants Ruin to come. She saw it, before any of us. They were her words, were they not? Ruin will come with the One.’

Aranfal gasped.

‘Ruin will destroy her,’ Shirkra said.

Mother narrowed her eyes in thought. ‘Yes. But I believe she knows that. I think she wants to die. I think she wishes to play a last game, before death comes.’

Shirkra threw herself down, and placed her head in her mother’s lap. ‘Very well,’ she said.

Mother stroked her daughter’s head. ‘I know this is a struggle for you,’ she said. ‘All of this – all that we have done, just to survive.’ She smiled. ‘You know where you have to go, now. You know whom you must seek.’

‘Yes, Mother.’

‘Take him with you,’ the Strategist said, pointing at Aranfal. ‘We should keep him safe. I think he will be useful to us in the game.’ She nodded to herself. ‘Yes. So useful. So safe.’

Shirkra grinned at Aranfal, and the Watcher sighed.




Chapter Three (#ud6eded5f-c42b-5a3b-9075-148af20b11db)


‘I am dead,’ Brightling said.

She was sitting on the deck of Jandell’s ship, legs crossed, smoking her pipe, and staring out at the bleak grey waters of the world beyond the Plateau. From time to time she picked at a bowl of dates, or sipped at a glass bottle of some red spirit the Operator had procured. He stood beside her, his head bowed.

‘That is a strange thing to say,’ Jandell said. ‘I can see you, sitting there, breathing in smoke, eating and drinking, and talking to me, telling me that you are dead.’

Brightling flicked a date into her dead mouth. ‘Whatever I thought I was is now gone forever.’ She nodded. ‘We all believe we know who we are. We look in the mirror, and think the truth stares back at us. It is a lie, though; it can be changed. I saw it happen in the past. I made it happen. A new creature, in the original shell. Aran Fal becomes Aranfal.’

She sucked on her pipe, and exhaled a dancing circle.

‘But the Machinery saw the real truth. It looked beyond the mirror. It knew who we really were.’

Jandell grunted. ‘Aran Fal and Aranfal. Those names sound almost the same.’

‘The two men are very different.’

The Operator nodded. ‘And what about you? Who is the real Brightling?’

She looked up at him. He had grown younger on their journey, at least in appearance: black hair now fell from his skull; the lines in his face had faded away, and there was a new light in his eyes. But he still wore that terrible cloak, and the faces within glared at her, smiled at her, licked their lips and laughed at her.

‘I was made for the Machinery, and now it is gone.’

‘You were the greatest person on the Plateau.’

Brightling shrugged. The greatest person on the Plateau. She thought of all the things she had done in her efforts to impress the Machinery and wreck the hopes of others. She thought of Canning, of the humiliations she had poured on him. It had all seemed so clear, once: so fair. The Operator loved her; he had told her so himself. She could do anything with his backing. She could ruin her enemies, in their own minds, and in the eye of the Machinery. She could expose them. She could stage plays to display their weaknesses to Overland and Underland alike. That world she believed in was at an end. The Strategist was broken, the Tacticians were broken, and the Machinery was broken. All of it, all of it, all of it, was always going to break.

She shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be a Watcher, but I was blind. I blinded myself. I didn’t see what was happening to the Machinery.’

Jandell laughed. ‘That guilt is mine, not yours. I created it. I spoke with it. I turned my eyes from the truth.’

‘The truth of Katrina Paprissi. But that was my error, more than yours, Operator.’

‘She was important to you,’ he said. ‘She was a daughter to you.’

Brightling turned once more to the waters.

**

It had been months since Brightling had joined Jandell on his ship, in the far North of the Plateau. She had never been on one before, yet even she could tell it was no ordinary vessel. When she looked out upon the waves she could see them rolling wildly, slamming and whirling in a great grey storm. But this had no impact upon the black ship, which seemed to float above the water, ignoring all its motions.

In the mornings, she would see him on deck, his cloak blowing in the wind, the faces wailing in their prison.

He had told her, in the beginning, where they were going: to the home of Squatstout, the little creature who had followed Aranfal around the Overland, all that time ago. But he said nothing more about it; he only stared at the ocean.

The ship had no crew.

**

They spent their evenings in the galley, a kind of kitchen below deck. He would speak to her, as she ate the food he conjured from only he knew where. He told her of strange things, of cities long gone and wars among the Operators. He told her of dreams that lasted millennia, of the birth of stars and the fall of civilisations.

When she thought back on these conversations, the memories turned to dust.

‘You are happy now, Operator,’ she said one evening. They sat opposite one another at a rough-hewn table. He watched her, with a smile, as she plucked at fruit and cheese.

‘I am not happy,’ he said after a moment. ‘I am … relieved. A weight has been lifted from me. I no longer hide from the truth.’

‘Ruin will come with the One.’

Jandell closed his eyes.

‘Prophecies are strange things, and this one was spoken by the strangest of all creatures. Who knows the truth of it? Who knows when Ruin will come, and what it will mean to us all? Perhaps she does not know herself.’

‘Who is this woman? Shirkra?’

Jandell smiled. ‘No. Shirkra is nothing but madness: twisted and deformed. The one who made the Promise …’ He stood from the table and walked to a shelf on the wall, where there was a small wooden box. He opened it, lifted something out, and returned to the table, placing the item between them. It was a statue, perhaps as tall as Brightling’s hand, depicting three women: identical creatures, wearing crowns of glass and dresses as white as ivory.

‘The Dust Queen,’ Jandell said. ‘Oldest of us all. I could not have made the Machinery without her. She looked into it, when we had finished, and she saw those words: Ruin will come with the One.’

‘Who is she?’ Brightling asked. She stared at the statue, and for the briefest of moments, the edges of the figures seemed to fall away, as if they were formed of dust. ‘Where is she now?’

‘I do not know.’ Jandell took the statue back to its box, and returned to the table. ‘I wish I did, now that …’ He let the sentence die.

In a swift movement he snatched up a fork and pronged a grape, thrusting it at Brightling, like a child trying to please a favoured aunt. The Watcher plucked it from the blade, and crushed it in her mouth.

‘This food is very old, so old,’ said Jandell.

‘It can’t be. It’s delicious.’

‘It is only as old as the memory itself, which is as fresh to me now as when it was made, back then, so long ago.’

‘The food is a memory?’ She lit her pipe and blew a ring of smoke into the air. The Operator watched it dance. ‘How can I taste a memory?’

Jandell laughed again. ‘Why shouldn’t a memory be real? Memories are what we live for, my family and I. Memories are our power. We can bring a memory back to life; we can twist different ones together, to create something else. It is our … magic. Yes, that is what they called it once.’

He put out his hand, and opened his palm. In the middle of it was a small flame, a flickering tongue of red fire.

‘What is this?’ she whispered.

Jandell laughed. ‘This is nothing. This is just a little trinket.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Touch it.’

Brightling hesitated. ‘It will burn me.’

Jandell shook his head, and she did not hesitate again. She plunged her hand into the fire, and felt only coldness.

‘What kind of flame is this?’

Jandell smiled. ‘A thing of memory.’

‘You remember a cold fire?’

He shook his head. ‘No. There is more than one memory at work here. My people can mix them together like paints on a palette. And they are not my memories; they are the memories of humanity. There is no Jandell, in truth. I was born in the pool of human memory that you call the Underland, long, long ago. My family and I are creatures of memory.’

As Brightling looked upon the flame, without thinking, she shifted her hands underneath her cloak, and felt it: her mask. An image appeared in her mind’s eye. She was a young Watcher, sitting at her desk. The Operator appeared behind her, and she did not react. It was as if this was simply to be expected. She turned to him, and he handed her something: her mask.

She felt it, now, and she lifted it out. It had taken the form of an old man, his features flashing with anger. Without knowing why she did it, Brightling put the mask on her face, for the first time in an age. Wearing it was painful; she could feel it weighing on her, tugging at the core of her being. She turned to Jandell, and for a moment he looked like his old self, ancient and weak. The flame spluttered in his hand, and suddenly went out. He lifted his other hand to his eyes, and she realised he was in pain.

She snatched the mask from her face and placed it on the table. Jandell was young again, though his palm was still empty. He gave her a weak smile. I have hurt him. The mask has hurt him.

‘What is this thing?’ Brightling whispered. She looked at her mask, which had formed into the face of a young woman, placid and plain.

‘Memories are what we live for,’ Jandell said, ‘because memories are life itself.’ He nodded at the dark mask. ‘That is the opposite of life. It is all that remains of our old enemy: a thing called the Absence. A creature that wished only to destroy memory, and all of memory’s children, and life itself. The masks your Watchers wear are formed of the Old Place, and give them a little sliver of its power: the power of memory. Your mask senses memories, but only to destroy them.’

‘When I have worn it, sometimes … I have felt I could strip out a person’s soul.’

Jandell did not respond. Brightling took the mask in her hand, and hid it away again.

‘Was Katrina a memory, Operator?’

Jandell sighed.

‘There is no Katrina any more. She is subsumed by the One. My people …’

He stared at her, unblinking. ‘This body is not mine; I took it long ago, because it suits me. I feel whole when I am within its memories. I warp it now, as I wish, but I did not create it. It is the same with Katrina; whatever she once was has now gone, replaced by a creature of memory. My mother.’

Brightling ran a finger along her mask. ‘If she is a creature of memory, Operator – then I could use my mask—’

Jandell silenced her with a finger. ‘You could not stand against her. And neither could that mask – remember, the Absence was defeated. That is only a shard of it, a piece of its corpse, and it would be defeated again.’

Brightling nodded, but she was unconvinced. A fantasy took life in her febrile imagination, and she grasped her mask. One day, I will destroy the thing that has possessed her, and I will bring Katrina back.

**

‘Look ahead,’ said Jandell.

Brightling pulled her black cloak around her and walked to the deck. The Operator had given her the garment, along with several pairs of trousers and shirts. She had no idea where the clothes had come from, but she was glad of them. Perhaps they are memories, too.

‘What is it?’

‘It is land, Amyllia.’

She squinted, and could just make out a patch of darkness, rising up from the water far in the distance.

‘Is it where Squatstout lives, Operator?’

‘Yes. My brother.’ The Operator sighed.

He turned to face her.

‘We will be there in a day.’

**

Brightling knew, when she woke, that something had changed.

She climbed from her bed hesitantly, and made her way to the deck. Jandell was already there. ‘It will grow larger, as you watch,’ he said. His back was turned to her.

The Watcher looked ahead. The island seemed no closer than it had the day before. However, as she looked, it appeared to lurch forward, forcing its way into view.

It was as if a mountain had been plucked from its home and dropped into the water, far from where it was supposed to be. There was nothing else in view, nothing but this black rock that reached from the sea to the sky: a balled fist, where the See House was a claw.

‘Our destination,’ Jandell said. Something had changed once again in the Operator. He still appeared young, but the lightness and vitality of the previous days had vanished. He was weaker, to the Watcher’s eye.

‘This is not a good place,’ Brightling said, sucking on her pipe and blowing pale smoke into the still air. ‘I am afraid of it.’

The Operator nodded.

‘Have you been here before, Jandell?’

‘No. I never had the inclination. I wish now that I had.’

‘Why?’

The Operator shrugged. ‘To see what sort of creature Squatstout has become.’

**

‘Squatstout knows we are here,’ Jandell said.

Brightling looked up from the deck of the ship. The cliff was a vast, dark wall, as impenetrable as the battlements of Northern Blown. Far above them, lined along the edge, she could make out people holding torches in the night. In the middle was a lumpen creature in a peasant’s shawl. Squatstout.

‘This seems a lovely place,’ said Brightling. ‘Operator, have you seen these?’

There were corpses in the water. They had not been there for long, by the look of them. She thought of the Bony Shore, and the things that Katrina found there, long ago. Brightling had told the girl they were just rocks. Perhaps they came from this place.

Jandell glanced at the bodies in the waves, before turning his attention back to the island. ‘There is an inlet here.’

Brightling studied the shore, and saw nothing but black stone. But the boat, guided by some invisible force, threaded its way through the boulders until the rocks hung over their heads and to their sides.

They had entered a cave, and she could see nothing.

‘Operator …’

There was a jolt, and the ship shuddered violently to a stop.

‘Do not be concerned,’ said Jandell. ‘They will find us soon.’

There came a noise of footsteps, and the cave filled with light. Brightling saw that the ship had run up onto the ground, on a patch of land mercifully free of jagged rocks.

They were in a giant chamber, carved from the very centre of the island. People were milling around, carrying their torches. Directly below, at the front of the ship, stood Squatstout. This was not the cringing servant Brightling remembered, but a lord, his posture erect, his eyes cool and watchful. Was this really the same creature that had once followed Aranfal around the Centre? He seemed tauter, somehow. He was still the same small, fat man, but there was an edge to him, now.

‘I knew you would come here, Jandell,’ Squatstout said with a smile. ‘I always knew you would come.’

‘Impressive. I only found out recently myself,’ Jandell replied.

‘Indeed. You left it a very long time, a very long time, which some would construe as rude, though not I. I have watched you, and I know you have been most busy.’

Jandell bowed.

‘But I am being so rude!’ Squatstout cried. ‘These are my companions, and my loyal servants,’ he said, gesturing behind him. ‘I call them my Guards.’

There were about a dozen Guards. Their faces were hidden behind gleaming masks, from which hung long, silver beaks, giving them the appearance of monstrous, metallic birds. They all wore chainmail under short green cloaks, and on their heads were wide-brimmed hats. Some held pikes.

Beyond this group were others, maybe a hundred of them, people with pale faces and curious eyes.

‘Come, join me for dinner,’ said Squatstout. There was a hissing quality to his voice that Brightling had not appreciated before. ‘We have a great deal to discuss, but I would not – I would not – have you go hungry in my home.’

As they clambered down from the ship, a bell began to ring.

**

Squatstout took them to a stone staircase embedded in the wall and leading into the heart of the island. The staircase was narrow, its stones slick with damp. The torches of Squatstout’s companions illuminated the way. On and on it went, through rock and mud, up into the island.

Brightling was sandwiched between several of the strange, beaked Guards. As she looked at their pikes, she thought of the bodies in the water. She felt under her cloak, and brushed a finger across her handcannon.

There was a commotion ahead, and the group came to a halt. Peering into the torchlight, Brightling saw one of the Guards huddled together with Squatstout, muttering incomprehensible words. His beak was painted a dull gold, and he seemed to hold a senior position, judging from the way the others kept their distance. Squatstout gestured at a section of the cave wall, and the Guard touched it with a gloved hand. The wall fell away, and the group marched through.

The bell kept ringing as they climbed, steadily, in the dark.

‘The bell rings only in my Keep,’ said Squatstout. ‘But soon, it will ring across the island.’

**

‘Welcome to my throne room, Jandell,’ said Squatstout, ‘where I have thought of you for ten thousand years.’

The room was circular, its floors and walls formed of heavy dark stones. Dawn was creeping through the windows, bringing with it a grey light. Brightling’s attention was seized by the throne itself, which sat on a slightly elevated platform in the centre of the room. It was made of wood, and had been warped and twisted into an ‘A’ shape.

The Guards fanned out. The one with the gold beak assumed a position directly behind the throne, a long wooden stick held firmly in his grasp. The other people, the pale-faced inhabitants of the island, were now nowhere to be seen.

Squatstout skipped to his throne and jumped into the air, thumping his backside down hard on the wood. He immediately locked his gaze on Brightling, who did not flinch. The lord of the island held out his hands, the palms facing outwards.

‘Tactician, I would like to say how sorry I am. I enjoyed the time I spent in the See House with that lovely man, Aranfal. I hope you don’t feel I tricked you.’

Brightling bowed, judging that silence was the wisest option.

‘I like to keep an eye on things, you must understand, and the Watchers of the Overland were very accommodating. I thought that perhaps I would be able to find the One among your number, as the Machinery spluttered to its end. My people like to live within mortals, you see. We worship you, in a strange way, and we love to be one with you. Isn’t that right, Jandell?’

Jandell did not respond.

Squatstout giggled. ‘She may have taken a host, I thought, and not yet revealed herself. I had a hunch it would be a Watcher: someone near the beating heart of power in your land. In the end, she did not need my help. But I was right, wasn’t I? I knew where she’d be hiding, though I did not find her.’

Brightling did not react. Squatstout smiled, then whistled through his teeth and rolled his eyes.

‘You are a hard woman to apologise to! Anyway, never mind. In truth, I didn’t really do anything wrong, did I? All I did was watch. Well, yes, I could have told you who I really was. Or rather, what I really was, for I told you my true name, did I not? But no: omitting the truth is just as bad as lying, as I’m sure the Bleak Jandell here would agree. But at the end of it all, you are here, now, in my home, and I aim to be a gracious host.’

Squatstout clicked his fingers. Several Guards exited by a door at the side, and came back hauling a long wooden table. Others appeared with piles of food on silver platters.

‘We have much to eat here,’ said Squatstout, ‘if you enjoy fish and seabirds.’

The Guards placed three wooden chairs behind the table. Brightling sat, but Jandell remained on his feet, watching Squatstout with a steady expression before walking towards the throne.

‘What do you call this place?’ he asked.

The Guard with the golden beak visibly tensed, and laid a hand upon his master’s throne.

Squatstout raised a hand. ‘All is well, Protector, my darling,’ he said. He cocked his head and grinned at Jandell. ‘This is the Habitation, Jandell. I am surprised you never learned that, over these long years.’

‘And he is the Autocrat,’ said the Guard known as the Protector. It was a deep voice, leathery, old. ‘You would do well to respect him.’

Squatstout – the Autocrat – gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Protector, you do not know whom you address. This is Jandell. He is one of the oldest of our kind, though he does not look it, does he? You grow younger in appearance, Jandell. The breaking of the Machinery has lifted a weight off you, hmm? The things Jandell could do … well, I have seen them all too often. Is that not right, Jandell?’

Jandell did not react. Brightling reached under her cloak, and placed her hand on the hilt of her blade. Strange, they had not taken her weapons. Perhaps they had no fear of them in this place.

The bell rang again.

‘Squatstout, listen to me,’ Jandell said. ‘I need your assistance. Where has Mother been, all these years? Are there mortals there? People who helped her? Perhaps they know something that can help us.’

Squatstout laughed, harsher now than before.

‘Help you do what?’

‘Stop Ruin. She has not found the Machinery: Ruin cannot come, until she does.’

‘Stop Ruin? No one and nothing can stop Ruin, not even the Dust Queen herself. The Strategist will find the Machinery in the end, and Ruin will come with the One. You think you see the truth now, Jandell. But you are arrogant if you think you can halt the inevitable.’

Jandell sighed. ‘You call yourself Autocrat again, then.’

Squatstout shrugged.

‘That is a name from a different time,’ continued Jandell. ‘It is strange to hear it.’

The Autocrat gave a fierce nod. He seemed exasperated.

‘It was a different time, so different! We were happy then, Jandell! All of us! Operator!’ He spat out the last word like a curse.

And then the room fell away.

**

Brightling was standing on hard, bare ground, surrounded by a throng of people. They were a sorry sight, a ragged horde, thin arms held aloft.

A red sun burned in a red sky, and red sand blew across red soil. The rags the people wore were red, and so was their skin, as if they had spent centuries cooking under the sun. Before them was a crystal platform, on which sat five red thrones. On those thrones, wearing crowns of red, sat five beings.

Brightling recognised three of them straight away. In the centre was Jandell, the young version, black hair framing his narrow face. He wore a cloak, but it was not the one she knew; there were no faces in the red material.

To Jandell’s left was Squatstout, who leaned forward to whisper something in the Operator’s ear. To his right sat the woman in the white mask, the one who had emerged from the Underland with Katrina, in the ruins of the Circus – Shirkra, Jandell had called her. The mask was nowhere to be seen, but the skin of her face was almost as bleached and flawless, and her green eyes now glinted red.

Brightling did not recognise the last two. They sat apart from the other three, holding hands: identical black twins, a boy and a girl, watching the goings-on with a savage glee.

Jandell stood from his throne, his cloak sweeping into the air. Squatstout laughed and clapped his hands.

In the distance, a bell rang.

Jandell pointed into the crowd, to a thin woman holding a baby. She clutched the child to her dusty bosom, hoping, perhaps, that Jandell was pointing somewhere else.

But he was not.

Hands grasped at the woman and her child, pushing her forward to the red thrones. A sense of dumb foreboding settled in the pit of Brightling’s stomach. Why are you afraid? You’ve seen worse. But there was something different, here, from the cruelties she had witnessed – that she had perpetrated – as a Watcher of the Overland. This was the dumb malice of a child toying with an insect: cruelty for its own sake. She looked to Jandell, to the real Jandell; he had averted his eyes.

The boy and girl leapt from their thrones and skipped to the side of the platform. The boy tapped the woman on the forehead. She looked into his eyes, and seemed to somehow deflate.

‘Delicious,’ the boy said, and his companions laughed.

The girl prised the baby from the woman’s arms, and danced around the platform with it as it squalled. She threw it in the air and caught it; she seemed certain to drop it several times, but somehow held on, grasping it by an arm or a leg as it cried. The mother did not protest; she melted away into the rabble, arms hanging by her side, no longer concerned by anything.

‘Bring the child here,’ said Jandell.

A moan ran through the crowd.

The girl stopped dead and looked at Jandell. She seemed to hesitate.

‘Girl, bring that to me.’

Jandell’s voice was different. It was colder.

The girl did not hesitate this time. She bowed as she approached Jandell, the baby held before her.

He took the child. Squatstout threw his head back and laughed, a sound that echoed across the barren plain like that bell that came from nowhere and everywhere.

Jandell held the child in his arms, cradling it like it was his own. Then he thrust it in the air, gripped tightly in both his hands. His eyes burned, and he looked upon its small face with a fury until the child hung limp. The boy and the girl ran to Jandell, staring up at him with devotion. Squatstout clapped, and Shirkra looked on impassively.

The real Jandell turned to the real Squatstout.

‘Why did you take me here?’

**

They were back in the Autocrat’s throne room.

‘You seemed to enjoy it, Autocrat Jandell.’

‘No, Squatstout, do not call me that.’

Squatstout sighed. ‘Very well, Operator, jester, innkeeper, whatever you call yourself these days. You did not seem to mind.’

‘I did not want to go.’

The Autocrat laughed. ‘So you say, yet you came anyway. You remember how it used to be, don’t you? It was better, then.’

‘No. It got better, later.’

Squatstout grinned. ‘Ah! That little world you built, all of us such friends. But it was never going to last, was it? You always just believe what you want to believe.’ He sighed. ‘And now look at us. Pathetic.’ He seemed to have a new idea. ‘You said you did not want to go, Operator?’

Jandell nodded.

‘Why did you go, then, if you did not want to? You are not so weak, are you?’

The Operator looked at the floor, and the Protector chuckled. Oh, do not laugh at the Operator.

Squatstout leapt up from his throne. ‘It has been ten thousand years, brother. You mean to tell me that in all this time, you have allowed your powers to wilt? We feared you so much, all of us, hiding away until the Machinery broke. And yet you had turned to … this.’ He gestured at the Operator. ‘All those fresh new memories, in that land, all those memories you could have taken!’

‘It is a poor way to grow powerful: stealing the memories of mortals.’

Squatstout thumped his chest with a balled fist. ‘Don’t you think I know that, my brother? But it is who we are, and we cannot deny that, never, never, never!’ He laughed. ‘And how dare you talk of theft, hmm – you who stole a boy from his home!’

A picture of Alexander Paprissi appeared in Brightling’s memory. A picture of a boy, with his family: a family that was ruined. She looked to the Operator, whose eyes were closed. She could not feel angry with him.

‘He did that for the greater good,’ she said. She had not meant to speak.

Squatstout spat on the ground. ‘There is his greater good. He has been like this for too long, Brightling – when his brothers and sisters hurt mortals, we are creatures of unspeakable cruelty. When he does it, it’s all about the greater good.’ He sighed. ‘But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the state he is in.’ He focused again on the Operator. ‘You could have made a deal with them, hmm, a little arrangement, like it used to be? “You give me some of your memories and I’ll help you with my lovely powers”. Hmm?’

‘No. I wanted them to go their own way.’

‘Their own way! How could they go their own way, after you made that … that thing? The Machinery!’

Jandell did not respond.

Squatstout turned to Brightling. ‘I don’t know which is worse: that the Bleak Jandell should allow himself to rot, or that you people should let such a weakling lord it over you!’

‘That is not true. The Machinery is the master of the Overland.’

‘Ah, the mistress of the See House, deigning to share her thoughts with us once again,’ said Squatstout. ‘Once my mistress, even, oh yes. And now you are a … what? A simple Watcher?’

‘Yes.’

Squatstout laughed. ‘You did not watch well enough, it seems. Mother lived with you! She hid away, inside one that you loved as your own!’

He laughed, and Brightling’s expression tightened. The Autocrat clapped his hands quickly, as he had done in that red country, and Jandell was thrown onto his back. The cloak flew from his body, faces shrieking, and fell at Squatstout’s feet. Jandell was naked apart from a black rag.

There was joy in Squatstout’s eyes. He raised a hand and the cloak flew to the wall, where it spread across the cold stone, a tapestry of agonised faces.

‘I never thought such a day would come.’ He clapped his hands again, and black chains sprouted from the stone floor, curling their way around Jandell and binding him tightly, before throwing him against the wall, with his cloak. The Operator closed his eyes, and did not make a sound.

Squatstout turned to Brightling. ‘You, Watcher, did you think that such a day would come?’

Brightling shook her head.

‘No, I’m sure you didn’t. You will witness much, now, that you never expected to see.’

Squatstout snapped his fingers.

‘Guards, take Brightling to some comfortable quarters. And remove her weapons.’

Brightling’s heart sank.

‘You didn’t think they were a secret, did you, Brightling?’ Squatstout smiled. ‘Nothing is a secret to me on my island. Oh, but you can keep your mask. Aranfal told me about it, hmm. I want us to examine it later, together.’ He smiled. ‘I want to know your … relationship with that thing.’

Two of the beaked creatures lifted Brightling from the table, each grasping one of her arms. A third snatched her weapons from their hiding places.

‘I will visit you soon, Tactician,’ said Squatstout. He turned to the Operator on the wall. ‘You once had such talents, Jandell. Such talents. I will be intrigued to look upon this mask you wrought. It will remind me of older times.’

Somewhere, a bell rang.




Chapter Four (#ud6eded5f-c42b-5a3b-9075-148af20b11db)


The house was large, and echoed all around.

Drayn crept along a corridor. Engravings leered at her from the walls, images of ancestors long dead, spurring her on. Candles burned down to the very stumps. A spider made the mistake of crossing her path, and went away forever.

‘I know you are here, wherever you are,’ she whispered, leaping at the shadows. ‘I will find you, and Unchoose you, and that will be the end of you!’

But there was no sign of Cranwyl. Where could the wretch be, by Lord Squatstout’s foot?

On she went, the courageous girl, unafraid of the noises in the dark, or not too afraid at any rate. She heard a creaking noise behind. She swung round, ready to lay waste to her challenger. No one was there. Yet still the noise came. Drayn concentrated.

There was silence for a moment, and then a cough.

It was from the library!

She was about to charge forward when she got a hold of herself. Cranwyl was no fool; it would do no good to reveal herself too quickly. Perhaps that was even what he wanted. She gathered her thoughts, calmed her heart, and padded along the corridor.

Never have I caught you, Cranwyl, wretch of all wretches. Tonight the tables will turn. Tonight you will find yourself Unchosen, by me!

She reached the door. To her left, in the corner of her eye, she could just make out old Fyndir, founder of the House of Thonn, engraved upon one of the many walls he built, all those years ago, when the Autocrat had just come to the Habitation. Wish me well, Fyndir!

The girl reached out, and grasped the door handle. She pushed down, very gently, knowing that Cranwyl’s hearing was second to none. She was almost there, down it went, down it went, and then – clunk.

The door was locked.

She pushed again, just to make sure it was not simply stiff, but no, there was no way in. Could Cranwyl have heard me coming, and locked the door? That had to be it; all was not lost. She simply had to find a way in—

There came a tap at Drayn’s shoulder, and the blood stopped coursing through her miserable veins. She turned, defeated again. There he was, in the mask, the beak almost reaching to Drayn’s own nose.

‘Cranwyl,’ she sighed, ‘you are cheating. That is the only way!’

The masked monster laughed. The temerity of it!

‘I don’t cheat, not ever, lady,’ Cranwyl said.

Drayn could sense the smirk beneath the beak. The effrontery! ‘I just do my best. But it’s not very hard. You’re easy to throw off the scent, you know, very easy.’

Drayn exhaled and dropped to the ground, bum thumping on the floor.

‘But I heard you in the library.’

‘No, you didn’t. You thought you heard something, but it wasn’t me. I might have had a hand in it, though.’

‘How?’

‘Well, I know all the creaks and cracks of this house, you see. I can make it speak for me, just by tickling it in the right place.’

He removed his mask. After all these years, it still surprised Drayn how young he was, with his smooth skin and bushy brown hair and sneaky, bright little eyes. He could not have been more than, what, thirty? He had been working since before she was born; he had started working when he was her age, he said. Fancy that!

‘You are too good,’ she said. ‘You’re as good as the real beaks. You’re not a beak, are you?’ She laughed, secretly hoping that he was. That would be great fun.

Cranwyl returned the laugh. ‘If I was one of them, I’d be in Lord Squatstout’s Keep right now, not sat here, that’s for bloody sure.’

He looked up to a shelf on the wall, where an old clock ticked.

‘Come,’ he said, the laughter gone from his voice. ‘Your mother will be expecting you.’

**

Drayn had dressed in her finery, as she always did when dining with her mother. It did nothing for her mood, or for Mother’s.

‘Did you know, girl, that there are rats in the yard?’

Mother shot a hard glance in her daughter’s direction, as if Drayn had herself introduced the vermin.

I suppose I did bring that baby thingermewhatsit into the outer barn, but that isn’t necessarily connected, is it?

‘No, my lady, I did not know.’ Sometimes she used a different voice when she spoke to Mother. More proper. She hated herself for it. ‘But I will work to rid the property of them, with the assistance of Cranwyl, if it so pleases you.’

Mother shook her head. ‘You are not a rat catcher. I will speak with Cranwyl in the morning.’

I could absolutely be a rat catcher, if I wanted. Anyway, I could help Cranwyl catch rats, that’s for sure. He definitely wouldn’t mind.

‘Eat your food.’

Mother was wearing her black dress tonight. It looked good on her, with her grey hair. Drayn thought so, anyway. She’d never say it, though.

Drayn turned to her plate. Some kind of seabird looked back at her, its stewed eyes swimming in its head.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, hoping Mother would let her leave and knowing that would never happen.

‘Eat.’

Drayn turned the bird over, so she could at least avoid making eye contact. She hacked off a piece of pale meat and looked to the walls. More old people, looking down at her. No doubt they had to eat this muck in their day as well.

When she was about halfway through the bird she put down her knife and fork, hoping the remains would be swept away before Mother could notice. Sure enough, a shadowy figure came out of the darkness and lifted the plate, muttering something as he went. This was a house of mutters and shadows, all right.

Drayn had a question on her mind, and was in no mood to mutter. She looked at Mother, carefully weighing her options. Was she in a good mood? Was she ever in a good mood? Who knew?

‘Mother.’ Never Mum – always Mother.

The lady in the black dress looked up from her bird, whose beak she was about to inhale.

‘Yes?’

‘I heard that something happened after the Choosing.’

‘Really? I wasn’t there.’

Mother was lying – she had been there, after Drayn had gone home, and she knew what had happened. The head of the House of Thonn always knew what was happening on the Habitation.

‘They say there was something that came from the sea.’

‘Who say?’

‘They.’

‘They say a lot.’

‘Is it true?’

Mother sighed. ‘You would find out, anyway, I have no doubt. Yes, something came. It was very strange. A black ship, far bigger than a fishing boat. It came from across the Endless Ocean.’

‘That cannot be.’

‘That is what we all thought, too. But it was there. And yes, I was there, and yes, I did see it.’

‘What was it?’ Drayn’s eyes were wide.

Mother shook her head, and shrugged, as if the question didn’t matter. Drayn hated when she did that.

‘No one knows,’ Mother said. ‘It all happened very quickly. The Choosing had actually just finished when the thing appeared.’

‘What was on it?’ Drayn’s voice was now a whisper.

Mother gave her a curious look.

‘You will not tell your friends?’

Drayn shook her head. She only had one friend, anyway.

‘I did not see them myself, but they say there were two creatures.’

Drayn swallowed. ‘What kind of creatures?’

‘A woman. And another … being.’

Drayn nodded. This can only mean one thing. ‘Another Autocrat!’

‘Yes.’

‘What do they want?’

Mother tutted. ‘How am I supposed to know? I am sure it’s nothing to worry about.’

‘Thank you, Mother.’

But Drayn thought there was something to worry about. Creatures did not just appear from the sea, not ever in all of history, apart from Lord Squatstout himself, may he live forever. She could tell that Mother felt the same way.

**

‘You’re always getting me in trouble with your mother,’ Cranwyl said. ‘When’s it going to stop?’

‘When we catch the black cat. Not before then.’

Drayn brushed a branch from her face. She lifted the torch higher, careful to avoid the trees. The last thing they needed was to set fire to the woods. That would definitely get Mother going.

She pointed the light towards an outcrop of brown boulders.

‘That’s where I last saw her,’ she said.

‘Or him.’

‘That’s where I last saw him, her, it, whatever. She was looking at me with her red eyes, and she seemed hungry.’

‘So we are here to catch a hungry cat beast?’

Drayn nodded. ‘We can easily take her, you and I.’ She put a reassuring hand on Cranwyl’s shoulder. ‘It’s just a cat. No match for us, definitely not.’

‘I thought you said it was a very big cat.’

‘Well, yeah, but still. No match for us.’

There was a creaking behind the boulders.

‘You know what that sounded like to me?’ asked Cranwyl.

‘A large cat.’

‘No. A baby thingermewhatsit.’

Drayn tutted at Cranwyl. Seizing the initiative, she crept behind the nearest tree and slinked her way towards the boulders. She put her hand in her bag and removed the net, planning to throw it over the beast once she had run it through with her stick. She had sharpened it specially for the occasion.

Cranwyl stayed where he was, the coward.

Round she went, until she was mere feet from the lair of the monster. She raised the stick aloft – actually, it was more of a spear, she had decided – and, with a murderous roar, leapt into the fray, thrusting her weapon before her.

When the bloodlust had subsided she threw the spear to the ground, triumphant, and opened her eyes, expecting to see the lifeless body of the creature that had tormented her, or at least walked in front of her the other day. She was surprised, then, to find a large pile of sticks, broken and shattered in her frenzy.

‘It seems there was no beast, after all.’

Cranwyl was at her side, looking superior, the swine.

‘Not on this occasion, I grant you that,’ Drayn conceded. ‘But it was there.’

‘Of course it was. I have no reason to doubt you.’

‘Cranwyl, it was there.’

‘If you say it was there, I must accept that it was there.’

‘Cranwyl.’

‘What?’

‘I hate you.’

‘Thank you.’

**

It was two o’clock in the morning by the time Drayn and Cranwyl returned to the house. They entered through one of the gates at the back, in case Mother was keeping watch. But that was very unlikely; she was always asleep before midnight. To be certain, Drayn stole a glance at the windows upstairs. All was darkness.

The girl and her servant went into the kitchen, where they threw themselves into rough wooden chairs. Drayn kicked off her muddied boots; Cranwyl immediately picked them up and began to scrub.

‘Mother says there were two creatures on the boat,’ Drayn said, her voice barely above a whisper. She had wanted to talk to Cranwyl about this all night, but something held her tongue. She did not know what.

Cranwyl looked up. He looked so afraid, sometimes.

‘What kind of creatures?’

Drayn beckoned him closer. Cranwyl gently shifted his chair forward and leaned in.

‘Well, she says that one of them was a normal person. But the other one was like …’

She did not need to go further. Cranwyl sucked in a sharp breath.

‘Another Autocrat! Now that is something. I wonder: are they related?’

Drayn rolled her eyes. ‘Who cares? I’m wondering what it all means, that’s what I’m wondering.’

‘Oh. Yes, well, me too.’

Drayn leapt to her feet. She found a loaf of bread to the side, and ripped off a chunk. She offered some to Cranwyl, but he shook his head, so she tore into it with gusto.

‘I wonder when we’ll hear anything about it?’ she asked, spitting crumbs on the floor.

‘Soon, I imagine,’ Cranwyl replied. ‘The lord likes to keep everyone informed of things like this. He is a kind and merciful leader.’

Just then, as if in answer, a bell rang.

Drayn dropped her bread.

‘Run,’ said Cranwyl.

The girl was gone in a flash, shooting up the stairs as quickly and quietly as she could. She felt her way into her room, changed into her nightdress, and threw her dirty clothes under the bed.

The bell rang again, from nowhere and everywhere, all at the same time.

Mother came in, carrying a candle. She had been quicker than Drayn expected. She crossed the room and sat at her daughter’s side.

‘The bell has rung,’ she said. ‘It has rung out from Lord Squatstout’s Keep, and everyone can hear it now.’

Drayn pretended as if she had just woken up, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

‘Really? But there was a Choosing just the other day.’

‘Yes. The lord is preparing another. Perhaps he wants to show the newcomers how we do things here.’

Drayn gave a little cough. ‘I am afraid,’ she said. She meant it, though she hadn’t meant to say it.

‘Don’t be,’ said Mother, as warm as she had ever been. ‘The good lord would never allow you to fall, unless he knows you are the one to be Chosen. I am sure of it.’

Why does she speak such nonsense? I’m not stupid.

Mother stood to leave. ‘Get some rest. The assembly is at dawn.’

‘I will.’

‘And Drayn,’ said Mother, reaching under the bed and lifting a muddied slipper. ‘Don’t go out again at night.’

Damn.

‘Yes, Mother.’




Chapter Five (#ud6eded5f-c42b-5a3b-9075-148af20b11db)


Canning had never had ambitions.

No – that was not quite true. He had them, all right. But they were quiet, dreamy things: not the burning desires of so many of his fellow citizens. All he had ever wanted was to immerse himself in the mundane: to live a humble life, a quiet existence, far away from the Centre and the Fortress, from Brightling and her schemes.

But there was no escaping the Machinery.

And where had it taken him, this dream he never wanted? The Bowels of the See House. They had found him after the Selection, and taken him away. His memory of those events was broken. He had seen a creature dressed in purple rags, standing tall, that thing in the white mask by her side. The new Strategist was a girl he once knew: Katrina Paprissi, the last of her name.

But no longer. That girl was gone now.

It was a very different type of Selection. There were none of the usual trappings: no parchment from the Operator, no phalanx of Watchers spreading from the Circus in a black arc, scouring the land for the chosen ones. There had been a flame, but a person had emerged, if she could be called a person.

He had fallen over somewhere, he remembered. He was always falling over. Feet had trampled him into the dirt. When he managed to snatch glances at his surroundings, he saw people charging towards the new Strategist, holding their arms out. There was something about them; they were possessed, like in the stories about the old gods. Canning forced his way to his feet to get a better view, but it was too late; there were too many bodies in the way. He grabbed a man by the shoulder, without knowing why. Human contact, perhaps? The man turned and stared through the Tactician; his eyes were stagnant pools.

Whatever was driving these people to the Strategist had not affected him, he realised. Hope grew. He could sneak away: run to the West, perhaps, and hide himself in a vineyard or a tobacco farm or a mine. But then he felt a cold hand at his own shoulder, and turned to face a Watcher.

He had been here, in this room, this cell, for as long as he could remember. Was there ever a time before this cell? He had new memories, now, things he was certain had never occurred, or at least not to him. He had been to a city of dark spires, where people plucked out their eyes, just to avoid looking at her, the woman in the white mask. He had seen a temple, a place of wisdom, reduced to ashes by the power of her mind, its inhabitants throwing themselves into the flame to escape her gaze.

Her name was Shirkra.

She had brought all this before him when she visited. She had penetrated him, used him, tormented him with visions. No, not visions. Memories.

She was here again, now. How long has she been here?

‘You’re wondering why I am hurting you,’ she said, her voice free of emotion.

Canning nodded.

The Operator – for that was what she was, she had told him so herself – shrugged her narrow shoulders, and giggled. Her red hair bounced in curls. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

‘It’s not your fault, really, I suppose. You didn’t mean to be Selected. You are unlucky, so unlucky, to have been Selected when you were. Mother told me to kill you all, long ago. I didn’t get you all, though, did I? The white-haired woman is gone, and you’re still alive. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Perhaps it never mattered – perhaps she made me do those things, just to distract me! To keep me out of the way, me and my Chaos! But still, we have you, and she doesn’t want to kill you now. That means I can play with you forever. What fun!’

**

Sometimes, Aranfal was there, too. Canning did not resent the Watcher. It was not his fault everything had come to this. It was all her.

Aranfal gave him cups of water.

**

‘When will this end?’ he asked her one night. He was unsure if he had spoken, or simply thought the question; it did not seem to matter with her.

‘It does not have to end, so it may never end,’ she said. ‘It might be good to make you into a story. Yes, everyone would know what you suffered, oh yes, down here, at my hand, and then they would never seek to place themselves against Mother.’

‘I did not place myself against her.’

‘Hmm, perhaps, perhaps. But the Machinery Selected you, and that is the same thing.’

She raised her arms, and took him back to the day he was Selected.

**

The Watchers had come early in the morning. Strange, but he had already known what they wanted. He had known when he woke. His room was a hovel, tucked into the back of a shop, stinking of fish, like everything else, with one dirty window facing out onto the lane. It had been grey, and cold, as it always was. He was thinner then, before all the lonely gluttony of the Centre, and as he stood from the bed he wrapped his smock tightly around his bones. He looked out the window; a girl with a stick in her hand was staring back. She pointed it at him, and ran away. He never did find out who she was.

He left the hovel with a sense of dread. He knew, of course, that a new Tactician had been Selected. He had begged the Machinery to leave him alone. He hated the idea of being Selected, which meant he probably would be. Things always went like that for him.

He quickly exited the lane and joined the main street, planning to go to the market as usual. He hoped this feeling was misplaced, or that they would not find him. But he did not make it very far. As soon as he turned onto the street, they were on top of him: the Watchers. He remembered it so clearly. There were three of them, narrow creatures, all wearing eagle masks. One of them held a parchment. He scoured it quickly, and then approached Canning.

‘You are Canning, the market trader,’ he said in a thin voice.

Canning wondered how they had known where to find him, though he later learned much that was strange about the Watchers.

‘I am,’ he replied, feeling a fool.

The Watchers fell to their knees, arms raised towards Canning, and with one voice began their spiel about the Machinery and how it had Selected him in its glory. But he was not paying attention. He was looking to the edge of the gathering crowd, where a young woman was standing. Her face was torn with misery.

‘Stand,’ he told the Watchers. It was the single occasion he ever summoned the courage to issue orders to these people. ‘When must I go?’

‘You are a Tactician,’ said one, though she seemed utterly unconvinced. ‘You may stay or go as you please.’

The first Watcher came forward again. ‘But of course, your people need you to lead them into Expansion – to conquer the very Plateau itself!’

The new Tactician nodded. ‘I will need one day,’ he said.

When the Watchers had gone, Canning moved into the ogling crowd. ‘All of you, leave,’ he said.

‘You’re enjoying dishing out commands,’ said Annya, the only one to stay behind.

‘I am not. I want to stay here.’

‘You can’t. You’ve been Selected. You’re going to leave me behind.’

She gave him that look of hers, then, such a strange look, wounded and piercing at once, a trembling defiance. And she turned and ran from him.

He chased her all the way to the dock, where they stood before that hateful wall. She had done this many times before. She was half mad, he had been told. Half-mad Annya. But he never thought she would really do it. No, he never thought that.

When she turned to face him, she was crying.

‘You have ruined my life,’ she said. There was no emotion in her voice.

‘Annya.’ He reached out a hand to her, but she knocked it away. ‘I didn’t mean for this to happen. How could I have meant for this to happen? The Machinery Selected me. It wasn’t the other way around.’

Annya walked to him, so their faces almost touched. ‘They say it only picks those that want to be picked. That’s what my father said.’

‘Believe me, it is not true.’

She snorted.

‘You can come with me,’ he said, lamely.

‘Tacticians aren’t allowed wives.’

‘It could be a secret.’

In an instant she struck him. He raised his hand to his stinging face.

‘And then I can be your … what, whore? Up there in your pyramid, hidden away like a secret?’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

Something changed, then. The anger seemed to leave her.

‘I can’t do that,’ she said.

Canning nodded. And then, as if it was the simplest act in the world, the love of his life climbed onto the wall, and threw her young body into the sea.

He never understood why she did it. Sometimes he thought it was an accident; perhaps she only meant to scare him, and had taken a tumble. But no. She had jumped. Half-mad Annya.

This was the memory the Operator brought before him, more than any other. When he asked her why she did it, she just shrugged.

She brought other memories, too: things that happened after he was Selected, and some that occurred long before. They were all twisted, somehow: a shade darker than he remembered. But when he was wrapped inside them, he was powerless. He would have done anything she asked of him. She preyed upon his old fears; she drained him of all hope.

All the while, she seemed to take such joy from his memories. She sparked with a strange power, as she wallowed in them. Once, he turned to her, and the woman was gone, replaced with a flickering light. It had a kind of elemental force, and he could not look upon it for long.

He never knew a memory could hurt so much. He never knew a good memory could be woven into something bad, or a bad memory made harder to bear. But she showed him it was so.

Strangest of all were the memories that were not his own. Could he even be certain they were memories, or were they the creations of her imagination? They were terrible, whatever they were; she could lift things from them, and make them real. How much power does she have?

And that was how the last Tactician in the Overland spent his days.




Chapter Six (#ulink_77b0fbac-0ea4-5fd7-8250-f78e895ba007)


‘What is there, when there is nothing at all?’

Brandione opened his eyes. They had returned to the blackness.

The Queen was by his side, her three bodies suspended in the air, weightless and timeless. Her gowns had been replaced by rags. Like Katrina Paprissi. Like the Strategist.

‘You are in mourning, your Majesty,’ Brandione said.

Three heads turned to him. ‘Yes. In this place, we are close to death. Can you not feel it? Can you not taste it on the air?’

Brandione sucked in a breath. ‘Yes.’

The Queen nodded. ‘Last Doubter.’ She surrounded him, placing him in the middle of three ragged women. ‘What is there, when there is nothing at all?’

Brandione looked around. ‘There is nothing,’ he said. ‘Just an empty room.’

‘But what if there is no room? What if there is no house, no land, no forest, no lake, no mountain, no stars, no moon, no sun, no birds, no people – what is there then?’

‘Emptiness.’

‘Emptiness,’ the Queen whispered. She glanced around the dark. ‘Once, long before my birth, there was only emptiness. We cannot know for certain what that emptiness was when it was alone. It is one of the great questions, is it not? What was there, before creation?’ She gestured at the void. ‘This is my imagining.’

She stared into the blackness, and seemed to shudder.

‘My people call it the Absence. It was not good, or evil, or anything in between. It simply was. Or perhaps, it was not.’ She giggled, though there was no humour in it.

Brandione gazed into the depths. ‘There is nothing here. Only a feeling of … death.’ He shook himself. ‘Not death – a void. Only the living die.’

‘Yes,’ the Queen said. ‘I never saw it in its original state. What a glory it surely was.’

For a moment, Brandione felt a surge of anger. Was this all there was to the story of mortals? Were they nothing more than flotsam, pushed along eternal waters?

The Queen sighed. ‘This is the Great Absence, at the height of its glory. But it is not a memory. It is only my dream, my drawing, of what the Absence might have been like, long ago. Before the mortals came to be. Before I came to be.’

‘I can’t see anything. But I can feel it.’

‘There is nothing to see. There is nothing at all, except eternity.’

There was a sound, from far away in the ether, lasting only a moment: a low moan.

The Queen turned her bodies away from Brandione, and lined up at his side. The smallest spark of blue had appeared, far away in the darkness.

‘The Absence was alone for such a long time. It existed, but nothing was there. It lived, but it was death.’

The light in the distance began to grow. ‘But something happened to it,’ the Queen said. ‘The great emptiness, over the long ages of solitude, began to change. It developed … a mind. It recognised itself as a something. The expanse was no longer empty: something was changing, in the dark.’

She sighed, and held her hands out, pointing at the blue light. It was still growing.

‘The changes accelerated. The Absence grew more aware of itself. It realised, for the first time, that it was alone. And it became lonely.’

She burst into laughter.

‘Can you imagine? It realises its existence, and it becomes lonely.’ She laughed again, and the sounds were sucked out into the ungrateful void.

‘And so it decided to create companions.’

Brandione realised, now, that they were travelling through the darkness; the light was not a light at all, but a planet, green and blue and wet and lush. New lights sparkled around it, and the darkness was no more: the deathly sensation dissipated and stars sprang up in the emptiness. A moon revolved around the planet, which spun around a blazing sun.

The moment disappeared, and they were somewhere else: a field, in the sunshine. A naked man and woman lay in the grass, their eyes closed, their hands intertwined. Their bodies were surrounded by the blackness – by the Absence. It spun around them like a spider building a web.

‘What is happening to them?’

‘They are being created,’ the Dust Queen said. ‘This is the beginning of the world. Or rather, it is how I imagine it to have been.’

The people stood, and it soon became clear they were not alone. Others rose across the field, the Absence crawling across them.

‘The Absence was no longer alone,’ the Dust Queen said. ‘It had created these things, so different to itself. Intelligent creatures, in a world of life.’

The strands of Absence rose away from the people, and ascended to the sky, where they formed into a strange tapestry among the clouds. The people below stood utterly still, statues of flesh and bone.





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