Kitabı oku: «The Machinery»
The Machinery
GERRARD COWAN
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2015
Copyright © Gerrard Cowan 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015. Cover image © 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-810354-5
Version: 2015-08-10
For Sarah, Finn and Evie
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Chapter One
I am breaking, the Machinery said.
Alexander had not heard it for days.
I am breaking.
It sounded different tonight: like a child.
‘Again,’ said Amile. The tutor’s voice seemed distant, as if it came from another room. ‘Recite it again.’
Alexander looked to the window. His sister was below, playing with marbles in the courtyard. I’ll try to speak to father again tonight. He knew he would be called a liar. But there was no other choice; he had to make them understand.
The boy turned to face Amile, and started over again.
‘On the third day, the tribe gathered on the Primary Hill, to be entertained by the madman.
‘“This is when all shall change,” the madman said. But the people did not believe him, and laughed in their ignorance.
‘“You will be punished,” said one.
‘“Punished by the Gods,” said another.’
I am breaking.
Alexander paused, and looked to the ceiling. There was nothing there.
Ruin will come with the One. You know who it is.
‘Continue.’ Amile’s hooked nose twitched. ‘And mean it; as things stand, you are lying to us both.’
Alexander looked once more to the window. Clack, clack, clack, went the marbles.
‘The prophet Arandel lifted a stone. He held it before his people and said: “This is matter; it too has energy. It too is understood by the Machinery, which knows the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea, the rocks at the core and the reptiles of the South. These words have been spoken by the Operator.”
‘The people laughed again. “If he told you all this, Arandel – where is he?” Arandel dropped the stone and looked to the sky.
‘“He is here.”’
Amile was smiling.
‘In the centre of the ground, at the peak of the hill, ten paces from where they sat, a fire had started to burn, as if of its own accord.
‘“Arandel, what have you done?”
‘“What witchcraft is this?” But their talking ceased, for they had seen something in the fire. A man stepped forth from the blaze, his cloak burning with flames of its own, dark and cold. The people wept, for they saw in this cloak the reflections of their own souls.
‘“He has come from the ground itself,” said Arandel. “From the ground and into flame, to the salvation of us all.”
‘This man came amid them and, as the tribe fell back and cowered before him, opened his arms. “It is your first Selection year,” he said. “You have been chosen. Nothing will be the same for you now.”
‘He walked among them.
‘“I have come from the Underland. I have come to save the Plateau.”’
Amile clapped his hands. ‘In seven years, Paprissi, that is the best that you have read.’
Alexander bowed.
‘What happened next?’
The boy cleared his throat.
‘And so the tribe received the Machinery, the power of the Underland. It would choose the greatest leaders of the Overland, its Tacticians and Strategists, from now until the end of time, be they bakers or butchers, merchants or artists, boys or girls, men or women. And thus, the Overland would grow under their wisdom, to become the envy of all the great Plateau.
‘In return for this gift, the Operator asked only one thing; that the people must never question the Selections of the Machinery.’
‘And long may it continue,’ said Amile. ‘The Machinery knows.’
‘The Machinery knows,’ said Alexander. And I know the Machinery.
Before Alexander was a red velvet curtain, fastened by a golden knot. The boy stood still for a moment, wondering if he had been noticed.
‘Come.’
Sucking in a breath, Alexander pushed through.
The study was an airy, spherical, stone-walled space, its ceiling formed of thick clear glass that could be winched open at points to allow the entry of cooling airs. It was night, now; starlight illumined everything. This room, unlike its counterparts in other parts of the dreary mansion, was in constant flux. Perhaps it reflected the mind and travels of Jaco Paprissi, Alexander’s father, the head of the Paprissi Financial House and lord of the manor.
Jaco and his men were the only Overlanders allowed to sail from the Plateau, and he had just returned from his most recent voyage. Items were still being unpacked from the wooden chests that filled the great courtyard, the most interesting or curious gravitating upwards to this study where they could be examined more closely. Alexander drank it in: on the second shelf to his left, a wooden statue depicted a man and a woman locked in primitive combat; above this, a row of silver instruments, like finely wrought blades; and on the floor to his right, a bronze representation of some kind of war machine, what appeared to be a trebuchet lined with cannon, rolling forward of its own accord.
In the centre of the room was a brass contraption, a long thick tube covered in golden letters in some foreign tongue. At the bottom of the tube was an eyepiece, into which Jaco peered.
‘This is new,’ the older man said. ‘It is … incredible. You can see things … well, it matters not.’
He turned to the boy and grinned.
‘It’s much better than banks and credit, eh?’
Jaco left his new toy and walked to his son, putting a hand on his shoulder and smiling down at him.
It is coming. The voice had grown weaker.
‘How was the lesson, Alexander?’
I’ll tell him, thought the boy. I’ll tell him. But he was afraid. Why should he believe me this time?
‘It was all right, but Amile made me do—’
‘The same thing all over again?’
‘Yes!’
‘The arrival of the Operator and the Gifting of the Machinery?’
‘Yes!’
Jaco laughed. ‘I hated it too, when I was your age. I wondered why I had to learn this stuff, when there was a whole world out there waiting to be found. But as I grew older, I began to see things differently.’
‘How?’
‘Well, things change. Your life goes off in different paths. And the Overland changes, too. Even the Plateau changes. The city grows, Tacticians and Strategists come and go. But one thing remains the same: the Machinery. It is the constant. It is important that we remember its birth.’
‘The Machinery knows.’
‘The Machinery knows,’ his father echoed, before leaping to his feet and returning to his lettered tube. Alexander hesitated before taking the plunge.
‘Father … I think I have heard it again.’
Jaco stopped dead, his hands falling to his side.
‘No, boy. You have not.’
Silence fell on the study.
‘It told me again, father. The Machinery told me who it is. I know who will bring Ruin.’
‘No.’ Jaco turned his eyes upon his son. ‘No. This is the madness of old women and Doubters.’ He held the boy’s gaze for a moment, then turned back to his machine. ‘I assume you are going to play in the Great Hall tonight?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘Good. Take your mind off this foolishness. And don’t stay up too long; it is already late.’
The elder Paprissi leaned down and put his eye to the telescope.
‘Yes, father.’
The Great Hall covered the entire southern section of the ground floor of Paprissi House. It was one of the oldest surviving parts of the building, its stone walls the remnants of an ancient keep: a place of faded nooks and crannies, dark snugs and cubbyholes. The summer light was fading as Alexander entered, casting shadows that darkened the aspects of the Paprissi forebears staring blankly down at their young descendant.
Alexander sat with his legs crossed in the middle of the cold stone floor, just next to the dining table, swinging a thin piece of white parchment through the air in a kind of sporadic dance. This strange, private little ceremony helped unleash his imagination. He was transported to other realms: to flaming battles on open plains; to dynastic struggles with Doubter kings; to the ruins of ancient cities, heavy with sorcery. Here, he could control events. Here, he did not feel like a plaything of a voice.
The One will come here …
The boy’s gaze floated to the Operator shrine, at the back of the hall. It had been there for as long as the hall itself, a grey statue on a black chair, proud and solemn. The sculptors of the Middle Period were renowned for the subtlety of their work, Amile had told Alexander; hence the fine detail of the wrinkled face, the perfect smoothness of the bald head, the laughing wisdom of the eyes. The cloak, though, was the symbol of the Operator; it had been refreshed in more recent years by one of the new artists of the Centre, and the talent of this master shone through, from the strange swirls of purple and black to the hints of faces in the ether.
GET OUT.
Alexander swung round. The voice seemed closer now, more urgent, as if the speaker was behind him. There was no one there. I can do nothing.
He turned back to the statue.
There was someone in its place.
‘Play, play, playing, like the little child you are.’
He – it – regarded Alexander thoughtfully, steadily rapping the arm of his dark throne with his sharp fingers. He was filth itself: his mangy skin red with scabs, his grey tongue flickering at the sides of his mouth. A torn gown billowed out onto the floor around him, coating the flagstones like oil on water, its colours in perpetual motion like the sky in a summer thunderstorm. The faces were ghosts in a silken prison.
‘Do you know who I am, Alexander?’
The boy was silent.
‘I am the Operator.’
The voice echoed of another world. A time before the Machinery.
‘I have known it for a long time,’ the Operator said. ‘You here, on your Plateau, you have known only ten millennia of it. But it has been my companion for much, much longer.’
Alexander steeled himself. Somehow, he always had known that this would happen.
‘How did you do that? How did you make a statue come to life?’
The Operator seemed surprised by the question. ‘I am a child of the Underland, boy. I know all its pathways and byways.’
He leaned forward in his throne, placing his head in his hands.
‘You have evaded me for some time, Alexander. I heard the Machinery speaking, you know. Oh yes. I could hear it, in the night, though its words were hidden from me. It took me a long time to find you, such a long time.’
‘It does not trust you. It knows you do not believe it.’
The Operator laughed, and the room seemed to darken. ‘I like you, Alexander. I like that you think you can talk to me, in such a way, about my own creation.’
‘You do not understand it fully, Operator. If you did, you would believe the words. Ruin is coming.’
The Operator slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. ‘Tell me what it has told you. Then we will see what I believe.’
Alexander approached the Operator. ‘Your enemy has returned, Operator. You thought you had destroyed the One, all those years ago. But you failed. The One has returned, and the One will bring Ruin.’
The Operator was on his feet in an instant, and loomed over Alexander. The faces in his cloak cringed, afraid of their master.
‘That is a lie,’ the Operator said, his voice trembling. ‘You have read a book about the past, I think, one that I overlooked. I have been too lenient with you all. You use these words you do not understand. The One is dead, and the Prophecy is a lie.’
The boy did not answer. He looked hopefully at the door, but no one was coming for him. Was his grandmother outside, sitting in her old chair?
There was a pattering of rain on the windows.
‘That is not what the Machinery told you,’ the Operator sighed. ‘It cannot be. Something is wrong with it, and it has told you, and you will not tell me.’
‘I have already told you the truth.’
The Operator shook his head. ‘No. No, that is not what it told you. But I will find the truth.’ He glided over to Alexander’s side and wrapped a long arm around the boy’s shoulder.
‘We will go to the Underland. You will be happier there. Yes, oh yes. We will be able to study your broken brain.’ Alexander snatched a quick look at a jagged smile; he willed himself to resist, but something had encircled and taken power over him, and he could do nothing but follow the strange creature to the window.
The Operator gathered him in his arms, smiled, and leapt into the rain of the night. They seemed to fall slowly, like feathers in the breeze. The authority that had been exerted over the boy allowed no room for fear. There was no need to scream, it assured him, no need to cry out or fight back. We are floating, not falling.
As he fell, he looked up and saw a face at the window: a girl gazing down at him; a girl with round black eyes and long black hair; a girl with marbles in her hands.
But then Alexander Paprissi was gone forever: gone below the earth.
Chapter Two
‘Could I take part today, Tactician? I believe I am ready.’
‘Why do you think you are ready?’
‘I have served my time. I have trained now for almost fifteen years.’
‘Almost fifteen years, indeed. And you think you are ready. Ready for what?’
‘For whatever you need me to do, Tactician. I could go in there now, if you like, and—’
‘You are always overreaching, Katrina. You must develop caution.’
Katrina Paprissi nodded. She had heard this a thousand times before. As ever, she smiled at the Tactician, before brushing some sand from her feet.
They were alone on the shore. Behind them loomed the great edifice of Northern Blown, the once dominant fortress that had stood apart from the Overland for longer than any other power. It had managed this through a mix of skilful diplomacy, deference, solid defences and the fact that its desolate lands were the least attractive in the entire Plateau. But now, its day was coming to a close. The castle seemed downcast in the bleached light of the dawn, as if aware that soon, perhaps this very day, its time would end. Even its curtain wall seemed to sag, as if willing itself to collapse before the onslaught of modernity.
‘Are you even listening to me, Paprissi? No, I imagine you are off in your world. What’s it like there?’
Katrina forced herself to meet Tactician Brightling’s gaze. She still found it difficult to look directly at those grey eyes. Brightling was the Watching Tactician of the Overland, her authority reflected in her golden gown and the silver half-moon crown that sat so easily upon her head. She was in her middle years, but her thin frame was hard with muscle. White hair flowed around her like a mane, unruffled even by the wind that whistled in from the sea.
Brightling was a woman of the new era, the progress of which she was hastening through her work. A pair of semicircular spectacles sat on her nose, the frame wrought from ivory. From the Tactician’s mouth hung a pipe, an elegant, curling affair of cedar wood. She wore a handcannon on her side, the hilt a twisted swirl of stars, the barrel inlaid with diamonds.
‘Katrina, by the Machinery, will you take your turn!’
The wind picked up, then: it tore through Katrina’s long black hair and laughed at her white rags, wearing her legs raw.
‘Now,’ the Tactician said, a new hardness in her voice.
Katrina looked at the board with bleary eyes. She hated Progress. This game was designed for people just like Tactician Brightling: cold souls with no stirring of action. Indeed, Brightling had actually designed its latest iteration. The woman had sat on the Progress Council for longer than she had been a Tactician.
They said the Operator himself had invented the First Iteration of Progress. Katrina wondered if that game had borne any resemblance to this version, the Nine Hundredth and Seventy-Fourth Iteration, which had been active for two years. She was just getting used to this one, which usually meant a new Iteration was imminent.
‘Tactician, do we really have to play this? Does it not seem strange to you? We’re about to conquer the Plateau, and we’re sitting here playing a stupid board of Progress.’
Brightling did not respond, but fixed Katrina with a stare. The young woman turned her attention to the board, her courage evaporating into the wind.
Katrina had the East and the South of the board, Brightling the North and the West. Her tiles were white, the Tactician’s black. She could see that she was in an impossible position. Over half of Brightling’s forces were poised to take the South, and Katrina had just one Watching tile remaining. How does this thing work again? A Watching tile destroys an Expansion tile, but only if there are no Operator cards left in the opponent’s hand. Does Brightling have a card?
‘You should take care what you do with that. I can see a move that would open your options and expose one of my flanks. Remember, I have only two Watching tiles left, while you retain two cards. You are still in this game. Do not overreach.’
Katrina studied the board again.
‘This game is impossible.’
‘This game always evolves, but it is not impossible. Everything evolves, everything changes. We must adapt to that.’
‘Except the Machinery.’
‘Except the Machinery.’
Katrina looked up to see that Brightling was smiling at her, white hair now blowing in the wind. The last of the Paprissis lifted her Watching tile, and prepared to put it in place.
‘Madam.’
Aranfal had appeared from nowhere, as he always did. He had the appearance of some creature of this icy habitat, with his aquamarine cloak and dirty blond hair: a beast that had crawled onto the beach. Amusement played across his thin face, his blue eyes alight with a joke that no one else was ever told.
‘Aranfal, welcome. What news?’
‘Good news, Madam Tactician.’ Aranfal’s voice was smooth and deep, his accent hinting at the far North, where they now sat. ‘King Seablast has agreed to grant you an audience.’
‘Good!’ Tactician Brightling clapped her hands. ‘How did he seem?’
‘Oh, obstreperous, my lady. Most incorrigible. But that could be a good sign. It might be a show.’
‘Yes, Aranfal. It might be. How many Watchers in the building?’
‘Two, madam, apart from me.’
‘And you will join them now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In the ceiling, madam.’
‘Good.’
Aranfal smiled at his superior and bowed. He cast an uneasy glance in Katrina’s direction. They had never got on. She suspected he envied her closeness to the Tactician. He seemed on the verge of speaking to her, before something on the ground distracted him.
‘What’s this?’ He lifted a yellow and black object, around a foot in length.
‘I think it’s a bone,’ Katrina whispered.
‘Be quiet, Katrina.’
‘It is, Tactician. It is an arm bone. There are more, further along the shore.’
‘Ridiculous. It is a rock, perhaps. A formation of some kind.’
Aranfal chuckled. ‘The northerners call this the Bony Shore, madam. Perhaps it is aptly named?’
‘Nonsense. Where would they come from?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps they drift here from a darker place. A terrible place, where people are thrown to the sea …’
Brightling tutted. ‘You do not know, Aranfal. Do not talk about this.’
She waved Aranfal away, and turned back to Katrina.
‘Your mind is full of nonsense. If your father could see you, plucking rocks from the beach and calling them bones, he would be horrified.’ She sighed, gathering her composure. ‘We will go in.’ She pointed to the fortress. ‘You are about to witness history, my girl.’
Katrina sucked in a breath. ‘I can come in this time?’
‘Yes, yes. But you will not do anything, Katrina, do you understand? You are there to observe me, and Aranfal.’
‘Yes, madam.’
Brightling turned to leave.
‘Madam, the game.’
The Tactician waved at the table.
‘It’s just a stupid board of Progress.’
‘There – that is it, then: the last holdout on the Plateau. Prepare the cannon, men! Prepare the cannon!’
General Charls Brandione reluctantly turned to face his assistant. Farringer was a cringing, scraping man of at least sixty who stared at the enemy position through his weasel eyes and scratched his arse with the hilt of his stumpy sword. He had an unaccountable love of fashion and had come to the field in full, ancient plate armour – heavy, inflexible, and useless in modern warfare. To make matters worse, he had festooned it with ribbons and feathers. The decorations ranged across the full gamut of gaudiness, from the orange of a sunburst to the pinks and greens of some southern bird.
Brandione’s armour was less striking, but better placed, allowing for manoeuvrability: a battered steel breastplate, a plate for his back, and a standard steel helmet, worn and rusted through years of use but solid and dependable.
‘Farringer, bring me a map of the city.’
The older man hesitated.
‘But General, I want to see—’
‘Now, Farringer – do it now.’
Prepare the cannon. Brandione smiled at that as he turned back to the great wall of Northern Blown. All around him, men struggled with the new artillery pieces, cursing as they hoisted them awkwardly into position. Soldiers traipsed to the supply lines to collect barrels of precious gunpowder, recently arrived from the West, which they gingerly rolled back to their iron dragons.
It was the smell that got to Brandione, more than anything else: that acrid stench.
But they were powerful, oh yes. Brandione had seen them in action since their first development. Rapid advances over the last two decades meant the largest could fire stones weighing hundreds of pounds, though the damned things seemed to kill more of his own troops than the enemy, when he ever got to use them.
He tapped the weapon at his side. This sort of cannon, he could live with: one that fitted in his hand.
When he looked to the fortress before him, some faith in the old ways returned. The new weapons were powerful, true, when pointed in the right direction and not falling victim to one of their many flaws. But Northern Blown was old, and hardened through constant war. Standing in resplendent isolation, with the Northern Peripheral Sea behind it, it looked like it had been torn from the Plateau itself, a living creature of alleyways and moss-covered towers that had forced its way into the continent. And all around it stood that jagged iron wall, thirty feet thick at its weakest point.
Between Brandione and this armoured metropolis were spread the more conventional forces of the Overland, still active today despite all the changes in the world, a metallic mass of thousands of serrated pikes and halberds that shimmered in the early afternoon light. Dotted among them were the siege machines of old: trebuchets, catapults and battering rams, all standing at the foot of the city. In a way, these reassured him more than the exploding iron pipes.
Is this really the end? Brandione had served the Overland for almost fifteen years, ever since he had left the College and turned his back on a career as an Administrator. He had seen towns razed to the ground and ploughed through corpses. He had struck down rebellion in the West. He had seen cities fall, here in the North. Is all of that really over, now? Or will we find a new enemy, one worse than all the others?
He shook himself; there was no time for this, not any more. He eyed the walls for signs of the enemy. Still nothing. He shifted on his feet.
‘Surrender?’ King Seablast was red in the face. ‘Tactician, know that Overland waves have broken against my wall in the past. Yours will be no different; we will cast you into the Peripheral Sea.’
Seablast is a warrior, thought Katrina. Even here, in his throne room, with our forces all around, he is prepared to fight. He was a thickset man, stout without being fat, his belly like a cannonball. He wore a wooden breastplate below a chainmail mesh, his helmet at his feet and his sword at his side. He was standing over Brightling, who sat in a high-backed, silver chair. The King leaned in close, his black beard almost touching her forehead and his bright-blue eyes blazing into her own.
Katrina stood some way behind the Tactician, her attention flickering between the scene before her and the furnishings and trappings of the throne room. Light spilled through four huge, stained-glass windows, bathing everything in a hazy purple and orange glow. At the far end of the hall, beneath a window on which was engraved a flaming sword, sat the throne itself, a large but unadorned iron chair that spoke of older times.
A slight cough from Brightling was enough to refocus Katrina’s attention. The Tactician was unruffled, smiling serenely at the King. She had been disarmed of her handcannon and sword upon entering the castle, but seemed utterly at ease.
‘You come here,’ Seablast continued, beginning to pace his throne room, ‘with a handful of troops and fire spouters, and you make the most outrageous demands of me. I know where this comes from. It is that toy of yours, that machine; it makes politicians of you all. But our walls will stand against politicians and toys.’
The King’s retinue laughed. As Brightling lazily regarded the monarch over the rim of her spectacles, her smile grew thinner.
‘What year is this, madam?’ asked the King, cocking his head to the side.
‘I do not know what the date is in the heathen calendar, but by our reckoning it is the 10,000th year.’
The King whistled between his teeth. ‘A bad time for you then, no?’
Brightling was very still as the King spoke.
‘Did you know, men, that according to the bullshit beliefs these people follow, on the 10,000th year since the Gifting of the Machinery, it will all far apart? It will break!’
The men laughed.
‘That is an evil Prophecy,’ said Brightling, so quietly that Katrina struggled to hear her.
The King shrugged. ‘That may be so, but I know that many of your people believe it.’ He turned back to his men, a glint in his eye. ‘You won’t find that Prophecy in their Book of the Machinery, lads. No one knows where it comes from, they say. It’s an old wives’ tale. But enough of these bastards believe it. Enough of them think that something really bad will happen. Well, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.’ He spat on the ground, inches from Brightling’s feet. ‘I have sent word to our vassals,’ he said, leaning over the Tactician’s chair again. ‘They will be here within the day. I suggest you and your friends return to your machine, before it dies.’
Tactician Brightling nodded slowly, appearing to think this over. Then she was on her feet, the King and his guards taking an involuntary step backwards.
‘Your vassals?’
‘Yes!’ The King was nervous now; Katrina could feel it. His anger was exaggerated, his confidence feigned. ‘The Second City; Anflef; Siren Down. These three and others will come at my command.’
The Tactician cocked her head to the side and smiled again.
‘Do you read books, your Majesty?’ she asked, her face a picture of wide-eyed innocence.
The King hesitated. ‘My kingdom, madam, contains the greatest scholars on all the Plateau.’
‘You should know, then, your Majesty, that I have allies of my own.’
There was a flurry of black as three robed figures fell from somewhere in the ceiling to the stone floor. The King’s guards leapt into belated action, swinging their swords wildly. They halted as quickly as they had begun when they saw that, in the arms of each of the masked strangers, was one of Seablast’s daughters.
The King became very still.
‘No doubt you have steeled yourself for such a scenario, King,’ the Tactician said. She returned to her seat, patting away the creases in her gown.
Seablast said nothing, but Katrina noticed a slight movement in his sword hand. Brightling turned to one of her Watchers; Katrina saw immediately that it was Aranfal, wearing his raven’s mask, a black and twisted thing that still frightened her, even today. The girl in his arms was the youngest, perhaps ten or eleven years old, with long, curly, blonde hair, thin, regal limbs, and fierce blue eyes. Katrina was suddenly seized by the image of her own brother, in the Operator’s arms, falling through the earth to the Underland. Is he afraid, still? Is he even alive? She had told no one what she had seen, back then, in the Great Hall of Paprissi House. Not even Brightling. What would she tell them, anyway? She had not been able to hear much of what the Operator had said; all she knew was that Alexander had been taken. Perhaps it never actually happened. Perhaps her family was destroyed for another reason.
There is no time for these thoughts. Not now.
‘Do you surrender, King?’ Brightling asked.
Seablast looked at his daughter; Katrina could not read the expression in his eyes. Was he weighing up his options? His daughter or his kingdom? He nodded at the girl, an almost imperceptible tilt of his head, and turned back to the Tactician.
‘No, madam. I do not.’
Brightling sighed and nodded to Aranfal. A slight jerk of a gloved hand and the girl’s neck was bleeding. She flinched, but did not cry out.
There were some parts of being a Watcher that Katrina Paprissi did not like.
‘The Second City, Anflef and Siren Down,’ Tactician Brightling said again. ‘Your Majesty, do you have a map?’
‘What?’ the King stammered, his eyes on his daughter, whose face had grown pale.
‘A map, your Majesty. Have you not heard of such things? They are developing so well. Oh, forgive me,’ said Tactician Brightling. ‘There it is.’
She walked to the southern wall, on which hung a map of the Plateau, if it could be called that; it was an unsophisticated affair, lacking the remotest sense of distance and perspective. Brightling reached into her shoe and withdrew a short, thin blade. The guards had not dared to carry out a thorough search, Katrina realised. It was always the same way.
‘The Second City, Anflef and Siren Down,’ Brightling said, pointing each out on the map with her blade. ‘The Second City,’ she said again, before slashing the city away. ‘Anflef,’ she said, and tore it apart. ‘Siren Down,’ she concluded, stabbing into its position with her knife, which vibrated as it stuck into the wall.
‘Your Majesty, you should pay more attention to your neighbours,’ she said, turning to the King. ‘These three allies of yours are now part of the Overland and under the beneficence of the Machinery.’
Seablast’s face was a pallid grey, his arms limp at his sides.
‘That cannot be,’ he hissed. ‘I would have heard something.’
‘Why? Your Majesty, while you slept, I conquered. Some of your allies fell to the General Brandione, a clever man who knows his way around the most terrible weapons you have ever seen. Others fell to me. I won’t tell you how I did it.’
Brightling’s smile returned.
‘If you become part of the Overland, willingly, the Machinery will forgive you. You will have a chance, like every one of its subjects, to rule the greatest nation in the world, if you are Selected.’
‘To be one of the politicians,’ the King rasped, his eyeballs rolling. ‘And if we resist?’
‘Then an entire continent will be thrown against the walls of this city.’
Farringer came stumbling back, lifting his visor to expose his sweat-drenched face.
‘What happened here, anyway?’ he asked, handing Brandione the map. ‘Why did they declare war?’
Brandione sensed a new tone in the older man’s voice: fear. Farringer was not made for this.
‘They have a new leader,’ he replied. ‘Their last King died a year ago. He was a clever old sod, that particular Seablast. He towed the line, and tugged his forelock, and did whatever Brightling told him to do. The new one is possessed with … something. You know the type.’
‘He thought he could lead his people against the Machinery.’
‘Yes.’ Brandione rolled his eyes and drew a finger across his throat.
Farringer chuckled and spat in the dirt. ‘Where’s Brightling?’
‘She’s in the city, talking to the King.’
‘He let her in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, this should not take long.’
As if in response, the great gate of Northern Blown began to open. The troops jolted to life, hoisting their weapons and leaping to attention at their war machines. But only two individuals emerged: Tactician Brightling, admired and distrusted in equal measure by the soldiery of the Overland, and King Seablast, whose very beard looked disconsolate. He lumbered along behind Brightling, a prisoner without chains.
There was someone else there, too: a girl in a state of mourning, to judge by her white rags. She flittered along behind the Tactician and the King, her footfalls swift and light, her black hair gleaming in the cold northern sun. Brandione had not seen her before: some Watcher, no doubt.
How had Brightling managed it? She had been able to enter one of the greatest fortresses in the world and persuade it to surrender, and not for the first time. Brandione had served with her before, here in the North and in the Western Rebellion. There had been other times like this one, when his skills were entirely worthless. Even when they did deploy their military might, she was always somewhere nearby, giving him little words of advice, he who had forgotten more about war than anyone else could remember, he who had been hand-picked by the Strategist himself to serve as his most senior adviser. Truly, there was something about the Tactician. She had been a Watcher for twenty years before her Selection, Brandione knew. That was a long time to serve the See House. The troops bowed as she brushed past, lowering their heads and averting their gazes.
The Tactician and her prisoner arrived at Brightling’s tent, a modest, green affair, and entered, the girl following in their wake.
‘No battle with Northern Blown, then,’ Farringer said.
‘No.’
‘What are your orders, sir?’
‘Nothing. We wait on Brightling.’
‘Ah! It looks like they’re done already.’
Indeed so. Just moments after she had entered the tent, Brightling had reappeared. Brandione could not see the expression on the Tactician’s face, but could well imagine her satisfaction.
Brightling crossed the bloodless battlefield to a trebuchet, wind-battered and pockmarked with arrows. Its operators scrambled away as the Tactician scaled the machine, refusing all offers of assistance. The troops crowded around her without prompting, Brandione among them.
Brightling pointed to the defeated city.
‘After a journey of almost ten millennia, the process of Expansion is complete.’
The soldiers cheered.
‘The city of Northern Blown, which just an hour ago was at war with the Overland, has now realised the truth of the Machinery. This is a great day.’
The cheers of the troops grew louder; they loved her ability to spare them a fight.
‘This victory does not belong to us, but to Northern Blown,’ Brightling continued. ‘Its people will now share in the glory of the world: the Machinery.’
Brandione wondered if the people inside the city knew what their King had done.
‘The Machinery knows,’ said Brightling.
The cheers became deafening. Brightling closed her eyes, taking it in. She was enjoying this, Brandione knew: the adulation of the crowd. Perhaps she had hated being an ordinary Watcher, skulking in the shadows while others took the glory. Now she was the focus of attention. It was not even her role, by rights: Expansion was the remit of Tactician Canning. But he would not mind. He had not been one of the Machinery’s most successful Selections; he always gave the impression of wanting to be somewhere, anywhere, other than the Fortress of Expansion.
Brightling lowered her eyes and looked back down at the crowd, whose applause was dying. She opened her mouth to continuing speaking, but was unexpectedly interrupted.
A commotion had begun on the edge of the troops. A small, thin man in the coarse goatskin of a peasant was rushing up and down the lines in an agitated state. With his spindly limbs and bulging eyes, he had the look of a panicking insect.
‘It is a messenger,’ Farringer said, screwing his eyes up tightly. ‘He doesn’t bring good news, by the look of him.’
Well spotted. Brandione hailed a nearby soldier. ‘Bring him here.’
The trooper ran off and cuffed the anxious man around the neck, dragging him to the trebuchet.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Brandione demanded. ‘You’re disturbing the Tactician’s speech.’
The messenger burst out of the sentry’s arms. A cluster of troops immediately made for him, but Brandione stopped them with a raised finger.
‘Let him speak.’
The wretch fell to his knees. ‘Are you General Brandione, the Strategist’s adviser?’ he asked.
‘Yes. What of it?’
‘I bring terrible news, lord; the worst in sixty-two years!’
Farringer stepped forward.
‘What do you mean to say? What is wrong?’
But Brandione already knew. It is sixty-two years since Kane was Selected.
The man doubled over, his body shaking. After a fit of coughing and shivering, he stood, dragging himself up by grabbing onto Farringer’s arm and rising to his full, unimposing height.
‘Strategist Kane is dead!’
Chapter Three
Sometimes Katrina felt older than the world itself.
She had first experienced the sensation as a child, before the Operator took her brother, before her mother died and her father sailed away. It was as if part of her was broken, the part that should have governed childhood and put a fire into youth.
No. It wasn’t broken. It was there, all right. But it was not alone. By its side was something else entirely, a tired creature that gazed on the world with weary comprehension, unsurprised by anything.
The feeling had grown stronger over the years. When her brother was taken, the old part of her had begun to dominate. Don’t tell anyone what you saw. What would they do, if they knew? How would they treat you, if they thought you were telling lies about the Operator? And so she had told no one, not even her father or Brightling. Sometimes, though, she wondered if the Tactician knew anyway. Nothing could stay hidden from her for very long.
She had hated it, at first. It conflicted with some of her most cherished beliefs about herself. She saw herself as courageous, perhaps even reckless; the older part restrained her. She saw beauty in the world, in the trees and in the mountains; the older part snorted at such sentimentality. She recoiled at some elements of the Watcher’s life, the cruelty and the treachery; the older part reminded her of the practicalities of the world, and of the hard decisions one must make to thrive.
She became aware, as time went by – she never knew how – that other people were not like this. Other people, people like Brightling, were complete. They were whole. She was two jagged halves.
But she had grown to appreciate it. She found herself able to tap into it, when she needed to. It was as if she had a deep and cool reservoir, hidden within her, which she could use to extinguish even the most searing of flames.
It was another mask.
‘Where is your mask?’
She jolted.
‘I do not have one yet.’
Aranfal frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘I am still an Apprentice.’
‘You are how old?’
Which part? ‘I am 21.’
‘Hmm. That is old, to still be an Apprentice. And even an Apprentice may wear a mask.’
‘Brightling—’
‘Tactician Brightling.’
‘Tactician Brightling says I can visit the Hall of Masks when we are back from the North.’
Aranfal nodded. ‘Well, good for you. I’m sure you’ll get the prettiest mask in all the fucking Hall.’
Katrina bit her tongue, though it took all her willpower. Or rather, it took all the power of her older half to beat down the tempestuous girl.
‘Are you celebrating the end of Expansion then, petal?’ Aranfal asked.
‘No. There are no celebrations.’
‘Why not? I thought you young people would have drunk half of Northern Blown by now.’
‘No. The Overland is mourning for the Strategist, Watcher.’ And I am not permitted to fraternise with young people, or with anyone who isn’t Brightling.
Aranfal nodded. ‘I know that, girl. Don’t take me for a fool.’
The older part once again suppressed her natural instincts, which this time pointed towards violence. ‘I am sorry, Watcher Aranfal.’
He nodded. ‘Good.’
They remained in silence for a moment.
‘Why am I here, Watcher?’ She looked around the hall. It was just as she would have expected from a place like this, all stone and straw and fireplaces and wood. Aranfal was sitting at a long, oak table, papers scattered before him. Dozens of candles burned around the hall.
‘Why are you here? How should I know?’
‘Brightling told me to come. She said you had something to show me.’
‘She said that?’ He squinted his eyes. ‘Was she any more specific?’
‘No.’
Aranfal sighed, and pointed at the papers. ‘Well, in that case, she must want you to bathe alongside me in the glamour of my life. At the moment I’m cataloguing the sheep and cattle in the surrounding fields. Yes indeed, being a Watcher is truly glorious at all times, as you will find out one day.’ He broke into a smile. ‘Although perhaps not, now that I think about it. You’ll get the plum jobs, I have no doubt.’
Katrina bowed her head, and did not speak. Aranfal had always been this way with her, though she did not know why. No Watcher outranked him, save Brightling herself; he was arguably the most powerful man in the world, now that Kane was dead, or if he was not, only Charls Brandione had more of a claim. But when he looked upon her, he did so with envy. The youthful part of her could not see this; it was her older self that recognised this emotion, and laughed at Aranfal for being so weak.
‘I firstly have to be made a Watcher,’ said Katrina, ‘which is easier said than done.’
There was a knock at the door, and a young Watcher entered, in a bull mask. He approached Aranfal, handed him a piece of parchment, and scuttled away, bowing as he went.
Aranfal scanned the parchment, and smiled.
‘Ah, now I understand,’ he said with a nod.
‘Understand what?’
He lifted the parchment. ‘It’s from Brightling. There’s going to be an interrogation, led by yours truly, and you are to attend. How does that sound?’
‘Excellent, Watcher.’ Nightmarish, said her younger self, and the other half did not disagree.
Seablast was a broken man.
Gone was the proud bearing of the warrior King, that sense of power he had conveyed only the day before. In its place was a downcast creature, his eyes dead, his black hair unkempt, his armour replaced with a dirty and torn white shirt. He even seemed thinner, shrunken, as if the loss of his lands had physically deflated him. He sat on a wooden stool before a stone table, and his legs and arms were shackled, like some kind of Doubter or common criminal.
Katrina stood at the back of the cell, pressed against a clammy wall. She wished she already had a mask of her own, when Seablast looked up at her. But he did not seem to see. His eyes looked through her, into nothing.
Aranfal took a seat opposite the King. He did not wear his raven’s mask, but laid it on the table, in front of Seablast. The King seemed to come to life when he noticed this strange object, this black, alien artefact that had made its way into his world, signifying the end of so much he had once held inviolable. Aranfal could have looked into the heart of the King, if he only chose to wear his mask. But it did not work like that. A Watcher only used his mask when he had to. Sometimes, wearing the mask actually hurt.
‘Do you recognise this?’ Aranfal had a certain tone to his voice, sometimes. Katrina pressed herself against the wall, willing it to suck her in.
‘That is a mask, Watcher,’ said the King. ‘I know all about you people. You live in a tower on a hill by the sea, and you run around with little masks on, and you think they are a gateway into people’s souls. Sometimes the masks are trees, sometimes they are people, sometimes they are cats, and sometimes they are dogs. Sometimes the masks are even made to look like sweet little birdies.’
He grinned at Aranfal, but Katrina saw through the smiles. He had lost everything, he was a husk of a man, yet still he felt the need to be combative. That wouldn’t do much good against Aranfal. That wouldn’t do much good at all.
Aranfal nodded, once, short and sharp. ‘Very good, King. It is a mask. But that is not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is, do you recognise this mask, in particular?’
Seablast thought this over for a moment, casting glances at the raven, which stared up at him from the table, waiting and watching. Katrina hated that bird, and feared it too. Seablast seemed unafraid. That will change.
‘Yes,’ the King said. ‘It is the raven of Aranfal, the renowned Watcher, Brightling’s hand-servant and general dogsbody. It is the mask of a weak man, who torments his victims by hurting their loved ones. It is the mask of a non-person.’
And then Seablast spat at Aranfal. It was a pathetic effort, the detritus of a dried and parched mouth. But it was not the quantity that mattered; it was the act itself.
In one cool, swift movement, Aranfal was on his feet. He leaned over the table and smacked the King with the back of his hand, sending a crack echoing in the cell like a shot from a handcannon. Seablast was knocked back, and would have fallen from his stool had it not been for his chains. He righted himself and glared at Aranfal through watery eyes, the right side of his face blooming red.
‘So, this is how the Watchers of the Overland treat kings,’ he said, his voice trembling.
‘King? You are a king no longer, Seablast. But don’t worry about that. You will have a place in history. You will always be remembered as the last independent ruler on the Plateau, who lost his lands through his own idiocy. Your name will echo through the ages. Children will sing songs mocking you, and drunks will lie in the gutter, puke drying on their lips, and thank the Machinery that they are not Seablast, knowing that it could be worse.’
Aranfal shrugged.
‘I am still a king,’ Seablast said. ‘One is born a king, by dint of one’s blood, which flows through the ages like a river. One is not Selected to rule by a machine; one is Selected to rule by one’s ancestry.’
‘Ancestry? Let’s look at your ancestry. Your father was a great man. He was respected by everyone in our land. He was a true diplomat, and he would have kept his people free, if he sat on the throne today.’
‘He was a weak streak of piss, and he only kept us free by placing us under the boot of the Strategist and your bitch of a superior. That is not being a king.’
‘Then what is being a king? Not only have you lost your kingdom, but through your mischief-making you have brought Anflef and Siren Down and all the other little kingdoms up here to their knees, too. All these old countries, gone forever, because of you. Not that it is a bad thing. Your subjects – apologies, our subjects – will now revel in the glory of the world.’
‘The Machinery? You don’t even know what it is!’ Seablast laughed. ‘You just trust the Operator, some fucking trickster who lives in another realm and pulls the wool over your eyes. He is a king, Aranfal the raven, just as I am. Except he will never give up his power, not to anyone in the world.’
‘And yet you handed your lands over to us, freely.’
‘Hardly freely. And it was my worst mistake. I should have kept fighting, without allies. I should have let my daughters die. It would have been better than this life.’
Aranfal sighed, and leaned back in his chair, knitting his hands behind his head.
‘I don’t think this little philosophical chitchat is getting us anywhere.’
Seablast shook his head. ‘No.’
Aranfal turned to Katrina. ‘Is this what you imagined an interrogation to be?’
Katrina started, and pushed herself off the wall. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Maybe? What does maybe mean?’
‘No, it’s not what I imagined an interrogation to be.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’re not asking him any questions.’
Aranfal snapped his fingers together. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’ He turned to face Seablast again. ‘Your Majesty, if I were a Doubter, in the kingdom of Northern Blown, where would I be most likely to hide?’
Seablast laughed. ‘Everyone here is a Doubter. You have given them nothing to believe in.’
Aranfal’s eyes widened. ‘Everyone? You know, we have a prison for Doubters, in the South of our lands, in the heart of the desert of the Wite. It’s been there for ten millennia, yet none of us know what’s in there, or even who mans it. You know why that is? Because no one ever leaves the Prison of the Doubters. So if all your people are Doubters, do I need to send them all down there?’
Seablast looked away from Aranfal.
‘Because I could do that, Seablast. It would be pretty hard work. There would be a lot of carts and carriages and horses and so forth. But we’re the masters of a continent, now. There’s not much we can’t do, when we put our minds to it. So I ask again – should I send everyone down there?’
Seablast did not reply.
Aranfal nodded. ‘I’m getting fucking tired of you, and this place. I’m from the North too, Seablast, though it’s colder and nastier than anywhere you’ve been. I don’t want to be in the North any more, understood? I want to go home. So let me ask you again – where would I find the Doubters in this fucking dump?’
Seablast met Aranfal’s gaze. ‘I tell you truthfully, I do not know any Doubters. They could be anywhere.’
‘What about your lieutenants? Those pricks in the throne room, back when you were a king? A few of them have gone missing, haven’t they? I bet they’re out and about now, planning to right your honour and make some trouble for us. Aren’t they? What are their names?’
Seablast remained silent, and his eyes focused on the table.
‘All I need is their names.’
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about. And I don’t see why they’d be Doubters.’
Aranfal turned to Katrina, his eyes blazing, his body shaking with fury. She could not tell if it was real or part of his act, but the older part of her told her to do whatever he asked.
‘Paprissi, there’s a bag on the floor beside you. Bring it over here.’
Katrina looked to her side, and saw a brown satchel. She instantly snatched it in her hand and walked to Aranfal’s side.
‘Unfold it on the table.’
She did as she was told. The bag turned into a gleaming array of knives, axes and other tools the Apprentice Watcher had never seen before and had no name for. She knew, however, for a certainty, that she would not like to be on the wrong end of any of them.
‘I’ll get her to use these,’ Aranfal whispered, jabbing a thumb at Katrina. ‘The only thing is, this is her first interrogation, so she might be clumsy. Thumbs and things might get lost forever.’
Katrina felt her stomach turn. You are a Watcher, girl, said the older part of herself. You know what this life is.
But this was never supposed to be my life, the younger side responded, in a rare moment of defiance.
She steeled herself, and smiled at the King, in what she hoped was a sinister manner. But it was evidently unsuccessful. Seablast smiled back at her, and winked. Winked.
‘Is there something amusing, your Majesty?’ Aranfal asked. His tone was smoothing, cool. He knew something the others did not.
‘I’ve been tortured before, by people worse than you,’ the King said. ‘Once I spent a couple of weeks as the guest of some snow bandits. I was humiliated, to fall into their hands. But I got myself free, pretty quickly.’ He grinned.
‘I’ve met snow bandits before, too, your Majesty. I’m from a similar background to them, in point of fact. And they are a nasty bunch. But they are not worse than us. Besides, what makes you think we are going to torture you?’
The King’s expression flickered from confusion to something else entirely: fear.
‘Katrina.’ Aranfal looked to Katrina again. ‘Gather up this bag of tricks, like a good little Apprentice, and take a walk down the corridor, till you come to the fifth cell from this one. It’s a nasty cell, that one, your Majesty, not like your own lovely abode. Once you get there, Katrina, pass on my regards to the King’s daughters. Don’t tell them he’s here. Don’t even ask them any questions. Just cut off bits of them. Let’s say – one finger each. Or a toe? What do you think, your Majesty – what would they prefer to lose?’
The King’s face was grey, his eyes once more on the table. But he did not protest. He did not say a word. By the Machinery, tell him whatever he wants, you idiot. Don’t force me to do this.
‘Seablast, you know I am a bad man,’ Aranfal said. ‘And you know I am committed to my work, and to the Machinery. Tell me where your missing minions are, or your daughters will suffer for your obstinacy.’
The King sighed, and his very bones seemed to rattle. When he looked at Aranfal, there was something new in his eye: resignation.
No. Please don’t do it, Seablast.
‘I already told you,’ said the King. ‘I made a mistake in my throne room. Do what you want. My girls would be better dead, than living under your rule.’
Aranfal lifted a finger. ‘Not my rule. The rule of the Selected.’
He packed up the instruments, and handed the bag to Katrina again.
‘Well, off you go, then.’
As Katrina walked down the corridor, she knew which part of her personality to turn to.
This is what being a Watcher is.
Get in there, do it quickly, get out again.
Show them no emotion.
Do a good job, and you will be recognised.
The world is a hard and cruel place, Katrina. You know that better than anyone. We do what we must to survive. We do what we must to thrive.
Only once did the other part get in.
What would father think of you now? Is this what he would have wanted for you?
She stood at the cell door, the fifth one along.
If father cared about you, he wouldn’t have left you to be raised by Watchers, now would he?
She pushed inside.
There was only one woman in this cell, and she was not a daughter of King Seablast.
‘Aleah.’
Thank the Machinery.
The woman sat at a table, a book open before her. Katrina knew her as one of the more ambitious generation of younger Watchers, the ones on the rung below Aranfal. She was unusually chubby for a Watcher, with unkempt blonde hair strewn around her face.
‘Has he said anything yet?’
‘No, Watcher.’
‘He didn’t break down again, when Aranfal threatened his daughters?’
‘Not this time.’
‘But he thinks you are hacking bits off them. He’ll be talking now, I bet. If he isn’t, we’ll try a different tack. Maybe we’ll send you in again in a while, with a finger. We’ll just take one off a corpse, so don’t worry.’
‘Where are his daughters?’
‘No idea. Maybe they’re dead. Or maybe old Aranfal let them go. Sometimes he’s soft, you know. I would have put the King in the same room as them, and made him watch what I did. But Aranfal only does that kind of thing when he has to. He’s soft.’
The woman seemed to catch herself, and grinned. ‘I jest, of course. He’s a genius at this type of thing. No one better.’
The door behind them opened, and Aranfal entered. He nodded at Aleah, and pointed to the door, waiting until she had left the room before he spoke.
‘The King has told me everything he knows. He reckons there will be some rebels out there, but it doesn’t sound to me like we’ve much to worry about. Only took another five minutes. It’s funny how it works, sometimes. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I just placed thoughts in his head, about what we knew and what we were doing. Having relatives is a very dangerous business. You are lucky, to be alone.’
I am?
‘So, there you have it, Katrina. The psychological art of the interrogation.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘In your next class, we really will chop off someone’s finger.’ He laughed. ‘But it’ll have to wait. You’re to go back south with Brightling in the morning.’
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