The blackness burned white: it flowed over the woman, until she was consumed by it. There was a scream from far away.
‘Do you know what that is, Canning? That is this woman, this Manipulator. She is suffering, Canning. Would you like to see her suffering?’
The whiteness fell away from the woman’s face for a heartbeat, and Canning saw her. Her eyes and her mouth hung open, and she reeked of an animal terror.
‘What are you doing to her?’
There was a laugh, and the woman was covered again.
‘You mean, what have I done to her. I finished her, Canning, and I took her memories away. They will know she is dead, now, in the world above. They heard the screams as well.’
More faces appeared then: the other Manipulators. Men and women, like Canning himself. Voices reached him, panicking whispers. They are still alive.
‘Can you hear them, Canning? They seek your aid. I would like to see that. Please, try to help them.’
The endless white turned back to black, then to red again, repeating over and over. Canning could no longer tell which parts of this place were the Outside. Is part of it the Old Place, or is it all the same creature, red and black and white …?
‘This one is good,’ the Outside said. The other faces disappeared, until only one remained: a very young man, perhaps in his late teens. ‘New to the whole business, but good. A fine delicacy.’
Canning closed his eyes as the young man screamed. The other Manipulators had taught him nothing; they had left him to fend for himself. Perhaps his reputation was enough for them: the Great Manipulator. But they were wrong, and he had thought too highly of himself. Now he regretted his arrogance. He wished he had retained just a little of the old Canning’s humility.
I hope my instincts save me, because they’re all that I have.
He opened his eyes, to find that all was once more black. A new face had appeared in the darkness: a woman, perhaps in her sixties, her eyes framed by curls of brown hair.
‘This one will be delicious,’ said the Outside. ‘She’s all hard and brittle. She’s probably quite a good one. When I break her, she’ll be nice and crunchy, like a lovely nut.’
Canning felt a wave of panic. You are just Timmon Canning. You are nothing but a fishmonger, and you weren’t even good at that.
But he knew this was not true, even now. He had grown into something greater. He would die here, if that was how his story was to end. But he would not die a coward. He would not die as the Tactician he had once been.
He closed his eyes again. He thought about where he was and what had taken him here. This was a construct of another being: a thing of memory, like Shirkra and all the others. Perhaps the power of memory could break it. He knew, however, that he could not take it by surprise, trapping it as he had done the Duet. It was watching him far too carefully for that. He would have to fight this thing. Somewhere, there must be a weapon I can use.
‘You are very impressive,’ the Outside said. ‘But the Old Place is memory; memory is the Old Place; and I am formed of memory. You cannot use the power of memory, as I can; you cannot use the Old Place, as its children use it. It is not your god.’
You are wrong. All of you are nothing but children: the children of humanity. The children of our nightmares. Children must do as their parents wish.
Canning felt a change. He touched a part of his mind and knew that he had created a barrier, beyond which the Outside could not pass. Suddenly there was silence, as his enemy’s words disappeared.
He opened his eyes, to find he was still in the great womb of blackness. Now, however, all was calm. But he knew he was not safe. Victory is more than defence. He began to search within himself, casting his mind over the detritus of his past. He was hunting for a weapon, driven by an instinct that he could fashion something fierce and terrible. He would make one from the memories available to him, in this place: his own.
He thought of his years of hardship as a poor, thin, starving child, and his years of misery as a fat, cossetted Tactician. There must be something in there. Where?
‘You are asking the wrong question.’
This was not the voice of the Outside. He knew this voice very well, and it sent a shiver through the core of him. Only two people in the world spoke with that voice.
The Duet, supposedly his prisoners, were standing before him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. He glanced between them, at those two pairs of glacial eyes. ‘How did you escape?’
Boy grinned at him. ‘Escape? What makes you think we escaped?’
Girl moved forward. ‘We’re still in your prison, Canning. You called us here. Did you not realise?’
Canning shook his head. ‘This is a trick. You are in league with the Outside.’
‘The Outside!’ Girl clapped her hands. ‘The Outside is so awful. So boring, even when he’s cruel.’
‘Yes,’ said Boy. ‘So many of the young ones are just like that.’
‘Be quiet,’ Canning snapped. ‘And don’t move.’
He did not know what prompted his words: irritation, perhaps. But the result was remarkable: as soon as he had spoken, the Duet became utterly still and completely silent.
‘You may speak again,’ he said. On cue, Boy and Girl came to life once more, exhaling deeply.
‘So it’s true,’ Canning said. ‘I’ve called you here, somehow. You’re still under my control.’ He scrunched up his eyes. ‘I’m not sure how I did that.’
‘You were searching for ways to defeat the Outside and free your friends, or whoever those wretches are,’ Boy said.
‘A part of you realised you controlled a great weapon,’ said Girl. ‘Us.’
Boy snatched his hand up: he held a long shard of ice that had been carved into a blade. It had a slightly red tinge and dripped cold water. ‘I will kill the Outside with this,’ he said.
‘No,’ Canning said, shaking his head. ‘I’ll fight him on my own. I only need to know …’ He nodded at the ice. ‘That thing. How do you know it will hurt the Outside?’
Boy shrugged. ‘I just do. It’s born from bad memories. It’s horrible.’ He grinned, and his teeth seemed sharper than normal. ‘I made it in a moment,’ he said. ‘I made it from things that the Outside won’t like. Not. One. Bit.’
‘You found it in a memory,’ Canning said. ‘Teach me how to do that, too.’
‘You ask how?’ said Girl. ‘You really don’t understand your powers. What natural talent you must have, Canning the Great Manipulator, to hold us as your prisoners, without even knowing how!’
He shook his head. ‘I do not know. I do not know.’ He nodded again at the weapon. ‘Where do I find things like that? What memories must I look to?’
Boy laughed. ‘You will find your way. You are the Great Manipulator!’
Canning shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’
Girl opened her mouth, but Canning did not hear her words. His defences had vanished. The Duet were gone, and he was now once more in the presence of the Outside.
‘You put up a wall against me, didn’t you, Canning? You don’t even know how you did it. I sense a certain power in you. But it has no direction. You do not …’
The words fell away, as Canning turned his mind to memories, searching for something powerful, something that burned. And soon enough, an image appeared. It was a woman with long white hair and a look of fire in her eyes. It was Brightling: the centre of so much of his suffering, threading the tapestry of her intricate webs.
For years, she had humiliated him. She had seen his weaknesses, and she had picked at them, tearing off the scabs and spreading the infection. She had turned him into a wretch. She had made him look a fool, in his own eyes, the people’s eyes, and the eyes of the Machinery. And he had allowed her to do it. He had agreed with her. He knew he was worthless. She had made him realise what a truly miserable, scrabbling wretch he was, and he deserved it.
Now, though, he saw what she had done. He knew the
truth of it. She did not humiliate him because he was weak. She did it because he was strong. She saw him as a threat, someone who could be Selected ahead of her as the Strategist, one day. She had turned him into the kind of man the Machinery would never Select.
A single memory came to him. He saw himself, sitting in the heights of the Circus, watching a play that Brightling had commissioned, a play in which all his failings were on display, a play designed to draw laughter, laughter aimed at him alone. It was so raw, so visceral: he could sense the very heart of it, the dark pulse of the pain within …
He looked down at his hands and saw that they held a long, dark sword. Red light played across the surface: the sparks of an inferno.
‘You have formed this from the power of memory,’ whispered Boy. Canning could not see him, but his words came from nearby. ‘Use it against the Outside!’
Canning looked around him, at the great pool of blackness.
‘Do not try to harm me,’ said the Outside.
Canning grinned. He knew fear when he heard it.
He pulled back his arm and thrust the blade into the darkness.
‘Is that all, Canning? Is that all you can conjure from the great pit of memory?’
The blackness fell away, and he was standing in a white space. A red circle floated before him and began to gently tremble.
‘Do you know why I am called the Outside?’
Canning shook his head. He glanced at his hand: it was balled into a tight fist, as if that strange sword was still in his possession. But it was gone.
‘It’s strange, really,’ the Outside said. His voice was hard, functional, devoid of feeling: the farmer, preparing to behead a chicken. ‘I was always just a bit different to the others. I always liked the little memories, the ones the others would ignore: stubbing a toe, cutting yourself shaving. They all excluded me, after a while. I was on the outside.’ He sighed. ‘I’ve never had a host, Canning. Do you know what that means? I couldn’t find anyone suitable, no matter how hard I tried. Too much of an outsider.’
There was a pause. ‘Perhaps it could be you? You’re quite impressive, in some ways. But no: I would’ve felt it by now.’
Canning’s sword reappeared, hanging pathetically between him and the red circle.
‘A nasty little weapon, this, formed from a horrible little memory, no doubt. Someone you don’t like, I’d say. A lot of powers in those memories. But do you really think the power of one or two little memories means anything to something like me?’
A mouth appeared, then, in the red circle, displaying daggers for teeth. It grew wider as it moved towards Canning, swallowing his pathetic little sword along the way.
The mouth came to a halt before him, hanging open. Canning looked to the side and saw Boy and Girl, grinning at him voraciously.
‘You made that weapon out of the power of memory,’ Girl said. ‘That’s good. But it was a piddling thing, really.’
‘Ask the Old Place for what you need,’ Boy whispered. ‘The power of memory will provide it, from all the memories that ever were. Demand it.’
Canning looked at the great, red mouth that hung before him. ‘I can’t do it,’ he said. ‘You should finish this thing. You should destroy the Outside.’
Girl giggled. ‘You summoned us here, Canning. You control us. You did this through your hold over the Old Place, your mastery of the power of memory. And you say you cannot fight a little child like the Outside?’
‘Besides,’ said Boy, ‘if you want us to truly help you, you would have to set us free. And I do not believe you want us to be free, Canning, as much as we would like it.’
Canning shook his head. ‘No. I do not want you to be free.’ He blinked, and the Duet were gone.
But the mouth was still there. And now it was moving again, floating towards him: the gaping maw of the Outside, coming to end him.
Strangely, he felt a new sense of calm. If he died here, in this terrible place, fighting to save a group of Manipulators, would that not be a good death? Would it not be honourable? If he had remained a Tactician he would likely have expired in the Fortress, slumped over a chair, a glass of Redbarrel falling from his outstretched hand. But that end would never come for him, now. He would never be a Tactician again.
Old Place, he said within his mind. The words felt alien to him. Underland. Come to me.
Nothing happened. The great mouth came closer.
A flicker of desperation sparked within the former Tactician. How could he master the great secrets of memory in this moment, standing here, a weak, half-beaten creature? But the thought turned to a kind of resolution. It has always been the same when you used this power. You have always felt desperate. You have always felt alone.
He pictured the Underland as a great ball of twisting light. He plucked the light apart, formed it into shapes. He thought back to a moment from his past, when he was a child. He remembered seeing a man in a field, slicing crops with a murderous instrument.
The ball of light became a scythe, not formed of wood or metal, but memories. And not one memory, but a great host, all of them infusing the scythe with their power.
The mouth fell back.
‘How did you fashion such a thing?’ There was a note of panic in the Outside’s voice.
Canning gritted his teeth, stepped forward, and swept the scythe in the air. It flashed as it went, cutting through the great mouth, splitting it in two. For a second both parts hung uselessly before him; the room flickered through different colours, the manic reflections of a crazed rainbow. The mouth vanished, and a great roar filled the air, a scream that crawled across Canning, into the corners of his mind …
Images flooded him, the memories of a million souls: too many to remember and too many to forget. He turned them away, their anguish and their joy and their fear and their strength. He felt himself falling out of the Outside’s world, back into reality, whatever that meant. But before the end, he saw them: his allies in this madness. Boy and Girl. Boy smiled at him and stuck a thumb in the air.
‘What mastery of the Old Place,’ whispered Girl.
He awoke amid a crowd of Manipulators.
They were gathered around him, staring down. There were Arna and Darrlan, the senior figures in this world, who had taken him to face the Outside. And there were the others, alive and well: the Manipulators whose minds and spirits had been taken by the Outside. The ones who survived, at least.
‘Help him up,’ said Darrlan. The others parted, allowing Controller Arlan to push through their circle and help Canning to his feet.
‘What happened?’ asked Arna.
Darrlan laughed in his boyish way. ‘Don’t you see? He’s beaten back the Outside.’
‘No,’ Arna said, shaking her great head. ‘There’s more here than that.’ She studied Canning intently, as if reading his soul. Her eyes widened. ‘He has killed him.’
The other Manipulators emitted a collective gasp, and the smile fell from Darrlan’s face.
‘Killed?’ he whispered, somewhere between horror and awe. ‘Killed?’
Canning nodded. He saw it again: that great scythe of shifting light. ‘It can be done.’
He looked down, and the scythe had returned, held tightly between his hands. It was there for only a second, but the others saw it. They saw it, and they saw what their Great Manipulator could do.
They fell to their knees.
CHAPTER 10
Turn back and live.
Brightling had come too far to turn back. And there was nothing to live for back there.
‘You know what’s coming,’ she said. There was a kind of whispering noise, close to her ear. The mask was urging her on.
Destroy it.
When Ruin spoke again, there was sorrow in his voice.
Very well.
For a time, she wondered if that was all. Perhaps the next time she heard him speak would be in person. Within the Machinery. She realised, then, that she had not considered this. The beating heart of th
e world was about to open for her. A childhood image bloomed in her brain, her infant imagining of what the Machinery actually looked like: a thing of iron, black and red, functional and beautiful all at once. She didn’t know how she pictured it, now. The pit of a monster.
I have been trapped here for so long. But I never saw another like you. Neither did Jandell. He loved you so much. He wanted to help you, in your ascent.
There was a laugh in the darkness.
All your efforts have turned to dust.
A new room appeared to Brightling’s left. She saw a younger version of herself: a girl, sitting in the library of the Watchers, alone.
The scene flickered and turned into something else. There she was again, a young woman amid a group of other Watchers, the only one without a mask. They were snaking out around the perimeter of an old house. Another change of scene: she was somewhat older, perhaps in her early thirties, and sitting at a great desk. Operator Jandell was behind her, his hand upon her shoulder.
The scene collapsed into a deluge of images, a crazed flow of visions of her past: a child, in the West, racing to the top of a hill; a young woman, playing with a blade; an older woman, interrogating a Doubter; and dozens more besides.
You have a conflicted quality, which the Machinery has always admired. You are ambitious, but there is a moral quality to your ambition.
The mask burned upon her.
You did not seek power simply for itself, as so many have. You wanted it for a purpose. You wanted to be Selected because you loved the world you grew up in. You loved the Machinery.
Ruin chuckled, and it echoed around the stairs.
And now you are coming to tear out its heart.
Brightling turned away from the room and once more faced the stairs. ‘I am coming to destroy you. I don’t care about the Machinery.’ The words tasted bitter on her tongue, and she did not know if they were true.
There is no difference. I am the Machinery!
Brightling walked on, and Ruin fell silent for a long time. Eventually, another doorway appeared, this time to her right. The image that appeared was unexpected. It was not an image from her past: not directly, anyway. It was someone she knew.
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