‘Help me,’ he whispered. ‘Help me!’
The shadow disappeared, and the Duet stood grinning in the centre of the hall. ‘Truly, we see that you are Arandel’s heir,’ they said as one. ‘We feel your power: the power to battle Ruin, in the end.’
Canning shook his head. ‘I can’t do it. I needed you to help me.’
Girl shook her head. ‘No, your majesty. You cast the shadow away by yourself.’
‘We remain your prisoners,’ said Boy.
Canning hesitated. ‘That was just a shadow.’
‘Yes. When Ruin comes in all his glory, he will crush you like a bug.’ Girl grinned at him.
Canning nodded. ‘I know it,’ he whispered. ‘Where is Ruin now? When will he come?’
‘Soon,’ said Boy. ‘He is in that thing you all love, Canning. He is trapped inside the Machinery, in the very heart of the Old Place. It is broken, but Ruin remains within its bounds. It will not hold him for much longer. He is so powerful.’
He reached out a hand.
‘The shadow of Ruin is growing, Canning. It is growing more powerful than the Old Place itself.’
Canning thought of the thing that had come to him. Perhaps it was nothing more than the memory of a memory. Or perhaps Ruin really had come here, to his throne room, to take the measure of him. Either way, he had felt the power of that thing, and he feared it.
‘Only one thing can stop it,’ said Girl.
‘The First Memory of the Old Place,’ whispered Boy. ‘It is greater even than Ruin.’
Canning nodded. He felt the truth of this. The First Memory. The words seemed to burn and sparkle in a corner of his mind.
The Duet spun around, so that they stood directly beside Canning, and put an arm each around the King of the Remnants. With their other arms they gestured to the centre of the hall, where an image had appeared. The picture was entirely blue, cold and icy. It was not dissimilar to a statue, crafted by some artist of the Centre, though that was where the similarities ended. It was in fact a memory, depicting a table surrounded by chairs. In one of the chairs sat the Operator – Jandell. Three identical women occupied another three places. As soon as he had a clear image of them, they seemed to change, as if they were formed of some transient substance. They were so similar that he wondered if they truly were three women, or perhaps just three faces of the same entity.
Canning looked at the rest of the group. On one side sat the Strategist, the girl who had been Katrina Paprissi. She was leaning over the table, staring at it intently. To her side sat that figure from Canning’s nightmares: Shirkra. She was not wearing her mask, and she leaned back in her chair, her hands folded behind her head.
And there, at Shirkra’s side, were the two Operators he knew best of all: the Duet. They held in their hands a small figurine. Canning walked closer and saw that it was a tiny model of himself.
Canning thought back to a distant moment, when he had sat with the Duet in the branch of a tree in the middle of a great forest, before he overpowered them, before he became the King of the Remnants.
‘You said you wanted me to play a game,’ Canning said. ‘To be a pawn.’
Boy nodded. ‘You must do it. It is your only hope to find the First Memory. The only hope of the world.’
‘But you will need to release us,’ said Girl. She grasped Canning’s arm. ‘We can’t take you to the game, unless we are free.’
Canning looked into Girl’s vicious little blue eyes. ‘How can I trust you?’
‘You have no choice.’
‘No. I don’t believe you.’ He shook his head. ‘I will find a way into the Old Place by myself. I’ll find the First Memory without playing any games.’
Boy smiled, and shook his head. ‘Ruin’s power is growing all the time. He will know if just any mortal enters the Old Place. But the game is beyond his control, as yet. He will not see you if you come as a player.’
‘It is our only chance,’ said Girl. She pointed a finger at the memory, at the little figurine of Canning. ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘you are meant to be there!’
Boy opened his mouth, but Canning silenced him with a finger.
‘I want to play the game,’ he said. ‘I want to find the First Memory. Me.’
The Duet exchanged glances. ‘To do that, you will have to set us free,’ said Boy.
‘We would need to go to the table of our own will,’ agreed Girl.
Canning held up a finger. ‘Do not try to harm me.’ He could feel the power of memory flow within him, now, stronger all the time. Without quite knowing what he was doing, he flicked a finger, and the Duet fell to their knees.
‘We will not betray you, oh mighty Canning,’ said Boy. His words were raspy.
‘Good,’ said the King of the Remnants. He made another gesture, and the Duet were free.
CHAPTER 15
The world fell into flames, but Brightling was not burning.
Welcome to the heart of memory, Brightling: the fire of the Old Place.
Ruin’s words seemed to come from far away, but he was here. She could sense him. He was so close. She felt the anger of her mask ripple through her.
Brightling had been in a real fire, long ago, during the Rebellion in the West. She had pushed her way from a smoke-filled room and thrown herself into a river from the top of the building. Anything to escape the flames. But this was all wrong. She was consumed by the inferno, but she was not burning.
It is not that kind of fire.
What kind of fire was this, which burned with such ferocity, yet caused her no harm?
It is the flame of memory.
She looked behind, to find the door was gone. The world was fire: nothing more.
You are here. It is too late for you.
He is right. There is no going back.
She walked through the flame.
If only Jandell could see this. The two things he loved the most: the Machinery and Brightling, side by side.
Brightling walked on.
He lost you, on that island of Squatstout’s. But perhaps you lost yourself. Perhaps you sought to escape him, before he broke you. He always breaks the things he makes, in the end.
Ahead, in the heart of the inferno, there was a moving patch of darkness: a shadow.
You still think you can destroy me, Brightling. But how can you destroy me, if you cannot reach me?
‘I can see you.’
Ruin laughed.
Destroy him. The words thudded in her mind, a kind of mantra. Destroy him. The mask whispered to her, as she bore down on Ruin. The shadow seemed to grow.
She had faced Doubters with her mask: literally faced them, simply turned her gaze upon them. They had screamed for their minds, before the end. They had begged for their sanity. The mask had taken something away from them: stripped them of themselves. She had not used it more than a handful of times. She was not a cruel woman, no matter what the world thought of her. She always had her reasons.
Everything you did was for the Machinery.
She pushed Ruin away. She focused on the mask, allowing it to spread its power through her. She saw it as a web, woven within and beyond her. She could reach out with it. She could reach out to him. She could scrape out his soul, if he had one.
The fire diminished, until it burned ten paces away. Everything else was dark. She was reminded, absurdly, of her mother’s cupboard, locking herself away when the thieves came, yes, the thieves, I remember that now, they used to come in the dark …
She looked at the flame, and she saw memories there, playing across the inferno. In the centre was the shadow. Ruin. Panic jolted her. She reached to her face, but her mask was gone. It appeared in the flames, floating on the fire. It had formed itself into the face of a young woman, her features twisted into a scream …
Do you see how I am imprisoned, Brightling?
The mask vanished, and something emerged in the middle of the flames. It put Brightling in mind of a grotesque birdcage, its dark bars formed o
f some strange material, curling together to the curved summit of the weird prison. From this structure there stretched a bar of the same substance, which made its way to a great wheel, a twisted web of a thing. A pipe of the same blackness led away from the cage, disappearing somewhere far away, falling into a haze.
Within the flame, within the cage, was the shadow of Ruin.
‘Where is my mask?’
Brightling moved slowly forward. She felt nothing beneath her feet.
‘Where is my mask?’
The fury of the fire began to abate. The flames were disappearing, vanishing away into the pipe, until only a flicker was visible. The darkness in the cage had assumed a shape: the figure of a person, a moving silhouette. It walked to the edge of its prison and placed its hands upon the bars.
Brightling, said that voice that seemed to speak within her mind and all across the world.
‘Ruin.’
The shadow man raised his hand, where he held her mask. He turned it towards her; it was Brightling’s own face that looked back, carved into that darkness, screaming in soundless pain.
She walked to the bars.
‘You are like the mask,’ she said. ‘You’re a thing of night.’
Night? Ruin laughed, a hollow sound in his cage. The night is filled with life. This is not night. He held the mask up in the air. This is not life. This is Absence.
‘All that remains of it.’
The Great Absence: our creator, who realised too late that he wanted to be alone. Long gone, now, except for this rotten piece of flesh.
Brightling’s mask floated above the shadow man now, staring down at the Watcher. It shifted through different faces: from Brightling to Jandell to her father to Katrina to Aranfal, and a hundred more besides.
Jandell and the Dust Queen betrayed me, ten thousand years ago. They tore me from my host, and imprisoned me in this cage.
Brightling began to tremble. This, then, was the heart of the world. This cage and its wheel were the centre of her existence, the first thing she thought of when she woke in the morning and the last before she went to sleep, the glorious creation that had made the Overland an empire. This thing had Selected her, and Canning, and all the great figures of history, men and women, boys and girls, butchers and bakers.
‘This is the Machinery.’
This is my prison. The dark hands pounded on the bars, though no noise came. But I am the Machinery. Ruin, burning in the fire of memory: trapped within a cage.
There came a great gust of fire from the pipe, and Ruin cried out.
‘You fear the flames.’
Fear the flames? He gestured at the space behind him. This is the heart of the Old Place. The power of all the memories that ever were burns in this place. I am a thing of memory. I love them more than anything else. But too much, Brightling … too much hurts.
Brightling nodded, suppressing a perverse sense of sympathy. I need to get my mask.
The Dust Queen’s treachery … well, I should have expected that. She has always been capricious. But my son … I am a father, and my first child betrayed me.
Ruin made a hissing sound. His anger flooded Brightling; she almost toppled over, but steadied herself, reaching out to the bars. She thought she heard a whisper. The mask. The mask. The mask!
Brightling tapped the bars, which hummed back at her. She sucked in a breath, before she asked the question that had hung over the Overland for ten millennia.
‘How does the Machinery work?’
The Machinery is broken. But I will show you how it once was.
The scene before Brightling did not appear to change in any significant way. The cage, the wheel, and the pipe to nowhere were there as before, and the shadow remained within the dark bars. Slowly, however, things began to alter. The space around the cage changed: black sand appeared at Brightling’s feet, and a red sun burned in the sky above her.
Brightling turned, prompted by some sense that a familiar presence was near. She saw him, then, crossing the dark sands in his cloak of faces. Jandell. He seemed to leap towards them in fits and starts, until he stood at the cage, gazing in at Ruin. This was the Jandell that Brightling had known from her youth, the old man, his head bald, his skin pale and lined. The faces in the cloak glanced fearfully at Ruin, but Jandell’s eyes were cold. His focus shifted from the shadow of Ruin to the great wheel, then onto the pipe, and finally to the cage itself, which he carefully prodded with his thin fingers. A craftsman admiring his handiwork.
Ruin began to speak. No, not Ruin: the memory of Ruin.
The great traitor.
Jandell did not flinch.
‘A Watching Tactician,’ he said.
Ah! Another one. You will need someone special. They are in a sorry state. He laughed, and it echoed across the sands.
Jandell turned from the cage and walked to the great wheel. He continued staring at Ruin as he grasped the instrument.
‘You know what I want now, Father,’ Jandell said. ‘You have seen my wishes. You know my vision for the Overland.’
The Machinery is breaking, Jandell. Release me from this cage, and I will forgive you. We can stand together once more.
Jandell smiled.
‘The Machinery will never break.’
I grow stronger than the flames. Soon, they will not harm me. You accepted the Queen’s aid in building this thing, yet you do not believe her words. It is breaking, Jandell.
‘No,’ said the Operator. ‘The Machinery will never break.’ He pointed at Ruin. ‘A Watching Tactician!’
Jandell began to turn the wheel, and a screech filled the desert, as of metal dragged across metal.
‘You know what happens when you defy me, Father,’ Jandell said. There was a flicker of a smile on his lips. ‘Remember I control the flames. I can burn you for as long as it takes, until I get my answer.’
The shadow stood very still. After a while, it seemed to nod.
There was a new sound: a distant rumble, the movements of some machine. And then the fire came.
It was different to what Brightling had seen before, somehow burning with a greater intensity, a special kind of fury. The cage vanished beneath the flames, obscured by tongues of red and gold and yellow. The Watcher staggered backwards. There was no heat from this flame, not in the sense of a normal fire. Yet all the power of the past was here, all the burning core of memory. She thought she saw things there, in the conflagration: images from older times, things she could never begin to understand, things that occurred in so many other lives.
There came a scream.
‘What is this?’ Brightling asked.
My torture.
While the real Ruin spoke to Brightling, the Ruin of the past writhed in the inferno.
In the heart of the Old Place, I was cast into all of memory. All of the past burned into me, with its lessons for the future. With that knowledge, I saw the paths to Jandell’s dreams. But I suffered, Brightling. I suffered.
As Brightling gazed at the fire, new images appeared. These memories were familiar. They were her memories: a young girl in the West, a Watcher ascending the summit.
Jandell twisted the wheel, and the fire fell away, vanishing through the pipe. The shadow in the cage now seemed more like a living being than he had before, on his knees, panting, his fists on the ground.
Amyllia Brightling.
Jandell smiled. ‘Good,’ he whispered. ‘Very, very good. I hoped it would be her.’
The voice spoke once more, in Brightling’s mind.
He always loved you. He loved you more, perhaps, than any other mortal, in the history of the Machinery. I sensed it within him.
‘So you Selected me. It was all down to you’
No. I saw only what was in the flames.
Something was happening in the cage. Ruin had climbed to his feet, and was whispering something. Brightling moved closer, but could hear nothing.
‘What are you doing?’ said the Operator.
Jandell had moved
away from the wheel and was approaching the cage.
‘Who are you talking to, Father? No one can hear you.’
Ruin spread his arms. When he spoke, it was not in that powerful voice that Brightling knew. This was the voice of a broken creature, the rasp of an old, broken man.
‘The Machinery is breaking,’ said the shadow. ‘My powers grow with every Selection.’ He tapped the bars. ‘Already, my voice can travel beyond the cage.’
Jandell shook his head. ‘You will not manipulate me. The flames will always control you. You will never be more powerful than the Old Place, Father. The Machinery will never break.’ He nodded. ‘Amyllia Brightling. Good. Good.’
He turned his back on Ruin and returned to the wheel. He twisted it, and the fire poured forth again, causing the memory Ruin to scream.
‘Why is he doing that again?’ Brightling asked.
Ruin laughed. It was always the same. He liked to use the fire, for his little shows in the Overland.
The flames swept upwards, disappearing into the sky, into some unseen space. Jandell leapt upon them and ascended. Brightling saw he had a piece of parchment in his hand.
‘He is going to the Circus,’ she said, remembering all those Selections she had seen, when fire had poured forth from the Portal.
Yes. And he will let me burn until he returns. He always did the same thing. It does not matter. What matters is that Jandell was wrong. The Machinery was breaking.
The scene changed. The cage remained in its position, beside the great wheel, with Ruin trapped inside. But they were now on a wintry mountaintop. The place was utterly unreal. All of it, from the form and colour of the rocks to the snow that lay on the ground, could have come straight from a painting or a tapestry. They were surrounded by the night sky, almost suffocated by stars.
In the cage, the memory of Ruin was standing very still before the pipe.
Jandell’s creation was built on two foolish mistakes, Brightling. He knew my powers would grow, every time I was burned. But I would never become more powerful than the fire, he thought. I would never be greater than the Old Place.
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