‘No,’ he said. ‘I cannot go to her. She is too much for me.’
Shirkra smiled at him, but there was no warmth there. ‘She is too much for us all. She will eat the world, one day: her and Ruin. We are all here to serve.’
They walked along the beach, Shirkra holding Canning’s elbow in an iron grip. As they went, the woman in the purple rags seemed to jolt towards them. Time and distance were different here, if they existed at all.
She was before them, then: the body of Katrina Paprissi, the Strategist, the One, Mother. She was utterly warped and changed from the girl that once followed Brightling around. The hair was still black, the skin still pale, but there the likeness ended. This creature was twice Katrina’s height, as if the Apprentice had been somehow stretched. She was sprawled across a throne, a dark thing made from the Machinery knew what. There was no wind here, but the purple rags moved incessantly, curling and twisting around the Strategist’s thin body. She watched him with a lazy curiosity, and he felt himself quail before those purple eyes.
‘You are Canning, the last of the Tacticians.’
This voice was not that of Katrina Paprissi. It had a hard tone, and was strangely deep, with a clunking, clanking quality. It reminded Canning of the movement of some war machine he had been forced to assess in the old days.
He did not know what to say, so simply bowed.
Shirkra took a position behind the throne. She knelt down and lifted some black sand; holding it above the Strategist’s head, she allowed it to drain away from her clenched fist. The Strategist stuck out her tongue, and drank the blackness in, watching Canning all the while.
‘I suppose that makes you my servant,’ said Mother, when she had finished with the sand. ‘I have only one Tactician left. One has gone from these lands; the others I threw to Chaos, along with any threat they could have posed. What madness my daughter brought to you all!’ She smiled at Shirkra, who giggled. ‘I thought of doing the same to you, Canning. Shirkra would have liked that. But my position is now secure. What purpose would it serve? Besides, I think I like you, Canning. You will be a useful servant.’
‘We are all your servants, madam,’ said Canning.
Shirkra laughed.
‘No,’ said the Strategist, raising a hand to Shirkra. ‘Do not mock him. It is a kind thing he says.’
Canning looked from Shirkra to the Strategist. He sensed he was expected to say something else, but it was beyond his reach.
The Strategist stood, casting Shirkra in her shadow. The red sun retreated into black clouds, and the dark sea fled from the shore.
‘Do you know who I am?’
Canning fell to his knees.
‘Mother,’ he whispered. ‘The One.’
‘Yes. Look at me.’
Canning looked up into the purple eyes.
‘Do you know where the Machinery is? Is that the sort of thing Jandell told you people? Your Operator – you do know his true name, don’t you?’
Canning nodded. He had heard it in Shirkra’s nightmares.
‘It might save me a lot of time if I knew where it was,’ Mother continued. ‘I could call off the game!’ She laughed, and glanced at Shirkra. ‘Would you like that, daughter?’
Shirkra nodded fiercely, and Mother turned back to Canning.
‘I realise, even as I speak, that I am being foolish.’ The voice had turned harsh and despairing.
‘I do not know where the Machinery is,’ Canning said. ‘I have never even seen it. No one has, except for the Operator himself.’
‘Look at me. Never look away from me.’
Canning met the Strategist’s gaze. He could see his life there, broken into fragments, being sorted and sifted through by this woman: this force.
‘You are a sad man.’
Canning nodded.
‘You have seen much that has hurt you. How pathetic, that the last Tactician in the Overland should be such a wretch.’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘But there is more to you, Canning. I can feel it. You have a future, I think, though it may not be one you hoped for. I believe you will be useful in the game.’
‘I don’t know what that is, madam. But I will do what you wish.’
She laughed. ‘Do what I wish! Ah, how long has it been since mortals said such things to me.’ She sighed. ‘I spent a long time as nothing, Canning. I was no more than memory, in the air. But how things change. I found a host that I love.’ She gestured at her body. ‘The Machinery has broken, and sent new powers to me. I can hear the other children of memory, scrabbling at my door, yearning to serve me once more. But in the dark days, only my daughter was there. Chaos was my only companion.’
She smiled at Shirkra.
‘Now I have returned,’ she said. ‘And you all once again pledge to do as I wish. It is strange to me.’
Mother sat down again on her throne. The purple drained from her eyes, and suddenly Canning was staring into the face of Katrina Paprissi.
‘You do not know where the broken Machinery is, Canning.’
‘No, Mother, I do not.’
‘I will find it. I will open it. Ruin will come.’
‘I understand.’
Mother turned to Shirkra, and nodded.
**
They were back at the wall, and Annya was about to leap for the thousandth time.
Shirkra was by his side, whispering, the tip of her tongue brushing against his face.
‘I could make this so much worse, Canning. I could infuse this memory with other things, little bits and pieces I have picked up over the millennia. This woman could perish still, but in so many other ways, ways you are simply incapable of imagining. I am Chaos. I am the detritus of nightmares, and the echo of daydreams. I can bring such things before your eyes that you would wish you had died in the Circus. I can take the very heart of a memory, a thousand of them, their deepest powers, and burn you in them forever.’
She looked at Annya.
‘A pretty wretch. Why would anyone choose death, particularly those whose lives are finite?’
She was gone, then, leaving him with the memory.
Canning looked to Annya.
‘I feel I am able to control this,’ he said. She did not respond. Of course not. She is a nothing – a memory.
He closed his eyes, and he saw it: a febrile power that crackled between a thousand colours, hues that came from another world. This was the essence of the memory, and it burned with greatness. He felt he could touch it. He reached out his hand …
**
When he opened his eyes again, the memory was gone, and he was standing in his cell.
In the corner he saw some clothes: green trousers, a loose, dark shirt, well-worn boots. Are they mine? He removed the old smock, and got himself dressed. Did I drag these from a memory?
There was a sound behind. He turned to the door, where a Watcher stood: a young man, in a lizard mask, holding a plate of bread and meat.
‘The Operator – I was told to give you some food.’ The eyes behind the mask were wide. ‘How did you – she said you were still … are you free of her? How did you do it?’
Canning shook his head.
‘Can you feel it?’ he asked the Watcher. Something had happened to him. He could still sense the power of the memory. He could hold it in his mind. He could use it. The heart of the memory was his. He could feel what Shirkra felt: the magic of memories. He knew, somehow, how she did what she did.
‘What are you doing?’ the boy asked. ‘I can’t – what are you doing to me?’
The Watcher seemed ready to cry for help, but Canning stopped him with a thought and, with another, threw him to the ground.
‘Where are you?’ he asked the boy. Canning could feel the edge of the memory that the Watcher had fallen into; he could see it sparkling, but when he tried to look more closely, it vanished from his grasp.
‘You? I see you, grandmother. But why …?’
The boy lost consciousness.
/> Imbued with a sense of power he had never felt before, the one-time Tactician walked through the door.
Chapter Nine
Brightling had been in many cells, but she had never been an inmate.
To be fair, it was not the kind of cell they had in the Bowels of the See House. It was a wide space, the walls covered with faded tapestries, depicting strange scenes. One of the images showed a short little man, climbing a rock and looking to the sky. Squatstout? It was difficult to tell. In the centre of the room was a table, laden with golden bowls of fruit and bread and cheese, a wooden jug of wine, and a glass. In the corner was a single bed.
She studied her surroundings carefully. Unsurprisingly, the room was sealed tight.
She took a seat at the table, spread some blue cheese over a piece of crusty bread, and contemplated her situation. Squatstout had overpowered the Operator – Jandell –
with little apparent difficulty. How had that happened? Even Squatstout had seemed surprised. Perhaps Jandell had lost his strength over the years, as Squatstout thought. All those memories you could have taken. Or perhaps he was like the rest of them: shattered by the end of the Machinery, and everything they had known.
Memories. She thought of the fire Jandell had shown her, and the food he kept on his ship. Memories were magic, he had said. What a quaint word, to come from something like him! Magic was the stuff of the market. Magic was the talk of Doubters. But she understood the power of memory, all right. She always had. She thought of Katrina. She thought of her old life, and the terrible things she had done to impress the Machinery, with Jandell as her guide. She did not feel guilt for any of it: that was how the world worked, back then. Still, the memories weighed on her. She would have liked to …
She sighed, and rubbed her head. Introspection did not come easily. Besides, she had other things to worry about, like getting out of this cell.
‘I bet you’re wondering how to get out of this cell.’
Squatstout had appeared at the table, smiling, as if he had always been there.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said, concealing her surprise. She took a bite out of her bread. ‘It would be remiss of me not to.’
Squatstout chuckled, and helped himself to an apple, which he crunched loudly. ‘I’m dying to know – what do you make of my little island? I believe it’s the first place you’ve visited, outside your Overland, so I’d love to know; truly, I would love to know.’
Brightling shrugged. ‘It’s cold, and it’s wet. It reminds me of my childhood.’
‘Ah yes, in the mighty West of the Plateau.’ Squatstout grinned savagely, displaying chunks of apple that had caught between his yellowing teeth. ‘A beautiful place. I missed it, after Jandell sent me into exile. Though the Habitation suits me well; it is a little island, and so it will always be the same. I do not have to worry about nasty changes, like Jandell has for ten thousand years. I can control it with ease. We have some food we can take from the island – birds and fish, mostly. The rest, I provide, though my people do not know it.’
He waved a hand, and a pair of oranges appeared in them. He grinned, and placed them on the table.
‘But I do love your land. I enjoyed my time there recently, with Aranfal. Ah! And I saw Shirkra again, for the first time in an age, though she sprinted away from me!’ His eyes creased. ‘How insulting – as if she didn’t like me. Still, perhaps she was shocked. She had just killed some Tacticians.’ He chuckled. ‘I believe you blamed the poor General.’
Brightling did not respond. The memory of those days weighed upon her, like so many others.
Squatstout clapped his hands. ‘Oh, she is such a beauty, but she is strange. She always has been. It got so much worse when Jandell gave her that mask. It’s a funny thing, that mask of hers. I can’t tell what she sees, when she looks through it, but it is not good for her at all.’ His eyes widened. ‘I almost forgot! What a fool! Your mask!’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Let me see it! If it is what I think it is, it must be such a thing!’
Brightling froze. She felt the mask against her skin, burning into her. I cannot give it to him.
‘Squatstout,’ she said, leaning forward. ‘Why do you throw people into the sea?’
The little man’s eyes narrowed, but he did not respond.
‘I have seen them, Squatstout: the bodies in the water. Their bones wash upon the north of the Overland.’
Squatstout slammed his fist on the table, and the plates jumped. The Watcher did not react.
‘Do not speak of things you do not understand.’ The cell darkened; the shadows in the corners seemed to grow. Squatstout looked up, and his aspect was changed: he seemed younger, and vulnerable. ‘I will let you in on a secret, Brightling, but you must not tell anyone.’
‘Tell me, Squatstout.’ She reached out and grasped his hand. Instinct. He did not pull away. ‘Perhaps I can help you.’
Squatstout leaned forward, and fixed Brightling with a desperate gaze, before glancing again at the shadows.
‘I hear a Voice.’
In a heartbeat Brightling was back in the old days, to a time she had pushed away, a time before Jaco had left the Overland and the Paprissis had fallen apart. She felt a shudder of pain. Memories, memories, memories.
‘The Machinery spoke to Alexander Paprissi, Squatstout. Is it speaking to you?’
The Autocrat laughed.
‘The Voice did not tell Alexander what it says to me, oh no.’
He glanced in the corners, then leaned forward furtively, and began to whisper.
‘It is not the Machinery – not really.’
Brightling allowed the words to linger.
‘If it was not the Machinery that spoke to Alexander, then what was it?’
‘It is a creature of memory,’ Squatstout whispered. ‘It is the source of the Machinery’s powers, though it is older by far, and it is manipulative. It is trapped within the Machinery, but even in its current form, it is powerful, so powerful – it can see beyond its prison. It could be watching us even now …’ He glanced once more at the shadows. His breaths came in strange little pants.
‘When Ruin comes, the Voice will be free!’ He thumped his chest. ‘But creatures like us need bodies, don’t we, Brightling? We need to live inside you, if we are to be anything at all. It is searching for the Chosen, to be its host. Hmm? It is like Mother, you see. She was nothing but a whisper on the wind, for such a long time, until she found the perfect host. But the Voice is greater than her, oh yes. The Voice holds sway over her.’
Mother. He means Katrina, and whatever she has become. ‘So this Voice wants to do to someone else what that thing has done to Katrina.’ For the first time in an age, Brightling felt a swell of anger.
But Squatstout was not listening.
‘Once I asked it, “what if you find the host before Ruin comes?” “Then I will make you hold them prisoner in the Old Place, until the day I am released”. That is what it said to me.’
‘Does it even know what it is looking for?’
Squatstout laughed.
‘My Brightling, the Voice is beyond even my comprehension, oh yes. I give it people, you see, people from my Habitation, all the time, hoping one of them will satisfy it. But they never do. Not in ten thousand years! They have all been Unchosen! It makes me kill them, then. It hates the ones that displease it. I must throw them from the cliff.’
‘Why do the people stay?’
Squatstout cocked his head to the side. ‘Because they believe in me, Brightling. When I came here, ten millennia ago, they were savages. The Voice called me here, hmm? I gave these animals a civilisation.’
Brightling winced. There was something ruthless about Squatstout: he spoke of his worshippers like a farmer assessing his cattle.
‘And they believe in the Voice. They want to make it happy. They worship me and the Voice, they worship us! They would never believe in another world – how could anything be better than living here, with us?’ He laughed. ‘Besides, where wo
uld they go? This rock is all they know.’
Squatstout leaned forward. ‘I fled back here, Brightling, when I knew the One had really returned. The Voice must have a host now, hmm? And who knows, my Brightling. Perhaps you could be the Chosen! Perhaps that’s what Jandell has seen in you all these years, though he had not the wit to know it!’
Brightling shook her head. ‘You are mistaken. I would be a terrible choice.’ She grinned. ‘I’m not … harmonious.’ Red lights of panic sparked within the former Tactician; she snuffed them out with a thought.
Squatstout clicked his fingers, and a Guard entered: the one with the golden beak. The strange head nodded at Brightling, and she frowned back at it.
‘My Protector will take you to the Choosing, Brightling. Oh, how exciting! If you are Chosen by the Voice to be its host when Ruin comes – and it would not surprise me, you are so impressive – then I will sit at your side forever, and take orders from you! It will be wonderful!’
‘But it would not be me then, would it, Squatstout?’ She fought to keep her voice steady. ‘I would be the puppet of one of your creatures. Like Katrina.’
‘Puppet? Puppet! Oh, what a thing to say about the host of the One!’
He chuckled, and snatched up some fruit.
‘Take her to the Choosing, Protector.’
**
The Protector was a strange presence.
There was a sense of power, there: power hard-earned, power that brought a kind of ease to the bearer. He was wearing a long black gown, like a scholar of the Overland, and the only weapon he carried was the wooden stick, unlike the pikes the other Guards possessed. He could have had other weapons, under the gown, but she did not think so. This man believed in one weapon, above all others: himself. She could have fought him. Perhaps she could have snapped him in two. But he knew she wouldn’t try. He just knew.
This wasn’t what made him strange. That was something else. He was … sad. A sad soldier, but devoted to his master. What manner of man is this?
They were walking up a stone staircase, now, a corkscrew that wound through the Keep. They passed by open windows as they went, looking out onto balconies that had been built into the side of the cliffs. Below these stretched waters, on and on. I could try to escape, but it’s a long way down.
The Strategist Page 8