The Strategist

by Gerrard Cowan

  ‘Ah,’ said Alexander.

  ‘Both of you sit in Thonn House,’ Simeon said. ‘You sit here, or in one of our other holdings. But you should not be sitting at the head of our House. Isn’t that right, sister?’ He turned upon Mother. ‘I was the first-born. You have lied to me, all our lives.’

  A silence fell across the hall.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Mother’s voice was quieter.

  ‘Did you know, Teron, that my sister raised me?’ Simeon asked, turning his gaze on Drayn’s father. ‘Our Mother died in a Choosing, when we were very young, and our father threw himself off the rock after her. A rare occurrence, to lose both at once like that, but be that as it may, it happens even on the Higher Third.’

  He sighed, and closed his eyes, as if succumbing to a memory, before he clicked back into the real world.

  ‘Well, when that happened, we were very small indeed. Perhaps three or four. Who knows? For years our nanny took good care of us, hmm? She raised us like one of her own. I look back on that time with fond memories.

  ‘But then, one day, nanny was gone. Lyna sent her packing. She’d decided she would run our House, and look after her little brother. Her little brother by one minute. Not a big age gap, I’m sure you’ll agree. But one minute makes a big difference in our world. It meant she was the head of the House, didn’t it? And I just went along with it. Stupid boy!’

  He reached into his cloak, and withdrew a sheaf of parchments, which he tossed on a table before the sofa.

  ‘Except, of course, you weren’t born first, were you, Lyna?’ He gestured at the papers. ‘These are documents I found in our mother’s rooms. I bet you thought you’d got all the evidence. But that’s always been your problem; you’re so arrogant. It seems that I was born first.’

  ‘Anyone could have written those,’ Lyna said.

  ‘And used Mother’s seal? And hidden them in her rooms? Come now. We could make them public if you like, and see who is believed.’

  Simeon grinned, leaned back in the sofa, and opened his arms wide. ‘I want to make this fair on everyone. I could have you taken by the Guards, you know, for tricking a rightful lord. But I don’t want anything nasty like that to happen. Not at all. So you sign everything over to me, in the morning, and we can forget the whole thing. Anyone asks, we’ll say you grew exhausted from all the trials and tribulations of heading a great House. That’s easily believable. I’ll even let the three of you live in one of the other houses, and I’ll make sure you get the same allowance you have permitted me, all these years. Now you can’t get any fairer than that.’

  Simeon leaned forward, lifted a glass of wine, and took a long sip.

  ‘We will think it over,’ said Mother.

  Simeon nodded. ‘There’s no need for things to get unpleasant.’ He gave her a slight smile. ‘I forgive you, sister.’

  Mother did not respond. She stared ahead; her lips were pursed, and her eyes were blank. That was a look of anger on her. Drayn knew it well.

  Uncle Simeon stood, and bowed twice, once to his sister and once to his brother-in-law.

  ‘I will come back in the morning,’ he said. He clapped his hands, and another man entered the room. It was a young man, with bushy brown hair and darting eyes.

  It was Cranwyl.

  Drayn’s heart leapt, and she almost ran to him. But it was just a memory. Not my Cranwyl.

  ‘My servant has overheard our conversation,’ Simeon said. ‘He has already sent word around the Habitation. Everyone knows what you’ve done, now. So don’t get any ideas about hurting me when I visit tomorrow. If I were to slip off the edge of the cliff, the whole island would know who helped me on the way.’

  Simeon walked over to Cranwyl, and pinched the young man’s cheek.

  ‘Cranwyl here is a smart boy, loyal and strong. He’ll be with me tomorrow, too.’

  Simeon looked up at the ceiling, and the younger Drayn shrank into a ball; her older counterpart remembered the sensation as if it was yesterday. But Simeon did not see her. He thudded out of the room, running a hand through his hair, as Cranwyl followed close behind.

  Mother and Father waited for a long while before they spoke.

  ‘You never told me,’ Father said. There was no anger in his tone. There was no emotion at all.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it is true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Father shrugged. ‘It was a wise decision, by a young person. Simeon would have destroyed this House.’

  ‘And you would never have married me.’

  ‘I like to think that isn’t true.’

  ‘You like to think it, but you know the truth.’

  ‘You remember what my parents were like.’

  ‘I do.’

  Silence reigned again for another while.

  ‘We know what we must do, Teron,’ Mother whispered. ‘We cannot lose everything we have built.’

  Father nodded, though he seemed hesitant. ‘Yes. But you heard him. That boy has told half the island.’

  Mother laughed. ‘That’s always been poor Simeon’s problem. He trusts his servants too much.’

  The memory ended, then, as the young girl at the top of the stairs retreated to her bedroom.

  **

  They had returned to the courtyard in the garden.

  ‘I did not sense any Voice, Alexander,’ Drayn said.

  ‘Oh, it was there. It was there.’

  The sun flickered, and they went to another part of the memory.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘There has been a mistake.’

  Wayward did not seem to hear Brandione. He was sitting at the table in the great tent, toying with the braids in his hair. They were blood red, the same colour as his gown.

  Brandione sat up in his bed, and looked at the courtier. Wayward was his only companion, these days; the Queen had not summoned him in a long time.

  ‘Did you hear me, Wayward?’

  The courtier remained silent for a moment. He kicked out his legs and rested his feet on the table, almost knocking over a carafe of wine. After some time he let out a whistling sigh.

  ‘Yes, I heard you. But why would I respond? You have told me the same thing many times now, my friend. “I am not the Last Doubter. There has been a mistake.” You are wrong. I have told you that you are wrong. Yet you will not listen to me.’

  ‘You are angry with me.’

  Wayward shrugged, staring at the rippling ceiling. ‘I am not angry. I am not anything. Do you think your attitude surprises me?’ He glanced at Brandione. ‘The Queen has foreseen this. She has foreseen everything. She knows more of the past than any other being, save the Old Place itself. When the past is known, the future can be seen, too.’

  ‘She knows what will happen, because of what occurred in the past? That can’t be true.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps. But there are lessons, in old memories, and all kinds of strange powers.’

  There was a rustling at the door. Sand blew inside, and formed into the shape of a man. It was one of the sand soldiers, holding a plate of peeled oranges. Brandione turned away. He found it difficult to look upon these pale imitations of human beings. Wayward and the Queen were immortals, creatures formed from memory, they said. But there was life in them; they thought, and they spoke, and they plotted. The soldiers, though, had no spark of humanity. Their bodies and their clothes were formed of swirling sand, pale white or yellow, and they stared at the world with lidless eyes that had no pupils. There were differences between them; this one had a long, lean face, and a pointed moustache. But they were all the same in the only way that mattered. They reeked of death.

  ‘You do not like them, Brandione,’ Wayward whispered. ‘You do not like them, and yet they are your army to command. A strange attitude, for such an accomplished military mind.’

  My army to command. Brandione looked again at the soldier. ‘When am I to command this army? In the game?’

  Wayward shook his head. ‘The game is f
or you to play alone. The army …’ He shrugged. ‘I do not know. That is the truth. But the Queen has given it to you, and there is a purpose to everything she does.’

  The soldier bowed, collapsed into dust, and vanished from the tent.

  ‘They are the Doubters,’ Brandione said. He walked to the table, and took a seat at Wayward’s side. ‘I know it. They’re the ones the Watchers sent to the Prison, over the ages.’

  Wayward nodded. ‘Of course. They were given to her, and she took their memories for herself. She took all of them: all of their pasts, everything they had even smelled or tasted. She can do that in a heartbeat, Brandione: drink a person clean.’

  ‘Why does she leave anything behind? Why keep them, even in that form?’

  ‘A reminder, perhaps. Besides, what good would an army be to you, if there were no soldiers?’

  There was a moment of silence.

  ‘You love her,’ Brandione said. ‘The Queen.’

  Wayward coughed out a joyless laugh. ‘Love her? Of course I love her.’ He spread his arms wide. ‘She is my creator. Often, I wonder, what kind of memory did I come from? I have such an array of emotions, Last Doubter – I can be as playful as a little dog, or melancholic. I can be thoughtful, and I can be trite. What manner of memory am I?’

  ‘More than one, perhaps.’

  Wayward nodded. ‘More than one, perhaps. You are right.’

  The courtier hopped up from his chair.

  ‘Are you worried about the game?’

  Brandione nodded.

  ‘You should be,’ Wayward replied, in a quiet voice. ‘Shirkra will be represented, there, for a certainty, and Mother. If you weren’t worried about facing such opponents, and the pawns that they have chosen, then you would be a stupid man, and you are far from a stupid man. You are a soldier—’

  ‘And a scholar, yes.’ He thumped the table, and Wayward started at the noise.

  ‘You are angry,’ Wayward whispered. ‘You are an angry man, underneath it all.’

  ‘Don’t I have a right to be angry?’

  Wayward nodded. ‘Yes. Oh yes! Anger is fair, in this scenario.’

  ‘The scenario in which I’m a pawn.’

  ‘Oh Brandione, do not feel ill-treated. This is a great honour. You have been selected as a … well, yes, a pawn. But you have been chosen by the Queen herself. She sees such things in you. She believes you will be victorious, in a way that no one ever has. You will stop Ruin!’

  ‘And if I’m not victorious, the Old Place will kill me, or hide me away somewhere.’

  ‘Oh! You should not dread this, Brandione. What an opportunity you have been given! A player in the first game for ten millennia – and the Queen’s player, at that!’

  The courtier clicked his fingers, and the room fell away.

  **

  They were at the bottom of a hollow tower. The ceiling was far above them, disappearing into nothing. The tower was filled with countless doors on every level; doors of every type, wood and iron and gold and silver.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The Old Place, of course,’ said Wayward. ‘Or one aspect of it, at any rate.’

  He gestured at the doors, stretching away around them and above them.

  ‘Behind each door is a corridor. Each corridor leads to another, and among these are halls and chambers and hidden passageways.’

  ‘It is a maze.’

  ‘Yes.’ He pointed at a door to Brandione’s side. It was light blue in colour, with golden leaves painted into the frame.

  ‘There are memories hidden within the maze. The maze is a memory.’

  ‘The memories of the Old Place.’

  Wayward nodded. ‘This is a vision of the Old Place. It is my vision, I suppose.’ He looked at the doors, almost longingly. ‘We wallow in this place, in all the powers of ancient memory: the older the better. But the First Memory … can you imagine the power it must contain?’

  ‘Have you ever sent in a pawn?’

  Wayward laughed. ‘Of course not – I wasn’t even alive when the game was last played. Besides, only the Old Ones play it. The family that fought the Absence.’

  Wayward sighed, and shook his head. ‘The point is this – you have been given a great honour. You have been selected as a pawn, by the Queen herself, to walk through this wondrous place. It is a glorious thing: your heart should swell with pride!’

  Wayward clapped his hands, and they returned to the table in Brandione’s tent.

  One of the servants of dust was holding a plate of bread.

  ‘What are you for?’ Brandione asked the soldier. But the soldier did not respond.

  **

  She called to him that night, while Wayward slept.

  She was standing outside his tent, her backs to him, beneath a silver pool of a moon. She wore three dresses of the same colour as the moonlight, lending her a spectral sheen, and she held her glass crowns in her three right hands.

  She did not acknowledge Brandione’s presence. Something had seized her attention, far ahead, and the three faces stared into the dark of the desert. Sand swirled around her feet, and danced around her crowns.

  Brandione stood to her left, and looked out into the distance. He could see nothing there but darkness, vast and empty and cold.

  ‘It is beginning,’ the Queen said.

  Brandione remained silent.

  ‘The Gamesman is on the move,’ the Queen continued. ‘The board is being set. The players are gathering.’

  ‘I can’t see anything, your Majesty.’

  The Queen hummed something, a sad little tune.

  ‘My Queen, why have you given me an army when I cannot take it into the game?’

  The heads turned to him. ‘It is your army. You will know how to use it, when the time comes.’

  He looked on the three women, and for a moment, he felt a surge of some strange emotion, pure and overpowering. It was not love: it was more than that. He wanted to worship her, as the savages once worshipped their gods. He wanted to be her Last Doubter, even if he did not truly believe it.

  She is doing this to me … she is toying with me. But he did not believe that. Not really. You are doing it to yourself.

  ‘None can stand against you,’ he said.

  The Queen laughed. ‘No. The others cannot defeat me now. But when Ruin comes, it will come with such a force, that not even I will be able to withstand it. That is why you must succeed. Only the First Memory can stop Ruin.’

  Brandione nodded, and looked out into the darkness.

  ‘I do not understand what is happening, your Majesty. But I will do whatever you need. I only ask – could you school me for the game? Could you tell me what to do?’

  The Queen shook her heads. ‘The journey is made by mortals. Anything I say would only confuse you, for I look at the Old Place with different eyes.’

  Brandione sighed, and stared out at the distance. He thought back to his days as a soldier, on the eve of a battle. Everything was confused, and depressed, and fearful, back then. But there were often moments, when he stood alone, that a sense of clarity rose within him: an iron certainty.

  He felt that now.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, in a voice that sounded distant, even to him. ‘It may sound strange, given … everything. But I believe … I think that we will win.’

  The three heads nodded. ‘So do I, my Last Doubter. So do I.’

  In a heartbeat she was gone. Brandione reached out his hand, wondering if he could still feel her there, on the air. But there was nothing: only a memory.

  Chapter Twenty

  Brightling awoke on the side of a road, tied to a tree, one leg crossed over the other. Her ankles were shackled together, her hands were bound, and a rag had been stuffed in her mouth. The Protector had not blindfolded her, at least. Small mercies.

  She glanced around. They were much higher on the Habitation, now; the night air here was cold and thin. She could just make out the edges of a great house behind her, a h
igh building formed of bricks and shadows. The place reeked of wealth: they must now be on the Higher Third. Had the Protector carried her up here? He must be strong.

  There was no sign of him. It was night, and the road was empty. He can’t have gone far. There’s no way he’d risk losing me for a second time. I’d kill a Watcher who failed me twice.

  Sure enough, after a moment there came the sound of shuffling footsteps and the thunk of a stick rhythmically hitting the cobbles of the path. The Protector appeared from a darkened corner, carrying a skin of water.

  ‘Ah,’ he said through the golden mask, the beak swinging in her direction. ‘Welcome to the world of the living.’ He pointed to the path. ‘We’re almost at the Lord Autocrat’s Keep.’

  Brightling nodded at her captor. Speaking wasn’t really an option.

  The Protector held up the water skin. ‘There’s a well nearby. You should drink. You’ll be thirsty.’

  He was correct. Brightling nodded at him again.

  ‘I will have to remove your gag,’ the Protector said. ‘Please do not scream, or shout, or anything of that nature. No one will come to your aid; you will only annoy me, and that would not be wise. Is this understood?’

  The prisoner gave another nod.

  ‘Good.’

  The Protector removed Brightling’s gag, and she sucked in a deep breath.

  ‘Thank you,’ she rasped.

  The Protector tilted the skin and poured some water down her throat. She drank it down greedily.

  ‘You are a great woman,’ the Protector said.

  Brightling’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t expect a compliment from you, if I’m honest. I thought I’d be more likely to get another taste of that.’ She nodded at his stick.

  The Protector shrugged. ‘Only if you make me use it. I have no reason to hurt you. I admire you a great deal. I marvelled at your escape; I cannot recall anyone ever escaping from the Keep. Yes, I feel I could learn a lot from you.’ He lowered himself down onto his haunches, so that the beak almost touched Brightling’s forehead. She flinched away from it. ‘He wants that mask of yours. He is afraid of it, and fascinated by it, all at the same time.’