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 …’