The Strategist

Jandell grunted. ‘Aran Fal and Aranfal. Those names sound almost the same.’

‘The two men are very different.’

The Operator nodded. ‘And what about you? Who is the real Brightling?’

She looked up at him. He had grown younger on their journey, at least in appearance: black hair now fell from his skull; the lines in his face had faded away, and there was a new light in his eyes. But he still wore that terrible cloak, and the faces within glared at her, smiled at her, licked their lips and laughed at her.

‘I was made for the Machinery, and now it is gone.’

‘You were the greatest person on the Plateau.’

Brightling shrugged. The greatest person on the Plateau. She thought of all the things she had done in her efforts to impress the Machinery and wreck the hopes of others. She thought of Canning, of the humiliations she had poured on him. It had all seemed so clear, once: so fair. The Operator loved her; he had told her so himself. She could do anything with his backing. She could ruin her enemies, in their own minds, and in the eye of the Machinery. She could expose them. She could stage plays to display their weaknesses to Overland and Underland alike. That world she believed in was at an end. The Strategist was broken, the Tacticians were broken, and the Machinery was broken. All of it, all of it, all of it, was always going to break.

She shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be a Watcher, but I was blind. I blinded myself. I didn’t see what was happening to the Machinery.’

Jandell laughed. ‘That guilt is mine, not yours. I created it. I spoke with it. I turned my eyes from the truth.’

‘The truth of Katrina Paprissi. But that was my error, more than yours, Operator.’

‘She was important to you,’ he said. ‘She was a daughter to you.’

Brightling turned once more to the waters.

**

It had been months since Brightling had joined Jandell on his ship, in the far North of the Plateau. She had never been on one before, yet even she could tell it was no ordinary vessel. When she looked out upon the waves she could see them rolling wildly, slamming and whirling in a great grey storm. But this had no impact upon the black ship, which seemed to float above the water, ignoring all its motions.

In the mornings, she would see him on deck, his cloak blowing in the wind, the faces wailing in their prison.

He had told her, in the beginning, where they were going: to the home of Squatstout, the little creature who had followed Aranfal around the Overland, all that time ago. But he said nothing more about it; he only stared at the ocean.

The ship had no crew.

**

They spent their evenings in the galley, a kind of kitchen below deck. He would speak to her, as she ate the food he conjured from only he knew where. He told her of strange things, of cities long gone and wars among the Operators. He told her of dreams that lasted millennia, of the birth of stars and the fall of civilisations.

When she thought back on these conversations, the memories turned to dust.

‘You are happy now, Operator,’ she said one evening. They sat opposite one another at a rough-hewn table. He watched her, with a smile, as she plucked at fruit and cheese.

‘I am not happy,’ he said after a moment. ‘I am … relieved. A weight has been lifted from me. I no longer hide from the truth.’

‘Ruin will come with the One.’

Jandell closed his eyes.

‘Prophecies are strange things, and this one was spoken by the strangest of all creatures. Who knows the truth of it? Who knows when Ruin will come, and what it will mean to us all? Perhaps she does not know herself.’

‘Who is this woman? Shirkra?’

Jandell smiled. ‘No. Shirkra is nothing but madness: twisted and deformed. The one who made the Promise …’ He stood from the table and walked to a shelf on the wall, where there was a small wooden box. He opened it, lifted something out, and returned to the table, placing the item between them. It was a statue, perhaps as tall as Brightling’s hand, depicting three women: identical creatures, wearing crowns of glass and dresses as white as ivory.

‘The Dust Queen,’ Jandell said. ‘Oldest of us all. I could not have made the Machinery without her. She looked into it, when we had finished, and she saw those words: Ruin will come with the One.’

‘Who is she?’ Brightling asked. She stared at the statue, and for the briefest of moments, the edges of the figures seemed to fall away, as if they were formed of dust. ‘Where is she now?’

‘I do not know.’ Jandell took the statue back to its box, and returned to the table. ‘I wish I did, now that …’ He let the sentence die.

In a swift movement he snatched up a fork and pronged a grape, thrusting it at Brightling, like a child trying to please a favoured aunt. The Watcher plucked it from the blade, and crushed it in her mouth.

‘This food is very old, so old,’ said Jandell.

‘It can’t be. It’s delicious.’

‘It is only as old as the memory itself, which is as fresh to me now as when it was made, back then, so long ago.’

‘The food is a memory?’ She lit her pipe and blew a ring of smoke into the air. The Operator watched it dance. ‘How can I taste a memory?’

Jandell laughed again. ‘Why shouldn’t a memory be real? Memories are what we live for, my family and I. Memories are our power. We can bring a memory back to life; we can twist different ones together, to create something else. It is our … magic. Yes, that is what they called it once.’

He put out his hand, and opened his palm. In the middle of it was a small flame, a flickering tongue of red fire.

‘What is this?’ she whispered.

Jandell laughed. ‘This is nothing. This is just a little trinket.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Touch it.’

Brightling hesitated. ‘It will burn me.’

Jandell shook his head, and she did not hesitate again. She plunged her hand into the fire, and felt only coldness.

‘What kind of flame is this?’

Jandell smiled. ‘A thing of memory.’

‘You remember a cold fire?’

He shook his head. ‘No. There is more than one memory at work here. My people can mix them together like paints on a palette. And they are not my memories; they are the memories of humanity. There is no Jandell, in truth. I was born in the pool of human memory that you call the Underland, long, long ago. My family and I are creatures of memory.’

As Brightling looked upon the flame, without thinking, she shifted her hands underneath her cloak, and felt it: her mask. An image appeared in her mind’s eye. She was a young Watcher, sitting at her desk. The Operator appeared behind her, and she did not react. It was as if this was simply to be expected. She turned to him, and he handed her something: her mask.

She felt it, now, and she lifted it out. It had taken the form of an old man, his features flashing with anger. Without knowing why she did it, Brightling put the mask on her face, for the first time in an age. Wearing it was painful; she could feel it weighing on her, tugging at the core of her being. She turned to Jandell, and for a moment he looked like his old self, ancient and weak. The flame spluttered in his hand, and suddenly went out. He lifted his other hand to his eyes, and she realised he was in pain.

She snatched the mask from her face and placed it on the table. Jandell was young again, though his palm was still empty. He gave her a weak smile. I have hurt him. The mask has hurt him.

‘What is this thing?’ Brightling whispered. She looked at her mask, which had formed into the face of a young woman, placid and plain.

‘Memories are what we live for,’ Jandell said, ‘because memories are life itself.’ He nodded at the dark mask. ‘That is the opposite of life. It is all that remains of our old enemy: a thing called the Absence. A creature that wished only to destroy memory, and all of memory’s children, and life itself. The masks your Watchers wear are formed of the Old Place, and give them a little sliver of its power: the power of memory. Your mask senses memories, but only to destroy them.’

‘When I have worn it, sometimes … I have felt I could strip out a person’s soul.’

Jandell did not respond. Brightling took the mask in her hand, and hid it away again.

‘Was Katrina a memory, Operator?’

Jandell sighed.

‘There is no Katrina any more. She is subsumed by the One. My people …’

He stared at her, unblinking. ‘This body is not mine; I took it long ago, because it suits me. I feel whole when I am within its memories. I warp it now, as I wish, but I did not create it. It is the same with Katrina; whatever she once was has now gone, replaced by a creature of memory. My mother.’

Brightling ran a finger along her mask. ‘If she is a creature of memory, Operator – then I could use my mask—’

Jandell silenced her with a finger. ‘You could not stand against her. And neither could that mask – remember, the Absence was defeated. That is only a shard of it, a piece of its corpse, and it would be defeated again.’

Brightling nodded, but she was unconvinced. A fantasy took life in her febrile imagination, and she grasped her mask. One day, I will destroy the thing that has possessed her, and I will bring Katrina back.

**

‘Look ahead,’ said Jandell.

Brightling pulled her black cloak around her and walked to the deck. The Operator had given her the garment, along with several pairs of trousers and shirts. She had no idea where the clothes had come from, but she was glad of them. Perhaps they are memories, too.

‘What is it?’

‘It is land, Amyllia.’

She squinted, and could just make out a patch of darkness, rising up from the water far in the distance.

‘Is it where Squatstout lives, Operator?’

‘Yes. My brother.’ The Operator sighed.

He turned to face her.

‘We will be there in a day.’

**

Brightling knew, when she woke, that something had changed.

She climbed from her bed hesitantly, and made her way to the deck. Jandell was already there. ‘It will grow larger, as you watch,’ he said. His back was turned to her.

The Watcher looked ahead. The island seemed no closer than it had the day before. However, as she looked, it appeared to lurch forward, forcing its way into view.

It was as if a mountain had been plucked from its home and dropped into the water, far from where it was supposed to be. There was nothing else in view, nothing but this black rock that reached from the sea to the sky: a balled fist, where the See House was a claw.

‘Our destination,’ Jandell said. Something had changed once again in the Operator. He still appeared young, but the lightness and vitality of the previous days had vanished. He was weaker, to the Watcher’s eye.

‘This is not a good place,’ Brightling said, sucking on her pipe and blowing pale smoke into the still air. ‘I am afraid of it.’

The Operator nodded.

‘Have you been here before, Jandell?’

‘No. I never had the inclination. I wish now that I had.’

‘Why?’

The Operator shrugged. ‘To see what sort of creature Squatstout has become.’

**

‘Squatstout knows we are here,’ Jandell said.

Brightling looked up from the deck of the ship. The cliff was a vast, dark wall, as impenetrable as the battlements of Northern Blown. Far above them, lined along the edge, she could make out people holding torches in the night. In the middle was a lumpen creature in a peasant’s shawl. Squatstout.

‘This seems a lovely place,’ said Brightling. ‘Operator, have you seen these?’

There were corpses in the water. They had not been there for long, by the look of them. She thought of the Bony Shore, and the things that Katrina found there, long ago. Brightling had told the girl they were just rocks. Perhaps they came from this place.

Jandell glanced at the bodies in the waves, before turning his attention back to the island. ‘There is an inlet here.’

Brightling studied the shore, and saw nothing but black stone. But the boat, guided by some invisible force, threaded its way through the boulders until the rocks hung over their heads and to their sides.

They had entered a cave, and she could see nothing.

‘Operator …’

There was a jolt, and the ship shuddered violently to a stop.

‘Do not be concerned,’ said Jandell. ‘They will find us soon.’

There came a noise of footsteps, and the cave filled with light. Brightling saw that the ship had run up onto the ground, on a patch of land mercifully free of jagged rocks.

They were in a giant chamber, carved from the very centre of the island. People were milling around, carrying their torches. Directly below, at the front of the ship, stood Squatstout. This was not the cringing servant Brightling remembered, but a lord, his posture erect, his eyes cool and watchful. Was this really the same creature that had once followed Aranfal around the Centre? He seemed tauter, somehow. He was still the same small, fat man, but there was an edge to him, now.

‘I knew you would come here, Jandell,’ Squatstout said with a smile. ‘I always knew you would come.’

‘Impressive. I only found out recently myself,’ Jandell replied.

‘Indeed. You left it a very long time, a very long time, which some would construe as rude, though not I. I have watched you, and I know you have been most busy.’

Jandell bowed.

‘But I am being so rude!’ Squatstout cried. ‘These are my companions, and my loyal servants,’ he said, gesturing behind him. ‘I call them my Guards.’

There were about a dozen Guards. Their faces were hidden behind gleaming masks, from which hung long, silver beaks, giving them the appearance of monstrous, metallic birds. They all wore chainmail under short green cloaks, and on their heads were wide-brimmed hats. Some held pikes.

Beyond this group were others, maybe a hundred of them, people with pale faces and curious eyes.

‘Come, join me for dinner,’ said Squatstout. There was a hissing quality to his voice that Brightling had not appreciated before. ‘We have a great deal to discuss, but I would not – I would not – have you go hungry in my home.’

As they clambered down from the ship, a bell began to ring.

**

Squatstout took them to a stone staircase embedded in the wall and leading into the heart of the island. The staircase was narrow, its stones slick with damp. The torches of Squatstout’s companions illuminated the way. On and on it went, through rock and mud, up into the island.

Brightling was sandwiched between several of the strange, beaked Guards. As she looked at their pikes, she thought of the bodies in the water. She felt under her cloak, and brushed a finger across her handcannon.

There was a commotion ahead, and the group came to a halt. Peering into the torchlight, Brightling saw one of the Guards huddled together with Squatstout, muttering incomprehensible words. His beak was painted a dull gold, and he seemed to hold a senior position, judging from the way the others kept their distance. Squatstout gestured at a section of the cave wall, and the Guard touched it with a gloved hand. The wall fell away, and the group marched through.

The bell kept ringing as they climbed, steadily, in the dark.

‘The bell rings only in my Keep,’ said Squatstout. ‘But soon, it will ring across the island.’

**

‘Welcome to my throne room, Jandell,’ said Squatstout, ‘where I have thought of you for ten thousand years.’

The room was circular, its floors and walls formed of heavy dark stones. Dawn was creeping through the windows, bringing with it a grey light. Brightling’s attention was seized by the throne itself, which sat on a slightly elevated platform in the centre of the room. It was made of wood, and had been warped and twisted into an ‘A’ shape.

The Guards fanned out. The one with the gold beak assumed a position directly behind the throne, a long wooden stick held firmly in his grasp. The other people, the pale-faced inhabitants of the island, were now nowhere to be seen.

Squatstout skipped to his throne and jumped into the air, thumping his backside down hard on the wood. He immediately locked his gaze on Brightling, who did not flinch. The lord of the island held out his hands, the palms facing outwards.

‘Tactician, I would like to say how sorry I am. I enjoyed the time I spent in the See House with that lovely man, Aranfal. I hope you don’t feel I tricked you.’

Brightling bowed, judging that silence was the wisest option.

‘I like to keep an eye on things, you must understand, and the Watchers of the Overland were very accommodating. I thought that perhaps I would be able to find the One among your number, as the Machinery spluttered to its end. My people like to live within mortals, you see. We worship you, in a strange way, and we love to be one with you. Isn’t that right, Jandell?’

Jandell did not respond.

Squatstout giggled. ‘She may have taken a host, I thought, and not yet revealed herself. I had a hunch it would be a Watcher: someone near the beating heart of power in your land. In the end, she did not need my help. But I was right, wasn’t I? I knew where she’d be hiding, though I did not find her.’

Brightling did not react. Squatstout smiled, then whistled through his teeth and rolled his eyes.

‘You are a hard woman to apologise to! Anyway, never mind. In truth, I didn’t really do anything wrong, did I? All I did was watch. Well, yes, I could have told you who I really was. Or rather, what I really was, for I told you my true name, did I not? But no: omitting the truth is just as bad as lying, as I’m sure the Bleak Jandell here would agree. But at the end of it all, you are here, now, in my home, and I aim to be a gracious host.’

Squatstout clicked his fingers. Several Guards exited by a door at the side, and came back hauling a long wooden table. Others appeared with piles of food on silver platters.

‘We have much to eat here,’ said Squatstout, ‘if you enjoy fish and seabirds.’

The Guards placed three wooden chairs behind the table. Brightling sat, but Jandell remained on his feet, watching Squatstout with a steady expression before walking towards the throne.

‘What do you call this place?’ he asked.

The Guard with the golden beak visibly tensed, and laid a hand upon his master’s throne.

Squatstout raised a hand. ‘All is well, Protector, my darling,’ he said. He cocked his head and grinned at Jandell. ‘This is the Habitation, Jandell. I am surprised you never learned that, over these long years.’

‘And he is the Autocrat,’ said the Guard known as the Protector. It was a deep voice, leathery, old. ‘You would do well to respect him.’

Squatstout – the Autocrat – gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Protector, you do not know whom you address. This is Jandell. He is one of the oldest of our kind, though he does not look it, does he? You grow younger in appearance, Jandell. The breaking of the Machinery has lifted a weight off you, hmm? The things Jandell could do … well, I have seen them all too often. Is that not right, Jandell?’

Jandell did not react. Brightling reached under her cloak, and placed her hand on the hilt of her blade. Strange, they had not taken her weapons. Perhaps they had no fear of them in this place.

The bell rang again.

‘Squatstout, listen to me,’ Jandell said. ‘I need your assistance. Where has Mother been, all these years? Are there mortals there? People who helped her? Perhaps they know something that can help us.’

Squatstout laughed, harsher now than before.

‘Help you do what?’

‘Stop Ruin. She has not found the Machinery: Ruin cannot come, until she does.’

‘Stop Ruin? No one and nothing can stop Ruin, not even the Dust Queen herself. The Strategist will find the Machinery in the end, and Ruin will come with the One. You think you see the truth now, Jandell. But you are arrogant if you think you can halt the inevitable.’

Jandell sighed. ‘You call yourself Autocrat again, then.’

Squatstout shrugged.

‘That is a name from a different time,’ continued Jandell. ‘It is strange to hear it.’

The Autocrat gave a fierce nod. He seemed exasperated.

‘It was a different time, so different! We were happy then, Jandell! All of us! Operator!’ He spat out the last word like a curse.

And then the room fell away.

**

Brightling was standing on hard, bare ground, surrounded by a throng of people. They were a sorry sight, a ragged horde, thin arms held aloft.

A red sun burned in a red sky, and red sand blew across red soil. The rags the people wore were red, and so was their skin, as if they had spent centuries cooking under the sun. Before them was a crystal platform, on which sat five red thrones. On those thrones, wearing crowns of red, sat five beings.

Brightling recognised three of them straight away. In the centre was Jandell, the young version, black hair framing his narrow face. He wore a cloak, but it was not the one she knew; there were no faces in the red material.

To Jandell’s left was Squatstout, who leaned forward to whisper something in the Operator’s ear. To his right sat the woman in the white mask, the one who had emerged from the Underland with Katrina, in the ruins of the Circus – Shirkra, Jandell had called her. The mask was nowhere to be seen, but the skin of her face was almost as bleached and flawless, and her green eyes now glinted red.

Brightling did not recognise the last two. They sat apart from the other three, holding hands: identical black twins, a boy and a girl, watching the goings-on with a savage glee.

Jandell stood from his throne, his cloak sweeping into the air. Squatstout laughed and clapped his hands.

In the distance, a bell rang.

Jandell pointed into the crowd, to a thin woman holding a baby. She clutched the child to her dusty bosom, hoping, perhaps, that Jandell was pointing somewhere else.

But he was not.

Hands grasped at the woman and her child, pushing her forward to the red thrones. A sense of dumb foreboding settled in the pit of Brightling’s stomach. Why are you afraid? You’ve seen worse. But there was something different, here, from the cruelties she had witnessed – that she had perpetrated – as a Watcher of the Overland. This was the dumb malice of a child toying with an insect: cruelty for its own sake. She looked to Jandell, to the real Jandell; he had averted his eyes.

The boy and girl leapt from their thrones and skipped to the side of the platform. The boy tapped the woman on the forehead. She looked into his eyes, and seemed to somehow deflate.

‘Delicious,’ the boy said, and his companions laughed.

The girl prised the baby from the woman’s arms, and danced around the platform with it as it squalled. She threw it in the air and caught it; she seemed certain to drop it several times, but somehow held on, grasping it by an arm or a leg as it cried. The mother did not protest; she melted away into the rabble, arms hanging by her side, no longer concerned by anything.

‘Bring the child here,’ said Jandell.

A moan ran through the crowd.

The girl stopped dead and looked at Jandell. She seemed to hesitate.

‘Girl, bring that to me.’

Jandell’s voice was different. It was colder.

The girl did not hesitate this time. She bowed as she approached Jandell, the baby held before her.

He took the child. Squatstout threw his head back and laughed, a sound that echoed across the barren plain like that bell that came from nowhere and everywhere.

Jandell held the child in his arms, cradling it like it was his own. Then he thrust it in the air, gripped tightly in both his hands. His eyes burned, and he looked upon its small face with a fury until the child hung limp. The boy and the girl ran to Jandell, staring up at him with devotion. Squatstout clapped, and Shirkra looked on impassively.