The Machinery

Katrina stood at the back of the cell, pressed against a clammy wall. She wished she already had a mask of her own, when Seablast looked up at her. But he did not seem to see. His eyes looked through her, into nothing.

Aranfal took a seat opposite the King. He did not wear his raven’s mask, but laid it on the table, in front of Seablast. The King seemed to come to life when he noticed this strange object, this black, alien artefact that had made its way into his world, signifying the end of so much he had once held inviolable. Aranfal could have looked into the heart of the King, if he only chose to wear his mask. But it did not work like that. A Watcher only used his mask when he had to. Sometimes, wearing the mask actually hurt.

‘Do you recognise this?’ Aranfal had a certain tone to his voice, sometimes. Katrina pressed herself against the wall, willing it to suck her in.

‘That is a mask, Watcher,’ said the King. ‘I know all about you people. You live in a tower on a hill by the sea, and you run around with little masks on, and you think they are a gateway into people’s souls. Sometimes the masks are trees, sometimes they are people, sometimes they are cats, and sometimes they are dogs. Sometimes the masks are even made to look like sweet little birdies.’

He grinned at Aranfal, but Katrina saw through the smiles. He had lost everything, he was a husk of a man, yet still he felt the need to be combative. That wouldn’t do much good against Aranfal. That wouldn’t do much good at all.

Aranfal nodded, once, short and sharp. ‘Very good, King. It is a mask. But that is not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is, do you recognise this mask, in particular?’

Seablast thought this over for a moment, casting glances at the raven, which stared up at him from the table, waiting and watching. Katrina hated that bird, and feared it too. Seablast seemed unafraid. That will change.

‘Yes,’ the King said. ‘It is the raven of Aranfal, the renowned Watcher, Brightling’s hand-servant and general dogsbody. It is the mask of a weak man, who torments his victims by hurting their loved ones. It is the mask of a non-person.’

And then Seablast spat at Aranfal. It was a pathetic effort, the detritus of a dried and parched mouth. But it was not the quantity that mattered; it was the act itself.

In one cool, swift movement, Aranfal was on his feet. He leaned over the table and smacked the King with the back of his hand, sending a crack echoing in the cell like a shot from a handcannon. Seablast was knocked back, and would have fallen from his stool had it not been for his chains. He righted himself and glared at Aranfal through watery eyes, the right side of his face blooming red.

‘So, this is how the Watchers of the Overland treat kings,’ he said, his voice trembling.

‘King? You are a king no longer, Seablast. But don’t worry about that. You will have a place in history. You will always be remembered as the last independent ruler on the Plateau, who lost his lands through his own idiocy. Your name will echo through the ages. Children will sing songs mocking you, and drunks will lie in the gutter, puke drying on their lips, and thank the Machinery that they are not Seablast, knowing that it could be worse.’

Aranfal shrugged.

‘I am still a king,’ Seablast said. ‘One is born a king, by dint of one’s blood, which flows through the ages like a river. One is not Selected to rule by a machine; one is Selected to rule by one’s ancestry.’

‘Ancestry? Let’s look at your ancestry. Your father was a great man. He was respected by everyone in our land. He was a true diplomat, and he would have kept his people free, if he sat on the throne today.’

‘He was a weak streak of piss, and he only kept us free by placing us under the boot of the Strategist and your bitch of a superior. That is not being a king.’

‘Then what is being a king? Not only have you lost your kingdom, but through your mischief-making you have brought Anflef and Siren Down and all the other little kingdoms up here to their knees, too. All these old countries, gone forever, because of you. Not that it is a bad thing. Your subjects – apologies, our subjects – will now revel in the glory of the world.’

‘The Machinery? You don’t even know what it is!’ Seablast laughed. ‘You just trust the Operator, some fucking trickster who lives in another realm and pulls the wool over your eyes. He is a king, Aranfal the raven, just as I am. Except he will never give up his power, not to anyone in the world.’

‘And yet you handed your lands over to us, freely.’

‘Hardly freely. And it was my worst mistake. I should have kept fighting, without allies. I should have let my daughters die. It would have been better than this life.’

Aranfal sighed, and leaned back in his chair, knitting his hands behind his head.

‘I don’t think this little philosophical chitchat is getting us anywhere.’

Seablast shook his head. ‘No.’

Aranfal turned to Katrina. ‘Is this what you imagined an interrogation to be?’

Katrina started, and pushed herself off the wall. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Maybe? What does maybe mean?’

‘No, it’s not what I imagined an interrogation to be.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re not asking him any questions.’

Aranfal snapped his fingers together. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’ He turned to face Seablast again. ‘Your Majesty, if I were a Doubter, in the kingdom of Northern Blown, where would I be most likely to hide?’

Seablast laughed. ‘Everyone here is a Doubter. You have given them nothing to believe in.’

Aranfal’s eyes widened. ‘Everyone? You know, we have a prison for Doubters, in the South of our lands, in the heart of the desert of the Wite. It’s been there for ten millennia, yet none of us know what’s in there, or even who mans it. You know why that is? Because no one ever leaves the Prison of the Doubters. So if all your people are Doubters, do I need to send them all down there?’

Seablast looked away from Aranfal.

‘Because I could do that, Seablast. It would be pretty hard work. There would be a lot of carts and carriages and horses and so forth. But we’re the masters of a continent, now. There’s not much we can’t do, when we put our minds to it. So I ask again – should I send everyone down there?’

Seablast did not reply.

Aranfal nodded. ‘I’m getting fucking tired of you, and this place. I’m from the North too, Seablast, though it’s colder and nastier than anywhere you’ve been. I don’t want to be in the North any more, understood? I want to go home. So let me ask you again – where would I find the Doubters in this fucking dump?’

Seablast met Aranfal’s gaze. ‘I tell you truthfully, I do not know any Doubters. They could be anywhere.’

‘What about your lieutenants? Those pricks in the throne room, back when you were a king? A few of them have gone missing, haven’t they? I bet they’re out and about now, planning to right your honour and make some trouble for us. Aren’t they? What are their names?’

Seablast remained silent, and his eyes focused on the table.

‘All I need is their names.’

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about. And I don’t see why they’d be Doubters.’

Aranfal turned to Katrina, his eyes blazing, his body shaking with fury. She could not tell if it was real or part of his act, but the older part of her told her to do whatever he asked.

‘Paprissi, there’s a bag on the floor beside you. Bring it over here.’

Katrina looked to her side, and saw a brown satchel. She instantly snatched it in her hand and walked to Aranfal’s side.

‘Unfold it on the table.’

She did as she was told. The bag turned into a gleaming array of knives, axes and other tools the Apprentice Watcher had never seen before and had no name for. She knew, however, for a certainty, that she would not like to be on the wrong end of any of them.

‘I’ll get her to use these,’ Aranfal whispered, jabbing a thumb at Katrina. ‘The only thing is, this is her first interrogation, so she might be clumsy. Thumbs and things might get lost forever.’

Katrina felt her stomach turn. You are a Watcher, girl, said the older part of herself. You know what this life is.

But this was never supposed to be my life, the younger side responded, in a rare moment of defiance.

She steeled herself, and smiled at the King, in what she hoped was a sinister manner. But it was evidently unsuccessful. Seablast smiled back at her, and winked. Winked.

‘Is there something amusing, your Majesty?’ Aranfal asked. His tone was smoothing, cool. He knew something the others did not.

‘I’ve been tortured before, by people worse than you,’ the King said. ‘Once I spent a couple of weeks as the guest of some snow bandits. I was humiliated, to fall into their hands. But I got myself free, pretty quickly.’ He grinned.

‘I’ve met snow bandits before, too, your Majesty. I’m from a similar background to them, in point of fact. And they are a nasty bunch. But they are not worse than us. Besides, what makes you think we are going to torture you?’

The King’s expression flickered from confusion to something else entirely: fear.

‘Katrina.’ Aranfal looked to Katrina again. ‘Gather up this bag of tricks, like a good little Apprentice, and take a walk down the corridor, till you come to the fifth cell from this one. It’s a nasty cell, that one, your Majesty, not like your own lovely abode. Once you get there, Katrina, pass on my regards to the King’s daughters. Don’t tell them he’s here. Don’t even ask them any questions. Just cut off bits of them. Let’s say – one finger each. Or a toe? What do you think, your Majesty – what would they prefer to lose?’

The King’s face was grey, his eyes once more on the table. But he did not protest. He did not say a word. By the Machinery, tell him whatever he wants, you idiot. Don’t force me to do this.

‘Seablast, you know I am a bad man,’ Aranfal said. ‘And you know I am committed to my work, and to the Machinery. Tell me where your missing minions are, or your daughters will suffer for your obstinacy.’

The King sighed, and his very bones seemed to rattle. When he looked at Aranfal, there was something new in his eye: resignation.

No. Please don’t do it, Seablast.

‘I already told you,’ said the King. ‘I made a mistake in my throne room. Do what you want. My girls would be better dead, than living under your rule.’

Aranfal lifted a finger. ‘Not my rule. The rule of the Selected.’

He packed up the instruments, and handed the bag to Katrina again.

‘Well, off you go, then.’

As Katrina walked down the corridor, she knew which part of her personality to turn to.

This is what being a Watcher is.

Get in there, do it quickly, get out again.

Show them no emotion.

Do a good job, and you will be recognised.

The world is a hard and cruel place, Katrina. You know that better than anyone. We do what we must to survive. We do what we must to thrive.

Only once did the other part get in.

What would father think of you now? Is this what he would have wanted for you?

She stood at the cell door, the fifth one along.

If father cared about you, he wouldn’t have left you to be raised by Watchers, now would he?

She pushed inside.

There was only one woman in this cell, and she was not a daughter of King Seablast.

‘Aleah.’

Thank the Machinery.

The woman sat at a table, a book open before her. Katrina knew her as one of the more ambitious generation of younger Watchers, the ones on the rung below Aranfal. She was unusually chubby for a Watcher, with unkempt blonde hair strewn around her face.

‘Has he said anything yet?’

‘No, Watcher.’

‘He didn’t break down again, when Aranfal threatened his daughters?’

‘Not this time.’

‘But he thinks you are hacking bits off them. He’ll be talking now, I bet. If he isn’t, we’ll try a different tack. Maybe we’ll send you in again in a while, with a finger. We’ll just take one off a corpse, so don’t worry.’

‘Where are his daughters?’

‘No idea. Maybe they’re dead. Or maybe old Aranfal let them go. Sometimes he’s soft, you know. I would have put the King in the same room as them, and made him watch what I did. But Aranfal only does that kind of thing when he has to. He’s soft.’

The woman seemed to catch herself, and grinned. ‘I jest, of course. He’s a genius at this type of thing. No one better.’

The door behind them opened, and Aranfal entered. He nodded at Aleah, and pointed to the door, waiting until she had left the room before he spoke.

‘The King has told me everything he knows. He reckons there will be some rebels out there, but it doesn’t sound to me like we’ve much to worry about. Only took another five minutes. It’s funny how it works, sometimes. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I just placed thoughts in his head, about what we knew and what we were doing. Having relatives is a very dangerous business. You are lucky, to be alone.’

I am?

‘So, there you have it, Katrina. The psychological art of the interrogation.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘In your next class, we really will chop off someone’s finger.’ He laughed. ‘But it’ll have to wait. You’re to go back south with Brightling in the morning.’

Katrina bowed. ‘Thank you, Watcher. This has been a good education.’

‘Hmm. Everything is.’

She left Aranfal alone in the cell, and took herself away from the dungeons of Northern Blown. As she made her way up the stairs, one part of her wept with relief that she had not been forced to torture a girl, just to torment her father.

The other part was disappointed.

Chapter Four

‘Is it Aran Fal, two names, or Aranfal, one name?’

‘Aranfal, one name.’

‘Just Aranfal? No surname?’

‘Correct.’

The Administrator raised his eyebrows. He was a stout man, his skin a dark brown, his bald head scrunched into folds of fat. He wore a gown of silver silk, embroidered with flowers; it hung open to expose his flabby flesh, and was tied with only a loose knot to hide his most private of parts.

He made quite the contrast with Aranfal, who was as thin as a rake and as pale as a spectre, his sunken features and grey eyes framed by a curtain of blond hair. He wore his blue cloak over a dark woollen shirt and hempen trousers. The pair of them looked like the build-up to a joke, sitting in the Great Hall of Northern Blown with nothing but a crackling fire for company.

‘That is … odd,’ the Administrator said. He stared at his papers as if they might offer some explanation. The search appeared to fail. ‘Uh, why is it so?’

Aranfal allowed his thin mouth to fall into a grimace. In truth, he did not mind the questions, but he couldn’t allow this man to assert himself too boldly.

‘Ah, not that it matters, Watcher,’ the Administrator said, leaning back in his chair and smiling broadly. He did not want to appear frightened, but Aranfal could see it in him. He had seen it all before. ‘I was just interested. I am not used to the ways of the North.’ He giggled.

Aranfal stood and threw a log into the flames. They crackled back at him appreciatively.

‘It’s not a northern thing, Administrator. If you must know, it came about when I was a young man. A boy, really. I lost my name when I went to the See House.’

‘You … forgive me, Aranfal, but how can a person lose their name?’

‘It was taken from me, by the Tactician.’

There was a moment of silence as Aranfal took his seat again, sighing with pleasure as he unfolded himself into the furs of the furniture. They did not make chairs like this, in the South. They did not make rooms like this in the South, either. There was a fire on each of the four walls. The stony ground was caked in the filth of dogs and the detritus of ten thousand meals, and the room was unadorned with paintings or fresco or any of the other fads of the Centre. The hall was filled with long wooden tables, scattered with brass pots and knives and cracked plates. At the top of the room, on a raised level, was a high table, where once the King had sat with his family and his most senior functionaries. No more. Modernity ruled here now.

Aranfal turned back to the Administrator. The man’s eyes were wide discs. He had placed his papers on his lap.

‘Tactician Brightling stole your name,’ he whispered. ‘Is there nothing that woman cannot do?’

Aranfal barked a laugh. ‘No, truly there isn’t. Here is what happened. I showed up in the Centre, in that black tower, a boy down from the cold North. Brightling took an interest in me. She decided she didn’t like Aran Fal, though, and since then I have been Aranfal.’

‘She didn’t like Aran Fal the name, or Aran Fal the person?’

A pause. ‘Both of them are gone now.’ The Watcher mocked himself inwardly for his melodrama. ‘I have spent almost half my life as a Watcher, now. As Aranfal.’

‘And a fine job you have made of it.’ The Administrator raised his glass of wine, before remembering that Aranfal was not drinking. He shrugged, and took a long slurp by himself.

They sat in silence for a while, staring into the flames. They used peat as fuel, up here, digging it from the bogs. Sometimes they found bodies there, in the soggy muck, preserved for thousands of years, from before the Machinery, even. The fuel took a while to get going, but when it did, the smell was delicious. It transported him back to older days. He had been happy as a child, hadn’t he? He could not remember. That was the world of Aran Fal.

He snapped back to reality, to find that the Administrator was staring at him. The man was making a habit of that. What did he think was going to happen, if he stopped looking?

‘Have you completed the inventory?’

The Administrator started, then hurried to gather up his papers. ‘Yes, master Watcher, it’s all in here. Nothing of any great significance, the usual old weaponry, not much use to us now. We can probably melt it down. Some jewels, though. I think the Tactician would like them. And sundry clothes, dishes, etc.’

‘Nothing of any tremendous value.’

‘No,’ the Administrator said with a slight shrug, before raising a finger. ‘Apart from the land itself. This is a good spot to control. From here we can keep watch of the northern waters.’

Aranfal nodded. ‘Do you expect some enemy to appear from those waters?’

The Administrator fell silent. He thinks I’m trying to catch him in a trap. If only he were so important!

‘Administrator, I am not trying to trick you. It is important now to think to the future. You would find that everyone in the See House feels the same way, right to the very top.’

The Administrator smiled nervously. ‘Well, you know what people say, other lands across distant seas, and all that. Better to be careful.’

‘Indeed.’

Silence reigned again. Eventually the Administrator bent over and lifted a bell, which he raised in the air and vigorously shook, creating a cacophony that made Aranfal want to throw the thing into the flames, along with its bearer. Before long a servant came scampering through the main door of the hall, wineskin in hand, and ran to the Administrator’s side, delicately refilling his drink before once again rushing out to some other part of the castle.

The Administrator did not once make eye contact with the servant. Aranfal despised this type of behaviour. It was something he had seen many times, especially among Administrators and other middling sorts. Funny, he spent his days with the most powerful people in the Plateau, but he never saw them act this way. It seemed that those with the real authority never felt the need to put it on display. It was just there, for the entire world to see, whether handed to them by the Machinery or not.

Aranfal was growing very tired of this little man.

‘Administrator,’ he said softly, ‘I want to get my work done up here as fast as possible, and go home. Have your men found anything suspicious?’

The Administrator leant forward, glancing theatrically into the shadows.

‘Do you mean … Doubters?’ he whispered.

‘Yes.’

The Administrator nodded. ‘Well, as you know, Watcher Aranfal, we humble servants lack your skills in such matters. Indeed, we do not even possess your beautiful masks, so we must look into people’s souls with only our own eyes—’

‘Please, just tell me how many.’

‘Hmm. Well, we have not yet found the ones the King mentioned, I am afraid. Perhaps you have had better luck on that front?’

‘No.’ The King was probably lying. People will say anything, sometimes. Perhaps I should visit him again.

‘But we have found three others.’

‘Three? That’s quite good, Administrator.’

‘Yes, well, you know …’

Aranfal leaned forward. ‘They made themselves quite easy to find, didn’t they?’

The Administrator cleared his throat. ‘Well, you may say that, but really I think we deserve some credit—’

‘Where did you find them?’

The Administrator cringed. ‘Uh, well, one of my men found them when he was out for a walk, you know, with a lady, as it were. They had just taken themselves up to the Bony Shore, and there they were, as bold as you like, three of them, on the sand, huddled around a little fire, and talking openly about the Machinery breaking. Strange-looking creatures, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘And your man and his lady friend, they are certain they heard these people speculate on the Machinery?’

‘Oh, worse than that, Watcher Aranfal. These folk were saying that the Machinery was breaking. They were delighted by that, by all accounts. They acted as though it was the best thing they’d ever heard, dancing around the fire.’

‘And your man can definitely be trusted?’

‘Oh yes. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They have already confessed. They are positively joyful about it, you know! They seem to like the thought of all the things you folk will do to them in the Bowels of the See House. Some people are like that. I heard there are folk in the West—’

‘I will speak to them myself. Where are they being held?’

‘In the dungeons, sir. Handy thing about old places like this.’ He flicked a hand at the walls. ‘They have such lovely dungeons.’

Aranfal stood and bowed to the Administrator.

‘If you find any more Doubters, Administrator, do let me know straight away.’

The Administrator seemed taken aback. ‘I wasn’t hiding anything from you! I just thought you might like to relax first, what with all the exertions of taking this place, you know.’

‘Thank you.’ Aranfal placed his hand in his cloak and felt it, hanging loosely from his belt: his raven’s mask. It always reassured him, knowing it was there. He felt almost naked without it, but had decided the Administrator might feel slightly unnerved, sitting across from a twisted raven that could see into his soul.

He turned to leave, and got halfway to the door before the Administrator started yapping again.

‘Oh, Watcher?’

‘Yes?’

‘I have not told you my name.’

One little scare won’t hurt him. It might do him good.

Aranfal flipped the mask into his hand and onto his face in one smooth movement.

‘That’s all right,’ he said, staring at the Administrator through the savage holes of his mask. ‘I already know everything I need to about you.’

As the Watcher left the Great Hall it took everything in his power to stifle a laugh at the look in the Administrator’s eyes.