The Machinery

In truth, Aranfal was not the same as Aran Fal. Aran Fal was dead, and Brightling killed him.

Aran Fal was murdered early on, when he first joined the Watchers. He was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kind of fellow, the honest son of an honest father, a golden stereotype who skipped his way along the road to the Centre. His was a soft kind of worldview, though he considered himself a paragon of courage. He was ambitious, yes, but ambition without an edge leads only in one direction, and that is to the edge of a cliff.

How had this big-hearted dreamer ended up among the black-clad operatives of the See House, with their strange masks and their brutish ways? Well, like many a young man, he thought he could change things. He did not like the world as he found it. He thought it could do with some revisions. There was no power in the world like that of the Watchers, the servants of the great Brightling, who at that stage was just establishing herself as the power of the Overland. To the young Aran Fal, the Watchers were the focus of all excitement, adventure, and potential.

He did not have a plan when he went to the Centre. It took him months to walk along those roads, alone for long periods with only his thoughts. They called the Overland a city, but he never understood why. Parts of it were nothing but vast empty spaces, with not a soul in sight. Aranfal had used the time poorly. He did not consider his options, or analyse the pitfalls that could lie ahead. Oh, how he had changed since then.

Despite everything, the Watchers took him in. He saw it as a just reward for his confidence. Perhaps that was even true. Or perhaps they saw something else, within him. Perhaps they saw Aranfal.

Eventually, she saw him, and she liked him, and she took him under her dark wing. She showed him many things, not least her technique for extracting information from recalcitrant Doubters.

‘If you do not co-operate with me,’ he told the prisoner, ‘I will find other ways to take it from you.’

The man before him was unlike anyone Aranfal had seen before. This was not to do with his physical appearance; in that regard, he was like many an inhabitant of the Centre. His skin was olive, and he wore his black hair long, tied back behind his shoulders. He had a sharp kind of face, all angles and edges, like something from a painting of one of the old families; a short beard stabbed out from the bottom of his chin. His dark eyes were constantly on the move, examining and dissecting his surroundings. He was like any wealthy merchant or Administrator, though his clothes were odd: he wore a torn red cloak, like an itinerant.

When the man spoke it was with an utter confidence that suggested he was unaware of the seriousness of his situation.

‘There is nothing you can do to me, Watcher of the Overland.’ He grinned as he said those last words, as if that exalted title was somehow amusing. He did not seem at all perturbed by the chains that bound him to his chair, or put out by the rough treatment he had already received at the hands of some more thuggish Watchers.

Aranfal was sitting opposite the man. He glanced around the room. It was a place of cold wet stone, of chains and dripping water and flickering candles. It was worse even than the cell they’d used for Seablast. A weaker man would already be spilling out his guts, in a place like this.

‘What is your name, Doubter?’

‘Gibbet.’

‘Do not lie to me.’

‘I am not.’

There was a pause.

‘Where are you from?’ Aranfal narrowed his eyes. ‘I hear hints of … what, the North, in your accent?’

‘But you hear the North everywhere, Watcher Aranfal, don’t you? You can’t escape it. No, I am not from your North. No.’

Aranfal smiled at the man, but it was a false thing. How do you know my name?

‘You have already confessed to your hatred of the Overland and the Machinery, long may it save us. You will tell me your plans now, or you will suffer the consequences.’

‘My plans? I have no plan. The plan was put in motion ten millennia ago, when the Promise was made.’

‘You will tell me your plan, Doubter.’

‘Ruin is coming. You can do what you want to me, but you cannot halt its rise.’

Aranfal rapped his knuckles on the table. ‘I will look into you,’ he said. He reached down and lifted his raven mask from the floor, slipping it on with a flourish. The subjects of interrogations often melted before the mask, afraid that all their secrets would be exposed. This man did not. He simply leaned forward in his chair, clasped his hands together, and stared at the raven with a dark smile.

Strange. Aranfal had a greater mastery of the mask than any Watcher, save Brightling. He would look through its hollow eyes, and sensations would gather within him, hints of treachery and rebellion; they would form like smoke, and he would inhale them. Sometimes he would be transported to other places, to the memories of the subject, and watch their Doubting take place. But with this man, there was nothing.

He removed his mask.

‘How did you do that?’ He failed to conceal his disappointment.

The man laughed. ‘I know the creature who makes your masks, Aranfal. I know him. I have known him from days of old. His tricks will not work with me.’

Aranfal sighed. ‘Do you know my mistress?’

‘I know of Brightling, if that is who you mean. But she is not your mistress. You will learn who your true mistress is, in time.’

Aranfal slammed a hand down on the table. ‘Brightling is my mistress, Doubter. Do you know her?’

‘I do.’

‘She is clever, you know. She taught me ways to extract information, even from those who are strong.’

‘Please, try your damnedest.’

Aranfal whistled, a strange shriek of a sound. The door to the cell opened immediately, and a burly Watcher entered, pushing a woman before him. She was relatively young, perhaps in her mid thirties. She had the same olive skin as Gibbet, but she was plumper. Her head was shaved down to the stubble; on her forehead was a tattoo of an eye, wide and staring.

‘This is a friend of yours, is it not?’ Aranfal asked.

Gibbet nodded. He grinned at the woman. Still he smiles.

‘Her name is Hood, as strange a name as your own.’

‘Oh, Watcher, I am far stranger than old Gibbet,’ said Hood.

Gibbet and Hood laughed in unison.

‘Your laughter upsets me,’ Aranfal whispered. ‘Doubters should not be allowed to laugh.’

He nodded at the other Watcher, who grunted as he threw Hood to the floor.

‘You should not have laughed,’ Aranfal said again.

The other Watcher raised his leg and stamped on Hood’s chest.

‘Do not laugh at us again,’ Aranfal whispered.

The beating that Hood received at the fists and boots of the Watcher was as savage as any Aranfal had witnessed. The woman’s bones cracked like kindling, and her face quickly dissolved into a bloodied pulp, the tattoo now impossible to discern. Aranfal turned away in disgust. He did not care for brutality, especially when his true target was the man, not the woman. But it was as Brightling had always said. A person will endure much suffering, but they will not stand for so much as a misplaced hair on a loved one’s head. This woman had no hair, but the meaning was the same. It had worked for him more times than he cared to remember. Some subjects, like old Seablast, did not even need to witness the torment of their loved ones, to fall apart. It was almost always a sure route to success.

Except this time, it wasn’t.

The woman did not cry out. She did not resist the blows as they rained down on her. She smiled. Through it all, she was grinning.

And Gibbet laughed.

Something is very wrong.

Aranfal leaned over Gibbet. ‘You laugh, still you laugh. But know that this treatment’ – he pointed at Hood upon the floor – ‘is just the tiniest taste of what I can do. I am not an impatient man. I can make things far worse, over a much longer period of time. Do you follow my meaning?’

But Gibbet kept laughing. He laughed as he looked into Aranfal’s eyes. He laughed as he looked at his companion. He laughed as he stood, and he laughed as he cast his chains aside, as if they were formed of butter. He laughed as he picked up Aranfal’s mask, and he laughed as he put it on.

‘No,’ was all Aranfal managed to say.

‘Yes,’ said the man, removing the mask and tossing it to the ground. ‘These things remind me too much of their maker.’ He pointed to Hood, and Aranfal glanced in the woman’s direction. She was on her feet, her wounds healed, her tattoo staring out, once again pristine. In her right hand she held the severed head of the brutish Watcher; his torso was beneath her left boot.

‘Now,’ Gibbet said to Aranfal. ‘Whatever will we do with you?’

Chapter Five

‘You are now the oldest of all our leaders,’ said Darrah, leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling, eyes wide, as if the thought had just this second occurred to her. ‘And by some way, too. How does that feel? It must be bloody awful.’

Annara Rangle, Tactician of the West, placed her book face down on the table. She removed her eyeglasses and lowered her head, fixing Darrah with a stare. It was a look her father had perfected: cold eyes, on the edge between anger and restraint. Not a look you wanted to see, from him. But she couldn’t do it. She never could. Not to Darrah, anyway.

The Tactician burst into laughter. Her sparrow chest rattled and one of her remaining curls of grey hair bounced about.

‘Although, on second thoughts,’ Darrah said, ‘those are not the giggles of an old lady. Stop them, please; they are an affront to my ears.’ She clasped her hands over the offended organs.

Rangle pouted her dry lips and slapped a hand across her mouth. ‘Mng mm shorry.’

‘You will be sorry,’ Darrah said, lifting a fist, and Rangle laughed again.

How many assistants spoke to their Tactician in this way? She had often wondered. And so she asked.

‘How many assistants speak to their Tacticians in this way?’ She assumed once again her father’s mask of disapproval.

Darrah raised a finger.

‘Not many.’ She stood, and walked to her Tactician, who remained seated. The assistant reached down with her finger, and stroked Rangle’s cheek, just once, lightly. ‘But we are more than that, aren’t we?’

Rangle brushed the hand away. ‘Not here,’ she whispered, staring up into the darkened rafters.

Darrah laughed, and took the chair beside the Tactician, burying herself in one of the many texts that lay before them.

Rangle glanced around the room. I should heed my own words more often, here. It would not do for the Watchers to know too much about my weaknesses. Especially this one. She squeezed Darrah’s knee; the gesture was met with a pout.

The Tactician laughed. She turned to her surroundings, looking again for eyes in the shadows. But there was no one there, or not that she could see. Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t observing her and making notes. Brightling’s servants would pride themselves on being unobtrusive. That was their job, after all.

But it was worth it. This place was the only thing that brought joy to her life, apart from Darrah. The Watchers’ Library was a glory of the world, though the world did not know it. It was a vast space, cluttered with shelves and dust, free of any attempt at organisation or categorization, so totally unlike the plain and insipid collections of the College. And the books here could not be found in the College. These were texts and parchments that the Watchers monitored and controlled, on behalf of the Operator himself. They peered into the dark cracks of the Overland, into parts of history that were hidden from the people as a whole: overly ambitious Tacticians stalked the pages, with aims of tricking the Machinery; reigns of terror and disaster were detailed, their histories too painful to be remembered; and there were other things, too, which made no sense, or at least not at first. Things from before the Machinery itself.

Thank the Machinery for Tactician Brightling. If she hadn’t let me use this place, I think I would be dead.

‘We should go to Watchfold soon, Tactician. The Administrators will be getting anxious.’

Rangle sighed. ‘They are already anxious, Darrah. They have been hounding me.’

‘They need your wisdom, my lady.’

‘They need my stamp of approval for their little projects. That’s all they need.’

Darrah had served Rangle for fifteen years now, though it felt like longer. She had changed little in that time: a round face, plump, turning to fat, but lively and warm; a stout, powerful little body, with arms like axe handles; black hair that she cut herself into savage spikes; skin of a light brown, like Rangle’s own. She was from the Middle West, like the Tactician, and had wandered one day into Watchfold, demanding a job. She had come a long way, she had said. Watchfold could not even be classed as the true West, she had said. It was like calling Redbarrel the North, or the Far Below the South; they were all too close to the Centre, founded at a time when the Overland was just a speck on the Plateau.

It was lucky Rangle had spotted her. The Administrators would have thrown her onto the road.

They were in the White Rooms, a suite of apartments in Memory Hall that served as the Tactician’s base in the Centre. In truth, this felt more like home than Watchfold Hall, where she was obliged to spend some weeks of the year. It was only a short journey down Greatgift from the See House, home of her beloved library. And the rooms themselves were far more to her taste. A large, central reception room dominated the apartments. It was lavishly appointed, from the lengthy dining table to the furniture that was scattered about the space. The main art feature was a fresco depicting the glorious death of the Third Strategist, who fell fighting in some southern war, arrows honeycombing his torso. His blood sprayed across the wall.

Rangle had even shifted her bed into this room, placing it behind a golden curtain. She liked the air here; it helped her to sleep, something that never came naturally.

The Tactician had been sitting at the dining table now for almost four hours, slowly leafing through the same old text. A lamp sent swirling shadows across the fresco. How many people have stared at that work of art? Which Tacticians have stayed here, have sat in this very chair? She had asked questions like these since she was a girl, watching her father hack a vineyard from the wilderness. Did anyone live here before us? Did savages dance their rituals among those rocks, before the Overland came?

Where have they gone?

Darrah threw herself into the seat beside Rangle.

‘What’s this one, then?’

Rangle smiled, and gently touched a page. ‘It is a very old one.’

‘All the ones you read are very old. Why don’t you read anything new?’

‘There is no fun in the new. I know about the new. I live the new.’

‘You do not.’ Darrah stuck out her tongue. ‘Garron Grinn is here, by the way. He’s shuffling about in the hallway.’

Rangle glared at Darrah. ‘And you thought you wouldn’t tell me till now?’

‘You said you didn’t want to speak to any Administrators until at least the 27th day of the 11th Month of the 10,000th year.’

‘Shut up. Send him in.’

Darrah pouted, leapt up from her chair, and vanished through the doorway. Rangle heard some murmuring outside, before Administrator Garron Grinn shuffled before her.

He was a tall man, and at least as old as herself, giving him a stooped, crooked posture, like a broken finger. A grey beard fell from his chin in unkempt spikes, mixing freely with the silver mat of hair that hung from his irritating head. His skin was black, as were his morose eyes, with which he cast sad little glances at his surroundings. He had a habit of clucking his tongue lightly when he saw something he didn’t like, which was often. He was, as usual, dressed in a heavy brown cloak, underlining his carefully contrived air of austerity.

Rangle had known Garron Grinn since she was sixteen years old, when she had first been whisked away from the vineyard to Watchfold. He had not changed in all that time. I’m sure that’s the same cloak.

‘Garron Grinn,’ she said, trying to sound as displeased as possible. ‘Did you receive my message?’

‘No, my lady,’ came the melancholy response.

‘Are you sure? Did my servant summon you from your bed in the middle of the night, demanding your presence in the White Rooms of Memory Hall?’

‘No.’

‘Are you certain, Garron Grinn?’ It was always both names with him, never just Garron. ‘Ah, then I know. My pigeon flew to you, with a message tied to its little foot. This instructed you to come hither, with all possible haste! That’s what happened, is it not?’

‘It is not, my lady.’

‘Then I came to you, in a vision, surrounded in white—’

‘You did not.’

‘Did you just interrupt me?’

‘No.’ He clucked his tongue.

She sighed, not to herself, but at Garron Grinn. ‘If none of these things happened, Administrator, then why, by the Machinery, are you standing before me now?’

Garron Grinn bowed, and it was a strange thing to witness. His rickety body creaked as he manoeuvred it back to what passed for a standing position.

‘We must discuss business, my lady.’

There came a giggle from the hallway.

‘Darrah,’ Rangle called, ‘please could you find something to occupy you elsewhere? Maybe in the People’s Level?’

There came a series of theatrical tuts, then the sound of feet tapping away along the corridor.

Garron Grinn clucked his tongue again. ‘Business,’ he said.

‘You can take care of business better than I.’ She meant it.

‘No. You were Selected. It is your duty.’

She rolled her eyes, as she had a million times before. It was most likely better suited to a teenage girl.

‘Very well.’ The Tactician of the West waved a hand at Darrah’s recently vacated chair.

Garron Grinn sat down, which was a much more complicated process than one could reasonably expect. After much sighing and creaking, he reached into the folds of his cloak and withdrew a sheaf of papers.

‘Applications for business licences; harvest figures; petty crimes. For you to review,’ he wheezed. ‘But there is no rush.’

That surprised her. No rush? There was always a rush where business was concerned, or so she had been led to believe.

Rangle flicked through the papers absentmindedly. ‘If there is no rush, then why are you here?’

Garron Grinn turned around in his chair, staring out into the shadows.

‘It’s all right,’ said the Tactician. ‘There is no one here but ourselves.’

The Administrator nodded, and clucked his tongue yet again. ‘It is the Watchers, Tactician.’

‘What of them?’ She cocked her head and gave Garron Grinn an accusatory look. ‘Have you done something wrong? Well, I won’t help you. You’ve always been up to no good. I knew it.’

Garron Grinn squinted. ‘No. Of course not. But I fear … that they have become interested in us. In our little capital.’

‘Watchfold? Fine. Let them. They are right to be. They are the power of this land, are they not? It would almost be an insult if they weren’t interested.’

Garron Grinn squinted again. ‘Ah, ah, ah, well, I suppose that is true. But don’t you …’ His eyes fell onto the old book that lay before the Tactician.

‘You think they care about my studies?’ Rangle asked with a chuckle. ‘I assure you, they know all about it, as you well know. Brightling herself gives me access to their library.’

‘Hmm.’

He had never liked her studies. Well, it mattered not. The Machinery had Selected her, not him. But he had a point, though he did not realise it. There were some things she did that the Watchers might not like. My study group. But Brightling did not know about that. She could not know about it. And Garron Grinn certainly did not know about it.

‘Garron Grinn, please. What is this all about?’

The Administrator reached back into his cloak. This time he withdrew a single piece of parchment, on which a series of names had been scrawled in red ink.

‘This was given to me by the Watchers in Watchfold. It is a list of suspected Doubters.’

Rangle shrugged. ‘The Watchers see Doubters everywhere. That’s their job. Let them round up these characters.’

Garron Grinn raised a skeletal finger. ‘That is not the point. This is more serious. These people have taken their Doubting to a bad level. They are pamphleteers, playwrights, that type of thing. As you know, the Watchers take a very dim view of unlicensed arts.’

Rangle was beginning to understand. Cultural control was fundamental to the Watchers; they simply would not tolerate anything that took place beyond their sanction. If this was happening in Watchfold, right under the nose of the Tactician of the West, it could look very bad indeed. Especially when said nose rarely made an appearance in its domain.

‘How long has all this been going on?’

‘It’s hard to tell. Some of these people are new to us, some of them we have discussed before. They are all harmless, in my opinion. But my opinion does not matter.’

‘What have the Watchers said?’

‘They haven’t said anything, though they’ve been seen on the dockside and in the Warrens. They’ve even turned up in the High Town.’

‘But not in the countryside?’ The countryside. A quaint name for half a continent.

‘Not as yet, my lady. But when the rot grips Watchfold, it quickly spreads. At least, that is what the Watchers say. And no one wants another rebellion in the West, madam.’

No. No one wants that. Not ever again.

‘Hmm. Then they are concerned,’ Rangle said. ‘And they think we are doing nothing about it. That is not good.’

Indeed it was not good. They could not attack her directly: not a Tactician, Selected by the Machinery. But they could make life uncomfortable. Did Brightling know about this? If she became irritated, she could close off the library.

She could ban me from it forever.

Garron Grinn sighed. ‘The question is, what do we do about it?’ His eyes flashed as they met hers.

Rangle thought it over for a moment. ‘Well, we cannot fight it, that’s for sure. I will go and speak with Brightling. Perhaps she will appreciate it, if we show at least some interest in the affairs of our area.’

‘Yes, madam. Perhaps.’

When Garron Grinn left, Rangle thought of summoning Darrah back to the apartments. But it was growing late. Better to be alone.

She took herself off to her private room, and reached up to a shelf, from which she removed it: the book that mattered most. She had shown it to none of the members of the study group, not even Darrah.

It was an old thing – the very oldest she had found, in fact. But it did not look it; the pages were formed of a tough substance, which had survived the ages, and even the binding was unbroken. But she could feel the millennia on its pages. This was a thing from long ago: from the very beginning of it all. It had no title that she could see. In fact, it was entirely empty, comprising just a single image on a single page, in the very centre of the manuscript. It had been painted in oil, which still shimmered as if it had been created that very morning.

A woman stood alone upon a rock, her shoulders hunched. She had been attacked, or had attacked someone else; her emerald dress was torn, her red hair hung in matted clumps, and her pale skin was bruised and bloodied. But there was a defiant gleam in her green eyes, as she stared from the confines of the page. If she had lost her battle, she knew she would win her war.