The Machinery

In her left hand she held a mask, as white as her skin. It seemed to have a life of its own: from its own eyes poured hatred, and its mouth was a sneer. In her right hand was a silver full-moon crown, the type worn by Strategists. It was stained red.

Below this woman, in a harsh scrawl, someone had written: Ruin will come with the One.

Chapter Six

Not even the People’s Level of Memory Hall could hold the crowds that came for the wake of Strategist Kane.

The old man lay in state in the centre of the hall, his body resting on a circular grey stone, his hands clasped on his chest and his grey hair flowing around his silver full-moon crown. He wore a silken gown of Strategist purple embroidered with recurring patterns of the number 9938: the year of his Selection. On his feet were slippers of silver satin, and an ivory brooch in the shape of an open hand was pinned to his chest. A forty-strong bodyguard surrounded the deathstone, armed with handcannon and sword and eyeing the hordes suspiciously.

Katrina leaned against the Southern Gate, alone in the crowd, exhausted and bored. It had taken weeks to reach the Centre, travelling in a line of carriages and military paraphernalia. The long journey through the ices of the North had been tense and silent, despite the great bloodless victory that had been achieved over Northern Blown. It was never easy to spend time with the Tactician, and Kane’s death hung over everyone like a miserable spectre.

It had been weeks now, months, since the Strategist had died, yet still they had only reached his wake. Nothing ever happened quickly in the Overland. Not quick enough for Katrina, anyway. It was one of her many flaws, according to Brightling. You must develop caution, Katrina. You are always overreaching. But Brightling only saw the young part of her. She had observed her Apprentice for years, and was the greatest Watcher of the land, yet still she could not see all of her.

Grief was everywhere: the people mourned for the Strategist. Ahead of Katrina was a knot of old women, their worn hemp shawls marking them out as peasants. To their right a girl clung to her father, staring at Katrina from above his shoulder. She was surely too young to comprehend the day’s events, but her eyes were red: perhaps she had been swept along by the emotion around her. Katrina wondered if the source of all this misery was not so much the death of the Strategist, but what it entailed. No one had wanted a Selection in the 10,000th year.

As she looked to the weeping mourners, the Apprentice Watcher wondered how they would behave when they attended the Strategist’s actual funeral. This was all for show, was it not? But Katrina could not pretend. Not where Kane was concerned. Neither part of her had ever liked him, and both were glad to see the back of his racking cough and lecherous glances.

It was a rare day that she was allowed to visit Memory Hall, the regal home of the Strategist. Her place was in the See House, the black tower of the Watchers that stood alone and resplendent on the Priador. Memory Hall was a smaller affair, a squat, red marble palace in the centre of Greatgift Avenue. Yet the sense of history here – her history, her country’s history – was palpable.

The walls were hung with tapestries, each recording an historical event, from the Gifting of the Machinery onwards. The greatest individuals were immortalised in statues of bronze and stone and gold, staring blindly down upon their descendants. There was Strategist Arandel, the prophet of the Machinery, standing in gold eighteen feet tall at the Eastern Gate, naked apart from his peasant’s smock. Opposite him were the stone figures of the Five Warriors, Tacticians of the Early Period, who glared down at onlookers from their destriers. And there by the staircase, so small he was barely visible, stood Strategist Lalle, who died just two days after his Selection at the age of ninety-six, by falling down that very staircase.

She was about to move forward into the crowd, when all eyes suddenly swung in her direction. Behind her, the gate was opening.

Brightling was dressed to mourn, a robe of white rags partly obscured by a black satin gown trimmed with Tactician gold. Her face wore a look of suffering that was so profound it was almost poised: a single tear glimmered on her right cheek, trailing a path through her blusher. Her white hair flowed freely; this struck Katrina as odd, at first, until she realised that the Tacticians would all have removed their half-moon crowns. The Strategist was dead, meaning that all the Cabinet, including the Tacticians, would now face a new Selection.

Brightling floated forward to the deathstone, the crowd melting before her and Katrina following in her wake. A dense silence breathed through the People’s Level as the Tactician came to the body of her late superior. She leaned over the corpse, the tear balancing for a moment on her cheek before falling to the old man’s pallid face. She reached a hand out, but seemed to quickly think better of it and pulled back, turning her perfectly miserable countenance to her Apprentice.

‘Come, Katrina.’

Together, walking almost in step, Tactician and Apprentice strode forward to the staircase, the eyes of the crowd still upon them. Katrina felt exposed, under their gazes. She was used to being shunted around in the shadows, but lately the Tactician had placed her in the foreground, in preparation for her elevation to a Watcher. If they actually make you one.

When they reached the base of the stairs, Brightling stopped and turned to the crowd, pointing a finger to the ground, to the Underland. The people fell to their knees, bowing their heads so low that their lips almost touched the stone floor.

In a short, sharp movement, Brightling pulled her hand back down to her side and turned around. Katrina briefly looked behind as they climbed, and saw that the people remained on their knees, driven to the ground by a woman whose time as a Tactician could be over in a matter of days.

‘Ah, good afternoon, Tactician,’ came a male voice after they had climbed ten or so steps.

Canning, the Tactician for Expansion, crawled out of a compartment in the side of the wall. The man could not abide crowds. In contrast to Brightling, he appeared to be adapting to life without pomp quite easily, clothed in a hairy woollen smock that was tied at the waist with a length of knotted vine, the uniform of the market trader he had been fourteen years before, when he was Selected. He clambered to his feet, sweat cascading down his fleshy face.

‘Good afternoon, Tactician Canning,’ Brightling smiled, as the rotund man brushed the dirt from his smock. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, I suppose. These things have to be done.’ He glanced at the black staircase that snaked its way upwards. ‘On we go, then. May as well start.’ He pushed past them and began to climb, his stout legs struggling up the steps. It was not long before he lagged behind the two women, wheezing in their wake.

Eventually they turned off the stairs. Before them was a wide corridor, the walls and floor formed of silver and interlaid with old stones; there were no paintings, statues or tapestries to obscure their terrible gleam.

At the end of the corridor was a huge, silver door. Four helmeted, armoured guards stood to attention as the Tacticians approached.

‘Watching and Expansion!’ came a cry from an unseen herald, as the small party swept through the entrance into the sumptuous heart of the Overland.

The first thing Katrina noticed was the chandelier, a vast construct of a thousand candles, overwhelming the room in flickering light and blue smoke. Servants pushed wheeled ladders around it, scrabbling upwards to relight extinguished flames. The room had a heavy, sleepy feel, like some brothel of the Far Below.

An immense fresco covered the walls, telling of the Gifting of the Machinery. The observer’s eyes were first drawn to an image of a savage tribe: they wore animal pelts, and some had bones as jewellery. Before them stood Arandel, the prophet of the Machinery and the herald of the Operator. The people looked upon him with loathing.

The events depicted on the next wall took the scene forward, to the moment of the Operator’s arrival. Arandel, benign and beatific, stood on the Primary Hill, his arms open as he implored the people to listen to his words. Behind him burned a great fire, from which emerged the Operator, his cloak a living thing of dark flame that swirled with faces.

I know you, thought the younger part of Katrina. I have seen you.

Do not think about it, said the older part. It doesn’t help you to think about it.

Agreed.

One scene stretched out across both the east and south walls: a depiction of the three buildings that were left to the people by the Operator. Straight ahead was the See House, the home of the Watchers, a crooked black tower on the edge of the Priador. Behind it, a night sky was smeared with stars. In the centre, painted over the corner where the east and south walls met, sat the Circus, the great stadium of the Overland, built at the very spot on the Primary Hill where the people had first encountered the Operator and where Selections still occurred today. The sky was lightening at this point, the marble edifice surrounded by dusk. To its right, smaller than the other buildings but somehow more imposing, was Memory Hall, the red palace in which they all now stood, its black windows winking at the viewer.

Katrina turned from the walls. Ahead of her, at the far end of the room, was a golden throne.

‘Do you know what that is, Katrina?’ Brightling asked.

‘Yes, madam.’

‘Well, off you go then. Pay your respects.’

Katrina nodded, then hesitantly padded forward.

This chair had hosted the backsides of the greatest men and women of the world: the Strategists, Selected by the Machinery to rule the Overland. As she stared at the seat, a sense of history drew up within her, making her dizzy: somehow, despite everything she knew, she could not convince herself that Arandel, Lalle, Kane, Obland, Syer, Barrio, and all the rest, had sat just five feet from where she now knelt.

‘It seems simple at first, doesn’t it?’

Katrina looked up with a start to see Tactician Canning at her side.

‘Yes. I thought it would be …’

‘More grandiose.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can’t see it all in the smoke. Give it a moment – look to the sides.’

Canning backed away as Katrina studied the throne. After a moment, the smoke cleared and it emerged: an almost perfect statue of the Operator, sitting on the edge of the great chair with his legs crossed and his arms folded in his lap. His cloak fell in waves around the base of the throne, strange images of trapped souls painted onto its surface. A hooked nose sat beneath two hollow black eyes, their expression impassive, neutral.

Katrina had hardened over the years, grown accustomed to seeing his image. And yet, there he was, again in the form of a statue – the creature that had taken her brother.

You think that, but do you know? You could be mad.

‘Brightling, is your skivvy done with her gawping? Is there not much to be discussed among us?’

The voice came from above.

‘Black hair, pale skin, nice girlie, very nice. Regal, I would say. From the Centre, yes. A Balatto, perhaps? No, too pretty, too delectable. A strange appearance. What is she?’

Grotius, the Tactician of the North, leered down at her. He was a huge man, fatter even than Canning. Even here in the Cabinet room, above the Strategist’s Throne itself, he gnawed on the fried wing of some massive bird, wiping his hands on the bloodied apron he retained from his pre-Selection career as a butcher. Servants flittered around him, carefully wiping blood and grease from the golden robes that were visible just below the apron. A red cleaver hung ominously at his waist.

‘Grotius, be quiet. You northern ape—’

‘Western whore.’

‘Redbarrel rat.’

This new voice came from the western wall. Katrina realised, now, that the room was broken into stepped levels: in the gloom, she could make out three sets of stairs, one leading to Grotius on the northern wall, another to this new speaker, the third to the south, at the door through which they had entered.

‘I am ignoring you, now, Grotius.’

Rangle, the Tactician of the West, was old; Katrina judged the woman to be in her eighth decade, to guess from the few wisps of grey hair that clung to her withered scalp. It was said she had wept for days when her Selection was announced: a rare reaction indeed among the ambitious denizens of the Overland. Rangle had only ever had one wish in life, they said: to study at the College. Her Selection put an end to all that.

‘No! No, I don’t want it! Mummy!’

Katrina turned to the southern wall. Bardon, ruler of the South, was nine years old: the youngest Tactician for fifty years. He was a small thing, even for his age, and looked as if a gust of wind could carry him away. He was a beautiful child, his skin a light brown and his wide eyes a striking blue. He sat atop a heap of silk-covered feather pillows, almost drowning in his golden gown, toying with a wooden doll and glancing nervously around the room. A chubby, harassed-looking woman, who Katrina assumed was the child’s mother, stood behind his throne: her efforts to hand him his official papers were not well received.

‘Katrina – come here now. That is enough.’

Two silver chairs sat on the lower level, in the centre of the floor: Katrina must have walked through them without realising. Canning and Brightling were sitting on them, side by side. The Watching Tactician motioned to Katrina to join her before turning to her colleague.

‘Who is chairing the Cabinet, Canning?’

‘Hmm? Oh, Tactician Bardon, I believe. His mother is trying to give him his notes.’

They all glanced up at the southern wall, where Tactician Bardon had finally been persuaded to accept his papers, a sullen expression on his face. Brightling hissed under her breath:

‘The boy! On a day like this!’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ sighed Brightling, ‘there is nothing to be done.’

Bardon suddenly looked at the crowd, head snapping up from the papers like a startled rabbit. He clapped his hands together and the room fell into total silence, bar the slurping of Tactician Grotius’s gums on avian bones.

Bardon glanced at his hands, as if shocked by what he had done, then smiled, lifted the papers, and began to read in a high-pitched, faltering voice:

‘Almost seven weeks ago, the Strategist of the Overland, Kane, who was Selected by the Machinery, was found dead. You will all be aware of this.’

Tactician Rangle made a little noise.

‘We, the Tacticians of the people, were Selected to serve for our lifetimes, or until the death of the Strategist, when all must be cast asunder and made anew. That time has come.’

The boy cast a glance at his mother, who gave him a reassuring smile and stuck two thumbs up.

Bardon turned back to the room. ‘We must begin the process of Selection,’ he said. ‘The Machinery, its messages interpreted and transmitted by the Operator, will bring forth a new Cabinet to replace the old, a new leadership for our people. All, some, or none of us may be Selected again. It matters not: what matters is the glory of the Overland.’

A round of applause erupted from the Tacticians and their assistants. Brightling smiled; Rangle twitched; Canning reached for his wine and Grotius finished his dinner.

Tactician Bardon glanced into the far corners of the room.

‘I now call on the Operator of the Machinery to tell us when the Selection will be, so that we may prepare the people for their examination and our minds for judgement.’

Katrina gripped Brightling’s throne. Is he going to come here? asked the younger part of herself. If he does, you say nothing, and remain calm.

‘There!’

Katrina was not sure who had spoken, but it did not matter; she had seen it too.

A piece of paper was floating in the air from the ceiling above, dipping and reeling like a feather before landing at Tactician Bardon’s feet. Katrina studied the ceiling for any sign of the Operator, but realised it was pointless. It was like trying to catch a sunbeam.

Bardon seemed unsure of himself. He touched the paper, quickly withdrawing his hand as if expecting a shock. When this did not occur, he picked it up.

‘Three weeks’ time for the Tacticians,’ he whispered, ‘and five for the Strategist.’

Silence held for a moment, before the room broke into chaos. Some assistants ran from the hall to spread the word; others chattered excitedly in little groups. Grotius ate his chicken; Rangle read her book; Brightling examined her fingernails; Canning looked to the floor; and Bardon beamed with pride. But all of them, Katrina saw, cast jealous looks in their colleagues’ directions.

She knew what they were thinking; she had lived with a Tactician long enough to read them. Five weeks for the Machinery to absorb the will of the people. Five weeks until the current group of Tacticians would gather once again by the Portal, the very place where the prophet Arandel had announced the coming of the Machinery, to receive the information they dreaded and anticipated in equal measure. Five weeks, and they would all find out. But they already knew one thing: the favourite for the role of Strategist, given their talents and experience, had to be one of them.

Had it not?

Chapter Seven

Rangle remained in her apartments after the gathering of the Cabinet, and did not leave for days.

Kane’s death had affected her in ways she could never have anticipated. She had not liked the man. There was a cruel streak to him. It was nothing severe, just a low-level meanness. She had known him longer than anyone on the Plateau, and she had seen it on many occasions. When she was first Selected, he had spoken with her, and quickly discovered her ambition to study at the College. He said it would be possible, that he would arrange everything. But when she arrived at the Great Hall, her name was not on the register. They all knew who she was, the students and the Scholars; they knew how she had been humiliated. They would never mock a Tactician of the Overland, not to her face. But she saw it; their eyes smiled at her.

She knew he was old. She wondered at his longevity, if truth were told. That cough of his. Those wasted limbs. But still he continued, pestering females, bringing whores to the Cabinet. She had known he would die before long. She could feel death stalking them both, while Brightling and the others looked to the future and schemed.

But something was wrong, in this death.

‘How could he fall from the balcony?’ Darrah had asked. ‘He must have sat there a hundred thousand times. How could he contrive to fall?’

She had not responded. She could not. She didn’t believe it either. But she had to. Brightling said he had fallen, so he had fallen.

Someone knocked at the study door.

‘Come in, Darrah.’

The younger woman held a bowl of soup in her hands. By the side was a torn chunk of black bread.

‘You should eat.’

Rangle nodded and waved to the table, where Darrah set down the food.

‘Are you coming to bed tonight?’ Darrah glanced at the corner of the study, where Rangle kept a single bed. The Tactician stayed here sometimes, when she felt the need for solitude. Darrah did not understand, and did not like it.

‘I don’t know.’

Darrah nodded. Her eyes burned. ‘The others have arrived.’

Rangle smiled. ‘Good. Tell them I will be there very soon. And get them soup, if they want it.’

Darrah nodded, almost imperceptibly, and stormed out of the room. That girl would be better off without me. I should end it.

But I won’t.

There was one thing in the world that prevented Annara Rangle from following Kane off the balcony of Memory Hall. It was not Darrah, and it certainly wasn’t her exalted station. It was her study group.

She started it about three years into her life as a Tactician. There were three members back then; Rangle herself, a curious Administrator called Eddvard, and Brynn, the Tactician of the North in those faraway days.

It began by accident. She had been to the library of the College – it was the only one she could access, at that time, and she was grateful for it – and had borrowed a Middle Period work of philosophy, The Halls of the Underland. She had always been obsessed with the Underland. What was this place? Some of the writings described it as another place of existence, or as a repository of historical memory. Some people had accessed it, the stories said, but only when the Underland wished to be entered. Otherwise, its gateways were always closed. And yet, there were so many strange things in the world that could not have come from the Overland. She had always been certain of it.

This book was a revelation. It argued that there was no Underland or Overland, but one country; the Underland could be seen in our daily lives. It was a strange little text, and its author was unknown, which was perhaps well for him or her; the book was not considered Doubting in these enlightened, modern days, but who knew what they would have thought back then, when things were darker and ignorance reigned. It played an important role in the Tactician’s life. One evening she was reading it in her study in the apartments (even then she stayed away from Watchfold), when Brynn had arrived unannounced. She heard him enter too late; he was looking over her shoulder before she even knew he was there.

‘I have thought about that book for ten years now,’ he whispered. He was very young, just a few years older than her; there was something calming in his brown eyes. He was from the West, too, but there the similarities ended; he came from wealth, far greater than that of her family. He stank of it.

‘Sometimes I look around me, and I see things, and I am sure they are not of the Overland.’ She remembered his words as clearly as if he had spoken yesterday. ‘They cannot be. Do you understand me?’

She was frightened. She could still feel the fear, even now. ‘I do understand you.’

He nodded, and left the room, forgetting whatever business he had come to discuss. But two days later he returned, with some manuscripts from his own collection. They met in the evenings, after Cabinet meetings; no one suspected a thing. Why would they? He was a Tactician, and they had business to attend to. One day he had simply shown up with Eddvard, as if the Administrator had always attended their clandestine discussions. No one ever asked why he started coming; it was better that way.

Over the years, the group changed members. Brynn died unexpectedly a few years into their studies, to be replaced as Tactician of the North by Syrrian, who was in turn succeeded by Grotius, the disgusting bastard. Eddvard passed away not much later. But the group carried on. As the years rolled by, Rangle grew better at identifying like-minded individuals. She was proud of her success; they had never been discovered.

She wondered what would happen, if Brightling found out. Would it even be considered a threat, the ramblings of an old lady and her friends? Perhaps it would anger the Watching Tactician. After all, she had allowed Rangle access to the greatest library in the Overland, its shelves stacked with dangerous knowledge. How would she feel, if she knew Rangle was showing these books to other people?

All we do is ask questions. Could that really anger her? The Tactician of the West did not care to find out. All that any Doubter seems to do is ask questions. It would not matter how important one was, if one was found to be a Doubter.