by Ed McDonald
‘Sure.’
‘As more phos is used, the size of the backlash increases exponentially. As we approach higher quantities of phos, let’s say two hundred coils, the backlash is roughly equal to the discharged energy. At four hundred coils, it’s three times as much. At six hundred coils it’s twelve times as much.’
‘Then how can something like the Engine control the backlash? It uses far more.’
‘That’s the beauty of it. The paradox allows the backlash to be reharnessed into more and more power. It breaks all of Songlope’s other laws of physics. Nall used the paradox to create the Engine. He forged a weapon that allowed ordinary men to bring down the power of a god by throwing a lever.’
I didn’t have time to go and study for an advanced degree in mathematics. Otto was nodding along as though he thought it entirely plausible. I decided to trust that they were getting it right.
‘So how is this a problem?’
Otto’s nodding stopped. His mouth drooped and he looked at his feet. Destran came and topped up the coffee that nobody was touching. Ezabeth raised her chin, strong, ready to be challenged.
‘I’ve run the equations on it. It took me two days to plot them. Bear in mind that this is far, far beyond any light matrix that I’ve seen calculated before. But what I calculated was that for this matrix to operate effectively it would require precisely seven hundred and twelve thousand battery coils to maintain its efficiency for a full year. Don’t you see? It’s precisely the amount they were feeding into the Engine. Coincidences don’t occur on this scale. This is the heart of the Engine.’
‘Well it had to work somehow,’ I said. ‘I’m not seeing the problem.’
‘Here,’ Ezabeth said, pointing to the intersection of five lines that had been circled in red. ‘Maldon had ringed this intersection. I removed this line from the calculation and ran the numbers again. If this section fails, the chains begin to collapse. The light never rerefracts, you see?’
I didn’t see. I shrugged.
‘Take my word for it,’ Ezabeth continued. ‘Without it, the calculation comes out differently. When this section is removed, the matrix will only accept one hundred and twelve thousand coils.’
‘Which is the exact number of coils supplied to the Engine for the last six years,’ Otto said. He winced as he put his fingers into his mouth and waggled a tooth that I’d knocked loose. ‘Maldon must have worked through every single angle on that schematic to identify it.’
‘Do you understand what this means, captain?’ Ezabeth said gently.
They let me have silence while that sank in. What they were implying went beyond any claim of profiteering. If they were right then what Gleck Maldon had discovered was that the Engine wasn’t just underpowered. It was dying.
‘Did somebody do this? Sabotage?’ I asked.
‘Highly doubtful,’ Otto said firmly. ‘We’re talking about the heart of the Engine. It was constructed by the Nameless and Nall warded the only entrance with his most dreadful magic. But without venturing inside, it’s impossible to say.’
‘It can’t be ruled out,’ I said. The thought of a traitor gaining access to the Engine’s heart sent cold liquid iron through my veins, heavy and black. ‘They’re feeding the Engine only what it can take. Who controls the flow of power into the heart?’
‘I’m not certain,’ Otto said. He pursed his lips as he thought. ‘The Order guards its secrets closely. The inner council comprises the three master engineers, the chief librarian, Princes Adenauer and Herono, Marshal Venzer and two master lunarists. One of them controls the phos supply to the Engine’s heart. At least one of them must know.’
‘But they won’t act,’ Ezabeth said. ‘They won’t even listen.’
‘What kind of output would the Engine have at one hundred and twelve thousand coils?’ I said. ‘If they threw the lever, today. With the power stored within it right now. What would it do?’
‘That’s the worst part,’ Ezabeth said. ‘You can put phos into a matrix like this, but it’s not going to behave as you wanted it to. Imagine a cart that’s running away down a hill. Now imagine that three of the wheels disappear. The cart won’t carry on more slowly. At best, it halts quickly. At worst? Everything it’s carrying is hurled outwards, thrown uncontrollably. If the Engine were activated it might do nothing, or it might release all that power across Valengrad. One hundred and twelve thousand coils is still enough to raze the city to the ground if it were to backlash against us. But I’m guessing. I’ve never seen calculations that use quantities of phos on this scale before. Nobody has. Light behaves differently the more you amass.’
‘So activating the Engine might kill us all?’
‘Yes.’
I picked up the coffee and drank the whole cup in a series of swallows. Held it out for more. I could not be sure that there was a traitor on the council, but if there was? We might be throwing ourselves into the dragon’s maw.
‘Who else knows about this?’
‘Nobody. Not yet,’ Ezabeth said. ‘I must confront the Order for a second time. They must help me access the heart of the Engine and see this for myself. Help me, Captain Galharrow. Use your influence to get me into the Engine’s heart.’
I sat silently, staring at the raven tattooed into my arm. Now would have been a damn good time for him to emerge. I had questions for him. I needed to know if we were as dead as I thought we were. The Engine was our only real defence against the Deep Kings and their numberless thralls.
We could use your help about now, I thought. There are a hundred thousand drudge setting up in the Misery and our only real weapon’s on its last leg. Get here, damn you. This is your war. And we’re losing.
14
‘It will all come to a head soon,’ Ezabeth mused. A dull morning sky hung over the city as we took coffee on the roof terrace. Eala was the only moon rising, her golden light faint and dusty. A cold day for summer’s end.
‘What will, lady?’ I asked.
‘All of this,’ she said, gesturing across the rooftops of the steaming city. ‘A century ago this was nothing but pastures and fields. A village, maybe. This war has gone on too long. It will end soon.’
‘You say that like it’s a good thing.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more. I don’t want the Deep Kings to win, but sometimes I wonder if we’re any better. The states are all but bled dry by the never-ending need to throw men and weapons into this bloody strip of land. The harvest won’t be strong this year, not when Rioque has cast such long shadows. There will be famine.’
‘Valengrad seems to be surviving,’ I said.
‘Of course it is. The princes all know that they must send sufficient wealth to the Range or lose their lands. Lose their titles, their riches. They meet their quotas, but only just. What wealth they have to spare they hoard. There is no charity, nary a glance to the Spirit of Mercy. Sometimes I wonder what we’re fighting for.’
‘Sometimes, so do I,’ I agreed. ‘Sometimes it feels like this is all someone else’s war. The Kings and the Nameless could have it out somewhere in the Misery and that would be the end of it. When you think of it that way, it all seems pointless. I don’t want to become drudge, though. That much I can tell you.’
‘There are cults that seek surrender to the Deep Kings. Why would anyone want to be changed like that?’ Ezabeth frowned.
‘They aren’t all strange-looking. Some of them take on colours, bright ones. Some of them don’t look so different to you and me. The drudge you saw at Station Twelve, they were standard soldier breeds. Thick skin, resilient, don’t need a lot of water. Like the Kings designed them for the Misery. But if you were to cross the Misery and see what lies beyond, where old Dhojara used to be, they’re different. They have artists, philosophers, artisans.’
‘You’ve seen them?’
‘Seen a lot of things.’
‘Pity gets men killed along the Misery,’ I said. ‘Stay long enough and you’ll find morality doesn’t survive sandstorms, clouds of arrows or Darling magic any better than flesh.’
‘You’ve a hard soul, captain.’
‘I do.’
‘Do you ever wish you were different?’
‘I wish everything was different.’
For a few moments, I felt like we were those kids back in the summer of our youth, walking along river banks and blowing the heads from the dandelion clocks. Like I hadn’t a thousand lives soaked red beneath my fingernails and like she wasn’t a traitor and most likely mad.
‘I wish my brother were here,’ Ezabeth said eventually. ‘He was always the philosopher in the family. I could use his mathematics more than his morality, though. But he’s out there in the Misery.’
‘He’s become a soldier?’
‘No,’ she laughed. It sounded odd through her veil. ‘Though I think he might like to be.’
‘Takes nerve to walk ten paces into the Misery. He must have some grit.’
‘He has a cause,’ Ezabeth said. ‘Perhaps that’s the same thing.’
‘And you? You were willing to risk your name. Your life. Why?’
Ezabeth turned her back on me. She looked out over the factories, seeking, until she pointed towards Herono’s phos mill, distant on the edge of the city.
‘There are one hundred and thirty-three phos mills throughout the city states,’ she said. ‘Some are big. Some are small. They give us light and warmth and water purifiers and communicators. But we forget that for every trickle of power there’s a person behind a loom. Night after night, worked until their back breaks and their mind cracks. Then somebody puts a pistol to the back of their head and sends their family what passes for compensation for the loss of a loved one. I started helping Maldon because I wanted to help the Talents. To make sure their sacrifice was not in vain.’
‘Nobody likes what happens to the Talents,’ I said. ‘But what choice is there?’ Ezabeth shook her head.
‘I had a friend at the university. A girl called Tessa. She came from common stock, but she was bright, oh, so clever that girl. She’d won herself a scholarship. And then she had her radiance. A little spur of magic, right there in the classroom. She burned off an eyebrow. The next day they took her to a mill because the law demanded it.’ Ezabeth put her arms around herself, rubbed at her elbows. ‘She only lasted four years, and there wasn’t much left to bury. She wasted away to skin and bone. She didn’t know her parents any more. The light even took them from her.’
I am not much good at comforting people. I just nodded.
‘I’m not so naive that I don’t understand the importance of the Talents’ work,’ she said. ‘Many have given their lives for the Range. But no life should be squandered to line a rich man’s pockets.’
Otto Lindrick appeared then, being helped along by his spotty apprentice. He didn’t look happy to have me back in his house. Couldn’t blame him.
Ezabeth had explained their connection. Lindrick had transferred into the city from a small countryside phos mill after the death of the accountant. The circumstances were suspicious. And when Lindrick was made responsible for the importation of battery coils from the outer mills, for the heart of the Engine, he discovered discrepancies. Problems with the supply. He had leaked the phos-battery records to Maldon, an expert light Spinner known for his dislike of the governing class. A man he could trust. He couldn’t have known what Maldon would discover, or what it would do to his mind.
‘You didn’t tell Prince Herono where Lady Tanza is,’ Lindrick said. I’d gone home and slept on it. I needed her money, but Ezabeth’s approval seemed to matter more.
‘I’m not one to stab a person in the back while they’re sleeping. If I think you’re fighting the wrong cause, you’ll see me coming head-on.’ Actually, I’d stabbed more than one man in the back, but it sounded good. ‘Someone with power sent those men to Maldon’s house. Right now I’m not prepared to trust anybody. We move slow. Steady. We eliminate the options one by one, not charge in firing off cannon.’
‘The Order refused to convene the council to hear her again,’ Lindrick said.
‘Marshal Venzer refused to give me an audience as well,’ Ezabeth said. ‘Even my cousin, who claims to be supportive of my concerns, offers me no assistance. If they will not heed me, I will take more direct action. I will make what I know public, if they give me no other choice.’
‘I understand your urgency,’ I said at length. ‘You might be onto something big. I get it. Maybe you are. Or maybe you’re wrong, maybe your calculations are off. But if you print that stuff, what do you think it would do to the people?’
‘They have to know,’ she said sternly. As unbendable as an iron bar.
‘People don’t need to know shit,’ I said. ‘Even if it’s true, which I fucking well hope it isn’t. You can’t say things like that to ordinary people. They don’t have the brains for it.’
‘Have you no respect for your countrymen?’ Lindrick said stiffly. The irony of his question was not lost on me, given what I’d done to him yesterday.
‘People are sheep,’ I said. ‘They do as you tell them. They believe what they want to, or whatever frightens them the most. If they don’t like it, they reject it or they ignore it. It’s natural. Can’t blame them for it. Can’t tell them they’re stupid either. They don’t understand that they’re sheep. How could they? The sheep don’t realise the shepherd is smarter than they are.’
‘You sound like the Nameless,’ Ezabeth said, frosty as midwinter.
‘Yeah, well,’ I grunted. ‘I spent some time around one or two of them. There’s a point you realise those bastards, whatever they are, they’re more than you and me. Not just a little, but a lot more. Where we think in days and months, they think in centuries. Play a long game. Maybe that comes with immortality. Maybe it’s just part of whatever it is that they are.’
‘You have such confidence in them? You’re so sure?’ she asked.
‘As sure as I need to be.’
For a long moment nobody spoke.
‘Perhaps it is time to put your faith elsewhere. The Nameless have failed us. Abandoned us in our hour of need. I do not think that Crowfoot will return. Perhaps he sees the Engine has failed and seeks new allies across the ocean. Perhaps the Lady of Waves shall retreat with him there and they will wage their war with new minions at their disposal.’ A dark anger lurked in her eyes. ‘As you say, they think in centuries, not months. What does it matter to the Nameless if we all perish?’
I thought about it. I didn’t like the sound of it, and it had a disturbingly likely ring of truth to it. For a moment it seemed all too plausible.
‘Then we’re all fucked anyway. Why engender a panic that will only get you hanged?’
‘Because the truth is bigger than I am.’
‘Most things are bigger than you,’ I said. She didn’t laugh. Lindrick didn’t laugh. Nenn would have laughed, and I wished she was there. ‘What would it take to prove to the Command Council that you’re right?’
Ezabeth thought about it. She rubbed at the stumps of her missing fingers.
‘Get me access to the heart.’
‘Nobody enters the heart,’ I said. ‘Not even Crowfoot.’
‘How would you know?’ she said. I knew because he’d told me once, years ago. I didn’t choose to share that. I shrugged. Ezabeth glanced down at my arm, then cocked her head and a new understanding narrowed her eyes.
‘You belong to him,’ she said. She gripped my arm between eight hard little fingers as I tried to turn away from her. The touch of her gloves froze me faster than any icy stare she’d given. I let her turn it back, fingers tra
cing across the skin. Suddenly I was sixteen again and Ezabeth was dressed in a light summer dress, all linen and shades of air. She had stroked her fingers along my arm, daring me to flinch from her tickling touch. We lay in the meadow, side by side, staring up at the sky. Desperate to touch one another, our youthful lust held in check by the dour-faced chaperone at her needlework nearby. A cruel game, to thrust children together to see if their excitement kindled and then insist they deny every natural urge. The memory soured my mood and I brought my arm back. That hopeful boy was gone, dead and buried beneath a tide of stinking bodies and enough black days to darken even our broken sky.
‘I don’t belong to anybody,’ I snapped. She was not convinced. ‘The heart’s beneath the citadel, and not even Crowfoot knows how to breach the locking mechanism. There’s a bunch of panels, a sequence that has to be adhered to. Get it wrong and you burn. Nobody gets in without Nall. You should know that.’
‘Of course I do,’ Ezabeth said. ‘But I’m at a dead end without Maldon. I need to know what he knew. If the Order will not answer me then I must enter the heart and see for myself. I don’t claim that I can fix what the Nameless forged, but I can try. And I’m better qualified than anyone else in the Alliance.’
‘The Order will never allow it,’ I said.
‘Of course they won’t,’ Ezabeth said, banging down her fist. ‘The fools block me at every turn. Regardless, I don’t care for their permission.’ I sensed a shifting beneath her veil as though she were smiling. ‘I will gain the access I need, whether they open the door for me or I have to blast open a new one.’
