‘Hello,’ Canning said.
‘Hello,’ echoed the boy.
‘What is your name, boy?’
‘Boy.’
‘What?’
‘My name is Boy.’
Canning nodded. He was used to being mocked, even by the young, but something told him this child was not making fun of him. He turned to the girl.
‘In that case, you must be Girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘You are brother and sister.’
‘Yes,’ said Boy. Their voices were virtually identical, too.
‘We have other brothers and sisters,’ said Girl. ‘But Boy and I are different. We are more.’
‘More brotherly and sisterly?’
‘Yes,’ said Boy. ‘We are the Duet.’
‘The Duet,’ agreed Girl.
Canning sighed. It dawned on him that, despite appearances, these children were very, very old indeed.
‘You are like the rest of them,’ he said. ‘That’s why you can see into my thoughts.’
Boy chuckled, and closed his eyes. ‘I can taste your memories. They have a certain sadness, and it is so sweet.’ He snapped his eyes open. ‘But no. I do not need memories to read you. You looked lost, but without a destination.’ He waved a hand at the pyramid. ‘And so you came here. Perhaps you have a connection with this place.’
‘You don’t know who I am.’
‘No. Who are you?’ asked Girl.
‘My name is unimportant,’ Canning said.
‘Unimportant,’ Boy repeated. ‘That is a fine name.’
‘Yes,’ said Girl. ‘I like that.’
‘Why are you here, Unimportant?’
Unimportant is as good a name for me as any.
‘Your sister is Shirkra?’
‘Yes,’ the Duet said as one.
Canning nodded. ‘Once, I ruled this place,’ he said, jabbing a thumb at the Fortress of Expansion. ‘I was Selected by the Machinery. Do you know the Machinery?’
Boy nodded. ‘We know of it. But we were not there at its birth. We were in the South.’
‘And Jandell kept us away, after that,’ said Girl. ‘So we only know dribs and drabs.’
‘Dribs and drabs,’ said Boy, nodding vigorously.
Canning nodded. ‘Well, the Machinery is the heart of the world. It has made the Overland into the greatest state the Plateau has ever seen by Selecting its best and brightest as our leaders. Apart from me, of course. Sometimes it makes mistakes.’
‘Where is the Machinery?’ asked Boy. ‘Do you know?’
‘No. Anyway, it’s broken, now, I think, and Ruin will come with the One. Well, the One is here, but no Ruin, as far as I can see.’
‘Ruin?’ Boy shook his head. ‘Ruin is not here yet.’
‘Oh no,’ Girl said. ‘You will all know when Ruin is here.’
‘We feel it though,’ whispered Boy. ‘We feel it in the air.’
Canning nodded. Words gushed forth from his mouth, almost involuntarily. ‘We have always been told that Ruin will come in the ten thousandth year, and that the One would bring it. Well, this is the ten thousandth year, and the Machinery has Selected a terrible thing. It seems the Prophecy was correct, and Ruin is coming, whether we like it or not.’
The Duet skipped forward, until they were just a pace from Canning.
‘Who is this terrible thing it has Selected?’ Boy asked.
Canning shrank back from their blue eyes. ‘It is a woman,’ he stammered. ‘Once, she was Katrina Paprissi, an Apprentice to the Watchers. But she isn’t Katrina now.’
‘Do you know her name?’
‘She calls herself Mother.’
The Duet glanced at one another, and turned back to Canning.
‘You are correct, Unimportant,’ said Boy. ‘I can feel her.’
‘We should go and see her!’ Girl yelled. ‘The three of us!’ The children took each other by the hands and began to dance around.
‘Please,’ said Canning, coming to a terrible realisation. ‘We cannot go to see her. I was held by her, and Shirkra, against my will. I don’t want anything to do with them again.’
‘You escaped from Shirkra?’ said the Duet. ‘You escaped from Shirkra and Mother?’ Their eyes narrowed into icy little slits.
‘I – no, look, it’s not what you think—’
Girl turned to Boy. ‘We should take him back to them. They will reward us, if we do!’
‘Yes! Yes!’
‘No!’ cried Canning. ‘I can go with you anywhere – just don’t take me there.’
Boy grinned and lifted his hand. A red light grew around it, flickering like a flame. It continued to expand, thrumming with power, until he pulled his arm back and flung it forward. Canning tried to duck away from the light, but it was impossible. It ensnared him, and he fell backwards, wrapped within its cold embrace. Memories flooded his mind’s eye for half a heartbeat, his own and others he did not recognise. There was no fighting this. It was that same power again, the power he had seen in the Bowels, the burning core of memories. This was different; it tasted of them, these ancient children. For a moment, he tried to conjure the abilities he had, back then, in the See House. But he could not. The Duet were focusing on him, and there was no defeating them.
He was nothing; he was Unimportant; he was Canning.
‘We will go to Mother and Shirkra,’ Boy said with a nod. ‘You will come with us willingly, or you will suffer the most enduring and terrible pain. Is this understood?’
Canning nodded miserably within his cell of light.
‘Good,’ said Girl. ‘Then we go.’
Chapter Fourteen
‘The game, the game, the game.’
Brandione opened his eyes. He had returned to the black beach, with the red sun glaring down. The Queen was ahead of him. She was half-formed, the lower parts of her bodies falling away into dust. Her faces were hidden behind dark veils. At her side was the table Brandione had seen before, the great circle of dark green stone, surrounded by chairs.
‘The game, the game, the game.’ She said the words in a thudding mantra, the chant of some savage religion. ‘The game, the game, the game.’
Brandione walked towards the table. As he went, the sun moved across the sky, keeping pace with him. Waves crashed rhythmically, far away.
The one-time General of the Overland joined the Dust Queen’s side, and looked down upon the table, where the five figurines still stood: Aranfal, Canning, the young girl, the plump female Watcher, and himself. As before, the surface was a picture of confusion: strange images played upon it, twisting across the stone, tortured lines and twisted shapes. They meant nothing to him, but he felt a power when he looked on them. He was a gnat, staring at a tornado.
‘The game, the game, the game.’
The Queen dissolved into dust. She reformed a moment later, sitting in three of the chairs.
‘Who will you play against?’ Brandione asked.
The Queen removed her veils. She was older now by far, her skin wan and stretched, her heads bald except for some thin strands of silver hair. Her eyes were small and watery, and she looked at him with unconcealed pain.
‘What am I?’ she asked. Her voice was the same, but tinged with sadness.
‘The Dust Queen,’ Brandione whispered.
The Queen waved three hands impatiently. ‘But what am I?’
‘You are a power. You are a force of nature.’
‘I am memory. All of this comes from memory.’ She gestured at the table. ‘I play the game with other memories, for other memories.’
Figures appeared in the other chairs, ghostly creatures whose outlines fell away into shadow. There was Shirkra, the murderer of Tacticians, and the Machinery knew who else. Two children sat side by side, a boy and girl, alike in almost every way; they were strangely familiar to him. The Operator was there, too – or the one he had known as the Operator, back in the old days. Jandell – that was his name. He was young, here, his hair long and dar
k. And finally there was the new Strategist, the creature that had once been Katrina Paprissi; she stared at the board with vacant eyes.
‘All of us spring from the power of memory,’ the Queen said. She pointed a finger at the children. ‘Here is the cruelty of youth.’ She flicked a finger at Shirkra. ‘There is … a tormented soul, born from the strangeness of memories.’
She paused for a moment, placing her heads in her hands. She sighed, and a breath of dust puffed through the air. She turned to Jandell. ‘There is despair, and hope, all at once. A complex thing; a thing that can lead to cruelty or action.’ Finally, she pointed at the Strategist. ‘And that … well. That is a thing of fearsome nurture: the clanswoman defending her children with a blunt stick.’
She stood from the table, and the other figures disappeared.
‘Question,’ she said, glancing at Brandione. ‘You have a question.’
He nodded. ‘What are you, your Majesty? What memories are you born from?’
The Queen smiled. ‘Too many to know, too many to know. I am the first child of the Old Place; it poured its young heart into me as it sought to beat back the Absence. Perhaps I am born of babies’ dreams, or the final wishes of the dead. Perhaps I am the earliest memory of the dawn. Perhaps I am the storm, the storm of memory itself … I do not know. But I am old; I am old.’
She flickered, and the old women were replaced with the Dust Queen Brandione knew.
‘All of us are formed of memory. Like memories, we are complex, and we change over time. We can do such things. We can wield memories like weapons; we can build towers from the past. But we are weaker than humanity, in so many ways. Because memories come from you: the Absence gave memories to mortals, and we are only the reflection of that power. We can pluck memories from you; we can scour the Old Place for them; but we cannot create them.’
‘Surely you remember the past.’
‘Yes, but our memories are shadows; they are things of nothing. What are they, but the memories of memories! Yours are … the gift of the Absence. We yearn for them, always, always. That is why the game is so important. It is more than a game. It is our search for the beginning of ourselves.’
Brandione pointed at the board, and its shifting symbols and shapes. ‘These are memories.’
The Dust Queen nodded. ‘These are the paths of the Old Place. It is a map. We watch it during the game. We watch our pawns, as they move through the Old Place.’
Pawns. ‘That’s me,’ Brandione said. An old anger flickered within him. I am a pawn to her. ‘And Aranfal. And Canning. We’re pieces in your game.’
The Queen nodded. ‘Yes. You are my piece. I saw you long, long ago: you are the Last Doubter. A soldier and a scholar.’
‘I’m not any of those things.’ He stared at the table, and his words came in a harsh whisper. ‘And I’m not a fucking pawn.’
He glanced at the Queen, who smiled at him.
‘Pawn is the wrong word,’ she said, spreading her palms.
Brandione felt suddenly ridiculous, as he always did after his bursts of anger. That was why he had suppressed them, so long ago. Now, his fit of pique had made this ancient being apologise to him. Ludicrous.
Brandione looked to the board again. ‘What must I do in this game?’
The Dust Queen clapped her hands, and in an instant transformed into three young girls, bouncing on their heels with excitement.
‘It is glorious, Brandione! Your prize is the greatest thing in creation … a thing of such power!’
He nodded. ‘If I know you now, your Majesty, that can mean only one thing – a memory.’
The three children jumped up and down. ‘Not just any memory – the greatest memory of all. A memory born from all the power of the Absence. It must be delicious, this memory. It must be a glory of the world.’ She sighed. ‘The First Memory of the Old Place. The earliest memory of humanity, from the beginning of time itself. A memory older than all of us – older than me. Imagine what power it must hold.’
The girls spun around, and transformed into three young women.
‘You have played this game for a long time,’ Brandione said.
‘Forever!’
‘Why don’t you go yourself, instead of sending me?’
‘Oh, it wouldn’t stand for it. The Old Place won’t let us. We can watch the game on our board, but we cannot search for the memory ourselves. Perhaps it loves mortals more than us. It loves its parents more than its children.’
‘No one has found the First Memory?’
‘No! Oh no! The Old Place guards it so well.’
‘If you have never found it, then how can anyone win the game?’
For the briefest of moments, the Queen seemed uncomfortable.
‘I am afraid, my Last Doubter, that the game is … challenging. Victory is a matter of degrees. Often the pieces become lost forever in the Old Place, unseen even to the players at the board. Or sometimes the Old Place grows tired of them, and …’ She let the sentence drift away.
‘So they all die, in the end. Or they disappear. The winner is the player whose piece survives the longest.’
The Dust Queen nodded. ‘That has been the way of it, yes. But do not despair, my Last Doubter. I see such things in you … I believe you will find the First Memory of the Old Place. You will take it, and you will use it.’
‘Use it?’
‘Yes, yes, of course! You are the Last Doubter. A soldier and a scholar. You will save us all.’
‘Save you?’
‘With the First Memory, of course! The others think it cannot be done. They think the Old Place will never let it be done. But you will find it, Brandione, and you will seize its powers, and you will stop Ruin!’ She grinned.
Brandione shook his head. ‘Impossible. This is all … it is a dream.’ He looked up at the red sun. It seemed to laugh at him. ‘A man could not do such a thing.’
The Dust Queen tutted. ‘Mortals have done great things before. The last time we played the game, a mortal started a war. A real war, a war in which humans could fight back. That was thanks to a man, my Last Doubter. That changed everything!’
‘I do not understand.’
The Dust Queen snapped her fingers.
**
They were standing on the roof of a dark tower, in the middle of a kind of courtyard. The tower was formed of smooth, black stone.
‘This is the See House,’ Brandione said.The Dust Queen cast him a sideways glance from her three heads.
‘No. Perhaps Jandell based the See House on this memory. This is an older thing by far.’
‘We are in a memory.’
The Dust Queen nodded.
Brandione walked to the side of the tower and found himself gazing out upon a great city of spires and domes, formed of yellow stone. Glass glinted in the sunlight, and dark birds wheeled in the sky.
‘Where are we?’
‘It is long ago. Just before the last war with humanity. This is the very beginning of the conflict, though we did not know it at the time.’
Brandione turned to the courtyard. That same green table stood in the centre, surrounded by five chairs.
‘Is this the Overland?’
‘Do you recognise it as the Overland?’
‘No, but I thought it might be the Centre, long ago.’
‘It is not the Centre.’
There was a thudding sound at the far side of the courtyard: a bolt being pushed from a lock. A black door opened, and five creatures emerged. Brandione recognised the first two immediately: the Operator and Shirkra. The Operator seemed young here, too. His hair was long and dark, and his skin was unblemished. He wore a simple black cloak, with no faces upon it. Shirkra was just as he remembered, in the green dress and the white mask, that strange thing that seemed to shift expression the more one looked upon it.
Behind them came Squatstout, who was the same as ever, in his dirty hareskin cloak. Then came those two children, the boy and girl. They must have been seven or ei
ght years old, to judge by their appearance. The boy wore a silk shirt and short trousers, while his sister was wrapped in a golden gown, its fabric covered with images of garish flowers.
‘Are these all Operators?’ he asked the Dust Queen.
The three heads nodded as one.
‘Who are the children?’
‘Boy and Girl. Together, they are the Duet.’
The five Operators each took a seat, with the children pulling their chairs close together.
‘This isn’t all of them, your Majesty, is it? Where is the Strategist?’
‘Mother does not always play the game. Games, after all, are really meant for children.’
In the courtyard, Squatstout was speaking.
‘Our sister, Shirkra, attacked the humans yesterday – she killed their leader on his own throne. Suffice it to say, the years of peace with the mortals are over.’
‘It was the only choice,’ Shirkra said. ‘The only choice.’
Squatstout ignored her. ‘I have spoken with Mother. She is not happy.’ He cast a sharp glance at Shirkra. ‘I think she should lock you up in a dark hole, sister, but it isn’t up to me. I don’t know why she … anyway, it does not matter. The point is this – Mother realises this society is at an end, and that it is time to build another. She knows that our brother, Jandell, and our sister, Shirkra, have … opposing visions of the future.’ He grinned at Jandell, who stared at the table and did not reply. ‘And so she suggests we play a game to resolve our differences.’
‘But what is the prize?’ Shirkra asked. She smiled widely, and clapped her little white hands together.
Squatstout nodded. ‘That’s the interesting part. The mortals are mustering against us as we speak, in whatever fashion they can, with their sticks and stones. They will be defeated, and humiliated, as they always are.’ He sighed. ‘The winner of the game will decide the future – whether we share this world in peace with the mortals, as we did until recently, or whether they are enslaved again.’ He shrugged. ‘Or something else entirely.’
There was silence for a moment. The twin boy and girl exchanged glances, and burst into laughter. Jandell raised a hand to silence them.
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