‘How did you recognise me?’
‘No one from here would travel this road at night,’ the Guard said. He pointed at her head. ‘And a strand of your lovely white hair is visible below your hood.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’m going to chain you now. Do not try and resist.’
Brightling nodded. ‘Go on then. Be gentle.’
The Guard released his left hand and reached under his cape. For half a heartbeat she thought of striking him. But she resisted the temptation; he would surely be primed for just such a manoeuvre.
So she kept smiling as the Guard withdrew an iron chain, and tightened it around her wrists. He tied the other end to his belt, just below his chainmail.
‘Don’t try anything stupid, please,’ he said. ‘My support will be here imminently.’
Brightling nodded. The Guard began to walk, slowly. He let her set the pace, and slowed down when she seemed to lag behind. He was considerate of his prisoner. That was a mistake.
She tugged on the chain, just once, very lightly.
The Guard sighed. ‘What is it? Please feel free to speak, if you want my attention. You don’t need to pull on the chain.’
She nodded. ‘I wanted to ask you a question.’
‘Go on.’
‘Are you new to your job?’
There was silence for a moment.
‘Why does it matter?’
Brightling nodded. ‘You’re new. I thought so. It explains a lot. For instance, when you’re alone with a potential troublemaker – Doubters, we used to call them – it is quite unwise to attach yourself to your target. It literally gives them leverage.’
The man laughed, but there was a nervous twinge to it. ‘Only if the target is stronger than you are. I very much doubt you are stronger than me.’
‘Strength is a funny thing,’ said Brightling. ‘It isn’t just about muscle.’
She made as if to pull on the chain, and the Guard tensed up, preparing for a tug of war. His inexperience was endearing. Instead of pulling, she leapt in the air, twisted her body, and kicked him on the back of his beaked head, where his neck should be. The Guard was strong and well armoured, but he stumbled forward. Brightling curled the chain around the man’s neck, and by sheer luck – no, instinct – she found a space between the mask and the chainmail. The chain snapped inside this hole and she twisted, feeling him choke beneath her.
But once again, her rustiness got the better of her. She did not look behind. She did not see the other Guard appear, raise his weapon, and strike her on the back of the head.
She fell forward, her face thumping into the dirt. She turned, her head screaming in pain. It was the Protector, with his golden beak, his wooden stick held straight out before him.
‘I am his support,’ the Protector said, as Brightling fell into blackness.
Chapter Sixteen
Irandus laughed and laughed.
His laughter rattled through the kitchen, across the pots and pans. It tapped against the windows, and it crawled across the ceiling. It was a strange kind of laughter: a soulless laughter from the grave.
Why is he laughing? Aranfal almost said. But it was no good asking questions, here. Not with Shirkra, and not with Irandus, the laughing man with the blade in his throat.
Eventually the laughter subsided, and Irandus’s face paled. He touched his neck, and withdrew his bloodied hand, looking upon it with horror.
‘Actually, this is quite sore.’
He slumped forward, his head on his arms.
‘That was very fun!’ Shirkra cried. She slammed a hand against the wooden table. ‘Now wake up, and reveal yourself!’
Reveal yourself? For a moment, Aranfal wondered if he could escape this place. Shirkra was preoccupied with the man she had stabbed, which was perhaps to be expected. I could make a run for it. I could.
But no. She would find me, wherever I went.
Irandus lay perfectly still, and Aranfal was certain the man was dead. How could he not be? But the world had changed, and things worked differently now. Or perhaps it hadn’t changed. Perhaps it was always the same, and he was only now opening his eyes. Maybe the truth was revealing itself to him, thanks to Shirkra, and Mother, and all the things they had wrought …
There came a chuckle from the lifeless Irandus. The candles and the lamp puffed into nothingness, and the room was cast into darkness.
‘Shirkra,’ said a male voice.
It was the kind of voice Aranfal knew well from his days in the North: hard, but flickering with intelligence, the kind of wisdom that was hard-earned. It was not the voice of Irandus Illarus.
‘Gamesman,’ Shirkra said, her own voice sweeping through the darkness, harsh as ever, but cut through with something else: disdain.
‘I have not seen you in an age,’ said the male voice.
‘Many ages of the world,’ Shirkra said. ‘Many ages for mortals. But not so many for us, no, not so many for us at all.’
‘Perhaps, perhaps. Yet the years have weighed on you, Mother of Chaos, even if they were nothing more than a heartbeat. I remember how the game ended the last time you played … a real war … you did not win.’
The candles came back to life. Shirkra held her mask in her hands, stroking the edges. She was smiling, but it was uneasy.
The Gamesman sat in the seat that had once been occupied by Irandus Illarus, but that was where the similarities ended. He appeared to be young, though Aranfal knew that could not be true. He had shoulder-length hair, thin and blond. His skin was ruddy, and his eyes were a cold and watchful blue. He was dressed in a dark green gown, on which were painted strange images: people and beasts, a hundred different malformed triangles and squares, eyes that stared into nothing. His features were delicate, in a way that many thought handsome. Aranfal knew this, because Aran Fal had once been thought handsome, and the Gamesman looked like that young man.
A Progress board was spread on the table before him, the tiles set out as if for a game. But there were not enough pieces, and fewer tiles than normal.
‘Have you played this?’ the Gamesman asked, looking at Aranfal.
‘Progress? Yes. But I do not know this version.’
‘This is the Third Iteration. It is old now, for you people.’
Aranfal nodded. The Gamesman sighed, and closed the board with the pieces still inside.
‘I have slept for a long time,’ he said, turning his attention to Shirkra. ‘I slept, and I dreamed of games. Sometimes though, Jandell would wake me. He would ask me about this game.’ He held up the board. ‘We would finesse it together, and he would pass our thoughts on to the mortals.’
‘That is all you have been doing, hmm?’ Shirkra asked, before breaking into laughter. ‘In all this time, you have helped Jandell with Progress? Oh, a shame for you, a shame.’
The Gamesman nodded. He lifted a hand to stroke his chin, and Aranfal noticed the man’s fingernails for the first time; they were long, and yellowing. ‘I would have willed it otherwise. But it is never up to me, is it? I only create the games, that is all I do, that is all I will ever do.’
Shirkra turned to Aranfal. ‘The Gamesman was one of our favourite servants, Aranfal my love. He was created by Mother herself, very early on. There are hundreds like him, thousands and thousands: young things, but powerful still. The Gamesman was one of our most beloved. In days of old, we knew him as—’
The Gamesman rapped the table with his fingernails. ‘No, Shirkra. Do not say that name. It is dead, now.’
Shirkra giggled. ‘So serious, for a lover of games!’
She turned again to Aranfal. ‘The Gamesman was a wonderful creature, wonderful. But all he wanted to do was play games. Hmm? We played with him, we played with him so much, but he would cheat.’
The Gamesman winced, and covered his eyes with his hands.
‘Yes, yes, he would cheat so much! And so one day, Mother punished him. She said that he would never again be allowed to play any of our games. He could create them, oh yes – that was now his role.
But he could not play the games he loved to play. Oh no. He could do little tricks, like the one you saw earlier, when he pretended to be another man. He can toy around with things like this.’ She flicked a finger at the Progress board. ‘But he can never play our games again. Ha!’
The Gamesman’s eyes glistened. ‘Now all I do is watch.’ He placed his hands on the table, and gave Shirkra a hard look. ‘I have begun preparations for the game. I was surprised that you wanted to play. I thought there would be no games again – not after last time.’
‘This time is different. There are no powerful mortals now, oh no. And when it is over, Ruin will come with such a fury that none will be able to stand in the way.’
Shirkra leaned forward. ‘Do you know what happened, hmm, Gamesman? The Queen! She wants to play, and she has offered us such wonderful prizes, even if we lose. She will take us to the Machinery. Mother will turn its remnants to dust, and she will bring Ruin. At last!’ Shirkra cocked her head to the side.
The Gamesman blinked. ‘I am not sure—’
‘Do you seek to deny Mother her wish?’
‘No! No! Not at all, Shirkra.’
‘Good. Because she has been kind to you. Things could have gone worse for you, you cheat.’
The Gamesman bowed his head. He unfolded the Progress board again and studied it for a long while, before extending a fingernail and shifting a piece from one square to another.
‘I used to miss the games more than I do now, anyway,’ he said in a quiet voice. His head snapped up, and he grinned at Aranfal and Shirkra in turn. ‘Come. I will show you the board, and you can tell me if you are pleased. I hope that you are pleased with me.’
‘As do I, Gamesman,’ Shirkra said. ‘As do I.’
The Gamesman grinned at Shirkra, but it was a false smile. He reached in the air, clicked his fingers, and once again, the room fell into darkness.
Chapter Seventeen
‘What will you do when you see Mother again, oh Boy, my brother?’
‘I will tell her of all the things we have seen these ten thousand years, oh Girl, my sister. I will tell her our tale in a heartbeat. What will you do?’
‘Oh, I will just smell her, my brother. I will wrap myself in her arms and I will smell her.’
Canning had studied the Duet on their journey to the See House. The way they spoke frightened him. Hardly surprising: he was, after all, a coward. But this was different. They put him in mind of the worst aspects of childhood. All the cruelties of the young had flowered within them and sparkled in their eyes.
He was still held in the red ball: a prisoner of light. But it was something more besides. It was a thing of memory, humming with the same power he had felt in the Bowels. Was it the essence of memories? Did they look like this, at root, this cold and draining light? Perhaps it is a memory itself.
As he stared at its sides, he thought he saw things there, images from his past and a thousand others. He tried to feel that old power again; tried to grasp it by its edges. But it was useless. He was just Canning. He knew what awaited him now: Shirkra, and her Mother.
‘Unimportant.’
He looked up. Boy and Girl were standing before the light, staring in at him. He wasn’t sure which one had spoken.
‘Yes, my lord and lady?’
Boy giggled. ‘Lord and lady! Very nice, very nice. Oh, it is lovely to be worshipped again!’
Girl poked Boy in the side. ‘Ask him! Ask him!’ She turned away, looking coyly at the ground.
Boy laughed, and grinned at Canning. ‘Sometimes my sister is so shy, Unimportant. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘No … of course not, my lord, my lady, of course I don’t mind.’
Boy bowed. ‘She wonders, Unimportant, how you would like to die?’
Girl was leering at the former Tactician, her face pressed against the light.
Canning’s mind raced through possible answers. ‘I do not want to die,’ was what he finally came up with.
Girl looked confused. ‘But all of you people die! If I knew I was going to die, I would think of nothing else. I would plan my death, over and over again.’
‘That would be a sad way to live.’
The Duet laughed together. ‘You are a fine man to speak of sad lives!’ cried Boy.
‘A fine man indeed,’ said Girl.
Canning raised his hands, palms spread open like the supplicant he had always been.
‘Let me help you, please,’ he said, his voice trembling. ‘There must be something I could do. Please don’t send me back to them.’
There came the sound of footsteps, and the three of them turned towards the noise. There was no one on the streets, these days, no one at all, so the footfalls echoed along Greatgift like shots from a handcannon.
That was strange. But stranger still was the reaction from Boy and Girl. The Duet fell forward, onto their knees, clutching at the sides of their heads.
‘Sister!’ Boy hissed. ‘They have brought a strong one, tonight! The strongest in years!’
Girl did not reply. She seemed in a worse state than Boy, lying on her front, face down and weeping into the cobblestones.
The red light flickered and disappeared, and the former Tactician crashed to the ground. He yelped, and scrambled to his feet.
Three figures were approaching. At first, Canning took them for a group of drunks. Two men in hooded brown cloaks were dragging along a woman dressed in white. Her arms were thrown across the men’s shoulders, and her head lolled wildly. For the briefest of moments, Canning caught a glimpse of her eyes, and saw that they were pale things, little ovals of bone.
Boy and Girl moaned as the three figures approached. For a second, Boy made eye contact with the strange, drunken woman, and he cried out like a wounded animal. Before long, however, the Duet were silent and still. Canning watched them for what felt like a long while: he was sure he could just make out something surrounding them, a kind of bubble of pale light. He thought he saw figures, there, moving across the surface. But soon they were gone.
The man on the left pulled his hood aside. He was middle-aged, perhaps as old as Canning, with a bald head and dark skin. His eyes darted wildly.
‘They are down, but they won’t be for long,’ he said to the other man.
‘No. We have to move, and get her out of here.’ This man removed his own hood. He was rough looking, his raw white skin peppered with black stubble. His head was coated with a tight mass of black curls, which he had greased with a sweet-smelling oil. He was younger than his companion, perhaps in his mid-thirties.
The woman in the centre coughed violently, and vomited a dark line of blood. She was very young: a girl, really, no older than fifteen or sixteen. Her blonde hair was tied back with string, and she had a long nose, like the snout of an animal. Her skin was a sickly yellow.
The older man nodded at Canning.
‘You should come with us. Right now. They’ll kill you, if they find you. They’ll kill you for years.’ His accent was strange. It was not of the Plateau – Canning was sure of it.
‘Kill me for years?’ he whimpered. By the Machinery, he despised himself sometimes.
The other man pointed to one of the narrow side streets that veered south. ‘Let’s go.’
Canning glanced down at the Duet. They had begun to stir; it would not be long before they awoke.
He made up his mind in an instant, and followed the newcomers to the alleyway.
**
‘You are not from the Overland,’ Canning said.
They were sitting in the shadow of a decrepit mansion, a rambling old building of the type one often found between the Centre and the Far Below, suspended between a marvellous past and an impoverished present. The woman was still unconscious; the men had carried her between them, yet still managed to set a pace that was far beyond the former Tactician. He lost them on several occasions, and was ashamed to find them waiting for him round some distant corner. Ah, shame: my old friend.
The two
men looked at one another, then back at Canning. ‘No,’ said the older man. ‘This is our first time here.’
‘We are from the South,’ said the other man.
‘There is nowhere south of the Overland, except the Wite,’ Canning said. ‘You’re from the desert?’
‘No,’ said the older man. ‘Our country lies beyond the desert. We call it the Wite, too – interesting, that we have the same name for it.’
‘Yes,’ Canning said. Interesting and bizarre. Perhaps this is some new trick.
‘It is not a country we are from. It is a realm of disaster.’
It was the woman who spoke; Canning was startled to find her sitting up, leaning on her elbows. Her eyes had taken on a more human appearance, and her skin was now a healthier tone, though she still seemed weak. She had the same strange accent as the men, but there was a harsh edge to her voice; she was powerful, and she knew it.
‘I am Controller Arlan,’ the older man said. ‘This is Controller Sanndro’ – he gestured at the other man – ‘and this lady is Raxx, a Manipulator of the Remnants.’
‘They call themselves Controllers,’ spat Raxx, ‘as if that means something. But all they do is chaperone us. They are just bodyguards.’
‘We dragged you away from death today,’ said Sanndro with a smile. He did not seem surprised by her aggression. ‘As we have done many times in the past.’
‘Hmm. I’ll give you that.’ Raxx clambered to her feet, and placed a hand on Sanndro’s head like it was a fence post. ‘You are very good at dragging things.’
She laughed, and turned to Canning. ‘What is your name?’
Unimportant. ‘Timmon Canning. Just Canning, though. Everyone calls me Canning.’
‘Canning. Very well, then. You were a help to us today, Canning, though I doubt you knew what you were doing. You distracted them.’
‘I assure you, whatever I did was perfectly accidental.’ He never found it sensible to talk himself up. In any case, it was the truth.
‘Hmm. I’m sure you’re right,’ said Raxx. ‘Anyway, no matter what you did, their thoughts were elsewhere when we came upon them, and for that I am grateful. It would not have been so easy, without you.’
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