The Strategist

by Gerrard Cowan

  ‘I heard a noise,’ the Listener said. She looked at the Watcher, who still held the instrument to her ear. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Brightling threw the instrument on the ground.

  ‘Were you listening? Did you hear something?’

  Brightling shook her head. ‘No.’ Information was power, and she would keep hers to herself.

  ‘Very well.’ The Listener nodded, but did not seem convinced. ‘I will come for you in the morning.’

  She left the room. Brightling climbed into bed, her mask and the instrument in her arms, and stared at the veil until morning came, or whatever passed for morning in this place.

  **

  The Listener came with it.

  ‘You lied to me in the night,’ she said. She walked to the side of the bed and studied the Watcher. Brightling was not afraid. There was no anger in the Listener’s eyes: just curiosity. The Listener twirled a blonde curl around her little finger. ‘I have thought about what you said. I listen to everything, you know. No one has ears like mine. And I know you lied.’

  She took the instrument from Brightling. ‘What did you lie about, Brightling?’ She held the instrument to her eye, and peered at it carefully. ‘Why did you lie?’

  Brightling rattled through her options. The truth is likely as good as anything, in this place. She climbed out of the bed.

  ‘I’m sorry. I was afraid.’

  ‘That is not the whole truth.’

  Brightling sucked in a breath. ‘I heard a voice.’

  The Listener grasped Brightling by her shoulders. ‘A voice? Was it the Voice? What did it say?’

  ‘It …’ She thought of lying, but realised she needed the Listener’s help to crawl through this maze. ‘It is a … darkness.’ She held her mask in her hand. ‘It is a thing of memory, isn’t it?’

  The Listener nodded. ‘Of course, of course, we all are.’

  ‘Then I have something that could hurt it.’ She put on her mask. Through its eyes the Listener seemed small, and old indeed. Brightling was gratified to see fear, and pain, in her eyes. Brightling concentrated, as she had been trained to do as a Watcher, all those years. The mask must become your second skin … your inner eyes …

  ‘Please, stop,’ the Listener whispered.

  Brightling nodded, and removed the mask.

  ‘I will right the wrongs they have committed: the One, and Ruin. With this – the last part of the Absence.’

  The Listener clicked her fingers, and they were once again on the tower upon the hill. It was daylight; a cold, pale sun glared down at them.

  The Listener gestured at Brightling’s mask. ‘That thing – it has a power. But then, so does the Voice.’

  Brightling nodded. ‘I will destroy it.’ Something was pushing her forward, down a dark and tangled path. Instinct. ‘Just show me the way to the Voice. Show me to the Machinery.’

  The Listener grinned. ‘You don’t need me to show you the way.’ She looked down at the ground. ‘They will take you where you need to go.’

  Brightling glanced at the tower floor. She barely had time to see the white hands, before they pulled her into darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Brandione marched into the desert at the head of his army of dust.

  The sands stretched on interminably. There was no wind here, but occasionally, he thought he saw movement in the emptiness: a swirl amid the dust. He wondered if she was out there, watching him, guiding the army on its march. But he dismissed the notion. He could always feel her, when she was nearby.

  Wayward was at his side, buried under a mass of black robes.

  ‘How long have we been here?’ Brandione asked. The sands sucked up his words.

  Wayward turned his head to him. ‘Since the march began. We must march on, ever on, across the desert.’

  ‘I remember we were in the tent, you and I. That was my life, wasn’t it? The tent, and the Queen.’

  ‘Life moves on.’

  ‘I feel no heat. I have no thirst. How can that be? Is this even real?’

  ‘Real? Am I real, Brandione? Is the Queen real?’

  Brandione did not respond. He stopped walking, turned his head, and looked back, to his endless troops. They trudged forward with a deadening rhythm, these pale creatures of sand, before coming to a halt. Their shapes and features shifted when he focused on them. In one moment, they were clearly crafted figures, a man with a fat face or a child with long hair. But in the next, they were barely visible amid the waves of sand.

  ‘If you had to choose between being a soldier or a scholar, which would it be?’

  Brandione turned back to Wayward.

  ‘I made that choice when I joined the armies of the Overland.’

  ‘Oh. I thought you would find the decision more agonising than that. I’m quite disappointed, truth be told.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘No, you’re not. Anyway, I don’t believe you. You don’t prefer being a soldier to a scholar, because you don’t see a need to choose. You were an ambitious student. You read deeply of history, and it gave you a will to succeed beyond the dusty halls of the Administrators or the creaking shelves of the libraries. You feared you were a coward, brave only in debate, courageous only in his thoughts. You wanted to prove yourself, and you succeeded, so much so that you climbed to the top of the military tree, even though you inserted yourself at the lowliest possible position.’

  Wayward grinned at Brandione.

  ‘Sounds like you’ve figured me out,’ the one-time General replied.

  ‘Well, we’ve been thinking about you for thousands of years, my good man.’

  ‘Then I am at a disadvantage.’ He turned to the empty horizon. ‘I would like to be with the Queen again. I have so much more to ask her.’

  ‘You will see her when you see her,’ Wayward said. ‘She knows what you need.’ He smiled. ‘But it is almost upon us. We are nearing the board! We are nearing the game!’

  Brandione saw nothing but the usual rolling sands.

  ‘Wayward, I will not lie to you. I’m not ready for this game, whatever it may be. How do I find a memory? I feel like I need more help.’

  ‘More help? Pah! Nothing can help you in the Old Place!’

  Brandione sighed.

  The courtier placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You are the Last Doubter. You are a soldier and a scholar. You will know what to do, in the end.’ He chuckled. ‘Besides – you cannot disappoint your audience.’

  ‘What?’

  Wayward gestured to the West. After a while, Brandione could just about make out shapes: figures, shadowing the path of the dust army.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Immortals: weak ones, like me. They follow their betters like parasites, and live off their glory.’

  Suddenly Wayward stopped talking. He looked to the horizon, and smiled.

  ‘Do you know where you are yet?’

  Brandione looked ahead. At first he saw nothing but the sands and the sky. After a while, though, something strange began to happen. Shapes began to form. The contours of buildings emerged, and great domes and glimmering spires shot up from the ground. For a moment, he wondered if he had gone mad, or if this was some effect of the desert: mirages, they were called. But no, that could not be possible. Wayward saw it, too.

  ‘If I didn’t know better,’ Brandione said, ‘I’d say that was the Centre of the Overland. But it can’t be, can it? We haven’t reached the southern settlements, let alone the Far Below.’

  Wayward shrugged. ‘The desert has taken us here, Brandione. The desert has taken us.’

  Far ahead, a hill had appeared, rising above the rest of the city. On the top was a building, a monstrosity of marble with a purple hue. Great statues loomed up from the structure; they were too far away to make out the details, but Brandione knew what he was looking at.

  ‘They have rebuilt the Circus,’ he said. ‘But this time, it has been made for the Strateg
ist.’ He looked at Wayward. ‘That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?’

  Wayward nodded. ‘From now on, you will be alone. I will stay here, with the dead.’ He gestured at the army.

  Brandione felt suddenly cold. ‘What is the point of the army, if it cannot come with me?’

  Wayward reached out, and touched the Last Doubter’s face. ‘The Queen knows what she has done, and we all must follow the Queen.’

  Brandione turned back to the Circus. The sand had melted away below him, and he found himself standing on a stone path, snaking its way forward to the Primary Hill.

  He looked once more at Wayward and his useless army of dust, and started walking to the Circus, to whatever awaited him there.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘You are finding all of this difficult, Drayn.’

  The girl looked at Alexander, startled. She felt as if she had been woken from a dream.

  ‘I put things away, you see. I try to get rid of them, so I don’t have to think about them again. You’re making me relive them.’

  ‘Not me, Drayn.’ Alexander wore a serious expression. ‘This hasn’t got anything to do with me.’

  They were in the grounds of the great house. It was said there was not much land on the Habitation, and that the Thonns owned half of it. Drayn wasn’t sure of that. But as she looked around the garden, she thought it might be true. The house itself seemed far from where they stood, just at the edge of the woods that clustered around the back of the property. In front of the trees was a wide stretch of water that the Thonns called the pond, though it was more of a lake, really.

  Drayn and Alexander were standing between the woods and the pond. The trees were dark, and chirped with life.

  ‘I don’t recognise this memory, Alexander.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘We may be seeing it from a different angle than you remember.’

  ‘How can that be? If this is my memory, wouldn’t we see it just exactly as I remember?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Memories are their own things, especially in the Old Place.’ He looked up at the sky, and his attention seemed fixed on a distant point. Drayn followed the direction of his gaze, until she saw it: a kind of tear in the fabric of the great blue expanse, crackling with a black energy.

  ‘What is that?’

  Alexander sighed. ‘Memories are such funny, terrible things.’

  There was a flurry of noise, and Cranwyl burst out from the trees. Not the real Cranwyl. Not my Cranwyl. Just a memory. He ran through them, as if they were nothing more than puffs of air. Drayn didn’t know why that still came as a surprise, down here, in a world where she could walk through memory.

  Cranwyl hurried to the edge of the pond and turned back to the forest, wildly scanning the trees. Twigs and branches were caught in his hair, and his clothes were muddy.

  ‘I remember this now,’ Drayn said, smiling at Alexander. ‘This is about a year after Simeon … you know. It’s the only time I caught Cranwyl. Ever.’

  Alexander looked around him. ‘I can’t see you anywhere.’

  ‘That’s because you’re looking in the wrong places. Like Cranwyl.’

  At the edge of the water, just next to where Cranwyl was now crouching, there was the slightest of movements.

  ‘Ah,’ Alexander said.

  The waters parted and Drayn leapt out, throwing herself upon Cranwyl with a blood-curdling scream. Cranwyl cried out, and the pair of them bowled forward onto the ground.

  ‘At last!’ shouted the Drayn from the memory, her knees on Cranwyl’s chest. She was utterly sodden, her clothes a muddy mess. Still, she had won.

  This was her happiest memory.

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Cranwyl spluttered. ‘No one said you could hide in the pond!’

  ‘No one said I couldn’t hide in the pond, either.’

  ‘No, well, yeah, I suppose you have a point.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘How did you breathe? Are you magical?’

  Drayn cried out in triumph, and raised her hand before her friend, displaying a round tube she had fashioned from a stick. Her little games with Cranwyl had given her such focus, back then. They were just what she had needed.

  Cranwyl took her by the arms and gently pushed her away. ‘Very clever. Very, very clever.’ He stood, and wagged a finger at her. ‘But you won’t catch me out like that again. I’ll put some bitey fish in the pond.’

  ‘Bitey fish?’

  ‘Hmm, yeah. You won’t want to hide in there, when the bitey fish are in the water.’

  There was a movement far ahead, at the house itself.

  ‘Here she comes,’ sighed the real Drayn. ‘Here to spoil my five minutes of fun.’

  Mother was smiling when she came to the pond, but that didn’t mean much where she was concerned. Drayn and Cranwyl turned guiltily towards her, hands behind their backs, standing up straight and formal. The real Drayn watched this with disgust. I never should have let her frighten me like I did.

  Mother’s smile was a fleeting thing, as it often was.

  ‘Drayn, you are wet.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  Mother looked at Cranwyl. ‘How did she get wet?’

  ‘She hid from me in the pond, madam. And she caught me!’

  Mother squinted.

  ‘Well. That sounds like fun.’ She turned her focus back to her daughter. ‘It’s almost time for dinner. Get into the house, and by the Autocrat’s nose, clean yourself up.’

  Drayn bowed. Mother nodded once to Cranwyl, turned, and walked back to the house.

  ‘I never understand why she always comes for you herself,’ Cranwyl said, when Mother was well out of earshot. ‘Why doesn’t she just send a servant?’

  ‘She wants to keep an eye on me, that’s why. She doesn’t trust the servants. Except you, Cranwyl.’

  Cranwyl nodded, and Drayn walked back to the house.

  **

  They were in the private dining room. It was small, at least in comparison with the Great Hall, and far more comfortable, to Drayn’s mind anyway. The walls were lined with shelves that groaned under the weight of mementoes and trinkets, from miniature portraits of earlier Thonns to jewellery and statuettes. The floor was overlaid with a deep red rug, woven from the furs of some unknown beast; it was a haven for discarded food, this rug, but no one ever thought to remove it. The room was gently lit by discreetly placed candles, which gave the intimate surroundings a warm glow.

  There was no chandelier.

  In the centre was a circular wooden table, an old, battered thing that had been in the family for generations. The Drayn of the memory sat between Mother and Dad, attacking her plate of fish with gusto. Mother picked at her food, as ever, and Dad lay back in his chair, worrying at a goblet of wine. He was drinking more. That was how the badness started.

  ‘You seem happy today, Drayn,’ Mother said.

  They never mentioned Simeon in the House of Thonn. No one ever said that name again, or at least not within earshot of a Thonn or their servants. This was not the first time that an upstart member of a great House had disappeared. The people were not surprised, and they did not care.

  So when Mother said that Drayn seemed happy, she meant it was the happiest the girl had looked since she put a noose around her uncle’s neck.

  ‘Yes,’ Drayn said, spooning more fish into her mouth. She saw no need to elaborate.

  ‘Cranwyl has been good for you,’ Mother said.

  Drayn shrugged.

  ‘He has been good for you, Drayn, and he has been good for the House of Thonn. Servants like Cranwyl are hard to come by. We will keep him on forever, I dare say.’

  Drayn met her mother’s eye. For once, they agreed.

  ‘He has helped me … with my thoughts,’ the girl said.

  Mother nodded, and Dad snorted. The female Thonns turned their attention to him. He had been strange, since Simeon went away.

  ‘Perhaps your father needs a Cranwyl of his own,’ Mother said.

  Dad laughed: a cold sound.
‘That would be good, wouldn’t it? A Cranwyl, to talk to in the night. Hmm.’ He slurped at his wine, then slumped forward in his chair, picking some food up in his fingers. He missed his mouth, and it fell onto his chest.

  Mother lifted a small, silver bell from the table and rang it, sending a gentle tinkling through the room. Two male servants appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Take my husband to bed.’

  The servants nodded, and hooked Dad up from his chair. He did not object. His head lolled backwards and forwards, and his eyes glazed over.

  Mother watched them leave, gave a little shake of her head, and returned to her meal.

  ‘Wine is no good,’ she said after a while. ‘Stay away from it.’

  Drayn nodded. ‘I will.’

  Mother sighed. ‘It’s not just the wine, of course. He is still upset by Simeon.’

  The dreaded name had been spoken.

  ‘I know.’

  Mother studied her daughter for a moment. ‘What do you know, Drayn?’ Her interest seemed genuine.

  Drayn hesitated, before taking the plunge. ‘I know he hasn’t been the same, since it happened. It wasn’t obvious at first. He seemed to think it was the right thing to do, like the rest of us. But he got quiet, after a while. He never used to be quiet. And then he started on the wine. He never used to drink so much wine. He said something to me, once, too, but I don’t know—’

  ‘What did he say?’

  Drayn paused for a moment. ‘He asked me if I was happy, and I said I was. Then he said that was unusual in the House of Thonn.’

  Mother tutted. ‘What a thing to say to your only child.’ She gave Drayn a hard look. ‘You shouldn’t listen to him, you know. He’s weak. I never saw it until now. He doesn’t understand what things are like in the House. He’s an outsider. You know, we used to marry our cousins – did you know that? Just to avoid bringing outsiders into the family. Only Thonns understand Thonns. This is a hard rock we live on, and the Houses survive by breeding hard people.’

  Drayn nodded. ‘I think you were right. Dad does need a Cranwyl.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Cranwyl made me feel better. He taught me to take the memory, and put it into a box, and keep it closed away, if I couldn’t just destroy it completely.’