To David, their stay in Uhlton had taken on the reality of a dream. Since they had arrived he had bathed, been given fresh clothes and now dinner in a hall crowded with what Mr Buchan had described as his executive staff. To David’s way of thinking they didn’t look at all like executive staff. Many wore guns, several bore lumpy old scars and eye patches. Even Mr Buchan was missing an ear.
Mr Buchan was one of the largest men, David had ever seen, David had been expecting that, but it was one thing to hear about something another to see it. But for all his size he did not seem ill or slovenly, in fact, he moved and spoke with an energy that David found exhausting. He roared and bellowed and punctuated exclamations with a huge roast leg of lamb that he shook in the air as though it were a mere chicken bone.
The hall in which they ate was cavernous and lit by hundreds of candles – so that the high ceiling was dim with dull smoke – and the table along which they all sat ran almost the entire length of it. The table had been piled high with food, most of which had gone into either Cadell’s or Mr Buchan’s stomach, both men truly had prodigious appetites, and David was reminded of his dream at the Lode: Cadell filling his mouth with the frozen corpses of birds.
Mr Whig sat to David’s right, and Cadell was across the table from him as quiet as he had ever seen him. Mr Buchan had been incredibly polite to David, and everyone kept saying how pleased they were to meet him at last and how sorry they were to have heard about his father.
But now, bathed and fed, it was all taking on the qualities of a dream. David struggled to keep his eyes open: a battle he was fast losing.
Unfortunately he suspected that sleep was still a long way off.
‘What is all this?’ he had asked at one stage, never expecting anyone to listen, but Mr Buchan waved for silence.
“David, dear Mr Milde,” he said throatily. “Think of us as the last bastion of the Confluence Party, outside of Hardacre. And certainly the last with any hope of affecting the destruction of the Roil.” He raised his glass. “To the Engine.”
The whole table took up the toast. “To the Engine.”
David glanced over at Cadell. He didn’t look very happy, in fact quite the opposite. Cadell glowered at Buchan, and the big man winked and blew him a kiss.
At last Mr Buchan reached into his elegant vest, patterned like a peacock’s tail, and pulled out a big pocket watch dwarfed by his massive hands so that it looked like some miniaturists’ fancy.
“Gentlemen, it is late and there is still much to do. Not to mention our exodus in two days. I bid you all good night.” His eyes flicked to Cadell. “Dare you brave my parlour, Mr Fly.”
Cadell’s expression was unreadable. “If we must,” he said quietly.
Mr Buchan nodded it was so and rose from the table like some huge beast breaking the surface of a primordial lake. In one movement, he pulled the napkin from around his throat – a napkin that for all his eating and food punctuating was spotless – folded it neatly and slipped it back into a silver napkin ring.
At that signal the hall quickly emptied. Half a dozen people nodding at David and wishing him the best and how pleased they were to finally meet such an upstanding young gentleman.
Then all but David, Cadell, Mr Buchan and Mr Whig remained.
“Gentlemen,” Buchan said, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “If you would follow me.”
On the rare occasions David needed to use the words “richly appointed”, he was merely trying to describe something like this. Mr Buchan’s parlour was the most “richly appointed” room David had ever seen.
Big comfortable chairs covered in plump cushions, lush wall hangings with scenes from history – famous battles and orators speaking – and, above it all, painted in glittering gold and stretching across the ceiling was a Vermatisaur, its many, many eyes rubies, its scales highlighted by diamonds.
Mr Buchan decanted a bottle of sherry and poured everyone a drink.
Mr Whig shut the door behind them and leant on a chair that faced a fireplace so clean that David suspected it had not been used in years.
There was a wooden writing desk and a broad backed wooden chair at the other end of the parlour. A tall ream of paper sat neatly on the edge of the desk, a blue glass paperweight a globe depicting Shale, the single continent prominent, rested upon it. David stared at the manuscript with interest and Mr Buchan caught his gaze.
“My Magnum Opus,” he said. “A history of the Confluents, partly apocryphal, particularly the material regarding Oscar the Fishmonger, which is appropriate for such a party such as ours don’t you think? I intend writing the last chapter once all this is done. Once I know how this turns out.”
Mr Buchan waved his glass of sherry in the direction of the desk, whilst his gaze settled upon Cadell.
“Many was the time I sat at that desk in Chapman’s Tower facing an even harder task than history. Writing letter after letter, each more hopeless than the last, and you never came. I begged you, implored and cajoled, and I do not do those things, and still you did not come and now. And now. Here you are. A little late by my reckoning, wouldn’t you agree, John?”
Cadell’s face wrinkled. “Well, I am here now.”
Buchan clenched his free hand into a fist and shook it in Cadell’s face. “How dare you? How dare you? I lost good men and women to this fight of ours. I have watched my party fail. But for mere chance leavened with paranoia, both Whig and I would have died in Stade’s attack. But we survived and with us hope, though even that has soured this last year. Our heroism, Medicine’s heroism, Warwick’s life, all of it has come to naught. I have seen my world come undone and I have not ignored it. But there is nothing that I can do.”
“And what do you think I can?”
“Do you know we even sent an expedition North, flew directly there.”
“You did what!” Cadell said. “An expedition to Tearwin Meet. That is folly. Absolute folly.”
“Desperation is a potent engine,” Mr Buchan said significantly. “It was an expedition equipped with the latest technologies, and some of the brightest people my city has ever produced, intellectuals of the calibre of the Penns. Not one of them returned, they crossed the wall and then we lost contact. Things are bad, Cadell.”
Cadell snorted. “And you think I don’t know that. Me who numbers in years more than all your cabinet’s ages combined. It is bad, and it will get much worse. It will get much worse and night will fall. How dare you? You, who has not seen what I have seen. You, who does not know the cost of what you ask.
“Why do you think that Stade does what he does? He fears that path, almost as much as I. You released me, but I did not ask to be released. How dare you rage at me?”
Mr Buchan stabbed a finger in the air, his big face reddened and his jowls shook. “I dare because I see what is happening now. I see the Roil growing. And we know enough of the restraints upon you, and the reasons for them.”
Cadell snarled. “Greater cities than you will ever know have fallen, greater civilisations have been destroyed in the cure. My world was wiped clean, and this life, this cage, and these hungers are my curse. The Engine is a cruel saviour, Mr Buchan. Cruel and cold. When you deal with it, you deal with a servant of death. There are no degrees in this, only a different scouring, and the slimmest most terrible of hopes.”
“But they are all we have! We let you out, we let the monster out because it is all we have.”
Cadell hung his head as though he could not face his accuser, defeated at last. “That they are.”
Mr Buchan was not satisfied, his face darkened. “And how could it be otherwise? Nine metropolises have fallen and three remain, though one has but weeks left to it. We are an obstinate people, Cadell. Why, the festival is still being held in Chapman. Tate fell because it was too proud to seek assistance. Mcmahon, pinnacle of everything that this world has achieved since yours tumbled, armed itself to the teeth and it fell faster than the lot of them.” He sat down, his voice dropping to a hars
h whisper. “And where were you? Where were you when all those people died? Where were you when the darkness smothered the refugees, when Endyms and Vermatisaurs tore Aerokin screaming from the sky?”
“You know where I was, where all the Old Men were. And then it took a long time to sate my hungers, to end my madness and face my fears.”
“Bah, you’ve made your fears a certainty.”
“Enough!” Mr Whig raised his hands pleadingly. “There are no certainties, Buchan,” he said. “Perhaps if the cities had banded together, instead of breaking apart we could have dealt with this threat. But they did not. The Engine is a last hope, but it was not the only one.”
“It is now,” Buchan said. “It is now.”
Chapter 31
Name an engine that hasn’t ruined us. I dare you. But of course you cannot. Our relationship with machines has always been… complicated.
• Norse – The Metal Captives
THE ROIL THREE MILES SOUTH OF THE ROIL EDGE
Margaret checked her readings once again and hoped against hope that she was right. Another ten minutes and she should be at the edge of the Roil. Another twenty and she would be out of fuel. A near thing, indeed.
She was so intent upon her readings that she did not see the armoured carriage until it had almost collided with the Melody.
Where in all the Roil had that come from? It wasn’t from Tate, but that didn’t make it friendly. At once she charged up her guns, they whined in her ears, competing with the sudden pounding of her heart.
The carriage flashed its forward lights at her.
On and off, on and off.
Margaret studied the vehicle, it was huge and clumsy looking, but cannon bristled from it like the spines of a particularly aggressive animal – and not all of it was endothermic weaponry.
Even the most cursory glance suggested that she was outgunned, even if it wasn’t nearly as elegant as the Melody.
Margaret brought her carriage to a halt. She was almost out of fuel, the cooling units were failing and the engine light had started flashing again.
A door in the side of the other carriage opened, revealing a figure clothed in a cool suit: a design similar though much inferior to her own. The rubber too thick to allow smooth movement, the person within it reduced to a lumpish clownishness, all hips and goggle eyes.
Margaret could not suppress a smile at the sight of such primitive and clunky garb: a museum piece as outdated as a carriage that would waste munitions space on regular guns, as though its designers weren’t quite sure who the enemy was.
Well, these people have not had twenty years to perfect their weaponry.
The figure gestured for her to follow, then struggled back inside its carriage and turned the vehicle around, aft guns aimed on the Melody.
Follow she did, down a short road and towards a grim thick-walled building jutting from the ground. A door in the front of the construction opened and light spilled out, so bright that she had to blink back tears, then, from the top of the opening, water streamed down, sealing the opening in a cataract of cold.
She followed the carriage in, through the falling water, and the gate closed shut behind her. The carriage stopped in front of her, she did the same. Cautiously, she climbed out, her ice guns armed.
Soldiers in more of those ridiculously antiquated cold suits stood around the Melody, their guns aimed at her.
The driver was already out of his vehicle. He came over to her and put out his hand. Margaret didn’t know what to do, she stared at the hand as though it might strike out at her.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re quite safe here. Safe as you have been in a long while, I’ll wager. My name’s Anderson. Welcome to the Interface. Of all the things I had ever expected to come from the South you are the last.”
That last line did not ring true.
You were expecting something, just not me, Margaret thought. I can see it in your face. You’re scared.
Margaret hesitated a little longer before gripping his hand; it was cold and dry. The air here was colder than the Melody’s cabin, moths would not last a second.
“Where am I?” She asked.
“Somewhere you shouldn’t be, a secret. But as always the Roil contains more secrets than even I could imagine. You shouldn’t be here, but you are. And this facility shouldn’t exist, but it does.” He dipped into a shallow bow. “This is the Council’s little enclave in the darkness. In truth it is the Interface no more.”
He tapped the fire-scored chassis of the Melody Amiss.
“That’s quite a sophisticated machine you’ve got there, and one that has seen some combat.”
Margaret refused to be fazed. He was just a man, and this Interface was nothing. Anderson had no reason to be so cocky. “My father and mother designed it,” she said. “What else would you expect?”
Anderson’s eyes narrowed, as though a thought had come upon him, and a very surprising thought at that. Margaret couldn’t tell if he was alarmed or pleased. He reached out to brush the hair from her face, and Margaret knocked his arm away.
“You’ve got the look all right.” Anderson whistled. “Penn! You’re a Penn. Why I was little more than a lad when I saw your father. Travelled all the way to Tate, back then we had train lines that ran the length of Shale.” Anderson laughed. “My, but I’m forgetting myself. You look tired. Rest a while. There is time for talk later, perhaps I’ll even explain all this to your liking.” He raised his hands in mock delight. “My, this just gets more interesting by the minute.”
“Margaret,” Margaret said as he led her away from her machine, towards a door from which had streamed cold-suited soldiers.
“Pardon?” Anderson said.
“My name is Margaret. Margaret Penn.”
“Well, Margaret Penn, I can’t tell you how pleased we are to see you.”
Margaret couldn’t say the same.
The Interface was a series of cold, long chambers guarded by sombre men and women who had seen far too much of horror. She was held for a while in the loading bay with her Melody as it was checked, with a rigour matching that of Tate, for Witmoths. Just as she was checked, her temperature taken, her pupil response measured. She did not surrender her weapons, nor was it requested that she did so.
Her fingers kept straying to the hilt of her rime blade.
They watched her now, and she could not help but feel sorry for them.
Their little enclave as Anderson put it was just that… little. Insignificant when compared to the efforts of Tate.
Margaret did not feel safe here, but that was barely an impediment.
She had grown up in the Roil and, as terrible as her last few days had been, she had endured these horrors all her life. She knew herself capable of dealing with them, and if she failed she would die. Death did not scare her. But it terrified these soldiers.
It had beaten them down, and it showed, not in their movements or the way they handled their weapons, absolute efficiency personified, but in their eyes. These people of the light had been thrown into a nightmarish place that did not hate, but just devoured. She could only begin to imagine how awful that might be.
In Tate, once the land beyond had succumbed suicide rates tripled and never really stopped. Some could not live in the dark, and you did not know if you could until you had to.
She noticed something else in these guards and the way they regarded her – a sort of grudging respect.
“You came from Tate in that?” One of them had asked, pointing back at the Melody, and here in the light Margaret could see just how much damage it had sustained, its armour dented, a rear tire worn down to metal. Seeing it so battered, Margaret had trouble believing it herself.
“Yes, all the way.”
The soldier bowed deeply. “Well, madam, you are indeed the bravest woman I have ever met, and I have Drifter in my blood. My mother and my aunts on her side were all air maidens, warrior pilots.” She laughed.
Margaret could not hold her
gaze.
It wounded her. She did not consider it bravery, there had been no choice in the matter. Well, that was not quite true. She had fled, and she was not yet ready to dwell too long on those who had stayed; nor the dim quaking of the earth as brilliance swept overhead, followed by the gently falling snow.
“Not brave,” she said. “It was just stupid luck. If I hadn’t gone looking for my parents I would be dead too.”
“But you kept going. You drove through the night-dark miles and we know what’s out there. All of us do. There is no escape in the Roil, but horror after horror.”
“Crew, enough gawking,” Anderson, said. “She has been a long time coming to us, let her have some peace,”
The guards nodded and gave her space, though they did not stop their scrutiny. Within half an hour, Margaret suspected she had been viewed by the entire installation. And as for peace, they had given her very little of that.
“I’m sorry to keep you so long here, but I thought it best that people should see you.” Anderson whispered to her.
“Why? They hardly know me.”
“You give them hope,” he said.
Margaret shuddered. The last thing she wanted to hear. How could she give anyone hope when she held none of it herself? Nausea threatened to engulf her. She struggled against it. Pushed it down, just as she had pushed everything else down.
Anderson must have seen some of this in her face for he led her gently from the loading bay.
“I do not wish to be anyone’s hope. If anything, I bring despair. My city is lost, destroyed. And if we have succumbed to the Roil how can you hope to defeat it?” Her voice was flat, she avoided Anderson’s gaze. “I did not ask for this. The things I have seen would extinguish anyone’s hope. I did not face my city’s attackers, but fled. All that I loved I have deserted.”
Anderson flinched at that. Margaret wondered what lay in his past. She had been driven away from the Roil. What might drive a man into it?
“And yet you are here, only a few hundred yards from the edge of the Roil,” he said. “You have survived. And survival is no small thing in these times. Now, you must be very tired.”
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