“I could pull out your lungs before you opened your mouth to scream. There isn’t time,” it said.
David’s head pounded with what he would have considered, before today, to be the most horrible headache possible. He wiped his face and his fingers came away sticky with blood, much more than last time: it spilled from his nose, his lips, and his ears. His clothes were covered in blood, and vomit. His whole body had become a bruise or a wound.
“I'm sorry,” the Engine of the World said, helping him to his feet. “There isn't time to clean you up. There isn't much time for anything. You've done well to get here. Cadell did well to get you here, but that is not enough. This last great choice must be your own.” It pointed to a cage that sat in the middle of the room, dark metal, hooked and barbed as the walls to Tearwin Meet had been.
David looked at that cage.
“I guess I have to go in there,” he said.
The Engine nodded. “Most cages are a prison, this is a liberation. If you make the choice to enter it.”
David took a deep breath. “I'm ready,” he said.
“Are you? I think not. There is much you do not know, let me illustrate. The Witmoths are not of the Roil, at least, they weren’t at first.” The Engine paused. “David, this world was made with the raw matter of another. Minnow technology, microscopic machinery did the making. The Witmoths were just our most perfect creation. We designed them as a weapon to be used against the Roil itself, to link our troops more effectively, to bind them in strategy, and instead, it was absorbed, and after that the Roil began to think.
“There's all manner of secrets and secret histories and histories of secrets.”
David pulled himself together, got unsteadily to his feet and stared dubiously at the cage.
“And what does that do?”
The Engine laughed lightly. “It engages me,” the Engine said. “It releases all that I am. The memories in you and the memories in the ring.”
“It releases Cadell again?”
“In a way, yes,” the Engine said. “History is a very different thing in this world of ours, David. Not at all what you might expect of it. It bears a rather peculiar weight. Over and over the cities have been remade. The people rebuilt, the Roil beaten back. It is in this city that all your memories are stored, cleaned of all but a vague knowledge of the Roil, then returned to their cities – in bodies rebuilt by minnow machinery.
“It is history as a set of ever diminishing circles. Repeating and repeating, and I’m afraid to say, I don’t think it can contract any more.”
CHAPTER 48
Death was coming. Just no one knew how. Nor that it would be so pervasive. I remember those last days clearly, even before the earth began to shake and those last Roil machines came over the horizon, on their titanic legs, all rage and fire. There’d been a quality to the air, a light positively elegiac.
Doom Patrol: Nights and Mornings on the Last Mountain, Ursula Madrigal
THE OUTER WALL
2098 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
Buchan and Whig sat around the fire, heads almost together, and Buchan’s hands nearly touching the flame. They looked up at the dark walls that Margaret and David had crossed almost half a day ago. “All this effort, and here we wait outside,” Buchan groaned. “Everything that we have done and once again, we’re left waiting.”
Whig patted his arm. “We made it this far, don’t discount that. We saw the pair of them to the edge of the wall.” He pointed at Kara, who sat hunched over, polishing her boots. She’d been polishing them since she’d brought the Dawn back down. Polishing and polishing, not saying a word. Whig said, “It's much harder for her.”
“But still, all this waiting.”
“Quiet,” Kara hissed.
“I did not mean–” Buchan said.
“I said, quiet. Another one’s coming, an iron ship,” Kara said; she ran from cover. “Fourth one today, and it’s coming back.”
Buchan and Whig followed her. They watched the ship curve around the valley, then shoot straight up into the sky. It dipped, then plummeted beyond the wall.
“That’s it,” Kara Jade said. “I’m going up there.”
“And what are you going to do? David said to–”
“I don’t remember David paying me to go on this expedition,” Kara said, sliding her fingers into her gloves. “I’m a free agent. And they’re my friends.” “But–”
She looked at Buchan significantly. “You want to come?”
Buchan shuddered. “No, we will guard the base of the wall. Just in case.” Kara cleared her throat, and spat on the ground. “Yes, just in case. I understand.”
She strode across the gravel, boots gleaming in the red light of sunset. At the edge of the overhang, she turned, and this time there was no mockery in her expression. “Good luck, gentlemen.”
“Be careful,” Buchan said.
Kara laughed, loud and clear in the cool air. “If I was ever careful, ever cautious, I would never have come here, neither would you.”
Buchan couldn’t argue with that.
She was hardly free of the overhang when the ground shook, and ice tumbled from the great wall. A piece that was almost the size of her crashed to the stones nearby and shattered. Kara ducked back under cover as more pieces fell.
“Something’s happening,” Buchan said.
“You don’t say,” Kara said. “The Engine,” she said, and her smile was wide, and grim. “It has to be.”
“And you?”
“I'm still going up. Four iron ships, I reckon there’s a path into the city.”
The Collard Green had already been dragged into the darkness, but the Roslyn Dawn had refused to go into the dark, and Kara couldn’t blame her. There was something ominous about that space beneath the wall despite its warmth. For all David’s declarations that it was safe, it threatened her. Kara was of the sky, as much as her Aerokin. Wide open spaces welcomed her, but that dark, it was old; it seemed to know something and seemed ready to swallow her without hesitation – perhaps the stories that David had told about the Downing Bridge and its malevolent spiders had affected her more than she’d thought.
She folded her arms and walked back to the Dawn.
Buchan shouted after her. “Do you have a death wish, girl?”
Kara Jade smiled. “I think you have me confused with Margaret. The Dawn will keep me safe.”
The Dawn’s doorifice was already opening. Kara could see Buchan’s large form in the dark beneath the overhang, and could just make out Whig’s slender figure behind him; touching his shoulder, talking to him quietly, no doubt, but with a strength that all Whig’s conversations possessed.
She stroked the belly of her Aerokin. “Just you and me,” she said.
The Dawn sighed, released her grip upon the earth and began to fly, rising high and fast. Outside it was cold and dead, but here, wrapped in such perfect life, Kara felt warm, she felt like she was home.
All alone in her Dawn. Finally alone – and never alone.
She couldn't help smiling. Death wish, no! This was all about life!
CHAPTER 49
There was desperation in those last moments. When things tipped over, and everything became mad, both sides did things that were... regrettable. Such is it at the ending of every war. How can forgiveness even be considered? Because it must be. Genocide is the only other option.
Compassionate Hatreds, stafford enwin
TEARWIN MEET
2100 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
They were upon Margaret almost at once.
Her vision narrowed, grew focussed only on the moment: a weakness in the enemy, a break in defence, the turning of teeth or claw. Margaret was back in Tate – in that amphitheatre where she had been wounded, but never beaten.
She struck the first Quarg Hound in the neck, once, twice, and it fell dead. its blood mingled with the snow: a bloody ash.
The second Hound lashed out – and she was ready for it, ducking beneath its grea
t claws, driving the chilled blade into its belly, pulling away as it fell on the sword; already swinging the other blade up and down, and onto its neck. The blade caught on armour, but she found her balance at once, struck down again, and watched the Quarg Hound’s head drop to the ground.
She kicked it away, and heard footsteps behind her. She had spun around in her fighting, no longer had her back to the wall. She remedied that problem, turning on her heel and throwing a blade from her belt towards the sound.
A man there ducked. And the blade clattered off a wall.
“You,” Tope said. “Where’s the boy?”
“I know you,” Margaret said. “You’re too late. He's inside, the door is shut.”
Margaret jabbed her rime blade at the two dead Quarg Hounds. “I killed these. Do not think of me as incapable of killing you.”
“Oh, I know your capabilities. You and I, we are much the same, steeped in blood. Wouldn’t you agree?” Tope slid his knife from its belt, his other hand gripping a pistol. “The boy now, he is something altogether different… undeserving.”
“I don't care. He has made it to the Engine of the World. He has walked through the door. I've delivered the bomb, that is all I ever needed to do.”
Margaret loosened her sword arm, swung the blade once, twice. Tope shot her in the stomach and she toppled to her knees, dropping the rime blade. She reached out towards it, her fingers touched the hilt. Tope gave her an almost sympathetic smile, and dragged the sword away from her.
“Miss Penn, people walk back through doors, too,” Tope said. “And when he does, I will be here. I am a patient man.”
Margaret went for a gun at her belt, and he shot her again. She fell on her side.
“That’s the problem when you try and fight someone else’s fight. This isn’t between you and I, it never was. You think me cruel,” Tope said. “And I am cruel, that’s a Verger’s remit, to be cruel when the rest of the world cannot. But this is given with love.”
Margaret’s world had shrunk to Tope. “Would you just shut up,” she said.
Tope’s lips pursed. He shook a finger at her, then lifted his arm higher. A dark spot on his wrist bubbled and spat. Skin tore free and from the wound a single moth detached itself, shaking out bloody wings. “See, I am also a bringer of gifts.”
Margaret found some vestige of strength. She yanked her last gun from her belt, the wound in her belly tearing (though she did not scream), and fired, not at him – because he was right, this had never been between him and her – but the moth.
The shot went wide. The Witmoth, however, didn’t. Margaret flung up her arms too late. It struck her face and slid with all the certainty of a death towards her eyelid. It was fluid and razor-sharp. It burned. She dropped her pistol, clawed at her face. Tope might as well not be there, the wound in her stomach did not exist, only this blazing pain.
“Hello, my darling. I’m bringing you home,” her mother said, and Margaret felt such joy, the absolute happiness; she had a mother again. She struggled against the thought: it was a lie. A trap for her mind.
There was no pain. Tope was smiling almost beatifically at her.
Margaret stood up, almost toppled again. Gritted her teeth. “And what if I don’t want to go?”
“You have no choice, my darling. None at all.”
She blinked; she was sitting inside the iron ship. Tope wasn’t, she knew that he would be back there waiting for David, and if he walked back through the door, David would face Tope’s knives.
She felt calm. Was this how David had experienced Carnival? She could think, she could rage, but it was all at a distance. As though she was watching someone else. David, she had to warn him!
Margaret rose from the seat.
She blinked. She was back at her chair.
She looked down: her fingers brushed her belly, dark forms held the wound closed, Witmoths more substantial than any she had seen before. They hissed at her touch. How long had she been... whatever it was that she had been?
“They will heal you.” At her feet was a bloody bullet. “The wound was cruel, but it’s nothing that I can’t repair. Margaret, my Margaret.”
She stood again, took a step, and blinked.
She was back in the seat.
This time she’d pulled buckled straps around her shoulders.
“You'll hurt yourself,” a familiar voice said. Her mother's voice, but it came from a different face altogether. Anderson, the head of the Interface, smiled at her with her mother's smile. He reached out and grabbed her arm before she could undo the straps.
“He should not have hurt you that way, but a rough instrument was what was needed. He will not be coming back with us.” Anderson looked down at her belly. “You will be healed, made whole, and of the whole. I will heal you, my daughter.”
Margaret yanked her arm free. “Let me go.”
“Hush, I have given you some autonomy, but you are mine now, and we are part of the whole. As you should have always been. I’ve missed you, my love. But now I can care for you.”
The ship shuddered, she felt it lift, and narrow windows grew out of slits in the wall, letting in light. She watched Tearwin Meet’s wall slide past, as the ship traced its path back out of the webwork that protected the city.
The space within it was primitive, nothing like her Melody Amiss or the Roslyn Dawn. In this sort of ship nothing but basic comforts were required. This ship fought and flew, as little more than a disposable barb of the Roil; not even as valuable as a limb, something to be spat out in anger, or with the cruellest of cunning. Steam swirled around her, such a contrast to the frozen world beyond the iron ship.
“Be still now,” her mother said. “Or you will hurt yourself.”
Margaret clenched her jaw. “No, I–”
Anderson tightened her belts, she could barely move. The open windows completely revealed the ship in greater detail. All around the edge of the craft sat Roilings, facing inward, and every one of them looked at her with the eyes of her mother.
“Where is Father?” Margaret asked.
She felt the answer first as a wave of bitterness and grief that crashed against her – so hard that she raised her hands to her face. “Your father is gone. When he destroyed Tate, when he used the I-bombs, he tore away his chance at life, at union, he tore himself from the both of us.”
“If only he'd managed to kill you, too,” Margaret said.
“He did,” Arabella said. “My body was destroyed, but I didn't need my body any more. The Roil doesn't require bodies, only thought, such warm and wonderful thought. It took a while to master it, but I have, my darling. And you will too.”
They reached the top of the wall, and there the Roslyn Dawn waited. Two bursts of flame. The iron ship shuddered a moment later, the ship creaking and groaning. The metal bulged inwards, but did not give, no matter how much Margaret wished it to.
The iron ship was quick to return fire.
Accurate and powerful fire, for the Dawn's engine nacelles blew, as did a large section of the fore skull. Her flagella thrashed at the air, and the Aerokin tipped and fell into Tearwin Meet.
The iron ship’s engines fired, and they were already putting distance between them and the walls of the city. Margaret turned and watched the last flash of the Dawn’s limbs as she tumbled into the metropolis with its razor-sharp wires, and was lost to sight. The iron ship raced south towards the Roil, towards the purest thought of her mother.
CHAPTER 50
History is a mess of argument. As though it's never quite what it should be. The pieces of a jigsaw cut crude and without thought of the future.
It's the historian's job to make them fit with eloquence and arrogance, and if that doesn't work, a sledgehammer will suffice.
Palimpsests and Powders, Deighton
TEARWIN MEET
DISTANCE FROM ROIL VARIABLE
The Engine of the World held David’s hand.
It said, “Time and time again the Roil has been beate
n back. But this time something different happened. This time the Roil grew so quickly – it was just forty years ago that the Roil conquered this world and was frozen from it. Normally centuries pass before I do what I must.
“And every time, I am activated by someone like you, driven by one of the Old Men, cast from their prison in desperation, just as unknowing as the rest of you. Last time it was Milton and a man called Stagwell Matheson.” The Engine smiled. “A humble shop clerk, would you believe. This time you came to me with Cadell.”
“And if I say no now?” asked David.
“You will walk back through that door, and die. But you will die knowing that the Roil can have its world, that humanity will be scoured from it, or fused wholly with it.”
“And if I walk into the cage?”
“You will be given this choice again. And you will know this world as you have never known it before.”
“And will I die?”
The Engine shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“I don't want to die,” David said. “I don't want anyone to die.”
“Death is a given,” the Engine said. “But realise this. The Roil has already washed over Drift – the last Mother fallen from the sky.” David felt himself fall with that news too. Mother Graine was gone. It said, “Hardacre burns in the south, and a great army crashes against the Underground – that secret place that was never a secret place: a wave of claw, tooth, flame and shadow. And that stronghold will not long remain so.
“To do nothing is to kill all that remains of your world. Are you prepared to let that happen?”
David stood there, looked at the door, then the cage. Thought of the Underground and the people that still fought, and he realised that he wasn't. That he had come all this way for Margaret, for Cadell, for Buchan and Whig. He had killed Old Men. All of it feeling he had no choice, and now, now... he realised that he did have a choice, and that it was the same as theirs.
Without another word, David stepped into the cage.
The cage was dark: it smelt of the dark. Icy and smothering at once. David half imagined he could see stars, points of light that danced and circled.
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