Night's Engines

by Trent Jamieson

  “I don’t want to do this,” he said, but he knew that for a lie. From the moment he had fallen from his window ledge, choosing to run instead of lie still and die, he had wanted this. No, that wasn’t true, he’d wanted this even before that. When his mother had died, when his father had frozen him out, without ever meaning to. Carnival had offered solace, but this, this was true relief.

  Here he could stop a world. Reset it, and make it what it should be. What a monstrous wonderful thing that was. He had a choice, and he had made it. He had no choice at all.

  “I’m ready,” he said. The cage closed around him like a fist. A thousand tiny spear points drove into his flesh. Pain, a terrible jabbing pain, and then they began to move.

  He shrieked and pushed his hands against the bars and hissed at their stinging energies. The world dropped on him from a great height and at a great speed.

  His heart stopped, but the cage tightened further, energies fired and set it beating again.

  Blood ran from his eyes and the cage fed the bloody teardrops back into his body. And he screamed – once his heart started beating again – and he could not hear his scream, though his throat threatened to tear itself apart.

  The machine gripped him and he stretched, became something that was not him – that the borders of his being could not even begin to contain. Distant engines engaged, machineries more powerful than anything of which he could imagine. But he knew at once that his kind had imagined them, had engineered them.

  All this catastrophic force.

  And, suddenly, he wanted it to stop.

  The machine stung him, ground him down, and ripped his being to shreds until all he could feel was the vast cold of the universe.

  I am dead, he thought, ruined by this Engine.

  The Stars of Mourning blazed distantly, disinterestedly –– David realised that there was no mourning there –– and dimmed. Weird masses were exchanged, great bodies vaster than this world circled each other faster, collided and did not collide, brushed past each other or flung away into space, gravity shifting their cores, and energies were stolen from their movement. He flew above it all, watching, though not really understanding, because the information crashing into him was too pure, and he realised what he had become.

  Not dead. But Death.

  And it was too late.

  The machine unleashed its fury.

  Margaret stared through the window; something was coming out of the darkness and at horrible rate. Instinctively she brought a hand up to the glass, covering her face. Around her the Roilings began to moan, and the ship increased its speed, pushing her back in her chair. But it was not fast enough.

  Suddenly she could move again, totally of her free will. She slipped a lozenge of Chill into her mouth, felt it sting against a cracked tooth. The thing on her arm yowled and slid free, it shuddered on the floor a moment. Then the creatures holding her wound together, and released their grip.

  The iron ship jolted as the ice front struck it, glass creaked and cracked. The craft itself began to flex, the pilots moaned, though they still kept up their flight. But there was a juddering uncertainty building within the ship’s movements.

  As she watched, one of the pilots dropped to the floor and the iron ship tilted with it. Witmoths rushed from its mouth and ears. They hovered senselessly before falling dead. Andersonhad fallen too; his hands clutching at his ears, his mouth open and screaming silently, dark blood streaming from his cracked lips.

  “Hold on,” Anderson groaned through gritted teeth.

  “What's happening?” she asked, though she suspected she already knew the answer.

  “We cannot take you to your mother,” Anderson said. “We failed. The Engine has been engaged.

  “We are losing so much, so swiftly. All this wisdom and all of it dying,” Anderson said, and his voice grew thick with concern. “We must land, while we still have a mind to do it. I did not come here to kill you, Margaret. Nor would I see you dead even now.”

  Margaret slipped another lozenge of Chill in her mouth and the iron ship came down hard, jarring her bones, tearing open her wound even more.

  And this time she screamed.

  CHAPTER 51

  And around, not thunder bound, but riotous and loud

  In rushed quick death, and icy breath, a vast and killing cloud.

  Engine Cantos, Anthony Wardell

  THE UNDERGROUND A ROIL EDGE

  The ice front hit, shearing through the Roil. The mirrors on the airships cracked, then fell in shards upon the earth, and the walking machines fell too.

  The Engine’s been engaged, Medicine thought. We’ve done it. David’s done it.

  The men at the front cheered and then stopped, falling dead, the blood freezing in their veins. At the rear, those soldiers close to the outer doors turned and ran, but all died before making a few steps. Their bodies sheathed and then smothered with ice.

  It's killing them, Medicine thought. Our salvation, it's going to kill us all.

  “Shut the doors! Shut the doors,” he cried, thinking it already too late. The air had suddenly stilled, his breath came in clouds, his eyes started to sting.

  “Shut the doors. Shut the doors,” the cry went up, breaking that silence and suddenly the iron doors closed. And no one knew how close a thing it was.

  But that was for later; now Medicine watched, eyes wide, as the Roil collapsed; within a few moments it was gone, and ice covered the window. He felt himself witness to something that he didn't quite understand, something that was bigger and crueller than he had ever expected.

  David, Medicine thought. Oh, David, what have you done? What did we make you do?

  All along the continent, Lodes came to life, lit by the Engine of the World; like neurons fired by David's raging thought. Releasing their cargo of cold, stilling the fury of atoms for just a moment, though that was all it took, creating instant permafrost.

  Round and round the fire the stationmaster danced, his circles describing some sort of victory. And then the cold struck, freezing the air, killing the Witmoths within him instantly. He fell and with him tumbled his family, their fevered eyes closing over with cold.

  And in the ice, curled up together, though dead for weeks, they died at last.

  Lode B1914, already woken but weeks before, roared this time to full strength, and flattened the wet land around with cold. Plants died. The little creek – down which David and Cadell had run from the Quarg Hounds – grew brittle and still.

  Tate’s Lode flared uselessly, the cold cracking the city's walls again, hurling out Quarg Hounds, plucking Endyms and Floataotons from the dark sky.

  The Margin's Lode flared with chill effulgence; the River Weep snap-froze. And factories died, their cells bursting with the cold, swift and painless death, but death nonetheless. Cuttle messengers fell from the sky. The Cuttlefolk army froze in its bivouacs.

  Where the Roil fastnesses – those dreaming cities – rose into the heavy sky, they felt the cold’s coming as a swift and terrible diminishment of thought. The Roilings moaned in anticipation of their doom, and knew at once the terror that they had not known since the Wit smoke had caught their souls. The fear of death.

  The engine that sat at the heart of McMahon rumbled a few more futile heartbeats. The ceaseless inventions tumbled uncontrollably: bombs, shields, pieces of weaponry, mewling creatures with bleeding eyes and fevered breath. And then it stopped. The Penn woke from the dreams that caged her and her first thoughts were of her daughter. And in her next, she knew her daughter was safe, if only for a few moments more. And she knew a brief happiness.

  A moment of stillness.

  The ice struck, as the nearest Lodes boiled and bubbled with pure cold. All thought was stripped away and there was not even time for sadness.

  Just an end.

  Deep in the south, Vermatisaurs crashed into the sky – crammed with terrified and battering Hideous Garment Flutes and Endyms, snatching and scratching and biting at each other’s fl
esh. And then the giant beasts turned tail and flew, raced to the volcanic mountains at the equator, where it was still hot for a few moments more at least, the ice crashing in from north and south. Most did not make it, but there were still enough that they were crammed into caves, the last ones sealed the holes in mountains with their own frozen flesh – their many heads describing a hundred different agonies – and so a few survived.

  They had seen this before and would see it again. And their brains bubbled with bitterness and a hunger for revenge and fire, and just hunger; and, as they fell into the deepest of sleeps, their dreams were filled with both.

  But few creatures made it. Most were caught in the fury of that racing front – a cloud of dirty ice – an obsidian curtain flung back on itself, dotted with the broken remains of Quarg Hounds, Floataotons, Hideous Garment Flutes and Endyms. And all manner of more exotic creatures: dreamlings, faunitaurs and cadinows, the latter hurling down bone instruments in dismay and losing their music to the ice.

  The cold stilled, and the sun shone down on a cloudless world made sluggish and white, when all before had been dark and swift.

  Carnelon had been taken. It had seen it, dark canisters that spread a purposeful madness. It had known not to go near. And with Carnelon’s fall, some deeper evolutionary mechanism was activated, weeks spent hidden in the hills, in a cave dark and deep.

  It looked at its young, they mewled and scraped and fed upon the corpse of one of their winged brethren, grown too old for flight and fattened for food. The Cuttle messenger had become meal.

  It sealed the cave mouth with materials extruded from its mandibles, and struck the wall in the points weakened for just that purpose: stone fell. And the cave mouth was as if it had never been a cave at all.

  Then it clutched the dead messenger in a claw and dragged the corpse deeper and deeper into the mountain. Let the world tear itself apart, it had its young and that was all it would need in the belly of the world.

  From the belly of the world they had sprung and the belly of the world would contain them again. Let the world turn and burn or freeze. It would keep its brethren safe.

  In his place at the heart of the storm, David sensed it all and found himself lost, so fragmented that he feared he would never put himself back together. Even that fear was almost impossible to hold, it slipped through the widening halls of his mind, and he watched it go, without realising that he was watching it, scarcely conscious of anything at all.

  But a voice, Cadell's voice, whispered sternly in his ear. “It is done. You can stop now.” A dry hand clasped his. “It is done, you have done it. Wake up.”

  David looked up and saw his mother – as she had looked just before the disease took her – and he could not tell if she was smiling or frowning. But there was love there all the same. And that was his memory, not Cadell's, his alone.

  “Wake up,” she said. “Wake up.”

  David gulped at the air like a drowning man. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and he was back in the cage, the taste of blood in his mouth. His whole body was stained with the effort, scoured and made squalid by it all. He just wanted to be clean, to be stripped of all that filth, and now, now that he was himself again: he wanted to escape his thoughts. He wanted to cry, but it seemed beyond him. He opened his mouth, and his crusted lips moved, cracking with the motion.

  “Let me out,” he said thickly, and leant heavily against the door. It swung open and he fell through the doorway to the floor.

  David lay there, his head boiling with thoughts, the aftershock of all the raw energy of the Engine. He wrapped his head in his arms, cradled it, hunched over. At last he let his hands drop.

  “What have I done?” he whispered, teeth chattering. He stared down at his bloodied nails, the ruined palms of his hands.

  “Frozen the world to death,” the Engine said. “But it is not the end. The storm will pass.”

  “And then what do I do?”

  The Engine looked at him as though he were a dullard. “Wait.”

  David recoiled at that answer. Wait: so that all this could happen again. He did not understand how that was worth it. “But surely there is something more than that? I do not want to construct another broken thing. The Roil will return, our technology, our heat will call it.”

  The Engine laughed. “The world is always broken. My power does not extend beyond the crust. I cannot still the heart of this world. To do so would destroy it utterly.”

  David looked out at the frozen land beyond the city. “What did we do just then?”

  “Stopped the Roil.”

  “But at what cost?”

  The figure raised its hands in defeat. “I am a machine, David. I do not understand these questions.”

  “Then it is up to me to find the answers.”

  “I doubt you will like the world you have made,” the Engine said. “No, it will not be at all to your taste.”

  “I didn't think I had any choice.” David said. “Everybody kept telling me I didn't have a choice. And what is choice anyway?” David realised that he was babbling, he stopped and looked down at his hands. His fingers were coated with blood. His cheek had been torn open at some stage in the process, he pushed his tongue against the wound, felt it poke through the side of his face.

  “Perhaps you didn't,” the Engine said. “I hope that gives you some comfort.”

  David wanted to hit this awful thing, but he saw the single tear that tracked its cheek, saw the shudder passing through its body. And he was too tired, too exhausted, and he just wanted to stop, to fall into some kind of sleep.

  “I was made for this,” the Engine said; it bent down and picked him up. “I am only ever whole when I ignite all my Lodes, but it is a dreadful thing. Already I am fading, the defences of the city crumbling, not to be rebuilt until I sleep.”

  “How long do you sleep?” David asked, thinking how that sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world right now.

  “As long as it takes, and never as long as the last time, but I would rather sleep forever. I would rather never wake again. Because when I wake, the world must end anew.”

  “This will not happen again,” David said, resolutely. “We will not pick up the pieces and rebuild our world, merely to break it down again.”

  He remembered something he had seen. Margaret was gone, and the Roslyn Dawn had crashed into the city.

  “Kara, I have to get to her,” he said. “I have to find her, and Margaret.”

  “Margaret is beyond the city now,” the Engine said. “I do not think you would like to find her.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I would like, I have to.”

  The Engine smiled. “See, you are beginning to understand.”

  The Engine led him to the doorway.

  David walked to the door, took a deep breath, tried not to look at the ruin of his cheek. “Let me out,” he said. “It's time to see this new world I've made, and make something of it.”

  “David,” the Engine said as the door opened. “You might find that this new world has teeth.”

  David stepped through the doorway, and the door shut behind him.

  “Hello, David,” Tope said, and he was already throwing knives.

  David dropped and flung out his arms. The first blade passed overhead, the second struck him in the arm.

  “Looks like you're having a bad day,” Tope said. “Where's your face gone?”

  David grasped at the cold, snatched at it, tried to freeze his flesh around the wound, but the pain was too much. Instead, he pulled the knife free and dropped it to the ground. Blood followed the steel: splattering and clattering.

  “Ah, I’ve been waiting for this day a very long time. I died and was reborn just so I could experience it. The Roil had me, and lost me. And now, here we are, the world ending. All ambitions undone, except this simplest of ones. The Roil is dying, and this world with it, but here I am. My little wish fulfilled.”

  “Not yet,” David said.

  �
��No, not yet, but soon.” He ran, charging at David, lips curled back with a cruel and dreadful savagery.

  David yanked the knife from his belt, the one Margaret had given him, Sheff's long killing knife, and Tope stopped. Just within reach. And for the first time in those implacable eyes, David saw doubt.

  “I know that blade,” Tope said.

  “Then you know he’s dead.” David snapped his hand forward and buried it to the hilt in Tope’s chest. The Verger shuddered. Ice, released at last in desperation and fear, sheathed David’s hand, sheathed the knife, and crackled up and along Tope’s flesh.

  “He’s dead, and so are you.” David pulled his hand free, and struck the Verger hard. He shattered in a burst of crystalline blood.

  David let the broken knife fall and ran. Kara was still out there.

  In the end, it was easy and terrible, for the Dawn had scattered in her fall. Bits of Aerokin were everywhere. He walked where the bulk of her ruin appeared to be.

  He could smell the rank terror of her death, even above the ozone crackling of the engine: a raw and horrible ending for the Dawn. But where was Kara?

  She couldn’t be dead. The Engine had told him that she wasn’t dead. But what did it know of life?

  And then he saw her. Curled up, wrapped in the foremost flagellum of the Dawn. Kara was breathing. And that horrible ending became something somehow beautiful, and he did not want to disturb it. But nothing beautiful lasts forever, and only pain could follow this. He touched her face gently and called her name. Her eyes flicked open and the pain within them was a greater hurt than anything that David had ever known.

  His voice died in his throat.

  “What happened to your face?” Kara said.

  David shrugged, the pain was getting worse, but there was nothing he could do. Not here at the end of the world.

  “She’s gone,” Kara said. “I’m sorry, she’s gone. I saw her, she was in the ship, the one that...”

  It took David a moment to realise that she meant Margaret.

  CHAPTER 52