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The boy cleared his throat.
‘And so the tribe received the Machinery, the power of the Underland. It would choose the greatest leaders of the Overland, its Tacticians and Strategists, from now until the end of time, be they bakers or butchers, merchants or artists, boys or girls, men or women. And thus, the Overland would grow under their wisdom, to become the envy of all the great Plateau.
‘In return for this gift, the Operator asked only one thing; that the people must never question the Selections of the Machinery.’
‘And long may it continue,’ said Amile. ‘The Machinery knows.’
‘The Machinery knows,’ said Alexander. And I know the Machinery.
Before Alexander was a red velvet curtain, fastened by a golden knot. The boy stood still for a moment, wondering if he had been noticed.
‘Come.’
Sucking in a breath, Alexander pushed through.
The study was an airy, spherical, stone-walled space, its ceiling formed of thick clear glass that could be winched open at points to allow the entry of cooling airs. It was night, now; starlight illumined everything. This room, unlike its counterparts in other parts of the dreary mansion, was in constant flux. Perhaps it reflected the mind and travels of Jaco Paprissi, Alexander’s father, the head of the Paprissi Financial House and lord of the manor.
Jaco and his men were the only Overlanders allowed to sail from the Plateau, and he had just returned from his most recent voyage. Items were still being unpacked from the wooden chests that filled the great courtyard, the most interesting or curious gravitating upwards to this study where they could be examined more closely. Alexander drank it in: on the second shelf to his left, a wooden statue depicted a man and a woman locked in primitive combat; above this, a row of silver instruments, like finely wrought blades; and on the floor to his right, a bronze representation of some kind of war machine, what appeared to be a trebuchet lined with cannon, rolling forward of its own accord.
In the centre of the room was a brass contraption, a long thick tube covered in golden letters in some foreign tongue. At the bottom of the tube was an eyepiece, into which Jaco peered.
‘This is new,’ the older man said. ‘It is … incredible. You can see things … well, it matters not.’
He turned to the boy and grinned.
‘It’s much better than banks and credit, eh?’
Jaco left his new toy and walked to his son, putting a hand on his shoulder and smiling down at him.
It is coming. The voice had grown weaker.
‘How was the lesson, Alexander?’
I’ll tell him, thought the boy. I’ll tell him. But he was afraid. Why should he believe me this time?
‘It was all right, but Amile made me do—’
‘The same thing all over again?’
‘Yes!’
‘The arrival of the Operator and the Gifting of the Machinery?’
‘Yes!’
Jaco laughed. ‘I hated it too, when I was your age. I wondered why I had to learn this stuff, when there was a whole world out there waiting to be found. But as I grew older, I began to see things differently.’
‘How?’
‘Well, things change. Your life goes off in different paths. And the Overland changes, too. Even the Plateau changes. The city grows, Tacticians and Strategists come and go. But one thing remains the same: the Machinery. It is the constant. It is important that we remember its birth.’
‘The Machinery knows.’
‘The Machinery knows,’ his father echoed, before leaping to his feet and returning to his lettered tube. Alexander hesitated before taking the plunge.
‘Father … I think I have heard it again.’
Jaco stopped dead, his hands falling to his side.
‘No, boy. You have not.’
Silence fell on the study.
‘It told me again, father. The Machinery told me who it is. I know who will bring Ruin.’
‘No.’ Jaco turned his eyes upon his son. ‘No. This is the madness of old women and Doubters.’ He held the boy’s gaze for a moment, then turned back to his machine. ‘I assume you are going to play in the Great Hall tonight?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘Good. Take your mind off this foolishness. And don’t stay up too long; it is already late.’
The elder Paprissi leaned down and put his eye to the telescope.
‘Yes, father.’
The Great Hall covered the entire southern section of the ground floor of Paprissi House. It was one of the oldest surviving parts of the building, its stone walls the remnants of an ancient keep: a place of faded nooks and crannies, dark snugs and cubbyholes. The summer light was fading as Alexander entered, casting shadows that darkened the aspects of the Paprissi forebears staring blankly down at their young descendant.
Alexander sat with his legs crossed in the middle of the cold stone floor, just next to the dining table, swinging a thin piece of white parchment through the air in a kind of sporadic dance. This strange, private little ceremony helped unleash his imagination. He was transported to other realms: to flaming battles on open plains; to dynastic struggles with Doubter kings; to the ruins of ancient cities, heavy with sorcery. Here, he could control events. Here, he did not feel like a plaything of a voice.
The One will come here …
The boy’s gaze floated to the Operator shrine, at the back of the hall. It had been there for as long as the hall itself, a grey statue on a black chair, proud and solemn. The sculptors of the Middle Period were renowned for the subtlety of their work, Amile had told Alexander; hence the fine detail of the wrinkled face, the perfect smoothness of the bald head, the laughing wisdom of the eyes. The cloak, though, was the symbol of the Operator; it had been refreshed in more recent years by one of the new artists of the Centre, and the talent of this master shone through, from the strange swirls of purple and black to the hints of faces in the ether.
GET OUT.
Alexander swung round. The voice seemed closer now, more urgent, as if the speaker was behind him. There was no one there. I can do nothing.
He turned back to the statue.
There was someone in its place.
‘Play, play, playing, like the little child you are.’
He – it –regarded Alexander thoughtfully, steadily rapping the arm of his dark throne with his sharp fingers. He was filth itself: his mangy skin red with scabs, his grey tongue flickering at the sides of his mouth. A torn gown billowed out onto the floor around him, coating the flagstones like oil on water, its colours in perpetual motion like the sky in a summer thunderstorm. The faces were ghosts in a silken prison.
‘Do you know who I am, Alexander?’
The boy was silent.
‘I am the Operator.’
The voice echoed of another world. A time before the Machinery.
‘I have known it for a long time,’ the Operator said. ‘You here, on your Plateau, you have known only ten millennia of it. But it has been my companion for much, much longer.’
Alexander steeled himself. Somehow, he always had known that this would happen.
‘How did you do that? How did you make a statue come to life?’
The Operator seemed surprised by the question. ‘I am a child of the Underland, boy. I know all its pathways and byways.’
He leaned forward in his throne, placing his head in his hands.
‘You have evaded me for some time, Alexander. I heard the Machinery speaking, you know. Oh yes. I could hear it, in the night, though its words were hidden from me. It took me a long time to find you, such a long time.’
‘It does not trust you. It knows you do not believe it.’
The Operator laughed, and the room seemed to darken. ‘I like you, Alexander. I like that you think you can talk to me, in such a way, about my own creation.’
‘You do not understand it fully, Operator. If you did, you would believe the words. Ruin is coming.’
The Operator slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. ‘Tell me what it has told you. Then we will see what I believe.’
Alexander approached the Operator. ‘Your enemy has returned, Operator. You thought you had destroyed the One, all those years ago. But you failed. The One has returned, and the One will bring Ruin.’
The Operator was on his feet in an instant, and loomed over Alexander. The faces in his cloak cringed, afraid of their master.
‘That is a lie,’ the Operator said, his voice trembling. ‘You have read a book about the past, I think, one that I overlooked. I have been too lenient with you all. You use these words you do not understand. The One is dead, and the Prophecy is a lie.’
The boy did not answer. He looked hopefully at the door, but no one was coming for him. Was his grandmother outside, sitting in her old chair?
There was a pattering of rain on the windows.
‘That is not what the Machinery told you,’ the Operator sighed. ‘It cannot be. Something is wrong with it, and it has told you, and you will not tell me.’
‘I have already told you the truth.’
The Operator shook his head. ‘No. No, that is not what it told you. But I will find the truth.’ He glided over to Alexander’s side and wrapped a long arm around the boy’s shoulder.
‘We will go to the Underland. You will be happier there. Yes, oh yes. We will be able to study your broken brain.’ Alexander snatched a quick look at a jagged smile; he willed himself to resist, but something had encircled and taken power over him, and he could do nothing but follow the strange creature to the window.
The Operator gathered him in his arms, smiled, and leapt into the rain of the night. They seemed to fall slowly, like feathers in the breeze. The authority that had been exerted over the boy allowed no room for fear. There was no need to scream, it assured him, no need to cry out or fight back. We are floating, not falling.
As he fell, he looked up and saw a face at the window: a girl gazing down at him; a girl with round black eyes and long black hair; a girl with marbles in her hands.
But then Alexander Paprissi was gone forever: gone below the earth.
Chapter Two (#ua62436c0-460c-57d9-9906-a4cb6501b7b8)
‘Could I take part today, Tactician? I believe I am ready.’
‘Why do you think you are ready?’
‘I have served my time. I have trained now for almost fifteen years.’
‘Almost fifteen years, indeed. And you think you are ready. Ready for what?’
‘For whatever you need me to do, Tactician. I could go in there now, if you like, and—’
‘You are always overreaching, Katrina. You must develop caution.’
Katrina Paprissi nodded. She had heard this a thousand times before. As ever, she smiled at the Tactician, before brushing some sand from her feet.
They were alone on the shore. Behind them loomed the great edifice of Northern Blown, the once dominant fortress that had stood apart from the Overland for longer than any other power. It had managed this through a mix of skilful diplomacy, deference, solid defences and the fact that its desolate lands were the least attractive in the entire Plateau. But now, its day was coming to a close. The castle seemed downcast in the bleached light of the dawn, as if aware that soon, perhaps this very day, its time would end. Even its curtain wall seemed to sag, as if willing itself to collapse before the onslaught of modernity.
‘Are you even listening to me, Paprissi? No, I imagine you are off in your world. What’s it like there?’
Katrina forced herself to meet Tactician Brightling’s gaze. She still found it difficult to look directly at those grey eyes. Brightling was the Watching Tactician of the Overland, her authority reflected in her golden gown and the silver half-moon crown that sat so easily upon her head. She was in her middle years, but her thin frame was hard with muscle. White hair flowed around her like a mane, unruffled even by the wind that whistled in from the sea.
Brightling was a woman of the new era, the progress of which she was hastening through her work. A pair of semicircular spectacles sat on her nose, the frame wrought from ivory. From the Tactician’s mouth hung a pipe, an elegant, curling affair of cedar wood. She wore a handcannon on her side, the hilt a twisted swirl of stars, the barrel inlaid with diamonds.
‘Katrina, by the Machinery, will you take your turn!’
The wind picked up, then: it tore through Katrina’s long black hair and laughed at her white rags, wearing her legs raw.
‘Now,’ the Tactician said, a new hardness in her voice.
Katrina looked at the board with bleary eyes. She hated Progress. This game was designed for people just like Tactician Brightling: cold souls with no stirring of action. Indeed, Brightling had actually designed its latest iteration. The woman had sat on the Progress Council for longer than she had been a Tactician.
They said the Operator himself had invented the First Iteration of Progress. Katrina wondered if that game had borne any resemblance to this version, the Nine Hundredth and Seventy-Fourth Iteration, which had been active for two years. She was just getting used to this one, which usually meant a new Iteration was imminent.
‘Tactician, do we really have to play this? Does it not seem strange to you? We’re about to conquer the Plateau, and we’re sitting here playing a stupid board of Progress.’
Brightling did not respond, but fixed Katrina with a stare. The young woman turned her attention to the board, her courage evaporating into the wind.
Katrina had the East and the South of the board, Brightling the North and the West. Her tiles were white, the Tactician’s black. She could see that she was in an impossible position. Over half of Brightling’s forces were poised to take the South, and Katrina had just one Watching tile remaining. How does this thing work again? A Watching tile destroys an Expansion tile, but only if there are no Operator cards left in the opponent’s hand. Does Brightling have a card?
‘You should take care what you do with that. I can see a move that would open your options and expose one of my flanks. Remember, I have only two Watching tiles left, while you retain two cards. You are still in this game. Do not overreach.’
Katrina studied the board again.
‘This game is impossible.’
‘This game always evolves, but it is not impossible. Everything evolves, everything changes. We must adapt to that.’
‘Except the Machinery.’
‘Except the Machinery.’
