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Katrina looked up to see that Brightling was smiling at her, white hair now blowing in the wind. The last of the Paprissis lifted her Watching tile, and prepared to put it in place.
‘Madam.’
Aranfal had appeared from nowhere, as he always did. He had the appearance of some creature of this icy habitat, with his aquamarine cloak and dirty blond hair: a beast that had crawled onto the beach. Amusement played across his thin face, his blue eyes alight with a joke that no one else was ever told.
‘Aranfal, welcome. What news?’
‘Good news, Madam Tactician.’ Aranfal’s voice was smooth and deep, his accent hinting at the far North, where they now sat. ‘King Seablast has agreed to grant you an audience.’
‘Good!’ Tactician Brightling clapped her hands. ‘How did he seem?’
‘Oh, obstreperous, my lady. Most incorrigible. But that could be a good sign. It might be a show.’
‘Yes, Aranfal. It might be. How many Watchers in the building?’
‘Two, madam, apart from me.’
‘And you will join them now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In the ceiling, madam.’
‘Good.’
Aranfal smiled at his superior and bowed. He cast an uneasy glance in Katrina’s direction. They had never got on. She suspected he envied her closeness to the Tactician. He seemed on the verge of speaking to her, before something on the ground distracted him.
‘What’s this?’ He lifted a yellow and black object, around a foot in length.
‘I think it’s a bone,’ Katrina whispered.
‘Be quiet, Katrina.’
‘It is, Tactician. It is an arm bone. There are more, further along the shore.’
‘Ridiculous. It is a rock, perhaps. A formation of some kind.’
Aranfal chuckled. ‘The northerners call this the Bony Shore, madam. Perhaps it is aptly named?’
‘Nonsense. Where would they come from?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps they drift here from a darker place. A terrible place, where people are thrown to the sea …’
Brightling tutted. ‘You do not know, Aranfal. Do not talk about this.’
She waved Aranfal away, and turned back to Katrina.
‘Your mind is full of nonsense. If your father could see you, plucking rocks from the beach and calling them bones, he would be horrified.’ She sighed, gathering her composure. ‘We will go in.’ She pointed to the fortress. ‘You are about to witness history, my girl.’
Katrina sucked in a breath. ‘I can come in this time?’
‘Yes, yes. But you will not do anything, Katrina, do you understand? You are there to observe me, and Aranfal.’
‘Yes, madam.’
Brightling turned to leave.
‘Madam, the game.’
The Tactician waved at the table.
‘It’s just a stupid board of Progress.’
‘There – that is it, then: the last holdout on the Plateau. Prepare the cannon, men! Prepare the cannon!’
General Charls Brandione reluctantly turned to face his assistant. Farringer was a cringing, scraping man of at least sixty who stared at the enemy position through his weasel eyes and scratched his arse with the hilt of his stumpy sword. He had an unaccountable love of fashion and had come to the field in full, ancient plate armour – heavy, inflexible, and useless in modern warfare. To make matters worse, he had festooned it with ribbons and feathers. The decorations ranged across the full gamut of gaudiness, from the orange of a sunburst to the pinks and greens of some southern bird.
Brandione’s armour was less striking, but better placed, allowing for manoeuvrability: a battered steel breastplate, a plate for his back, and a standard steel helmet, worn and rusted through years of use but solid and dependable.
‘Farringer, bring me a map of the city.’
The older man hesitated.
‘But General, I want to see—’
‘Now, Farringer – do it now.’
Preparethe cannon. Brandione smiled at that as he turned back to the great wall of Northern Blown. All around him, men struggled with the new artillery pieces, cursing as they hoisted them awkwardly into position. Soldiers traipsed to the supply lines to collect barrels of precious gunpowder, recently arrived from the West, which they gingerly rolled back to their iron dragons.
It was the smell that got to Brandione, more than anything else: that acrid stench.
But they were powerful, oh yes. Brandione had seen them in action since their first development. Rapid advances over the last two decades meant the largest could fire stones weighing hundreds of pounds, though the damned things seemed to kill more of his own troops than the enemy, when he ever got to use them.
He tapped the weapon at his side. This sort of cannon, he could live with: one that fitted in his hand.
When he looked to the fortress before him, some faith in the old ways returned. The new weapons were powerful, true, when pointed in the right direction and not falling victim to one of their many flaws. But Northern Blown was old, and hardened through constant war. Standing in resplendent isolation, with the Northern Peripheral Sea behind it, it looked like it had been torn from the Plateau itself, a living creature of alleyways and moss-covered towers that had forced its way into the continent. And all around it stood that jagged iron wall, thirty feet thick at its weakest point.
Between Brandione and this armoured metropolis were spread the more conventional forces of the Overland, still active today despite all the changes in the world, a metallic mass of thousands of serrated pikes and halberds that shimmered in the early afternoon light. Dotted among them were the siege machines of old: trebuchets, catapults and battering rams, all standing at the foot of the city. In a way, these reassured him more than the exploding iron pipes.
Is this really the end? Brandione had served the Overland for almost fifteen years, ever since he had left the College and turned his back on a career as an Administrator. He had seen towns razed to the ground and ploughed through corpses. He had struck down rebellion in the West. He had seen cities fall, here in the North. Is all of that really over, now? Or will we find a new enemy, one worse than all the others?
He shook himself; there was no time for this, not any more. He eyed the walls for signs of the enemy. Still nothing. He shifted on his feet.
‘Surrender?’ King Seablast was red in the face. ‘Tactician, know that Overland waves have broken against my wall in the past. Yours will be no different; we will cast you into the Peripheral Sea.’
Seablast is a warrior, thought Katrina. Even here, in his throne room, with our forces all around, he is prepared to fight. He was a thickset man, stout without being fat, his belly like a cannonball. He wore a wooden breastplate below a chainmail mesh, his helmet at his feet and his sword at his side. He was standing over Brightling, who sat in a high-backed, silver chair. The King leaned in close, his black beard almost touching her forehead and his bright-blue eyes blazing into her own.
Katrina stood some way behind the Tactician, her attention flickering between the scene before her and the furnishings and trappings of the throne room. Light spilled through four huge, stained-glass windows, bathing everything in a hazy purple and orange glow. At the far end of the hall, beneath a window on which was engraved a flaming sword, sat the throne itself, a large but unadorned iron chair that spoke of older times.
A slight cough from Brightling was enough to refocus Katrina’s attention. The Tactician was unruffled, smiling serenely at the King. She had been disarmed of her handcannon and sword upon entering the castle, but seemed utterly at ease.
‘You come here,’ Seablast continued, beginning to pace his throne room, ‘with a handful of troops and fire spouters, and you make the most outrageous demands of me. I know where this comes from. It is that toy of yours, that machine; it makes politicians of you all. But our walls will stand against politicians and toys.’
The King’s retinue laughed. As Brightling lazily regarded the monarch over the rim of her spectacles, her smile grew thinner.
‘What year is this, madam?’ asked the King, cocking his head to the side.
‘I do not know what the date is in the heathen calendar, but by our reckoning it is the 10,000th year.’
The King whistled between his teeth. ‘A bad time for you then, no?’
Brightling was very still as the King spoke.
‘Did you know, men, that according to the bullshit beliefs these people follow, on the 10,000th year since the Gifting of the Machinery, it will all far apart? It will break!’
The men laughed.
‘That is an evil Prophecy,’ said Brightling, so quietly that Katrina struggled to hear her.
The King shrugged. ‘That may be so, but I know that many of your people believe it.’ He turned back to his men, a glint in his eye. ‘You won’t find that Prophecy in their Book of the Machinery, lads. No one knows where it comes from, they say. It’s an old wives’ tale. But enough of these bastards believe it. Enough of them think that something really bad will happen. Well, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.’ He spat on the ground, inches from Brightling’s feet. ‘I have sent word to our vassals,’ he said, leaning over the Tactician’s chair again. ‘They will be here within the day. I suggest you and your friends return to your machine, before it dies.’
Tactician Brightling nodded slowly, appearing to think this over. Then she was on her feet, the King and his guards taking an involuntary step backwards.
‘Your vassals?’
‘Yes!’ The King was nervous now; Katrina could feel it. His anger was exaggerated, his confidence feigned. ‘The Second City; Anflef; Siren Down. These three and others will come at my command.’
The Tactician cocked her head to the side and smiled again.
‘Do you read books, your Majesty?’ she asked, her face a picture of wide-eyed innocence.
The King hesitated. ‘My kingdom, madam, contains the greatest scholars on all the Plateau.’
‘You should know, then, your Majesty, that I have allies of my own.’
There was a flurry of black as three robed figures fell from somewhere in the ceiling to the stone floor. The King’s guards leapt into belated action, swinging their swords wildly. They halted as quickly as they had begun when they saw that, in the arms of each of the masked strangers, was one of Seablast’s daughters.
The King became very still.
‘No doubt you have steeled yourself for such a scenario, King,’ the Tactician said. She returned to her seat, patting away the creases in her gown.
Seablast said nothing, but Katrina noticed a slight movement in his sword hand. Brightling turned to one of her Watchers; Katrina saw immediately that it was Aranfal, wearing his raven’s mask, a black and twisted thing that still frightened her, even today. The girl in his arms was the youngest, perhaps ten or eleven years old, with long, curly, blonde hair, thin, regal limbs, and fierce blue eyes. Katrina was suddenly seized by the image of her own brother, in the Operator’s arms, falling through the earth to the Underland. Is he afraid, still? Is he even alive? She had told no one what she had seen, back then, in the Great Hall of Paprissi House. Not even Brightling. What would she tell them, anyway? She had not been able to hear much of what the Operator had said; all she knew was that Alexander had been taken. Perhaps it never actually happened. Perhaps her family was destroyed for another reason.
There is no time for these thoughts. Not now.
‘Do you surrender, King?’ Brightling asked.
Seablast looked at his daughter; Katrina could not read the expression in his eyes. Was he weighing up his options? His daughter or his kingdom? He nodded at the girl, an almost imperceptible tilt of his head, and turned back to the Tactician.
‘No, madam. I do not.’
Brightling sighed and nodded to Aranfal. A slight jerk of a gloved hand and the girl’s neck was bleeding. She flinched, but did not cry out.
There were some parts of being a Watcher that Katrina Paprissi did not like.
‘The Second City, Anflef and Siren Down,’ Tactician Brightling said again. ‘Your Majesty, do you have a map?’
‘What?’ the King stammered, his eyes on his daughter, whose face had grown pale.
‘A map, your Majesty. Have you not heard of such things? They are developing so well. Oh, forgive me,’ said Tactician Brightling. ‘There it is.’
She walked to the southern wall, on which hung a map of the Plateau, if it could be called that; it was an unsophisticated affair, lacking the remotest sense of distance and perspective. Brightling reached into her shoe and withdrew a short, thin blade. The guards had not dared to carry out a thorough search, Katrina realised. It was always the same way.
‘The Second City, Anflef and Siren Down,’ Brightling said, pointing each out on the map with her blade. ‘The Second City,’ she said again, before slashing the city away. ‘Anflef,’ she said, and tore it apart. ‘Siren Down,’ she concluded, stabbing into its position with her knife, which vibrated as it stuck into the wall.
‘Your Majesty, you should pay more attention to your neighbours,’ she said, turning to the King. ‘These three allies of yours are now part of the Overland and under the beneficence of the Machinery.’
Seablast’s face was a pallid grey, his arms limp at his sides.
‘That cannot be,’ he hissed. ‘I would have heard something.’
‘Why? Your Majesty, while you slept, I conquered. Some of your allies fell to the General Brandione, a clever man who knows his way around the most terrible weapons you have ever seen. Others fell to me. I won’t tell you how I did it.’
Brightling’s smile returned.
‘If you become part of the Overland, willingly, the Machinery will forgive you. You will have a chance, like every one of its subjects, to rule the greatest nation in the world, if you are Selected.’
‘To be one of the politicians,’ the King rasped, his eyeballs rolling. ‘And if we resist?’
‘Then an entire continent will be thrown against the walls of this city.’
Farringer came stumbling back, lifting his visor to expose his sweat-drenched face.
‘What happened here, anyway?’ he asked, handing Brandione the map. ‘Why did they declare war?’
Brandione sensed a new tone in the older man’s voice: fear. Farringer was not made for this.
‘They have a new leader,’ he replied. ‘Their last King died a year ago. He was a clever old sod, that particular Seablast. He towed the line, and tugged his forelock, and did whatever Brightling told him to do. The new one is possessed with … something. You know the type.’
‘He thought he could lead his people against the Machinery.’
‘Yes.’ Brandione rolled his eyes and drew a finger across his throat.
Farringer chuckled and spat in the dirt. ‘Where’s Brightling?’
‘She’s in the city, talking to the King.’
