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‘He let her in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, this should not take long.’
As if in response, the great gate of Northern Blown began to open. The troops jolted to life, hoisting their weapons and leaping to attention at their war machines. But only two individuals emerged: Tactician Brightling, admired and distrusted in equal measure by the soldiery of the Overland, and King Seablast, whose very beard looked disconsolate. He lumbered along behind Brightling, a prisoner without chains.
There was someone else there, too: a girl in a state of mourning, to judge by her white rags. She flittered along behind the Tactician and the King, her footfalls swift and light, her black hair gleaming in the cold northern sun. Brandione had not seen her before: some Watcher, no doubt.
How had Brightling managed it? She had been able to enter one of the greatest fortresses in the world and persuade it to surrender, and not for the first time. Brandione had served with her before, here in the North and in the Western Rebellion. There had been other times like this one, when his skills were entirely worthless. Even when they did deploy their military might, she was always somewhere nearby, giving him little words of advice, he who had forgotten more about war than anyone else could remember, he who had been hand-picked by the Strategist himself to serve as his most senior adviser. Truly, there was something about the Tactician. She had been a Watcher for twenty years before her Selection, Brandione knew. That was a long time to serve the See House. The troops bowed as she brushed past, lowering their heads and averting their gazes.
The Tactician and her prisoner arrived at Brightling’s tent, a modest, green affair, and entered, the girl following in their wake.
‘No battle with Northern Blown, then,’ Farringer said.
‘No.’
‘What are your orders, sir?’
‘Nothing. We wait on Brightling.’
‘Ah! It looks like they’re done already.’
Indeed so. Just moments after she had entered the tent, Brightling had reappeared. Brandione could not see the expression on the Tactician’s face, but could well imagine her satisfaction.
Brightling crossed the bloodless battlefield to a trebuchet, wind-battered and pockmarked with arrows. Its operators scrambled away as the Tactician scaled the machine, refusing all offers of assistance. The troops crowded around her without prompting, Brandione among them.
Brightling pointed to the defeated city.
‘After a journey of almost ten millennia, the process of Expansion is complete.’
The soldiers cheered.
‘The city of Northern Blown, which just an hour ago was at war with the Overland, has now realised the truth of the Machinery. This is a great day.’
The cheers of the troops grew louder; they loved her ability to spare them a fight.
‘This victory does not belong to us, but to Northern Blown,’ Brightling continued. ‘Its people will now share in the glory of the world: the Machinery.’
Brandione wondered if the people inside the city knew what their King had done.
‘The Machinery knows,’ said Brightling.
The cheers became deafening. Brightling closed her eyes, taking it in. She was enjoying this, Brandione knew: the adulation of the crowd. Perhaps she had hated being an ordinary Watcher, skulking in the shadows while others took the glory. Now she was the focus of attention. It was not even her role, by rights: Expansion was the remit of Tactician Canning. But he would not mind. He had not been one of the Machinery’s most successful Selections; he always gave the impression of wanting to be somewhere, anywhere, other than the Fortress of Expansion.
Brightling lowered her eyes and looked back down at the crowd, whose applause was dying. She opened her mouth to continuing speaking, but was unexpectedly interrupted.
A commotion had begun on the edge of the troops. A small, thin man in the coarse goatskin of a peasant was rushing up and down the lines in an agitated state. With his spindly limbs and bulging eyes, he had the look of a panicking insect.
‘It is a messenger,’ Farringer said, screwing his eyes up tightly. ‘He doesn’t bring good news, by the look of him.’
Well spotted. Brandione hailed a nearby soldier. ‘Bring him here.’
The trooper ran off and cuffed the anxious man around the neck, dragging him to the trebuchet.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Brandione demanded. ‘You’re disturbing the Tactician’s speech.’
The messenger burst out of the sentry’s arms. A cluster of troops immediately made for him, but Brandione stopped them with a raised finger.
‘Let him speak.’
The wretch fell to his knees. ‘Are you General Brandione, the Strategist’s adviser?’ he asked.
‘Yes. What of it?’
‘I bring terrible news, lord; the worst in sixty-two years!’
Farringer stepped forward.
‘What do you mean to say? What is wrong?’
But Brandione already knew. Itis sixty-two years since Kane was Selected.
The man doubled over, his body shaking. After a fit of coughing and shivering, he stood, dragging himself up by grabbing onto Farringer’s arm and rising to his full, unimposing height.
‘Strategist Kane is dead!’
Chapter Three (#ua62436c0-460c-57d9-9906-a4cb6501b7b8)
Sometimes Katrina felt older than the world itself.
She had first experienced the sensation as a child, before the Operator took her brother, before her mother died and her father sailed away. It was as if part of her was broken, the part that should have governed childhood and put a fire into youth.
No. It wasn’t broken. It was there, all right. But it was not alone. By its side was something else entirely, a tired creature that gazed on the world with weary comprehension, unsurprised by anything.
The feeling had grown stronger over the years. When her brother was taken, the old part of her had begun to dominate. Don’t tell anyone what you saw. What would they do, if they knew? How would they treat you, if they thought you were telling lies about the Operator? And so she had told no one, not even her father or Brightling. Sometimes, though, she wondered if the Tactician knew anyway. Nothing could stay hidden from her for very long.
She had hated it, at first. It conflicted with some of her most cherished beliefs about herself. She saw herself as courageous, perhaps even reckless; the older part restrained her. She saw beauty in the world, in the trees and in the mountains; the older part snorted at such sentimentality. She recoiled at some elements of the Watcher’s life, the cruelty and the treachery; the older part reminded her of the practicalities of the world, and of the hard decisions one must make to thrive.
She became aware, as time went by – she never knew how – that other people were not like this. Other people, people like Brightling, were complete. They were whole. She was two jagged halves.
But she had grown to appreciate it. She found herself able to tap into it, when she needed to. It was as if she had a deep and cool reservoir, hidden within her, which she could use to extinguish even the most searing of flames.
It was another mask.
‘Where is your mask?’
She jolted.
‘I do not have one yet.’
Aranfal frowned. ‘Why not?’
‘I am still an Apprentice.’
‘You are how old?’
Which part? ‘I am 21.’
‘Hmm. That is old, to still be an Apprentice. And even an Apprentice may wear a mask.’
‘Brightling—’
‘Tactician Brightling.’
‘Tactician Brightling says I can visit the Hall of Masks when we are back from the North.’
Aranfal nodded. ‘Well, good for you. I’m sure you’ll get the prettiest mask in all the fucking Hall.’
Katrina bit her tongue, though it took all her willpower. Or rather, it took all the power of her older half to beat down the tempestuous girl.
‘Are you celebrating the end of Expansion then, petal?’ Aranfal asked.
‘No. There are no celebrations.’
‘Why not? I thought you young people would have drunk half of Northern Blown by now.’
‘No. The Overland is mourning for the Strategist, Watcher.’ And I am not permitted to fraternise with young people, or with anyone who isn’t Brightling.
Aranfal nodded. ‘I know that, girl. Don’t take me for a fool.’
The older part once again suppressed her natural instincts, which this time pointed towards violence. ‘I am sorry, Watcher Aranfal.’
He nodded. ‘Good.’
They remained in silence for a moment.
‘Why am I here, Watcher?’ She looked around the hall. It was just as she would have expected from a place like this, all stone and straw and fireplaces and wood. Aranfal was sitting at a long, oak table, papers scattered before him. Dozens of candles burned around the hall.
‘Why are you here? How should I know?’
‘Brightling told me to come. She said you had something to show me.’
‘She said that?’ He squinted his eyes. ‘Was she any more specific?’
‘No.’
Aranfal sighed, and pointed at the papers. ‘Well, in that case, she must want you to bathe alongside me in the glamour of my life. At the moment I’m cataloguing the sheep and cattle in the surrounding fields. Yes indeed, being a Watcher is truly glorious at all times, as you will find out one day.’ He broke into a smile. ‘Although perhaps not, now that I think about it. You’ll get the plum jobs, I have no doubt.’
Katrina bowed her head, and did not speak. Aranfal had always been this way with her, though she did not know why. No Watcher outranked him, save Brightling herself; he was arguably the most powerful man in the world, now that Kane was dead, or if he was not, only Charls Brandione had more of a claim. But when he looked upon her, he did so with envy. The youthful part of her could not see this; it was her older self that recognised this emotion, and laughed at Aranfal for being so weak.
‘I firstly have to be made a Watcher,’ said Katrina, ‘which is easier said than done.’
There was a knock at the door, and a young Watcher entered, in a bull mask. He approached Aranfal, handed him a piece of parchment, and scuttled away, bowing as he went.
Aranfal scanned the parchment, and smiled.
‘Ah, now I understand,’ he said with a nod.
‘Understand what?’
He lifted the parchment. ‘It’s from Brightling. There’s going to be an interrogation, led by yours truly, and you are to attend. How does that sound?’
‘Excellent, Watcher.’ Nightmarish, said her younger self, and the other half did not disagree.
Seablast was a broken man.
Gone was the proud bearing of the warrior King, that sense of power he had conveyed only the day before. In its place was a downcast creature, his eyes dead, his black hair unkempt, his armour replaced with a dirty and torn white shirt. He even seemed thinner, shrunken, as if the loss of his lands had physically deflated him. He sat on a wooden stool before a stone table, and his legs and arms were shackled, like some kind of Doubter or common criminal.
Katrina stood at the back of the cell, pressed against a clammy wall. She wished she already had a mask of her own, when Seablast looked up at her. But he did not seem to see. His eyes looked through her, into nothing.
Aranfal took a seat opposite the King. He did not wear his raven’s mask, but laid it on the table, in front of Seablast. The King seemed to come to life when he noticed this strange object, this black, alien artefact that had made its way into his world, signifying the end of so much he had once held inviolable. Aranfal could have looked into the heart of the King, if he only chose to wear his mask. But it did not work like that. A Watcher only used his mask when he had to. Sometimes, wearing the mask actually hurt.
‘Do you recognise this?’ Aranfal had a certain tone to his voice, sometimes. Katrina pressed herself against the wall, willing it to suck her in.
‘That is a mask, Watcher,’ said the King. ‘I know all about you people. You live in a tower on a hill by the sea, and you run around with little masks on, and you think they are a gateway into people’s souls. Sometimes the masks are trees, sometimes they are people, sometimes they are cats, and sometimes they are dogs. Sometimes the masks are even made to look like sweet little birdies.’
He grinned at Aranfal, but Katrina saw through the smiles. He had lost everything, he was a husk of a man, yet still he felt the need to be combative. That wouldn’t do much good against Aranfal. That wouldn’t do much good at all.
Aranfal nodded, once, short and sharp. ‘Very good, King. It is a mask. But that is not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is, do you recognise this mask, in particular?’
Seablast thought this over for a moment, casting glances at the raven, which stared up at him from the table, waiting and watching. Katrina hated that bird, and feared it too. Seablast seemed unafraid. That will change.
‘Yes,’ the King said. ‘It is the raven of Aranfal, the renowned Watcher, Brightling’s hand-servant and general dogsbody. It is the mask of a weak man, who torments his victims by hurting their loved ones. It is the mask of a non-person.’
And then Seablast spat at Aranfal. It was a pathetic effort, the detritus of a dried and parched mouth. But it was not the quantity that mattered; it was the act itself.
In one cool, swift movement, Aranfal was on his feet. He leaned over the table and smacked the King with the back of his hand, sending a crack echoing in the cell like a shot from a handcannon. Seablast was knocked back, and would have fallen from his stool had it not been for his chains. He righted himself and glared at Aranfal through watery eyes, the right side of his face blooming red.
‘So, this is how the Watchers of the Overland treat kings,’ he said, his voice trembling.
‘King? You are a king no longer, Seablast. But don’t worry about that. You will have a place in history. You will always be remembered as the last independent ruler on the Plateau, who lost his lands through his own idiocy. Your name will echo through the ages. Children will sing songs mocking you, and drunks will lie in the gutter, puke drying on their lips, and thank the Machinery that they are not Seablast, knowing that it could be worse.’
Aranfal shrugged.
‘I am still a king,’ Seablast said. ‘One is born a king, by dint of one’s blood, which flows through the ages like a river. One is not Selected to rule by a machine; one is Selected to rule by one’s ancestry.’
‘Ancestry? Let’s look at your ancestry. Your father was a great man. He was respected by everyone in our land. He was a true diplomat, and he would have kept his people free, if he sat on the throne today.’
