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The Machinery
The Machinery
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The Machinery

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‘He was a weak streak of piss, and he only kept us free by placing us under the boot of the Strategist and your bitch of a superior. That is not being a king.’

‘Then what is being a king? Not only have you lost your kingdom, but through your mischief-making you have brought Anflef and Siren Down and all the other little kingdoms up here to their knees, too. All these old countries, gone forever, because of you. Not that it is a bad thing. Your subjects – apologies, our subjects – will now revel in the glory of the world.’

‘The Machinery? You don’t even know what it is!’ Seablast laughed. ‘You just trust the Operator, some fucking trickster who lives in another realm and pulls the wool over your eyes. He is a king, Aranfal the raven, just as I am. Except he will never give up his power, not to anyone in the world.’

‘And yet you handed your lands over to us, freely.’

‘Hardly freely. And it was my worst mistake. I should have kept fighting, without allies. I should have let my daughters die. It would have been better than this life.’

Aranfal sighed, and leaned back in his chair, knitting his hands behind his head.

‘I don’t think this little philosophical chitchat is getting us anywhere.’

Seablast shook his head. ‘No.’

Aranfal turned to Katrina. ‘Is this what you imagined an interrogation to be?’

Katrina started, and pushed herself off the wall. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

‘Maybe? What does maybe mean?’

‘No, it’s not what I imagined an interrogation to be.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re not asking him any questions.’

Aranfal snapped his fingers together. ‘I knew I’d forgotten something.’ He turned to face Seablast again. ‘Your Majesty, if I were a Doubter, in the kingdom of Northern Blown, where would I be most likely to hide?’

Seablast laughed. ‘Everyone here is a Doubter. You have given them nothing to believe in.’

Aranfal’s eyes widened. ‘Everyone? You know, we have a prison for Doubters, in the South of our lands, in the heart of the desert of the Wite. It’s been there for ten millennia, yet none of us know what’s in there, or even who mans it. You know why that is? Because no one ever leaves the Prison of the Doubters. So if all your people are Doubters, do I need to send them all down there?’

Seablast looked away from Aranfal.

‘Because I could do that, Seablast. It would be pretty hard work. There would be a lot of carts and carriages and horses and so forth. But we’re the masters of a continent, now. There’s not much we can’t do, when we put our minds to it. So I ask again – should I send everyone down there?’

Seablast did not reply.

Aranfal nodded. ‘I’m getting fucking tired of you, and this place. I’m from the North too, Seablast, though it’s colder and nastier than anywhere you’ve been. I don’t want to be in the North any more, understood? I want to go home. So let me ask you again – where would I find the Doubters in this fucking dump?’

Seablast met Aranfal’s gaze. ‘I tell you truthfully, I do not know any Doubters. They could be anywhere.’

‘What about your lieutenants? Those pricks in the throne room, back when you were a king? A few of them have gone missing, haven’t they? I bet they’re out and about now, planning to right your honour and make some trouble for us. Aren’t they? What are their names?’

Seablast remained silent, and his eyes focused on the table.

‘All I need is their names.’

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about. And I don’t see why they’d be Doubters.’

Aranfal turned to Katrina, his eyes blazing, his body shaking with fury. She could not tell if it was real or part of his act, but the older part of her told her to do whatever he asked.

‘Paprissi, there’s a bag on the floor beside you. Bring it over here.’

Katrina looked to her side, and saw a brown satchel. She instantly snatched it in her hand and walked to Aranfal’s side.

‘Unfold it on the table.’

She did as she was told. The bag turned into a gleaming array of knives, axes and other tools the Apprentice Watcher had never seen before and had no name for. She knew, however, for a certainty, that she would not like to be on the wrong end of any of them.

‘I’ll get her to use these,’ Aranfal whispered, jabbing a thumb at Katrina. ‘The only thing is, this is her first interrogation, so she might be clumsy. Thumbs and things might get lost forever.’

Katrina felt her stomach turn. You are a Watcher, girl, said the older part of herself. You know what this life is.

But this was never supposed to be my life, the younger side responded, in a rare moment of defiance.

She steeled herself, and smiled at the King, in what she hoped was a sinister manner. But it was evidently unsuccessful. Seablast smiled back at her, and winked. Winked.

‘Is there something amusing, your Majesty?’ Aranfal asked. His tone was smoothing, cool. He knew something the others did not.

‘I’ve been tortured before, by people worse than you,’ the King said. ‘Once I spent a couple of weeks as the guest of some snow bandits. I was humiliated, to fall into their hands. But I got myself free, pretty quickly.’ He grinned.

‘I’ve met snow bandits before, too, your Majesty. I’m from a similar background to them, in point of fact. And they are a nasty bunch. But they are not worse than us. Besides, what makes you think we are going to torture you?’

The King’s expression flickered from confusion to something else entirely: fear.

‘Katrina.’ Aranfal looked to Katrina again. ‘Gather up this bag of tricks, like a good little Apprentice, and take a walk down the corridor, till you come to the fifth cell from this one. It’s a nasty cell, that one, your Majesty, not like your own lovely abode. Once you get there, Katrina, pass on my regards to the King’s daughters. Don’t tell them he’s here. Don’t even ask them any questions. Just cut off bits of them. Let’s say – one finger each. Or a toe? What do you think, your Majesty – what would they prefer to lose?’

The King’s face was grey, his eyes once more on the table. But he did not protest. He did not say a word. By the Machinery, tell him whatever he wants, you idiot. Don’t force me to do this.

‘Seablast, you know I am a bad man,’ Aranfal said. ‘And you know I am committed to my work, and to the Machinery. Tell me where your missing minions are, or your daughters will suffer for your obstinacy.’

The King sighed, and his very bones seemed to rattle. When he looked at Aranfal, there was something new in his eye: resignation.

No. Please don’t do it, Seablast.

‘I already told you,’ said the King. ‘I made a mistake in my throne room. Do what you want. My girls would be better dead, than living under your rule.’

Aranfal lifted a finger. ‘Not my rule. The rule of the Selected.’

He packed up the instruments, and handed the bag to Katrina again.

‘Well, off you go, then.’

As Katrina walked down the corridor, she knew which part of her personality to turn to.

This is what being a Watcher is.

Get in there, do it quickly, get out again.

Show them no emotion.

Do a good job, and you will be recognised.

The world is a hard and cruel place, Katrina. You know that better than anyone. We do what we must to survive. We do what we must to thrive.

Only once did the other part get in.

What would father think of you now? Is this what he would have wanted for you?

She stood at the cell door, the fifth one along.

If father cared about you, he wouldn’t have left you to be raised by Watchers, now would he?

She pushed inside.

There was only one woman in this cell, and she was not a daughter of King Seablast.

‘Aleah.’

Thank the Machinery.

The woman sat at a table, a book open before her. Katrina knew her as one of the more ambitious generation of younger Watchers, the ones on the rung below Aranfal. She was unusually chubby for a Watcher, with unkempt blonde hair strewn around her face.

‘Has he said anything yet?’

‘No, Watcher.’

‘He didn’t break down again, when Aranfal threatened his daughters?’

‘Not this time.’

‘But he thinks you are hacking bits off them. He’ll be talking now, I bet. If he isn’t, we’ll try a different tack. Maybe we’ll send you in again in a while, with a finger. We’ll just take one off a corpse, so don’t worry.’

‘Where are his daughters?’

‘No idea. Maybe they’re dead. Or maybe old Aranfal let them go. Sometimes he’s soft, you know. I would have put the King in the same room as them, and made him watch what I did. But Aranfal only does that kind of thing when he has to. He’s soft.’

The woman seemed to catch herself, and grinned. ‘I jest, of course. He’s a genius at this type of thing. No one better.’

The door behind them opened, and Aranfal entered. He nodded at Aleah, and pointed to the door, waiting until she had left the room before he spoke.

‘The King has told me everything he knows. He reckons there will be some rebels out there, but it doesn’t sound to me like we’ve much to worry about. Only took another five minutes. It’s funny how it works, sometimes. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. I just placed thoughts in his head, about what we knew and what we were doing. Having relatives is a very dangerous business. You are lucky, to be alone.’

I am?

‘So, there you have it, Katrina. The psychological art of the interrogation.’ He tapped the side of his head. ‘In your next class, we really will chop off someone’s finger.’ He laughed. ‘But it’ll have to wait. You’re to go back south with Brightling in the morning.’

Katrina bowed. ‘Thank you, Watcher. This has been a good education.’

‘Hmm. Everything is.’

She left Aranfal alone in the cell, and took herself away from the dungeons of Northern Blown. As she made her way up the stairs, one part of her wept with relief that she had not been forced to torture a girl, just to torment her father.

The other part was disappointed.

Chapter Four (#ua62436c0-460c-57d9-9906-a4cb6501b7b8)

‘Is it Aran Fal, two names, or Aranfal, one name?’

‘Aranfal, one name.’

‘Just Aranfal? No surname?’

‘Correct.’

The Administrator raised his eyebrows. He was a stout man, his skin a dark brown, his bald head scrunched into folds of fat. He wore a gown of silver silk, embroidered with flowers; it hung open to expose his flabby flesh, and was tied with only a loose knot to hide his most private of parts.

He made quite the contrast with Aranfal, who was as thin as a rake and as pale as a spectre, his sunken features and grey eyes framed by a curtain of blond hair. He wore his blue cloak over a dark woollen shirt and hempen trousers. The pair of them looked like the build-up to a joke, sitting in the Great Hall of Northern Blown with nothing but a crackling fire for company.

‘That is … odd,’ the Administrator said. He stared at his papers as if they might offer some explanation. The search appeared to fail. ‘Uh, why is it so?’

Aranfal allowed his thin mouth to fall into a grimace. In truth, he did not mind the questions, but he couldn’t allow this man to assert himself too boldly.

‘Ah, not that it matters, Watcher,’ the Administrator said, leaning back in his chair and smiling broadly. He did not want to appear frightened, but Aranfal could see it in him. He had seen it all before. ‘I was just interested. I am not used to the ways of the North.’ He giggled.

Aranfal stood and threw a log into the flames. They crackled back at him appreciatively.

‘It’s not a northern thing, Administrator. If you must know, it came about when I was a young man. A boy, really. I lost my name when I went to the See House.’

‘You … forgive me, Aranfal, but how can a person lose their name?’

‘It was taken from me, by the Tactician.’

There was a moment of silence as Aranfal took his seat again, sighing with pleasure as he unfolded himself into the furs of the furniture. They did not make chairs like this, in the South. They did not make rooms like this in the South, either. There was a fire on each of the four walls. The stony ground was caked in the filth of dogs and the detritus of ten thousand meals, and the room was unadorned with paintings or fresco or any of the other fads of the Centre. The hall was filled with long wooden tables, scattered with brass pots and knives and cracked plates. At the top of the room, on a raised level, was a high table, where once the King had sat with his family and his most senior functionaries. No more. Modernity ruled here now.

Aranfal turned back to the Administrator. The man’s eyes were wide discs. He had placed his papers on his lap.

‘Tactician Brightling stole your name,’ he whispered. ‘Is there nothing that woman cannot do?’

Aranfal barked a laugh. ‘No, truly there isn’t. Here is what happened. I showed up in the Centre, in that black tower, a boy down from the cold North. Brightling took an interest in me. She decided she didn’t like Aran Fal, though, and since then I have been Aranfal.’

‘She didn’t like Aran Fal the name, or Aran Fal the person?’

A pause. ‘Both of them are gone now.’ The Watcher mocked himself inwardly for his melodrama. ‘I have spent almost half my life as a Watcher, now. As Aranfal.’

‘And a fine job you have made of it.’ The Administrator raised his glass of wine, before remembering that Aranfal was not drinking. He shrugged, and took a long slurp by himself.