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They sat in silence for a while, staring into the flames. They used peat as fuel, up here, digging it from the bogs. Sometimes they found bodies there, in the soggy muck, preserved for thousands of years, from before the Machinery, even. The fuel took a while to get going, but when it did, the smell was delicious. It transported him back to older days. He had been happy as a child, hadn’t he? He could not remember. That was the world of Aran Fal.
He snapped back to reality, to find that the Administrator was staring at him. The man was making a habit of that. What did he think was going to happen, if he stopped looking?
‘Have you completed the inventory?’
The Administrator started, then hurried to gather up his papers. ‘Yes, master Watcher, it’s all in here. Nothing of any great significance, the usual old weaponry, not much use to us now. We can probably melt it down. Some jewels, though. I think the Tactician would like them. And sundry clothes, dishes, etc.’
‘Nothing of any tremendous value.’
‘No,’ the Administrator said with a slight shrug, before raising a finger. ‘Apart from the land itself. This is a good spot to control. From here we can keep watch of the northern waters.’
Aranfal nodded. ‘Do you expect some enemy to appear from those waters?’
The Administrator fell silent. He thinks I’m trying to catch him in a trap. If only he were so important!
‘Administrator, I am not trying to trick you. It is important now to think to the future. You would find that everyone in the See House feels the same way, right to the very top.’
The Administrator smiled nervously. ‘Well, you know what people say, other lands across distant seas, and all that. Better to be careful.’
‘Indeed.’
Silence reigned again. Eventually the Administrator bent over and lifted a bell, which he raised in the air and vigorously shook, creating a cacophony that made Aranfal want to throw the thing into the flames, along with its bearer. Before long a servant came scampering through the main door of the hall, wineskin in hand, and ran to the Administrator’s side, delicately refilling his drink before once again rushing out to some other part of the castle.
The Administrator did not once make eye contact with the servant. Aranfal despised this type of behaviour. It was something he had seen many times, especially among Administrators and other middling sorts. Funny, he spent his days with the most powerful people in the Plateau, but he never saw them act this way. It seemed that those with the real authority never felt the need to put it on display. It was just there, for the entire world to see, whether handed to them by the Machinery or not.
Aranfal was growing very tired of this little man.
‘Administrator,’ he said softly, ‘I want to get my work done up here as fast as possible, and go home. Have your men found anything suspicious?’
The Administrator leant forward, glancing theatrically into the shadows.
‘Do you mean … Doubters?’ he whispered.
‘Yes.’
The Administrator nodded. ‘Well, as you know, Watcher Aranfal, we humble servants lack your skills in such matters. Indeed, we do not even possess your beautiful masks, so we must look into people’s souls with only our own eyes—’
‘Please, just tell me how many.’
‘Hmm. Well, we have not yet found the ones the King mentioned, I am afraid. Perhaps you have had better luck on that front?’
‘No.’ The King was probably lying. People will say anything, sometimes. Perhaps I should visit him again.
‘But we have found three others.’
‘Three? That’s quite good, Administrator.’
‘Yes, well, you know …’
Aranfal leaned forward. ‘They made themselves quite easy to find, didn’t they?’
The Administrator cleared his throat. ‘Well, you may say that, but really I think we deserve some credit—’
‘Where did you find them?’
The Administrator cringed. ‘Uh, well, one of my men found them when he was out for a walk, you know, with a lady, as it were. They had just taken themselves up to the Bony Shore, and there they were, as bold as you like, three of them, on the sand, huddled around a little fire, and talking openly about the Machinery breaking. Strange-looking creatures, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘And your man and his lady friend, they are certain they heard these people speculate on the Machinery?’
‘Oh, worse than that, Watcher Aranfal. These folk were saying that the Machinery was breaking. They were delighted by that, by all accounts. They acted as though it was the best thing they’d ever heard, dancing around the fire.’
‘And your man can definitely be trusted?’
‘Oh yes. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. They have already confessed. They are positively joyful about it, you know! They seem to like the thought of all the things you folk will do to them in the Bowels of the See House. Some people are like that. I heard there are folk in the West—’
‘I will speak to them myself. Where are they being held?’
‘In the dungeons, sir. Handy thing about old places like this.’ He flicked a hand at the walls. ‘They have such lovely dungeons.’
Aranfal stood and bowed to the Administrator.
‘If you find any more Doubters, Administrator, do let me know straight away.’
The Administrator seemed taken aback. ‘I wasn’t hiding anything from you! I just thought you might like to relax first, what with all the exertions of taking this place, you know.’
‘Thank you.’ Aranfal placed his hand in his cloak and felt it, hanging loosely from his belt: his raven’s mask. It always reassured him, knowing it was there. He felt almost naked without it, but had decided the Administrator might feel slightly unnerved, sitting across from a twisted raven that could see into his soul.
He turned to leave, and got halfway to the door before the Administrator started yapping again.
‘Oh, Watcher?’
‘Yes?’
‘I have not told you my name.’
One little scare won’t hurt him. It might do him good.
Aranfal flipped the mask into his hand and onto his face in one smooth movement.
‘That’s all right,’ he said, staring at the Administrator through the savage holes of his mask. ‘I already know everything I need to about you.’
As the Watcher left the Great Hall it took everything in his power to stifle a laugh at the look in the Administrator’s eyes.
In truth, Aranfal was not the same as Aran Fal. Aran Fal was dead, and Brightling killed him.
Aran Fal was murdered early on, when he first joined the Watchers. He was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kind of fellow, the honest son of an honest father, a golden stereotype who skipped his way along the road to the Centre. His was a soft kind of worldview, though he considered himself a paragon of courage. He was ambitious, yes, but ambition without an edge leads only in one direction, and that is to the edge of a cliff.
How had this big-hearted dreamer ended up among the black-clad operatives of the See House, with their strange masks and their brutish ways? Well, like many a young man, he thought he could change things. He did not like the world as he found it. He thought it could do with some revisions. There was no power in the world like that of the Watchers, the servants of the great Brightling, who at that stage was just establishing herself as the power of the Overland. To the young Aran Fal, the Watchers were the focus of all excitement, adventure, and potential.
He did not have a plan when he went to the Centre. It took him months to walk along those roads, alone for long periods with only his thoughts. They called the Overland a city, but he never understood why. Parts of it were nothing but vast empty spaces, with not a soul in sight. Aranfal had used the time poorly. He did not consider his options, or analyse the pitfalls that could lie ahead. Oh, how he had changed since then.
Despite everything, the Watchers took him in. He saw it as a just reward for his confidence. Perhaps that was even true. Or perhaps they saw something else, within him. Perhaps they saw Aranfal.
Eventually, she saw him, and she liked him, and she took him under her dark wing. She showed him many things, not least her technique for extracting information from recalcitrant Doubters.
‘If you do not co-operate with me,’ he told the prisoner, ‘I will find other ways to take it from you.’
The man before him was unlike anyone Aranfal had seen before. This was not to do with his physical appearance; in that regard, he was like many an inhabitant of the Centre. His skin was olive, and he wore his black hair long, tied back behind his shoulders. He had a sharp kind of face, all angles and edges, like something from a painting of one of the old families; a short beard stabbed out from the bottom of his chin. His dark eyes were constantly on the move, examining and dissecting his surroundings. He was like any wealthy merchant or Administrator, though his clothes were odd: he wore a torn red cloak, like an itinerant.
When the man spoke it was with an utter confidence that suggested he was unaware of the seriousness of his situation.
‘There is nothing you can do to me, Watcher of the Overland.’ He grinned as he said those last words, as if that exalted title was somehow amusing. He did not seem at all perturbed by the chains that bound him to his chair, or put out by the rough treatment he had already received at the hands of some more thuggish Watchers.
Aranfal was sitting opposite the man. He glanced around the room. It was a place of cold wet stone, of chains and dripping water and flickering candles. It was worse even than the cell they’d used for Seablast. A weaker man would already be spilling out his guts, in a place like this.
‘What is your name, Doubter?’
‘Gibbet.’
‘Do not lie to me.’
‘I am not.’
There was a pause.
‘Where are you from?’ Aranfal narrowed his eyes. ‘I hear hints of … what, the North, in your accent?’
‘But you hear the North everywhere, Watcher Aranfal, don’t you? You can’t escape it. No, I am not from your North. No.’
Aranfal smiled at the man, but it was a false thing. How do you know my name?
‘You have already confessed to your hatred of the Overland and the Machinery, long may it save us. You will tell me your plans now, or you will suffer the consequences.’
‘My plans? I have no plan. The plan was put in motion ten millennia ago, when the Promise was made.’
‘You will tell me your plan, Doubter.’
‘Ruin is coming. You can do what you want to me, but you cannot halt its rise.’
Aranfal rapped his knuckles on the table. ‘I will look into you,’ he said. He reached down and lifted his raven mask from the floor, slipping it on with a flourish. The subjects of interrogations often melted before the mask, afraid that all their secrets would be exposed. This man did not. He simply leaned forward in his chair, clasped his hands together, and stared at the raven with a dark smile.
Strange. Aranfal had a greater mastery of the mask than any Watcher, save Brightling. He would look through its hollow eyes, and sensations would gather within him, hints of treachery and rebellion; they would form like smoke, and he would inhale them. Sometimes he would be transported to other places, to the memories of the subject, and watch their Doubting take place. But with this man, there was nothing.
He removed his mask.
‘How did you do that?’ He failed to conceal his disappointment.
The man laughed. ‘I know the creature who makes your masks, Aranfal. I know him. I have known him from days of old. His tricks will not work with me.’
Aranfal sighed. ‘Do you know my mistress?’
‘I know of Brightling, if that is who you mean. But she is not your mistress. You will learn who your true mistress is, in time.’
Aranfal slammed a hand down on the table. ‘Brightling is my mistress, Doubter. Do you know her?’
‘I do.’
‘She is clever, you know. She taught me ways to extract information, even from those who are strong.’
‘Please, try your damnedest.’
Aranfal whistled, a strange shriek of a sound. The door to the cell opened immediately, and a burly Watcher entered, pushing a woman before him. She was relatively young, perhaps in her mid thirties. She had the same olive skin as Gibbet, but she was plumper. Her head was shaved down to the stubble; on her forehead was a tattoo of an eye, wide and staring.
‘This is a friend of yours, is it not?’ Aranfal asked.
Gibbet nodded. He grinned at the woman. Still he smiles.
‘Her name is Hood, as strange a name as your own.’
‘Oh, Watcher, I am far stranger than old Gibbet,’ said Hood.
Gibbet and Hood laughed in unison.
‘Your laughter upsets me,’ Aranfal whispered. ‘Doubters should not be allowed to laugh.’
He nodded at the other Watcher, who grunted as he threw Hood to the floor.
‘You should not have laughed,’ Aranfal said again.
The other Watcher raised his leg and stamped on Hood’s chest.
‘Do not laugh at us again,’ Aranfal whispered.
The beating that Hood received at the fists and boots of the Watcher was as savage as any Aranfal had witnessed. The woman’s bones cracked like kindling, and her face quickly dissolved into a bloodied pulp, the tattoo now impossible to discern. Aranfal turned away in disgust. He did not care for brutality, especially when his true target was the man, not the woman. But it was as Brightling had always said. A person will endure much suffering, but they will not stand for so much as a misplaced hair on a loved one’s head. This woman had no hair, but the meaning was the same. It had worked for him more times than he cared to remember. Some subjects, like old Seablast, did not even need to witness the torment of their loved ones, to fall apart. It was almost always a sure route to success.
Except this time, it wasn’t.
The woman did not cry out. She did not resist the blows as they rained down on her. She smiled.Through it all, she was grinning.
And Gibbet laughed.
Something is very wrong.
Aranfal leaned over Gibbet. ‘You laugh, still you laugh. But know that this treatment’ – he pointed at Hood upon the floor – ‘is just the tiniest taste of what I can do. I am not an impatient man. I can make things far worse, over a much longer period of time. Do you follow my meaning?’
But Gibbet kept laughing. He laughed as he looked into Aranfal’s eyes. He laughed as he looked at his companion. He laughed as he stood, and he laughed as he cast his chains aside, as if they were formed of butter. He laughed as he picked up Aranfal’s mask, and he laughed as he put it on.
‘No,’ was all Aranfal managed to say.
