Gerrard Cowan - The Strategist

He turned back to the board. ‘What are you?’

He wondered if the question was too specific. But then the Dust Queen smiled.

‘Canning.’

The last Tactician in the Overland sat on a wooden stool, wearing only a ragged smock. He was thin, these days. He lifted his head and glanced at Aranfal, before turning once more to the dirt.

‘Tactician Canning,’ the Watcher said. He wasn’t supposed to use that title. Not any more. But he couldn’t help himself.

Free Canning, if you can. That’s what Jandell had said. The one we called the Operator, before we knew there was more than one.

The prisoner forced his head up and looked at Aranfal again, his eyes dull in the candlelight. He was attempting to control himself. The greatness of the spirit. How many times had Aranfal seen that, here, in the Bowels of the See House?

But never like this. Canning is braver than he looks.

‘Water. Please.’

Aranfal walked out into the corridor, scanning it quickly. Operator Shirkra would not like it if she knew he was helping Canning. She wouldn’t like it at all.

He crouched down, and pulled a stone up from the floor. Inside the hole was a wooden cup of water, hidden on another visit. The liquid looked rancid, but Canning wouldn’t mind. It might keep him alive. And he still wants to live, though only the Machinery knows why.

The Watcher returned to the cell, and lifted the cup to Canning’s lips. The former Tactician drank greedily, dirty water slopping across his cheeks. He gave Aranfal a hopeful look when he had finished. The Watcher had seen that look many times, too, down here. For a moment, memories crowded his vision: the broken rubble of his past.

‘There is no more,’ Aranfal said. ‘It wouldn’t do you any good, anyway. You shouldn’t have too much, in your state.’

Canning nodded. His head fell forward, and it seemed for a moment that he might have fallen asleep. Before long, however, he hacked out a cough, and looked up again at the Watcher.

‘You’re helping me. Why?’

Because Jandell asked me to, in the ruins of the Circus. But it wasn’t Aranfal who bowed to the Operator, back then. Aranfal would have nodded, before running as far as he could. No: Aranfal was fading away, and Aran Fal was returning. That was the boy who went to the See House all those years ago: the boy whose names were forced together by Brightling herself. Not perfect, not by a long shot. But a man who helps another man in the Bowels of the See House.

He studied Canning again. There was something different about the former Tactician, something that had changed fundamentally. The Watcher struggled for the word. Toughness, perhaps? Was he changing, too? Did the end of the Machinery do something to them all – free them to become themselves?

‘Because you’re not allowed to die,’ he said.

‘Ah.’ Canning nodded. ‘Shirkra. She likes having me here. She likes to hurt me.’

Aranfal shrugged. ‘That’s part of it, I suppose. But nothing happens without the Strategist’s say so. Not any more. That’s why you’re alive.’

Canning snorted. ‘Why would she want to keep me alive?’

Why indeed?

‘I cannot begin to fathom …’ He thought, for a moment, of the new power in the Overland. He had not seen her since the Selection; no one had. Still, her presence was everywhere, a purple smoke that clogged the lungs and stung the eyes. ‘Perhaps she thinks you will help her.’

‘How could I help her?’

Aranfal squinted at Canning. They had had this conversation many times, here in the darkness of the Bowels, but Canning never seemed to remember. What has happened to him? Has Shirkra rummaged about in his mind a little too much? Aranfal had seen what the female Operator could do. She played with a person’s memories, and she twisted them until they bled. But no. More than that. She took power from them. It reminded him of a story he had read, long ago, as a child in the North: a story about ancient magic, of gods that toyed with men and women, stole from them and abused them, but who always were defeated, in the end, tricked by the same ploys they used against their victims. Were those just stories, or were they history? He smiled at his own hopefulness: Aranfal laughing at Aran Fal.

‘The Strategist only cares about one thing,’ Aranfal said. He looked into the corners, as if she might be hiding there, the thing that had once been Katrina Paprissi. She would not like me talking about her. Or perhaps she would. How would I know? He sighed. What did it matter, anyway? He never knew how things worked in this new world.

‘The Strategist only cares about the Machinery. That’s all. She’s not been here; she’s been searching for it. Perhaps she thinks you can help her find it.’

Canning coughed a laugh. ‘Me? I thought she was the One, whatever that means? She thinks I could help her? Not even Brightling knew where the Machinery was. No one knows, apart from the Operator, and sometimes not even him, if the stories are to be believed. Doesn’t she think I would have said something by now, to get myself away from her … her …’

‘Shirkra,’ Aranfal said, glancing again at the shadows of the cell.

‘Yes. Her Shirkra .’ Canning trembled, and his head lolled forward again. He lifted it with great effort, making a grunting noise.

‘I don’t know what the Strategist thinks,’ Aranfal said with a shrug. ‘I’m just guessing. Maybe she likes the way you smell. How would I know? We never see her.’

Canning’s face broke into a dark smile. ‘Then who rules the Overland? Shirkra?’

Aranfal shrugged again. He was being too free with his words. What does it matter? Shirkra will kill him soon anyway. Whether the Strategist wills it or not, Shirkra will kill this man …

‘No one rules the Overland. The Watchers do what Shirkra wants, but I’m not sure you could call it ruling. I don’t know what the people are doing. I don’t know how they run their lives.’ By running away, if they have any sense.

‘They look after themselves now,’ Canning said. ‘As it should be. We would have been better off all along, without these gods and their machines.’

For a moment, the Watcher was surprised. Is that how we all think of them now? As gods? But his attention was soon diverted by a noise in the corridor outside: a gate being opened, far away.

‘She’s coming again.’ There was a tremor in Canning’s voice. ‘The woman in the white mask.’

Footsteps came to them, delicate feet padding across cold stone.

‘Have you seen what she does to me, Aranfal? Have you been here, when she … I can’t remember. I can’t remember seeing you here.’

The Watcher did not respond. It was too late, now. Shirkra was among them.

She was the same as always, a thin woman in a green dress, curls of red hair flowing behind her mask, that weird thing that approximated her own face and seemed to shift between expressions. It was strange; the Watcher had seen her many times since the events of the Circus, but he could never quite hold a steady image of her in his mind’s eye. To leave her side was to wake from a nightmare; there was always a sense of something vast, terrible, and untouchable, fading into nothingness.

In Mother’s absence, she had emerged as the dominant force in the See House, and in the Centre at large. Her reign was strange and volatile: she would lock herself away for days, and then appear, ordering the Watchers to burn every second house on an unfortunate street, or poison the wells of an almshouse, or swap the stones in a cemetery. It was chaos. But then, so was she.