Gerrard Cowan - The Strategist

‘That is a strange thing to say,’ Jandell said. ‘I can see you, sitting there, breathing in smoke, eating and drinking, and talking to me, telling me that you are dead.’

Brightling flicked a date into her dead mouth. ‘Whatever I thought I was is now gone forever.’ She nodded. ‘We all believe we know who we are. We look in the mirror, and think the truth stares back at us. It is a lie, though; it can be changed. I saw it happen in the past. I made it happen. A new creature, in the original shell. Aran Fal becomes Aranfal.’

She sucked on her pipe, and exhaled a dancing circle.

‘But the Machinery saw the real truth. It looked beyond the mirror. It knew who we really were.’

Jandell grunted. ‘Aran Fal and Aranfal. Those names sound almost the same.’

‘The two men are very different.’

The Operator nodded. ‘And what about you? Who is the real Brightling?’

She looked up at him. He had grown younger on their journey, at least in appearance: black hair now fell from his skull; the lines in his face had faded away, and there was a new light in his eyes. But he still wore that terrible cloak, and the faces within glared at her, smiled at her, licked their lips and laughed at her.

‘I was made for the Machinery, and now it is gone.’

‘You were the greatest person on the Plateau.’

Brightling shrugged. The greatest person on the Plateau. She thought of all the things she had done in her efforts to impress the Machinery and wreck the hopes of others. She thought of Canning, of the humiliations she had poured on him. It had all seemed so clear, once: so fair. The Operator loved her; he had told her so himself. She could do anything with his backing. She could ruin her enemies, in their own minds, and in the eye of the Machinery. She could expose them. She could stage plays to display their weaknesses to Overland and Underland alike. That world she believed in was at an end. The Strategist was broken, the Tacticians were broken, and the Machinery was broken. All of it, all of it, all of it, was always going to break.

She shrugged. ‘It didn’t matter. I was supposed to be a Watcher, but I was blind. I blinded myself. I didn’t see what was happening to the Machinery.’

Jandell laughed. ‘That guilt is mine, not yours. I created it. I spoke with it. I turned my eyes from the truth.’

‘The truth of Katrina Paprissi. But that was my error, more than yours, Operator.’

‘She was important to you,’ he said. ‘She was a daughter to you.’

Brightling turned once more to the waters.

**

It had been months since Brightling had joined Jandell on his ship, in the far North of the Plateau. She had never been on one before, yet even she could tell it was no ordinary vessel. When she looked out upon the waves she could see them rolling wildly, slamming and whirling in a great grey storm. But this had no impact upon the black ship, which seemed to float above the water, ignoring all its motions.

In the mornings, she would see him on deck, his cloak blowing in the wind, the faces wailing in their prison.

He had told her, in the beginning, where they were going: to the home of Squatstout, the little creature who had followed Aranfal around the Overland, all that time ago. But he said nothing more about it; he only stared at the ocean.

The ship had no crew.

**

They spent their evenings in the galley, a kind of kitchen below deck. He would speak to her, as she ate the food he conjured from only he knew where. He told her of strange things, of cities long gone and wars among the Operators. He told her of dreams that lasted millennia, of the birth of stars and the fall of civilisations.

When she thought back on these conversations, the memories turned to dust.

‘You are happy now, Operator,’ she said one evening. They sat opposite one another at a rough-hewn table. He watched her, with a smile, as she plucked at fruit and cheese.

‘I am not happy,’ he said after a moment. ‘I am … relieved. A weight has been lifted from me. I no longer hide from the truth.’

‘Ruin will come with the One.’

Jandell closed his eyes.

‘Prophecies are strange things, and this one was spoken by the strangest of all creatures. Who knows the truth of it? Who knows when Ruin will come, and what it will mean to us all? Perhaps she does not know herself.’

‘Who is this woman? Shirkra?’

Jandell smiled. ‘No. Shirkra is nothing but madness: twisted and deformed. The one who made the Promise …’ He stood from the table and walked to a shelf on the wall, where there was a small wooden box. He opened it, lifted something out, and returned to the table, placing the item between them. It was a statue, perhaps as tall as Brightling’s hand, depicting three women: identical creatures, wearing crowns of glass and dresses as white as ivory.

‘The Dust Queen,’ Jandell said. ‘Oldest of us all. I could not have made the Machinery without her. She looked into it, when we had finished, and she saw those words: Ruin will come with the One .’

‘Who is she?’ Brightling asked. She stared at the statue, and for the briefest of moments, the edges of the figures seemed to fall away, as if they were formed of dust. ‘Where is she now?’

‘I do not know.’ Jandell took the statue back to its box, and returned to the table. ‘I wish I did, now that …’ He let the sentence die.

In a swift movement he snatched up a fork and pronged a grape, thrusting it at Brightling, like a child trying to please a favoured aunt. The Watcher plucked it from the blade, and crushed it in her mouth.

‘This food is very old, so old,’ said Jandell.

‘It can’t be. It’s delicious.’

‘It is only as old as the memory itself, which is as fresh to me now as when it was made, back then, so long ago.’

‘The food is a memory?’ She lit her pipe and blew a ring of smoke into the air. The Operator watched it dance. ‘How can I taste a memory?’

Jandell laughed again. ‘Why shouldn’t a memory be real? Memories are what we live for, my family and I. Memories are our power. We can bring a memory back to life; we can twist different ones together, to create something else. It is our … magic. Yes, that is what they called it once.’

He put out his hand, and opened his palm. In the middle of it was a small flame, a flickering tongue of red fire.

‘What is this?’ she whispered.

Jandell laughed. ‘This is nothing. This is just a little trinket.’ He leaned towards her. ‘Touch it.’

Brightling hesitated. ‘It will burn me.’

Jandell shook his head, and she did not hesitate again. She plunged her hand into the fire, and felt only coldness.

‘What kind of flame is this?’

Jandell smiled. ‘A thing of memory.’

‘You remember a cold fire?’

He shook his head. ‘No. There is more than one memory at work here. My people can mix them together like paints on a palette. And they are not my memories; they are the memories of humanity. There is no Jandell, in truth. I was born in the pool of human memory that you call the Underland, long, long ago. My family and I are creatures of memory.’

As Brightling looked upon the flame, without thinking, she shifted her hands underneath her cloak, and felt it: her mask. An image appeared in her mind’s eye. She was a young Watcher, sitting at her desk. The Operator appeared behind her, and she did not react. It was as if this was simply to be expected. She turned to him, and he handed her something: her mask.

She felt it, now, and she lifted it out. It had taken the form of an old man, his features flashing with anger. Without knowing why she did it, Brightling put the mask on her face, for the first time in an age. Wearing it was painful; she could feel it weighing on her, tugging at the core of her being. She turned to Jandell, and for a moment he looked like his old self, ancient and weak. The flame spluttered in his hand, and suddenly went out. He lifted his other hand to his eyes, and she realised he was in pain.