Jandell did not respond.
Squatstout giggled. ‘She may have taken a host, I thought, and not yet revealed herself. I had a hunch it would be a Watcher: someone near the beating heart of power in your land. In the end, she did not need my help. But I was right, wasn’t I? I knew where she’d be hiding, though I did not find her.’
Brightling did not react. Squatstout smiled, then whistled through his teeth and rolled his eyes.
‘You are a hard woman to apologise to! Anyway, never mind. In truth, I didn’t really do anything wrong, did I? All I did was watch. Well, yes, I could have told you who I really was. Or rather, what I really was, for I told you my true name, did I not? But no: omitting the truth is just as bad as lying, as I’m sure the Bleak Jandell here would agree. But at the end of it all, you are here, now, in my home, and I aim to be a gracious host.’
Squatstout clicked his fingers. Several Guards exited by a door at the side, and came back hauling a long wooden table. Others appeared with piles of food on silver platters.
‘We have much to eat here,’ said Squatstout, ‘if you enjoy fish and seabirds.’
The Guards placed three wooden chairs behind the table. Brightling sat, but Jandell remained on his feet, watching Squatstout with a steady expression before walking towards the throne.
‘What do you call this place?’ he asked.
The Guard with the golden beak visibly tensed, and laid a hand upon his master’s throne.
Squatstout raised a hand. ‘All is well, Protector, my darling,’ he said. He cocked his head and grinned at Jandell. ‘This is the Habitation, Jandell. I am surprised you never learned that, over these long years.’
‘And he is the Autocrat,’ said the Guard known as the Protector. It was a deep voice, leathery, old. ‘You would do well to respect him.’
Squatstout – the Autocrat – gave a tinkling laugh. ‘Protector, you do not know whom you address. This is Jandell. He is one of the oldest of our kind, though he does not look it, does he? You grow younger in appearance, Jandell. The breaking of the Machinery has lifted a weight off you, hmm? The things Jandell could do … well, I have seen them all too often. Is that not right, Jandell?’
Jandell did not react. Brightling reached under her cloak, and placed her hand on the hilt of her blade. Strange, they had not taken her weapons. Perhaps they had no fear of them in this place.
The bell rang again.
‘Squatstout, listen to me,’ Jandell said. ‘I need your assistance. Where has Mother been, all these years? Are there mortals there? People who helped her? Perhaps they know something that can help us.’
Squatstout laughed, harsher now than before.
‘Help you do what?’
‘Stop Ruin. She has not found the Machinery: Ruin cannot come, until she does.’
‘Stop Ruin? No one and nothing can stop Ruin, not even the Dust Queen herself. The Strategist will find the Machinery in the end, and Ruin will come with the One. You think you see the truth now, Jandell. But you are arrogant if you think you can halt the inevitable.’
Jandell sighed. ‘You call yourself Autocrat again, then.’
Squatstout shrugged.
‘That is a name from a different time,’ continued Jandell. ‘It is strange to hear it.’
The Autocrat gave a fierce nod. He seemed exasperated.
‘It was a different time, so different! We were happy then, Jandell! All of us! Operator!’ He spat out the last word like a curse.
And then the room fell away.
**
Brightling was standing on hard, bare ground, surrounded by a throng of people. They were a sorry sight, a ragged horde, thin arms held aloft.
A red sun burned in a red sky, and red sand blew across red soil. The rags the people wore were red, and so was their skin, as if they had spent centuries cooking under the sun. Before them was a crystal platform, on which sat five red thrones. On those thrones, wearing crowns of red, sat five beings.
Brightling recognised three of them straight away. In the centre was Jandell, the young version, black hair framing his narrow face. He wore a cloak, but it was not the one she knew; there were no faces in the red material.
To Jandell’s left was Squatstout, who leaned forward to whisper something in the Operator’s ear. To his right sat the woman in the white mask, the one who had emerged from the Underland with Katrina, in the ruins of the Circus – Shirkra, Jandell had called her. The mask was nowhere to be seen, but the skin of her face was almost as bleached and flawless, and her green eyes now glinted red.
Brightling did not recognise the last two. They sat apart from the other three, holding hands: identical black twins, a boy and a girl, watching the goings-on with a savage glee.
Jandell stood from his throne, his cloak sweeping into the air. Squatstout laughed and clapped his hands.
In the distance, a bell rang.
Jandell pointed into the crowd, to a thin woman holding a baby. She clutched the child to her dusty bosom, hoping, perhaps, that Jandell was pointing somewhere else.
But he was not.
Hands grasped at the woman and her child, pushing her forward to the red thrones. A sense of dumb foreboding settled in the pit of Brightling’s stomach. Why are you afraid? You’ve seen worse. But there was something different, here, from the cruelties she had witnessed – that she had perpetrated – as a Watcher of the Overland. This was the dumb malice of a child toying with an insect: cruelty for its own sake. She looked to Jandell, to the real Jandell; he had averted his eyes.
The boy and girl leapt from their thrones and skipped to the side of the platform. The boy tapped the woman on the forehead. She looked into his eyes, and seemed to somehow deflate.
‘Delicious,’ the boy said, and his companions laughed.
The girl prised the baby from the woman’s arms, and danced around the platform with it as it squalled. She threw it in the air and caught it; she seemed certain to drop it several times, but somehow held on, grasping it by an arm or a leg as it cried. The mother did not protest; she melted away into the rabble, arms hanging by her side, no longer concerned by anything.
‘Bring the child here,’ said Jandell.
A moan ran through the crowd.
The girl stopped dead and looked at Jandell. She seemed to hesitate.
‘Girl, bring that to me.’
Jandell’s voice was different. It was colder.
The girl did not hesitate this time. She bowed as she approached Jandell, the baby held before her.
He took the child. Squatstout threw his head back and laughed, a sound that echoed across the barren plain like that bell that came from nowhere and everywhere.
Jandell held the child in his arms, cradling it like it was his own. Then he thrust it in the air, gripped tightly in both his hands. His eyes burned, and he looked upon its small face with a fury until the child hung limp. The boy and the girl ran to Jandell, staring up at him with devotion. Squatstout clapped, and Shirkra looked on impassively.
The real Jandell turned to the real Squatstout.
‘Why did you take me here?’
**
They were