‘Memories,’ the Queen said. She shook her three heads.
Something new had appeared at the Queen’s side. It was a table, a circular thing formed of a dark green stone, surrounded by great wooden chairs that seemed to have grown straight out of the sand. Brandione approached it, and looked upon its surface. A vortex of shapes and symbols twisted before him, dancing across the stone, laughing at his ignorance in an ancient and unknowable tongue.
Five figurines had been spread across the table’s surface. They were formed of different materials – wood, glass, stone – but they each were shaped into a person. He went through them, one after the other, lifting them up and examining them carefully. One of them was oddly familiar, though he could not think why: a plump woman, wearing a Watcher’s mask that had been formed into the face of a cat. Another figurine meant nothing to him: a young girl, slight, but displaying a kind of defiant bravery. The girl held a parchment, on which tiny letters had been written. Brandione held it to his eye and read the meaningless words: House of Thonn.
‘I saw that girl, long ago,’ the Dust Queen whispered. ‘She is not a citizen of your Overland. She has never set foot on your Plateau. But she will help to reshape your world. She will fall, and she will rise again. The Fallen Girl.’
Brandione studied the figurine for a moment longer, then placed her back on the table, near the plump woman. He knew the other figurines only too well. He lifted one of them, formed of painted glass: a youngish man with narrow features, his hair painted a garish yellow. His hands were steepled, the tips of his fingers resting at the base of his chin. He wore an aquamarine cloak.
Brandione glanced at the Queen, whose eyes sparkled at him.
‘This is Aranfal,’ he said. ‘A Watcher of the Overland.’ He sighed. ‘A torturer, like all the rest of them. But he was the worst.’ He raised the figurine to his eye. ‘In the … olden times, he took me on a journey to a museum in the Far Below. Him and Squatstout.’ The thought of the little man sent a shudder through him.
The Queen laughed. ‘Squatstout!’
Brandione looked up at her. ‘Yes. He’s an assistant to the Watchers. Do you know him?’
The Dust Queen shook her three heads. ‘He is not an assistant to the Watchers. He is a thing of the oldest ages. He is a creature of the shadows, though he longs for the light. He is a glory of the world.’
‘He is like you?’
The Queen favoured him with three faint smiles.
Brandione placed Aranfal back on the table, and lifted another figurine. The marble was formed into the shape of a fat man, clad in a shawl. He was bald, and even in this form, a heavy sadness clouded his eyes.
‘Canning,’ Brandione said, placing the last Expansion Tactician back into his place upon the swirling board. ‘He was always a good man, though he was weak.’
‘A strange man,’ the Queen said. ‘He is complex, though he sees no good in himself. He has been suppressed by others, through his life; the higher he climbed, the worse it all became.’
‘He was not a bad person,’ Brandione said, ‘but he was not a good Tactician.’
Three sets of shoulders shrugged. ‘He was Selected by the Machinery. You all followed it blindly, yet you loathed one of its choices.’
Brandione nodded. ‘Perhaps. But it’s too late now. We will never know what he could have achieved.’
The Queen laughed. ‘Never know? The game has not even begun, Brandione.’ She pointed one of her fingers at the last figurine. ‘Pick that one up.’
Brandione lifted the final piece, and held it before him.
‘I know this man better than all the others,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps I only thought I did.’
The figure of Brandione was carved of wood. It showed the one-time General as he once had been, clad in his leather armour, upright and proud. He thought of himself now, still wearing the rags of a prisoner. Am I still a General, with my army of dust? No. The old Brandione was dead; he had died with the Overland. They all had. He began to long for this person, and for all the things he had worn, all the things he had been, when he was Charls Brandione, leader of the Overland’s armies, at the right hand of the Strategist …
The Dust Queen coughed. The rags disappeared, and his armour returned. A handcannon hung from his left side, and a sword from the other. He nodded at her, but his mind was elsewhere.
‘Question,’ she said.
His mind swirled with possibilities. He could ask her about this game, perhaps. He could ask her what his role was to be in the future. But strangely, these did not seem to matter.
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?