‘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.
She snatched the mask from her face and placed it on the table. Jandell was young again, though his palm was still empty. He gave her a weak smile. I have hurt him. The mask has hurt him.
‘What is this thing?’ Brightling whispered. She looked at her mask, which had formed into the face of a young woman, placid and plain.
‘Memories are what we live for,’ Jandell said, ‘because memories are life itself.’ He nodded at the dark mask. ‘That is the opposite of life. It is all that remains of our old enemy: a thing called the Absence. A creature that wished only to destroy memory, and all of memory’s children, and life itself. The masks your Watchers wear are formed of the Old Place, and give them a little sliver of its power: the power of memory. Your mask senses memories, but only to destroy them.’
‘When I have worn it, sometimes … I have felt I could strip out a person’s soul.’
Jandell did not respond. Brightling took the mask in her hand, and hid it away again.
‘Was Katrina a memory, Operator?’
Jandell sighed.
‘There is no Katrina any more. She is subsumed by the One. My people …’
He stared at her, unblinking. ‘This body is not mine; I took it long ago, because it suits me. I feel whole when I am within its memories. I warp it now, as I wish, but I did not create it. It is the same with Katrina; whatever she once was has now gone, replaced by a creature of memory. My mother.’
Brightling ran a finger along her mask. ‘If she is a creature of memory, Operator – then I could use my mask—’
Jandell silenced her with a finger. ‘You could not stand against her. And neither could that mask – remember, the Absence was defeated. That is only a shard of it, a piece of its corpse, and it would be defeated again.’
Brightling nodded, but she was unconvinced. A fantasy