Garron Grinn raised a skeletal finger. ‘That is not the point. This is more serious. These people have taken their Doubting to a bad level. They are pamphleteers, playwrights, that type of thing. As you know, the Watchers take a very dim view of unlicensed arts.’
Rangle was beginning to understand. Cultural control was fundamental to the Watchers; they simply would not tolerate anything that took place beyond their sanction. If this was happening in Watchfold, right under the nose of the Tactician of the West, it could look very bad indeed. Especially when said nose rarely made an appearance in its domain.
‘How long has all this been going on?’
‘It’s hard to tell. Some of these people are new to us, some of them we have discussed before. They are all harmless, in my opinion. But my opinion does not matter.’
‘What have the Watchers said?’
‘They haven’t said anything, though they’ve been seen on the dockside and in the Warrens. They’ve even turned up in the High Town.’
‘But not in the countryside?’ The countryside. A quaint name for half a continent.
‘Not as yet, my lady. But when the rot grips Watchfold, it quickly spreads. At least, that is what the Watchers say. And no one wants another rebellion in the West, madam.’
No. No one wants that. Not ever again.
‘Hmm. Then they are concerned,’ Rangle said. ‘And they think we are doing nothing about it. That is not good.’
Indeed it was not good. They could not attack her directly: not a Tactician, Selected by the Machinery. But they could make life uncomfortable. Did Brightling know about this? If she became irritated, she could close off the library.
She could ban me from it forever.
Garron Grinn sighed. ‘The question is, what do we do about it?’ His eyes flashed as they met hers.
Rangle thought it over for a moment. ‘Well, we cannot fight it, that’s for sure. I will go and speak with Brightling. Perhaps she will appreciate it, if we show at least some interest in the affairs of our area.’
‘Yes, madam. Perhaps.’
When Garron Grinn left, Rangle thought of summoning Darrah back to the apartments. But it was growing late. Better to be alone.
She took herself off to her private room, and reached up to a shelf, from which she removed it: the book that mattered most. She had shown it to none of the members of the study group, not even Darrah.
It was an old thing – the very oldest she had found, in fact. But it did not look it; the pages were formed of a tough substance, which had survived the ages, and even the binding was unbroken. But she could feel the millennia on its pages. This was a thing from long ago: from the very beginning of it all. It had no title that she could see. In fact, it was entirely empty, comprising just a single image on a single page, in the very centre of the manuscript. It had been painted in oil, which still shimmered as if it had been created that very morning.
A woman stood alone upon a rock, her shoulders hunched. She had been attacked, or had attacked someone else; her emerald dress was torn, her red hair hung in matted clumps, and her pale skin was bruised and bloodied. But there was a defiant gleam in her green eyes, as she stared from the confines of the page. If she had lost her battle, she knew she would win her war.
In her left hand she held a mask, as white as her skin. It seemed to have a life of its own: from its own eyes poured hatred, and its mouth was a sneer. In her right hand was a silver full-moon crown, the type worn by Strategists. It was stained red.
Below this woman, in a harsh scrawl, someone had written: Ruin will come with the One.
Not even the People’s Level of Memory Hall could hold the crowds that came for the wake of Strategist Kane.
The old man lay in state in the centre of the hall, his body resting on a circular grey stone, his hands clasped on his chest and his grey hair flowing around his silver full-moon crown. He wore a silken gown of Strategist purple embroidered with recurring patterns of the number 9938: the year of his Selection. On his feet were slippers of silver satin, and an ivory brooch in the shape of an open hand was pinned to his chest. A forty-strong bodyguard surrounded the deathstone, armed with handcannon and sword and eyeing the hordes suspiciously.
Katrina leaned against the Southern Gate, alone in the crowd, exhausted and bored. It had taken weeks to reach the Centre, travelling in a line of carriages and military paraphernalia. The long journey through the ices of the North had been tense and silent, despite the great bloodless victory that had been achieved over Northern Blown. It was never easy to spend time with the Tactician, and Kane’s death hung over everyone like a miserable spectre.
It had been weeks now, months, since the Strategist had died, yet still they had only reached his wake. Nothing ever happened quickly in the Overland. Not quick enough for Katrina, anyway. It was one of her many flaws, according to Brightling. You must develop caution, Katrina. You are always overreaching. But Brightling only saw the young part of her. She had observed her Apprentice for years, and was the greatest Watcher of the land, yet still she could not see all of her.
Grief was everywhere: the people mourned for the Strategist. Ahead of Katrina was a knot of old women, their worn hemp shawls marking them out as peasants. To their right a girl clung to her father, staring at Katrina from above his shoulder. She was surely too young to comprehend the day’s events, but her eyes were red: perhaps she had been swept along by the emotion around her. Katrina wondered if the source of all this misery was not so much the death of the Strategist, but what it entailed. No one had wanted a Selection in the 10,000th year.
As she looked to the weeping mourners, the Apprentice Watcher wondered how they would behave when they attended the Strategist’s actual funeral. This was all for show, was it not? But Katrina could not pretend. Not where Kane was concerned. Neither part of her had ever liked him, and both were glad to see the back of his racking cough and lecherous glances.
It was a rare day that she was allowed to visit Memory Hall, the regal home of the Strategist. Her place was in the See House, the black tower of the Watchers that stood alone and resplendent on the Priador. Memory Hall was a smaller affair, a squat, red marble palace in the centre of Greatgift Avenue. Yet the sense of history here – her history, her country’s history – was palpable.
The walls were hung with tapestries, each recording an historical event, from the Gifting of the Machinery onwards. The greatest individuals were immortalised in statues of bronze and stone and gold, staring blindly down upon their descendants. There was Strategist Arandel, the prophet of the Machinery, standing in gold eighteen feet tall at the Eastern Gate, naked apart from his peasant’s smock. Opposite him were the stone figures of the Five Warriors, Tacticians of the Early Period, who glared down at onlookers from their destriers. And there by the staircase, so small he was barely visible, stood Strategist Lalle, who died just two days after his Selection at the age of ninety-six, by falling down that very staircase.
She was about to move forward into the crowd, when all eyes suddenly swung in her direction. Behind her, the gate was opening.
Brightling was dressed to mourn, a robe of white rags partly obscured by a black satin gown trimmed with Tactician gold. Her face wore a look of suffering that was so profound it was almost poised: a single tear glimmered on her right cheek, trailing a path through her blusher. Her white hair flowed freely; this struck Katrina as odd, at first, until she realised that the Tacticians would all have removed their half-moon crowns. The Strategist was dead, meaning that all the Cabinet, including the Tacticians, would now face a new Selection.
Brightling floated forward to the deathstone, the crowd melting before her and Katrina