Brightling winced.
The Paprissis were destroyed. The girl was abandoned, and ended up where she belonged: with you , the cold nurturer.
Brightling steeled herself. It is testing me. It is only a voice: it has no power. ‘She was going to join you, no matter what happened,’ she whispered. ‘I feel no shame in that. That thing was always going to take her over.’
Always? Always is a powerful word.
A door opened to Brightling’s right. There was no escaping it, this time, no walking away. Something in the room beyond called to her, pulled her towards it. She resisted, perhaps longer than Ruin expected; she thought she heard him muttering darkly. She was not one to give in to temptation. Not her.
But there was no refusing the draw of the room. It was the light that did it. As she stared at her feet, it gathered across the stones: the purple of the Strategists, spilling into the darkness, driving it away.
She began to tremble, and she cursed herself for it. She could resist no longer. She turned her head towards the light and saw her: the girl who changed everything. Her foster daughter. Mother. The Strategist.
Katrina stood alone in a small, confined space, more like a cell than a room. No. This is not Katrina. This was the creature, at its zenith: taller than the girl Brightling had known, stretched into unusual proportions. Her white rags had turned purple, as had her eyes. The same colour of light hung around her in a strange haze. She was standing completely still.
‘It is not really her,’ Brightling said. She felt a wave of relief. She did not want to face that thing, the parasite that had seized control of an abandoned, orphaned girl. But she perhaps feared meeting the real Katrina even more. She had failed that child. If she had been wiser, or more observant, she would have seen what was inside her. She could have gone to the Operator, and he would have done something. She was sure of it. But she had failed. The greatest Watcher of them all, a Tactician of the Overland, and I let my girl be devoured from the inside out.
Isn’t she wonderful?
Brightling silently agreed. There was something incandescent about this girl. Something luminous.
You did this, Brightling.
Anger flared within the Watcher. ‘I failed her,’ she said. ‘But your people put the demon inside her. Not me.’
But what are we, Brightling? What are my people? We came from you . All of you. The memories of humanity. They gave birth to us. They feed us. We are your creations. You are the parents, and we are nothing but children.
‘Children don’t live forever. They don’t have powers that could break the world. They aren’t called fucking Ruin, either.’
There was a laugh in the darkness. I am a child, Brightling.
There was a movement behind the image of Katrina. An old woman appeared, her face just visible under a dark hood. She threaded her arm through the Strategist’s, and smiled at Brightling. Something crawled from her mouth, and flew away.
We are powerful beings, it is true. But all power has constraints. We are born of humanity; we cannot live to our true potential until we are at one with humanity. When we join a host, we become something more. An immortal, still, but one with greater scope . A truer being.
‘And the mortal dies.’
The man that you see, when you look at Jandell – that is not Jandell. He is the host for Jandell. He was meant for Jandell.
The old woman turned and embraced the girl, before vanishing. Katrina breathed in deeply.
The host and the Operator must be just right , before the combination reaches its full potential. You made Katrina the perfect host for Mother. You gave her a certain strength: the mentality of a Watcher. Yet you weakened her as well. You filled her with self-doubt. Mother waited, and watched, and smiled, while you worked your dark influence.
Katrina disappeared, replaced with a flickering procession of images: Brightling and Katrina, Katrina and Brightling, over and over, as the girl grew up under the wing of the Watchers.
I did this.
The host was ready when the world changed. She was ready when the Machinery broke, and I sent such powers to her.
The mask throbbed against her. ‘Say what you want: I am coming for you, with my mask.’
See what I have wrought, from my prison. See what I did to your world. See what powers I gave the One. You think I am weak?
‘I think my mask is stronger.’
Ruin laughed, and the door to the cell slammed shut.
‘The Machinery destroyed my family,’ said Jaco Paprissi. ‘The Machinery destroyed us all.’
The old man stared hard at Jandell. When he had first appeared before Drayn and the Operator, rising out of the grass like an animal, his features had been obscured by thick, green paint, the same colour as his robes. Now the paint was gone, but the wildness remained. His skin was raw, his grey hair matted with dirt. His face was deeply lined, but there was a certain spark in his dark eyes. A drive. It reminded Drayn of her mother.
He had taken them into this settlement, him and his men, through clusters of low, stone buildings, until they had come to this cold, dark hall, a damp space of wood and animals and smouldering flame. The other people had peeled off as they went, until they were alone, just Drayn and Jandell and this strange old man.
The wind howled outside the building. The wind always seemed to howl in this place.
Jandell took his son away. That’s what he’d said, when they first met this man. Drayn had met a boy, deep in the Old Place, one who had stood at her side on her journey through her worst memories. That was him. Drayn knew it. She saw some of Alexander in Jaco. She wondered if she should tell him. I met your boy, my lord. I met him in the land of memory.
‘No,’ Jandell said.
Drayn was unsure, at first, if he was speaking to Jaco or to her. He was sitting to her side at the rough-edged table, hunched over, his strange cloak gathered around him, the faces staring wanly at the world outside their prison. ‘I destroyed your family. I cannot hide from that.’
Jaco ran a hand through his nest of hair. ‘Yes. But you’re as much a victim as the rest of us. You may have built it and operated it, but the Machinery was its own thing. It spoke to Alexander. It told him such … things. And it made you take him away.’
A new brightness seemed to enter Jaco’s eyes. He was directly opposite Jandell, and he leaned in towards him. ‘Is he alive down there?’ But the light flickered out as quickly as it had come. ‘No. He can’t be. It’s not a place for little boys.’
A little boy. I met him. I knew him well …
Jandell shook his head. ‘There is a