won and lost — cursed and blessed with near endless life. Cadell was an Old Man freed, a titan, and a fool.
Out of obligation (to Medicine Paul, a political ally of David's father) or cunning, Cadell took young David with him to the city of Chapman, on the storm front of that great monster-bearing cloud, the Roil.
In that city, David met the warrior Margaret Penn, sole survivor of the Roildevoured city of Tate. And there he discovered that Cadell meant to destroy the Roil using a weapon of last resort — the Engine of the World.
When Chapman fell, they were forced to flee (again, always fleeing — be it Verger, Roil or politics), this time by air on the Aerokin the Roslyn Dawn. And, in that flight, Cadell was fatally wounded in a battle with an iron ship. But the Old Man had one last trick up his sleeve. With a ring known as the Orbis, and a bite, he infected David with his purpose and found a sort of resurrection within the young man's blood.
And just in time, for more iron ships came, and David struck them down. Safe in the far northern metropolis of Hardacre, with Cadell's allies Buchan and Whig, they sought to negotiate a journey into the Deep North to the Engine of the World. Of course, they were never safe: stern Margaret, cursed David. The Roil hunted them. Old Men freed at last, and raging, hunted them, and the Engine, that madness in the north, waited like death.
One way or another, this is a Nightbound Land.
The Weave and Fray of History,
Langdon Magritte
CHAPTER 1
We all have our limitations, and you meet me at the edge of mine. It is very sharp, careful, or you will cut yourself upon it. Limitations are to be honed: limitations are a weapon. Believe me when I say that it is a philosophy to hold to, in such limited times.
A Verger always gets the job done. That is my limitation and my creed. And I always do.
THE CITY OF HARDACRE 973 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
An airship passed overhead, and an old man, but not an Old Man, pulled a knife on David Milde.
“Time to die, Mr Milde,” the old man said.
David thought that as greetings went, at least it was to the point, and he couldn’t resist: he looked at his watch. “Really?”
Of all the people David expected might try to kill him, and that included Margaret Penn, this grey and grinning man, eyes gleaming beneath his bowler hat, wasn’t one of them, though there was a great deal of death in him. David still wasn't sure where he had come from. The street had been empty moments ago; then, as though bloomed out of the shadow of the airship, or sprang from the rhythmic beat of David's boots, the man had appeared, lips curled, and eyes bright.
A riot rumbled low and menacing in the distance like a storm. People shouted, sang and howled. Constables blew their whistles. Glass smashed. This was the third riot in the last week. David could taste smoke, and blood, and he had to admit neither was as repellent to him as they used to be.
“Do you think it's wise to do this alone?” David said, looking up and down the street, just the two of them, and a door some way back that slammed shut. “I can be… troublesome.”
“Troublesome.” The man lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps, but not so much for me and mine.” He whistled once, and three men dropped lightly from the rooftops.
These David recognized, Council Vergers — the cut-throat keepers of Mayor Stade's peace. They were a long way from home; from Mirrlees, the drowning city. Vergers had tried to kill him there, as they had killed his father.
Their movements were swift and jerky, as though they had been wound too tight, as though their blood burned. And maybe it did, rumour had it that Stade had transformed his Vergers with Cuttleblood. David wondered what that felt like. How might it burn? He thought he could understand it a little, after all something foreign burned in his blood, but he couldn't quite bring himself to pity them.
Both Buchan and Whig had warned David against leaving the Habitual Fool. The inn was safe, the rest of the city was most definitely not, but, then again, David wasn’t particularly safe, either. He possessed certain hungers that he preferred not to reveal to either Buchan or Whig. David had but ten minutes ago procured a few grains of Carnival, it laid in a twist of paper in a hidden pocket in his jacket. He could certainly use the drug's calmative properties now.
The Vergers' leader tipped his hat. “Name’s Sheff, man should know the one that kills him. I knew your father, shame about his get.” He glanced at David’s hidden pocket.
Was it that obvious? David thought he'd been subtle in his procurement of the drug; his cheeks burned. “Who are you to judge me because I take Carnival?”
“You don’t take Carnival, it takes you,” Sheff said, tossing his knife from hand to hand. It was an old- fashioned Verger’s blade, the handle’s pommel a black pearl. The sort you only saw on the covers of novels, and cheap ones at that. Didn't mean it wasn't perfect for gutting a man.
He wanted to argue the point, and explain that he took Carnival simply to keep at bay Cadell — the Old Man who had infected him with his thoughts. But it was too complicated and he didn’t quite understand it himself, just that the Carnival helped keep a wall in his mind between him and Cadell.
“Stade’s gone, and the Old Man he hunted dead. Mirrlees has fallen too, and I fled that city's politics weeks ago,” David said, and even as he said it, he could hardly believe that only weeks bridged the gap between him in this northern city, and the frightened young man who had run for his life from murder and death at his father's house. “We don’t need to do this, the Roil is hurrying to put an end to everything. The past is broken.”
“I don't care about no broken past, or Old Men dead.” Sheff's grin didn't slip. He lifted his free hand, gripped the brim of his hat, and pulled it from his head. Silver hair gleamed, close-cropped, on his skull. “A Verger always sees the job done. And you, sir, are the job. Stade wished you dead, and death by me would be a kindness compared to the other deaths that hunt you.” He said that with no little pride, his face a weird melange of relish and stern disapproval.
Why did people always want him dead to redress things that he had never done? “So this is to be a mercy killing, then?” David said.
“Of sorts. Better death here than in the Far North where the mad machine dwells. You'd have done well to let dear Mr Tope kill you.”
“Tope killed my father, he hunted me all the way to Chapman, and still he couldn’t finish what he started.”
“I’m not Tope, young man,” Sheff said.
“And I’m not a man anymore,” David said; there was bluster in those words, and some truth.
Sheff smiled. “You’ll bleed like a man, and you’ll die like one, too.” He set his hat carefully down on the cobblestones. As though he was going to dance around it. Perhaps killing to him was a dance. And, not for the first time, David wondered if death wouldn't be a mercy. Sheff was right, he was heading towards something far crueller.
To the north lay Tearwin Meet and the Engine of the World. The Engine was a weapon of last resort against the Roil, and was rumoured to be mad. David’s dealings with it had been limited to a single bright burst of consciousness focussed upon him at one of its Lodes, which he had compelled to destroy three iron ships flown by the Roil. He'd shattered them with ice. The Engine hadn’t been happy with his use of the Lode. After all, it was the Engine that had punished the Old Men for engaging it the last time. It was the Engine that had turned those who had constructed it, and unleashed its energies, into monsters.
