Carnelon had been taken. It had seen it, dark canisters that spread a purposeful madness. It had known not to go near. And with Carnelon’s fall, some deeper evolutionary mechanism was activated, weeks spent hidden in the hills, in a cave dark and deep.
It looked at its young, they mewled and scraped and fed upon the corpse of one of their winged brethren, grown too old for flight and fattened for food. The Cuttle messenger had become meal.
It sealed the cave mouth with materials extruded from its mandibles, and struck the wall in the points weakened for just that purpose: stone fell. And the cave mouth was as if it had never been a cave at all.
Then it clutched the dead messenger in a claw and dragged the corpse deeper and deeper into the mountain. Let the world tear itself apart, it had its young and that was all it would need in the belly of the world.
From the belly of the world they had sprung and the belly of the world would contain them again. Let the world turn and burn or freeze. It would keep its brethren safe.
In his place at the heart of the storm, David sensed it all and found himself lost, so fragmented that he feared he would never put himself back together. Even that fear was almost impossible to hold, it slipped through the widening halls of his mind, and he watched it go, without realising that he was watching it, scarcely conscious of anything at all.
But a voice, Cadell's voice, whispered sternly in his ear. “It is done. You can stop now.” A dry hand clasped his. “It is done, you have done it. Wake up.”
David looked up and saw his mother — as she had looked just before the disease took her — and he could not tell if she was smiling or frowning. But there was love there all the same. And that was his memory, not Cadell's, his alone.
“Wake up,” she said. “Wake up.”
David gulped at the air like a drowning man. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and he was back in the cage, the taste of blood in his mouth. His whole body was stained with the effort, scoured and made squalid by it all. He just wanted to be clean, to be stripped of all that filth, and now, now that he was himself again: he wanted to escape his thoughts. He wanted to cry, but it seemed beyond him. He opened his mouth, and his crusted lips moved, cracking with the motion.
“Let me out,” he said thickly, and leant heavily against the door. It swung open and he fell through the doorway to the floor.
David lay there, his head boiling with thoughts, the aftershock of all the raw energy of the Engine. He wrapped his head in his arms, cradled it, hunched over. At last he let his hands drop.
“What have I done?” he whispered, teeth chattering. He stared down at his bloodied nails, the ruined palms of his hands.
“Frozen the world to death,” the Engine said. “But it is not the end. The storm will pass.”
“And then what do I do?”
The Engine looked at him as though he were a dullard. “Wait.”
David recoiled at that answer. Wait: so that all this could happen again. He did not understand how that was worth it. “But surely there is something more than that? I do not want to construct another broken thing. The Roil will return, our technology, our heat will call it.”
The Engine laughed. “The world is always broken. My power does not extend beyond the crust. I cannot still the heart of this world. To do so would destroy it utterly.”
David looked out at the frozen land beyond the city. “What did we do just then?”
“Stopped the Roil.”
“But at what cost?”
The figure raised its hands in defeat. “I am a machine, David. I do not understand these questions.”
“Then it is up to me to find the answers.”
“I doubt you will like the world you have made,” the Engine said. “No, it will not be at all to your taste.”
“I didn't think I had any choice.” David said. “Everybody kept telling me I didn't have a choice. And what is choice anyway?” David realised that he was babbling, he stopped and looked down at his hands. His fingers were coated with blood. His cheek had been torn open at some stage in the process, he pushed his tongue against the wound, felt it poke through the side of his face.
“Perhaps you didn't,” the Engine said. “I hope that gives you some comfort.”
David wanted to hit this awful thing, but he saw the single tear that tracked its cheek, saw the shudder passing through its body. And he was too tired, too exhausted, and he just wanted to stop, to fall into some kind of sleep.
“I was made for this,” the Engine said; it bent down and picked him up. “I am only ever whole when I ignite all my Lodes, but it is a dreadful thing. Already I am fading, the defences of the city crumbling, not to be rebuilt until I sleep.”
“How long do you sleep?” David asked, thinking how that sounded like the most wonderful thing in the world right now.
“As long as it takes, and never as long as the last time, but I would rather sleep forever. I would rather never wake again. Because when I wake, the world must end anew.”
“This will not happen again,” David said, resolutely. “We will not pick up the pieces and rebuild our world, merely to break it down again.”
He remembered something he had seen. Margaret was gone, and the Roslyn Dawn had crashed into the city.
“Kara, I have to get to her,” he said. “I have to find her, and Margaret.”
“Margaret is beyond the city now,” the Engine said. “I do not think you would like to find her.”
“It doesn’t matter what I would like, I have to.”
The Engine smiled. “See, you are beginning to understand.”
The Engine led him to the doorway.
David walked to the door, took a deep breath, tried not to look at the ruin of his cheek. “Let me out,” he said. “It's time to see this new world I've made, and make something of it.”
“David,” the Engine said as the door opened. “You might find that this new world has teeth.”
David stepped through the doorway, and the door shut behind him.
“Hello, David,” Tope said, and he was already throwing knives.
David dropped and flung out his arms. The first blade passed overhead, the second struck him in the arm.
“Looks like you're having a bad day,” Tope said. “Where's your face gone?”
David grasped at the cold, snatched at it, tried to freeze his flesh around the wound, but the pain was too much. Instead, he pulled the knife free and dropped it to the ground. Blood followed the steel: splattering and clattering.
“Ah, I’ve been waiting for this day a very long time. I died and was reborn just so I could experience it. The Roil had me, and lost me. And now, here we are, the world ending. All ambitions undone, except this simplest of ones. The Roil is dying, and this world with it, but here I am. My little wish fulfilled.”
“Not yet,” David said.
“No, not yet, but soon.” He ran, charging at David, lips curled back with a cruel and dreadful savagery.
David yanked the knife from his belt, the one Margaret had given him, Sheff's long killing knife, and Tope stopped. Just within reach. And for the first time in those implacable eyes, David saw doubt.
“I know that blade,” Tope said.
“Then you know he’s dead.” David snapped his hand forward and buried it to the hilt in Tope’s chest. The Verger shuddered. Ice, released at last in desperation and fear, sheathed David’s hand, sheathed the knife, and crackled up and along Tope’s flesh.
“He’s dead, and so are you.” David pulled his hand free, and struck the Verger hard. He shattered in a burst of crystalline blood.
David let the broken knife fall and ran. Kara was still out there.
In the end, it was easy and terrible, for the Dawn had scattered in her fall. Bits of Aerokin were everywhere. He walked where the bulk of her ruin appeared to be.
He could smell the rank terror of her death, even above the ozone crackling of the engine: a raw and horrible ending for the Dawn. But where was Kara?
