Then all but David, Cadell, Mr Buchan and Mr Whig remained.
“Gentlemen,” Buchan said, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. “If you would follow me.”
On the rare occasions David needed to use the words “richly appointed”, he was merely trying to describe something like this. Mr Buchan’s parlour was the most “richly appointed” room David had ever seen.
Big comfortable chairs covered in plump cushions, lush wall hangings with scenes from history – famous battles and orators speaking – and, above it all, painted in glittering gold and stretching across the ceiling was a Vermatisaur, its many, many eyes rubies, its scales highlighted by diamonds.
Mr Buchan decanted a bottle of sherry and poured everyone a drink.
Mr Whig shut the door behind them and leant on a chair that faced a fireplace so clean that David suspected it had not been used in years.
There was a wooden writing desk and a broad backed wooden chair at the other end of the parlour. A tall ream of paper sat neatly on the edge of the desk, a blue glass paperweight a globe depicting Shale, the single continent prominent, rested upon it. David stared at the manuscript with interest and Mr Buchan caught his gaze.
“My Magnum Opus,” he said. “A history of the Confluents, partly apocryphal, particularly the material regarding Oscar the Fishmonger, which is appropriate for such a party such as ours don’t you think? I intend writing the last chapter once all this is done. Once I know how this turns out.”
Mr Buchan waved his glass of sherry in the direction of the desk, whilst his gaze settled upon Cadell.
“Many was the time I sat at that desk in Chapman’s Tower facing an even harder task than history. Writing letter after letter, each more hopeless than the last, and you never came. I begged you, implored and cajoled, and I do not do those things, and still you did not come and now. And now. Here you are. A little late by my reckoning, wouldn’t you agree, John?”
Cadell’s face wrinkled. “Well, I am here now.”
Buchan clenched his free hand into a fist and shook it in Cadell’s face. “How dare you? How dare you? I lost good men and women to this fight of ours. I have watched my party fail. But for mere chance leavened with paranoia, both Whig and I would have died in Stade’s attack. But we survived and with us hope, though even that has soured this last year. Our heroism, Medicine’s heroism, Warwick’s life, all of it has come to naught. I have seen my world come undone and I have not ignored it. But there is nothing that I can do.”
“And what do you think I can?”
“Do you know we even sent an expedition North, flew directly there.”
“You did what!” Cadell said. “An expedition to Tearwin Meet. That is folly. Absolute folly.”
“Desperation is a potent engine,” Mr Buchan said significantly. “It was an expedition equipped with the latest technologies, and some of the brightest people my city has ever produced, intellectuals of the calibre of the Penns. Not one of them returned, they crossed the wall and then we lost contact. Things are bad, Cadell.”
Cadell snorted. “And you think I don’t know that. Me who numbers in years more than all your cabinet’s ages combined. It is bad, and it will get much worse. It will get much worse and night will fall. How dare you? You, who has not seen what I have seen. You, who does not know the cost of what you ask.
“Why do you think that Stade does what he does? He fears that path, almost as much as I. You released me, but I did not ask to be released. How dare you rage at me?”
Mr Buchan stabbed a finger in the air, his big face reddened and his jowls shook. “I dare because I see what is happening now. I see the Roil growing. And we know enough of the restraints upon you, and the reasons for them.”
Cadell snarled. “Greater cities than you will ever know have fallen, greater civilisations have been destroyed in the cure. My world was wiped clean, and this life, this cage, and these hungers are my curse. The Engine is a cruel saviour, Mr Buchan. Cruel and cold. When you deal with it, you deal with a servant of death. There are no degrees in this, only a different scouring, and the slimmest most terrible of hopes.”
“But they are all we have! We let you out, we let the monster out because it is all we have.”
Cadell hung his head as though he could not face his accuser, defeated at last. “That they are.”
Mr Buchan was not satisfied, his face darkened. “And how could it be otherwise? Nine metropolises have fallen and three remain, though one has but weeks left to it. We are an obstinate people, Cadell. Why, the festival is still being held in Chapman. Tate fell because it was too proud to seek assistance. Mcmahon, pinnacle of everything that this world has achieved since yours tumbled, armed itself to the teeth and it fell faster than the lot of them.” He sat down, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “And where were you? Where were you when all those people died? Where were you when the darkness smothered the refugees, when Endyms and Vermatisaurs tore Aerokin screaming from the sky?”
“You know where I was, where all the Old Men were. And then it took a long time to sate my hungers, to end my madness and face my fears.”
“Bah, you’ve made your fears a certainty.”
“Enough!” Mr Whig raised his hands pleadingly. “There are no certainties, Buchan,” he said. “Perhaps if the cities had banded together, instead of breaking apart we could have dealt with this threat. But they did not. The Engine is a last hope, but it was not the only one.”
“It is now,” Buchan said. “It is now.”
Chapter 31
Name an engine that hasn’t ruined us. I dare you. But of course you cannot. Our relationship with machines has always been… complicated.
THE ROIL THREE MILES SOUTH OF THE ROIL EDGE
Margaret checked her readings once again and hoped against hope that she was right. Another ten minutes and she should be at the edge of the Roil. Another twenty and she would be out of fuel. A near thing, indeed.
She was so intent upon her readings that she did not see the armoured carriage until it had almost collided with the Melody.
Where in all the Roil had that come from? It wasn’t from Tate, but that didn’t make it friendly. At once she charged up her guns, they whined in her ears, competing with the sudden pounding of her heart.
The carriage flashed its forward lights at her.
On and off, on and off.
Margaret studied the vehicle, it was huge and clumsy looking, but cannon bristled from it like the spines of a particularly aggressive animal – and not all of it was endothermic weaponry.
Even the most cursory glance suggested that she was outgunned, even if it wasn’t nearly as elegant as the Melody.
Margaret brought her carriage to a halt. She was almost out of fuel, the cooling units were failing and the engine light had started flashing again.
A door in the side of the other carriage opened, revealing a figure clothed in a cool suit: a design similar though much inferior to her own. The rubber too thick to allow smooth movement, the person within it reduced to a lumpish clownishness, all hips and goggle eyes.
Margaret could not suppress a smile at the sight of such primitive and clunky garb: a museum piece as outdated as a carriage that would waste munitions space on regular guns, as though its designers weren’t quite sure who the enemy was.
Well, these people have not had twenty years to perfect their weaponry.
The figure gestured for her to follow, then struggled back inside its carriage and turned the vehicle around, aft guns aimed on the Melody.
Follow she did, down a short road and towards a grim thick-walled building jutting from the ground. A door in the front of the construction opened and light spilled out, so bright that she had to blink back tears, then, from the
