Mr Whig sat to David’s right, and Cadell was across the table from him as quiet as he had ever seen him. Mr Buchan had been incredibly polite to David, and everyone kept saying how pleased they were to meet him at last and how sorry they were to have heard about his father.
But now, bathed and fed, it was all taking on the qualities of a dream. David struggled to keep his eyes open: a battle he was fast losing.
Unfortunately he suspected that sleep was still a long way off.
‘What is all this?’ he had asked at one stage, never expecting anyone to listen, but Mr Buchan waved for silence.
“David, dear Mr Milde,” he said throatily. “Think of us as the last bastion of the Confluence Party, outside of Hardacre. And certainly the last with any hope of affecting the destruction of the Roil.” He raised his glass. “To the Engine.”
The whole table took up the toast. “To the Engine.”
David glanced over at Cadell. He didn’t look very happy, in fact quite the opposite. Cadell glowered at Buchan, and the big man winked and blew him a kiss.
At last Mr Buchan reached into his elegant vest, patterned like a peacock’s tail, and pulled out a big pocket watch dwarfed by his massive hands so that it looked like some miniaturists’ fancy.
“Gentlemen, it is late and there is still much to do. Not to mention our exodus in two days. I bid you all good night.” His eyes flicked to Cadell. “Dare you brave my parlour, Mr Fly.”
Cadell’s expression was unreadable. “If we must,” he said quietly.
Mr Buchan nodded it was so and rose from the table like some huge beast breaking the surface of a primordial lake. In one movement, he pulled the napkin from around his throat – a napkin that for all his eating and food punctuating was spotless – folded it neatly and slipped it back into a silver napkin ring.
At that signal the hall quickly emptied. Half a dozen people nodding at David and wishing him the best and how pleased they were to finally meet such an upstanding young gentleman.
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.