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  One way or another, this is a Nightbound Land.

  The Weave and Fray of History,

  Langdon Magritte

  PART ONE

  HARDACRE

  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 Stuck Pig and Other Capers, Jackson Sheff

  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.

  But it was the Engine that Shale needed now. A few weeks, a month, that was all this world had left to it unless the Engine was engaged, and David, through mischance and Cadell's bite, was the only one able and willing to operate it: to set in motion its energies and drive the Roil from the world.

  Certainly, there were many willing to stop him — the Old Men included, they hunted him, even now — Sheff was just the next one in line. The funny thing was, as David saw it, he really had no idea how he was meant to engage the Engine. Cadell did, and he wasn't talking.

  “I don't think you understand just what I am,” David said.

  “Troublesome,” Sheff said. “Soon to be dead.” He nodded his head once. “Gentlemen.”

  The Vergers to the left and right rushed him at the same time. They were quick, their long knives dancing, but David was quicker.

  Still, he didn’t quite know what he was doing. The first Verger’s knife brushed his arm, and blood blossomed, the second Verger’s blade slashed through his jacket, and scraped along a rib. That focussed him.

  David kicked out, struck the first assailant just beneath the knee. Bone snapped. The Verger screamed, tumbled to the ground, and David spun, ducking beneath a knife, fists finding the second Verger’s belly and his throat. No scream for him, just a gasp and a swift fall.

  “See,” David yelled. “See!” Though he didn’t know why he was yelling it, just that he was angry and hungry, and here, for the first time, he was fighting the knife men that had killed his father, and chased him from his home, and he was winning.

  Something heavy struck him between his shoulders, knocked him stumbling forward onto his knees. Strong hard hands wrenched his arms back, until he felt as though they must tear from thei
r joints, and he realized that he would have been better off paying attention to the other men around him.

  “Three is always better than one,” a dry voice whispered in his ear.

  Sheff grinned at him, his blade gleaming in the daylight.

  A few streets away people chanted furiously. Something political and progressive, no doubt; the Hardacre folk liked their slogans.

  Sheff cleared his throat, spat upon the ground. “A Verger always gets the job done.”

  The blade pushed close against his throat. Sheff smiled.

  Then his face wasn’t there any more. Blood and bone spattered over David. And, despite himself, David licked his lips a little. He sprang to his feet, swinging his head backwards, felt the crack of a nose breaking; the man behind him groaned and fell, releasing his hold on David’s arms. Blood rushed back into his hands, he closed them to fists.

  Sheff swayed before him, a Verger's perfect balance keeping him there as his body negotiated its position with death. The knife clattered to the ground.

  “Not this Verger,” David whispered in Sheff's ear. David pushed him in the chest, and the man toppled over. “Not Tope, not you.”

  He crouched down, snatched up Sheff's knife. The Verger behind him scrambled to his feet, knife in hand, eyes blinking. David danced around his guard, and drove Sheff’s blade through the Verger’s heart — felt the Cuttle-driven flutter of its last beats. “Nor this one, either.”

  He pulled the knife free, turned his head. “What about you two?”

  The other Vergers were running, holding each other up, not even glancing back.

  “Don’t gloat over the dead,” Margaret said behind him. He closed his eyes, waited for the bullet to come. He might have even wished it on a little. Margaret at least had the right to kill him. She didn’t fire, of course, and he turned and glared at her. Margaret, pale tall Margaret, greatcoat down to her ankles, rifle still smoking in her hand. As puzzling to him as the first time he had met her in Chapman. In fact, she’d shot something that time, too. Her eyes narrowed, she glared back at him.

  “You were following me?” David said.

  “Saved your life.”

  “I was holding my own.”

  Margaret shrugged, and slid her rifle back into its sheath. “I was bored.” She gave a rather wan smile. “Followed you by the rooftops. Almost ran into your friends.”

  “We'll talk about this later,” David said, and Margaret gave him a look that suggested she most definitely wanted to. He gestured at the two fleeing Vergers, still stumbling towards the riots. In the press of all those bodies they’d never find them. “What do we do about them?”

  “Nothing,” Margaret said. “They won’t be hunting you for a while. I think we’ve killed enough people today, don’t you?”

  “They wanted me dead,” David said.

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” he said, dropping Sheff’s knife by his body. Margaret surprised him by picking it up, and wiping it clean on Sheff's shirt. “Useful,” she said, almost as though he wasn’t there. Her eyes flicked up to him. “Do you mind if I keep it?”

  “Not at all.”

  Margaret slipped the knife into a ring at her belt and smiled a rather Sheffish grin. “Time we left,” she said. “Vergers or not, we'd be fools to linger.”

  David looked at the rooftops. “That way?” he said, somewhat dubiously.

  “Of course not,” Margaret said, already hurrying down the street, stepping neatly over rubbish. “I wouldn’t want you falling and cracking your skull — let's not do the work of your enemies.”

  David looked at Sheff's hat, and stomped on it. “Try and kill Milde's get, eh?” he said to Sheff's corpse. “Gets you killed instead.”

  “David,” Margaret said over her shoulder without a hint of indulgence. “Hurry.”

  And he did.

  The sound of the riot grew, faded away and grew again; such was the curling nature of Hardacre's streets. They led to trouble as often as they led away from it, but Margaret — efficient Margaret — knew her way even after a few weeks; another corner and the riot may as well have been a hundred miles away. She took them down a side street that ran almost directly to the Habitual Fool, the pub they had been staying in these past few weeks. Almost directly meant a meander, and another near-miss with the riot. In fact, one poor fellow ran at them with an iron bar, only to be neatly punched in the neck by Margaret. He teetered there, blinking, so Margaret kicked him in the stomach, looking all the while like she would rather do the same to David.

  He stepped over the groaning man.

  “I'm sick of being hunted! Talking of which, why were you following me?” David asked, his limbs shuddery; he suddenly and desperately needed some of that Carnival in his pocket, and food, plenty of food. His stomach rumbled.

  “I needed to know.”

  “Know what? That I visit the brothels of Goodlin Street, or that I’m still taking Carnival?”

  “I know you haven’t been visiting brothels,” Margaret said.

  David sighed, felt heat in his face. Carnival killed that part of him dead. Besides, his father's friend Medicine Paul had once sent him to a brothel. The experience had been somewhat painful, embarrassing, and terribly awkward; even then Carnival had been his greater craving.”Then what? What did you need to know that asking me wouldn't have answered?”

  “I needed to know that you weren’t the one doing the killing. Those bodies they've been finding, the ones that started appearing a week after we arrived.”

  She thought he was capable of that? They turned another corner and he could see the Habitual Fool up ahead.

  “Well, are you?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “Of course not. That’s Cadell, all of that is Cadell. He's an Old Man; it's what they do. They've hungers when they're alive, persuasive hungers, believe me. But when they die it gets much, much worse.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  “Eat something,” he said. “I’m hungry.”

  He was always hungry, and the sight of Sheff and the Verger dead had only made him hungrier. After all, he was an Old Man, too.

  Margaret grabbed his arm. David wrenched free, and turned on her. “Don’t get between me and food,” he said, with a hiss — all teeth and spittle. “Don’t you dare!”

  Before Margaret could see his embarrassment, and her hurt expression could turn to anger, he bolted to the pub, pushing the door right into a poor drinker. The man scowled and clenched his fists, until David smiled at him. “Please don't get between me and food,” he repeated.

  The man backed away, hands out. “It's nothing. It's nothing,” he said.

  David wondered just what he saw in his face.

  David could feel Margaret's gaze on him. Could feel the question still unanswered.

  He knew what he had to do. And it terrified him.

  CHAPTER 2

  That time in Hardacre was filled with such desperation and yet everything moved so slowly. My partner, Whig, and I have waded through the molasses of civic paperwork before. We’ve never let it stop us. I was cocky, but what mayor isn't? We've earned such pride. I got things done, and in my time, but this wasn't my metropolis. Every painful step, every stall and stymie was an illustration of that, as though Hardacre sought to remind me whenever it could that it wasn’t Chapman, that these weren’t my people, that my power base was gone, that my people were gone.

  I know that Margaret Penn hated me for it, but, at the time, I didn't quite understand her urgency. David wasn't the only one being hunted. We all had things to grieve: the profound loss of loved ones and homes. Nothing was simple anymore.

  There was a will against us, a great and terrible will.

  Well, we had terrors of our own. Not least of them Master Milde.

  Recollections Recollected, A Buchan

  THE CITY OF HARDACRE 973 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL

  What little guilt Margaret Penn possessed
about following David evaporated the moment the Vergers had attacked. David could be angry at her all he liked, but the truth was she had saved his life. With David dead, the Roil could never be stopped. The Roil had destroyed the metropolis of Tate, subsumed her mother into its mind, and taken away everything else that she cared about. She lived for its destruction, and David was so tightly bound in any possibility of defeating the Roil that his welfare had become far more important than her own.

  He was the key that engaged the Engine of the World. She needed him alive, and she had to believe that David wanted to live as well. He went on and on about being hunted. But what did he really know about that?

  Margaret, on the other hand, was well acquainted with pursuit. It filled her dreams as much as the destruction of her city. Her mother hunted her.

  She knew it as surely as the twin moons that shone in the sky. Just as she knew her mother would be relentless in that hunt. Margaret had seen the things that her mother had at her disposal; she’d seen the great works of the Roil, and how quickly it had washed over first her city, and, not long after, the city of Chapman. When such industry was combined with such intellect it was unstoppable.

  Almost, and it was that almost that tantalised and horrified her.

  If David hadn’t destroyed the iron ships that had followed them after their escape from Chapman, she’d most probably be deep in the Roil now, part of the thought within its massed mind, as an ant was part of the thought of its nest.

  It sickened her, just how close she had come. And just how dependent she was on David.

  She’d followed him, partly to see that he was safe, partly to spy, and mostly because she was bored. They were stuck here in Hardacre. They should have gone weeks ago, left this chaotic little city for the north.