Engn II E-Book

Simon Kewin

• Herausgeber: Stormcrow Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The wheels of the great machine turn again…

Three years after the destruction of Engn, Finn is awoken by a shattering earthquake. As the people of the valley flee the ruins, rumours circulate that the machinery of Engn is working once more. Finn is haunted by the thought that Connor desperately needed him to do something. Uncovering buried secrets, Finn sees he has to return to the wreckage of Engn to find the answers to his questions.

To him, the events of the Clockwork War are history, but he learns that others are still fighting the ancient battle. For them, the machinery of Engn and its mysterious purpose are at the heart of everything.

Diane refuses to come with him, thinking he needs to put the past behind him. But then Engn’s line-of-sight signals start to broadcast again…

Leseprobe

Engn II

The Clockwork War

Simon Kewin

For Carole

To find the clock-winder they needed to find a clock. He’d been looking for some high tower like the one near the Valve Hall, but instead there was a small, round clock on a building wall up ahead, its thirty-six digits picked out in gold. Two incandescent bulbs flickered beneath it, the clock’s single hand casting a long shadow up the wall…

- Engn

Table of Contents

I

II

III

IIII

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

XXX

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

XXXV

XXXVI

Landmarks

Cover

Table of Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Copyright Page

Title Page

Body Matter

I

One hundred and seventeen years before the destruction of Engn…

Aivan was tinkering with one of the broken clocks in the Director's workshop when the iron-clad guards of the Ironmasters Guild came for him.

“You are needed at the Hub. Come quickly.” Three of them stood in the doorway, voices muffled, faces invisible behind leather and metal masks. Strictly speaking, they weren't allowed in the workshop, or in any of the Director's private chambers. And yet here they were.

“What is it?” asked Aivan, annoyed at being interrupted but also alarmed at the intrusion. In his hand, he held a pair of tweezers, and in the tweezers, a tiny cog from the clock he was repairing. The cog glimmered as it caught the light. His hand was shaking. “What has happened?”

“You must come now,” said the Ironmaster. “There is no time to lose.”

Aivan set down his tweezers and stood. He didn't want to follow the Ironmasters. Could they force him to come if he refused? Perhaps, perhaps not. They always left the Director – and therefore Aivan, his apprentice – alone. But they also wouldn't obey direct orders. Or answer questions. The Director, despite his title, apparently wielded little control over the individual guilds. It was another thing that troubled Aivan. Another Engn mystery. Was the Director in charge, or wasn't he? Why was everything arranged like this?

One day, when the current Director died or retired and Aivan took over, he'd find out. Find out everything. The purpose of the machine. The secret at its heart. The truth about what the Director actually did. The prospect of it all sent a familiar thrill of anticipation through him. It was just a shame the Director was so young and fit. It would be years – decades – before Aivan finally got to know the truth.

“Come now. We must hurry,” said the iron-clad guard. “An engine awaits at the terminus. You are needed at the Hub.”

The guards stood in the doorway, as if a barrier prevented them from coming inside. Aivan looked around at all the clocks. The cogs and pendulums of the broken mechanisms. The faces of the functioning clocks, ticking their way through the hours. He liked it in here. He felt safe. The air hummed with the purposeful whirring of all the tiny machines. The world made sense in this little room. Everything was ordered. He could refuse to go with them. Couldn't he?

Still, for them to visit him was unheard of. It was an inversion of the natural order. Something serious had happened.

“Very well,” he said.

The guards turned and left in a hurry, pacing across the expanse of the pendulum floor of the Western Grand Tower. Clock seventy-two. As Aivan stepped from the room after them, the array of timepieces behind him awoke and began chiming the hour in a coordinated cacophony of clangs and alarms. It was, he thought, as if they were trying to warn him about something.

Aivan had visited the Hub numerous times while shadowing the Director. There were clocks controlling each of the six steam-powered rams that met in the heart of the great cube, and the Director always paid these special attention. Checked their time every day. It was another mystery. The Hub was central, that was clear. Central to Engn physically, but also at the heart of the purpose. The secret. From what Aivan had managed to glean, Engn had been destroyed at least twice over the centuries. Rioters or invaders had wrecked the machinery, sending fires raging through Engn, triggering cascading explosions, levelling everything. Everything except for the Hub and one or two other important locations. It was the Hub the guards rushed to defend when conflagrations flared up. Always the Hub. Yet even they didn't seem to know why. He'd quizzed them, more than once, but had been met with shrugs and silence.

But it was from here they always rebuilt Engn, working their way outwards, connecting everything back together. This was the foundation. The centre.

So much in Engn was confusing and baffling that he'd long ago concluded it was deliberately built to be so. An attempt to confuse and dazzle, to obscure the true purpose. A baffling array of incomprehensible devices and meaningless customs. A machine so vast and all-encompassing people stopped seeing it, stopped asking why it was there. But he'd seen through that. Perhaps that was why he'd been picked out those years ago, plucked from his pointless hours of labour assembling valves to shadow the Director.

On at least one occasion, he knew, the machine had been deliberately dismantled and rebuilt. An older, smaller Engn replaced with a new one: bigger, taller, more powerful. But even through that the Hub had remained untouched, the machine growing greater and greater around it, feeding more and more power into it.

A thought came to him as he climbed from the moving engine whose rails had swept him across the machine at such eye-watering speed. Perhaps this, unexpectedly, was the day? Perhaps the Director had chosen this moment to pass on the secrets of Engn. Was it possible? The prospect was delicious and suddenly alarming. Was he ready for the responsibility? Was he ready for the truth? He suddenly wasn't sure. Aivan took a moment to look around, to calm his breathing. The familiar wheels and towers of the great machine gleamed. From the Hub, their arrangement was clear. Axles and belts and timing chains from all across the machine led here. This was what they were for. These six vast rams. Except, they didn't do anything so far as he could see. They just were. He was obviously missing something. And now, perhaps, he would find out what.

Steeling himself, Aivan turned to follow the guards. They hurried underneath the axle of the eastern ram, its smooth metal shaft vast and shining above his head. He could feel the power thrumming through it, the concentrated force in that great piston up above him. If you stopped and studied them closely you could see the rams jerking backwards and forwards, almost too quick to discern. The power required to push each piston in and out was titanic. He'd never been able to work out what was doing the pushing, let alone why.

His gaze followed the shaft towards the cube. A small crowd of people stood around the eastern entranceway. He faltered as he walked closer, seeing who they were. Not just iron-clad guards but those wearing gleaming silver, too: the soldiers of the Silversmiths Guild. Did they take orders from the Director or was it the other way around? There were three masters there, too. The Clockmakers, the Ironmasters, and the Silversmiths Guilds. The trio who ruled the Inner Wheel. And all of them waiting there. Waiting for him. Dread lurched within him. The three watched him as he approached, suspicion clear on their faces.

The iron-clad guards stopped as they arrived at the group. Aivan wondered what he would say, how he would explain himself to these powerful and terrible people. But to his surprise, as he approached, they parted. Without anyone saying a word, they stood aside, granting him passage into the Hub. Looks passed between the masters, looks full of meaning he couldn't understand.

Not looking at them, keeping his eyes fixed firmly ahead of him, Aivan the apprentice Director of Engn, strode inside.

Light filtered into the cavernous space from the five openings in the walls and the one in the roof. Diagonal shafts of sunlight slanted through the western port, providing more shadow than light. Still there was no sound, save for the clacking of his own footsteps as he strode to the centre. The sense of suppressed, concentrated power was overwhelming in here. As it always was. The thrumming air was thick with it. The six steel shafts – one through each wall, one from the beam-engine above them and one thrusting up from the buried engine beneath their feet – glistened like a grounded star in the middle of the echoing chamber. The shafts tapered as they stretched towards each other, giving the room a confusing sense of scale, as if it contained vast distances.

And at the very centre, where they met at a point and all that terrible power was focused there was – what? He had studied it from below often, craning his neck upwards, trying to understand. A small cube of some rock or metal, held there for no apparent purpose. Doing nothing, achieving nothing. The Director always refused to talk about it, dismissing him with a wave of his hand whenever Aivan asked.

Up ahead he saw something that shouldn't be there. On the floor in the very centre of the chamber stood a clock. A wooden casement clock, one he knew well. What was it doing there? The Director never let it out of his sight, carrying it with him all about Engn as he checked the accuracy of all the timepieces and control mechanisms. Sleeping beside it so the gentle ticking sound was with him every second of the day. Yet there it was, abandoned, an oblong wooden box quietly counting out the seconds to itself, standing like a tombstone in the middle of the floor.

Aivan slowed as he neared, trying to make sense of the sight, expecting some unnamed, terrible thing to happen at any moment.

“Aivan. You are here at last.”

The quiet voice seemed to come from nowhere, from beneath his feet. The steps down to the underground engine. The Director must have set his regulator clock on the floor before descending. Wary now, suddenly not wanting to reach the centre, Aivan shuffled forwards. The concentrated atmosphere of the room seemed to press down on his shoulders.

“Aivan.”

There, at the foot of stone steps, head and arms cramped against the walls, lay the Director of Engn. There was blood on his bald head, but the familiar glint in those eyes was bright.

“What has happened?” asked Aivan, hurrying down the steps, the sight of his master filling him with alarm.

The Director didn't speak for a moment, as if he was trying to remember how to make his mouth and throat work. “Fell,” he said finally, his voice little more than a whisper.

Aivan put his ear close to the Director's. He couldn't escape the notion this was all some test, another part of his initiation. But the blood was surely real, and the Director's limbs and neck lay at very wrong angles.

“You fell down the stairs?” said Aivan. “We can lift you up; take you to the Infirmary.”

The Director shook his head, the movement almost imperceptible. “No. Too late for that. It's my heart.”

“Your heart?” said Aivan, as if he didn't know the word.

The Director nodded. “Ironic. Spent all my time worrying about the clocks in Engn. Never thought about the one ticking away in my own chest.”

“You had a heart attack?”

The Director grimaced as some agony cut through him.

“Pain like you wouldn't believe, lad. Crushing my chest. That's why I fell down the stairs.”

“But we can lift you up,” repeated Aivan, not knowing what else to say.

“No. My heart's hammering away too fast. Stuttering like it's about to stop. That's why I sent for you; sent the others away. There isn't much time and a lot to tell you.”

“Tell me? Tell me what?” But, of course, he knew. The day Aivan had long hoped for was here. And he suddenly wasn't ready. Wasn't ready at all.

“You need to know the secrets,” the Director continued. “You're young, but there's no one else. Only the Director knows…” He stopped as more pain lanced through him, his face contorting into ugliness.

“Secrets?” said Aivan.

“The purpose of Engn. What it's all for. You must have wondered. Only I know, and now I must tell you.”

“But there have to be others. The masters. There can't just be you.”

“The knowledge is too dangerous. No one else must know the truth. They wouldn't stand for it, you see. If they knew what we'd done, they wouldn't stand for it. That's what we do, you and I. Director to Director, over the centuries, keeping the secret until the day it's needed.”

“Tell me, then,” said Aivan. “Tell me what I have to do. Tell me the secret.”

“Engn is…”

Another spasm of pain. The Director clutched at his chest, his face creasing up in lines of agony. For a moment, Aivan thought he wasn't going to open his eyes again, that he was gone.

“Director! Tell me. I don't know what to do!”

The Director twitched. His mouth moved, whispering something inaudible. Aivan put his ear to the man's lips. “I didn't hear! Say it again.”

“Engn,” whispered the Director. “Engn is … a weapon.”

“A weapon?” said Aivan. “How can it be a weapon? I don't understand!”

The Director spoke slowly, as if forming each word required the deepest concentration. “The ultimate weapon. Kept ready all these years for the final battle. The Clockwork War.”

It made no sense. “But the war ended centuries ago. Everyone knows that.”

“No, no. Not won yet. It's all still here. Ticking away. Counting down. People carry the war around in their heads, waiting to fight it again.”

“But … how can Engn be a weapon?” said Aivan. “I don't understand. Is it something to do with this place? The Hub?”

There was no reply. Aivan shouted now, shaking the Director, wringing the truth from him. “You must tell me! I can't be the Director without knowing. The secrets must be passed on. What does it do? How is Engn a weapon? Why is it needed?”

Aivan's only reply was silence. The Director – the previous Director – didn't move or speak again. Aivan kneeled there for five minutes, ten minutes, trying to make sense of what he'd heard. But there was no sense to be made. Only scraps and glimpses. And what would he do, now, when his own time came? When he had to pass on the terrible secrets of Engn to the next Director?

There was nothing he could do. The secret had been lost. And that, Aivan saw, had to become his secret. The secret he would carry instead. No one else must ever know. Everything had to go on as before. Anything else was unthinkable. The lie had become too large. Engn was life for so many people and he had to maintain the illusion. Play the part for the rest of his days.

Finally, Aivan, the Director of Engn, stood. He climbed the stairs one by one back to the surface. At the top, he hefted the regulator clock onto his shoulders. The weight of it surprised him. It was a burden. He could feel the ticking clock kicking against his spine.

Looking straight forwards, he strode towards the eastern doorway to confront the knot of waiting masters.

II

Three years after the destruction of Engn…

Booming explosions shook Finn awake. For a moment, he lay unmoving in bed, slick with sweat, not sure what was real and what was dream. He'd been back inside Engn as the towers and wheels collapsed and bloomed into flame. He'd been in the dormitory as Graves or Croft or Bellow tipped his bed over and began their machine-like kicking. He'd been falling, falling down clanging metal chutes leading to the mines.

But no. He was back home and Engn was long gone. He'd lived in the valley for three years since the destruction. He was safe. Everyone in his family was safe. And yet his bed was lurching as if being shaken by some furious giant. He was fully awake, but the shaking hadn't stopped. This wasn't another nightmare; it was real.

On the shelf opposite, the small wind-up clock his parents had given them as a house-warming gift shuddered into life. It marched its way sideways, twisting around before toppling off and smashing to the floor. Badger, lying curled up on the end of the bed, whined in alarm. Her features blurred as Finn looked at her, as if something was wrong with his eyes.

“What's going on? What's happening?”

Diane's voice beside him was shaky, as if the two of them were rattling along the lane at high speed in a cart rather than lying in bed. Scraps of plaster and dust rained down from the ceiling above them, scratching into his eyes.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to get outside!”

Helping each other, staggering across the swaying room, they blundered their way to the stairs. Badger led the way, more stable on her four legs despite her age, clattering down the steps before them. Finn and Diane followed. Downstairs, their little kitchen had come alive. Pots and cups and cutlery rattled and tinkled as if possessed. Finn stood for a moment watching it all, trying to understand. Diane, still in her thin nightshift, grabbed him by the arm and hauled him through the door.

They ran from the cottage they shared, Mrs. Hampton's old place, and stood looking back from the garden, both panting, holding each other's hand. Badger cowered behind them. It was barely light, the low winter sun just peeping over the line of the hills. Frost gilded every surface. The grass of their little lawn sparkled, but it was sharply cold on Finn's bare feet.

He'd thought, somehow, it would only be their house being shaken to pieces. But, no. The whole world was moving. The ground was suddenly no longer solid; it flowed and bucked beneath them like the sea in a storm. The trees all up the valley sides danced, scattering the last of their leaves as if being blown by a strong wind.

Then, in an instant, it all ceased. A huge silence rolled through the valley, as if every living thing was standing in stunned disbelief. Finn shivered, his clenched jaw muscles hurting sharply. He didn't move, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the world to start making sense again. Diane put her arm around his waist. Her body was warm against his. Relief and shock played across her face as she stared around.

“Finn!”

His father came careering down the lane, still clad in his own nightgown, sandals on his feet he kept slipping out of. In other circumstances, the sight would have been comical.

“Finn! Diane! Are the two of you okay?”

“Yes, yes,” said Diane, her teeth clenched against the cold.

“What's happening?” asked Finn again. “What's going on?”

His father bear-hugged the two of them. His chest was heaving heavily from his sprint down the lane. He replied only when he'd released the two of them. “An earthquake.”

“An earthquake?” said Finn.

He knew what it meant, of course. Still, it was hard to relate such a little word to the power of the real thing. The whole world had shaken. It was like the day Engn fell. The ground had cracked and broken then, too. But there'd been a reason for that – it hadn't just happened. It made sense. “But we don't get earthquakes,” he said.

“No,” said his father. “Not these days.”

There was worry in his father's voice. For some reason, hearing that was worse than the shaking of the solid ground.

“Is mother all right?” he asked. “The house?”

“She's fine. A few plates smashed. These old houses were built to survive a little shaking.”

“Have you heard from Shireen?”

“Your mother's gone up there to see if they're all right.”

“Why didn't you use the line-of-sight?” asked Diane.

His father shook his head. “No good. Everything goes out of alignment when something like this happens. It'll take days to get it all running again. The quake probably heaved up a few roads and power lines, too. Flane is going to be busy getting everything straight. We all are.”

Finn studied his father. What did he mean, something like this? Something like this never happened.

“Is it safe to go back inside?” asked Diane. She was trembling visibly in the freezing morning air. Her hair was long now, flowing and golden. When she'd been on the run, she'd kept it hacked short, so it didn't get in the way. It smelled good as Finn held her close. It was contact with a world that made sense.

“No,” said his father. “There can be aftershocks. Sometimes they last a day or two. It's best not to go in.”

“But we'll need warm clothes and blankets to sleep outside this time of year,” said Diane. “I mean, we can manage, but not the older ones.”

His father nodded. “In the old days folk used to gather together in the Moot Hall. It has deep foundations to withstand the tremors. The wooden walls sway rather than falling over. We'll gather there until we're sure there are no more quakes.”

“I need to find out about my village,” said Diane. “It may have struck there, too.”

“It's a long way off,” said his father. “Perhaps they'll be safe. We can leave a message at the Switch House as we go past. Rory will tell us as soon as we get word from down the valley.”

Now Finn put his arm around Diane, offering her his warmth. The ice on the road sparkled in front of them. Everything was so peaceful, so right. It was too hard to believe what had happened. They started walking, but then Finn remembered something.

“Wait. I have to go back inside, just for a moment.”

“Why?” asked Diane. The suspicion in her voice was clear. She knew very well what he was going in for.

“Connor's image spindle.”

“Finn, no,” said his father. “I told you, it's not safe. Especially not for that. It doesn't matter.”

Finn caught the look passing between Diane and his father. They'd discussed this before. Discussed him and his obsession with the silvery shaft of metal Connor had given him just before they'd destroyed Engn. He knew they didn't understand.

“But it might get damaged if the house does fall down,” said Finn. “The spindle is delicate. Then there's the reader; it barely works as it is. It's taken me months to get it to show any images at all and now it could be smashed to pieces.”

“Then it won't get any more smashed,” said his father.

“I…” But before Finn could reply fully, another deep boom tolled through the air, heavy and solid in the still morning air, the sound rebounding off the stone sides of the mountains. For a moment, none of them spoke, looking around as if for an explanation.

“What was that?” said Diane. “Another earthquake?”

“Nothing shook,” said Finn. “The ground didn't move.”

“It sounded like an explosion,” said his father. “A big explosion, far away.”

They looked at each other, each thinking the same thought, none of them saying it. They'd all heard sounds like it before, although not for three years. But how was that possible? Engn had been destroyed. He had seen it destroyed. They all had.

There'd been rumours, of course. But people liked rumours, liked to make up stories to fill what they didn't actually know. Travelers passed through the valley with wild tales of being pursued by ironclads and the stories grew from there.

Besides, even if the concussion had boomed across the great grass plain, it didn't prove anything. Perhaps some surviving fragment of the machinery had finally corroded or collapsed. Shaken loose by the earthquake, maybe. Or some buried tank of oil had been ignited by a chance flame. That was all it was.

Still, the look of anxiety of the faces of his father and Diane was clear.

“Okay, look,” said Diane. “I can see you're not going to come without the spindle. You go inside the house and grab it. I'll get the reader from the workshop. Then we can get to the Moot House.”

“No,” said Finn. “I don't want you risking yourself.”

“And I don't want you risking yourself,” said Diane, “but you're going to whatever I say, aren't you?”

She was right, of course. She thought he was obsessed with the object Connor had given them. Her meaning was clear. Risking himself meant risking her, too. Risking them. Just as it had before, back in Engn. Risking her was the price he would have to pay.

“Okay,” said Finn. “Just … be careful.”

His father looked troubled, but he didn't say anything. He would have, once. Now, since their return to the valley, he treated both Finn and Diane as grownups. Sometimes, Finn actually wished he wouldn't. Sometimes he wanted to be told what was best, what to do, what everything meant.

“You be quick, both of you,” said his father. “If there's any sign of another quake, come straight out, you hear?”

Finn nodded. “I'll grab some more clothes, too.”

His father held Badger while Finn and Diane ran back to the cottage and the little stone outhouse they used as a combined workshop and wood store.

At the door, Finn slipped on the outdoor shoes he'd left there the evening before, then stepped inside. He trod carefully, as if the slightest footstep could bring the whole house crashing down around his ears. He crossed their kitchen, shards of shattered pottery and glass crunching beneath his feet. On the mantelpiece, over the smoky old iron stove they cooked on, was the stone pot he kept the spindle in, as if it were their most treasured possession. Thankfully the pot was undamaged.

He lifted the slim metal spindle out, holding it carefully by its tip to examine it in the morning sunlight. It looked intact. The tiny etched lines spiralling around it were unblemished. He exhaled with relief. All the answers he sought; they were still there. Still, literally, in his grasp. If only he could read them.

For months after their return to the valley, he hadn't even understood what the spindle was. Connor had given it to him just before he died. It will come in useful.Remember what it was all for. Finn had assumed it was some key or token he hadn't, in the end, needed. Then one of the tinkers passing through the valley, selling broken fragments of Engn machinery to anyone who would buy, had told him what it really was. A memory spindle. Used to record the images from the seeing orbs.

Finn recalled drawers full of the tinkling metal sticks. And Connor had gone to the trouble of giving him this one in the control room. Clearly it was important. Vital. He had only to construct a reader and all his questions about Connor and Engn would be answered. Soon, soon, he would uncover the truth.

Spindle grasped in one hand, he threw warm coats over his arm and picked up shoes for Diane, then crossed back to the doorway. The rising sun dazzled his eyes as he stepped outside, blinding him for a moment. His father was nothing more than a shape, Badger beside him, whining and scrabbling. Then Diane was there, standing in front of him.

“Finn, I'm sorry,” she said. “There was nothing I could do.”

Finn shielded his eyes and squinted to see what she meant. In her arms, she carried the smashed fragments of the memory spindle reader.

It was shattered beyond repair.

III

“How do you know all this about earthquakes?” Finn asked his father as they walked together towards the Switch House. “We don't get earthquakes.”

“I just … know the old stories.”

Finn caught his father's momentary hesitation. “The old stories don't say anything about aftershocks and gathering at the Moot Hall,” said Finn. “They're just children's tales about mad giants throwing rocks at each other in underground caves. Fireside stories for winter nights.”

His father shrugged. “My grandfather told me other tales. Earthquakes used to be a lot more common in the old days. He always took some coaxing; he didn't like to talk about it. None of the old people did.”

“Why?” asked Diane, walking along behind them. “Back home, we all knew about them.”

“I think it was too painful,” said Finn's father. “People died. It's worse up here in the mountains. My grandfather wasn't afraid of anything but talk of earthquakes made him go pale. Winter was worst, he said. Big tremors could bring down avalanches right through the valley.”

Finn caught the glance of anxiety. His father didn't like to talk about that distant day; the day when Finn and Connor had survived an avalanche by climbing into the branches of an old oak tree. His father had admitted years later he'd been sure Finn was dead. That they were searching for bodies. A terrible day, but also the start of Finn's friendship with Connor. A terrible day and a good day. He thought back, trying to remember. Had there been an earthquake? A tremor to trigger the avalanche? He couldn't recall. It was all too long ago.

His father glanced across Finn, stroking his snowy beard as he did when he was thinking. Remembering those distant events. Some moments stayed with you however long you lived.

They found Mrs. Megrim on the ground at the foot of the spiral path up to the Switch House. The sight of her there, as they rounded the bend, took Finn to another memory. The day the old woman defied the ironclads and the master who led them. The day she slipped Finn the secret line-of-sight encryption key. She'd never really recovered from the injuries she'd sustained in performing that simple act, although it wasn't something she ever mentioned. She'd never walked straight again, limping awkwardly as if something inside her was no longer properly connected. And here she was once more, a heap of black on the ground.

“Don't just stand there gawping, boy,” she called, seeing Finn and the others approaching. “Help me up.”

Mrs. Megrim, at least, still treated him like a foolish child, chiding him constantly about the tasks he'd failed to complete to her satisfaction. Once he would have complained about it to anyone who would listen. Now he wouldn't have it any other way. Everything in the world could change, people could come and go, but Mrs. Megrim would still be there, telling him to stop dawdling like an idiot and hurry up.

“Sorry, Mrs. Megrim,” said Finn. Standing over her, he could see the pink of her scalp through her wispy grey hair. She wore her usual dark-as-night black coat, but underneath there were woollens of purple and even red. Something she had taken to since Rory's return. She had lost Tom, along with a large part of both her sons' childhoods, but she had set aside her loss that much. He understood, now, that her habitual black had been a symbol of mourning. A prolonged, drawn-out grief that would never truly end. It was hard to believe Mrs. Megrim had once been the wild, fun-loving girl his mother described. Except, every now and then, he caught a flash of her sly sense of humour and saw the woman she might have been if things had gone differently.

Finn squatted down to lever her back up to her feet, cradling her elbow. “What happened? Why are you sitting here on the ground?”

Mrs. Megrim couldn't keep the grimace of pain from her face as her body unbent. “I'm not sitting on the ground. I fell over when the earthquake hit. Can't you work anything out for yourself, boy?”

She stood unaided, a little wobbly, leaning heavily on her stick. The stick that had been waved at Finn many times in his childhood. These days she needed it much more. These days it was a crutch rather than a weapon. Mrs. Megrim didn't leave her cottage often and rarely made it up to the Switch House. When she did venture out, she crept along, her stick rather than her legs doing most of the forwards movement.

Now Rory ran the line-of-sight network, with occasional help from Finn and Shireen. None of them were immune from the endless stream of reminders and instructions she flashed their way: recollimate the lenses, maintain the logs, watch the bank wall. If anything, the frequency of the messages had increased since she took to staying indoors.

And she'd also finally shown them, one dark night when the rain hammered down on the Switch House roof and no sensible person was out and about, the other message log she'd kept all those years. The secret log of communications to both the wreckers and the other Switch House operators she trusted. And also, of all the messages she'd deliberately failed to route through to Engn over the years. It was clear, documented proof of her many crimes. Mrs. Megrim had shown it to them with pride, unfolding the log from swathes of white cotton as if it were some sacred text. Finn had run his finger down the list of encrypted messages from Matt Dobey, sent over many years. He'd wondered what they'd all said. Whether they'd been about him or Connor or Diane. It didn't matter now. Matt was long dead. Matt and his masters in Engn. The log was no longer updated. There had been no need to add any entries to it for three years.

“But I don't understand, Mrs. Megrim,” said Diane. “If you were here when the earthquake struck, you must have left home an hour ago. How did you know you'd be needed today? Did you know all this was going to happen?”

People still grumbled about Mrs. Megrim knowing everything, knowing their own business before they did. Even that she employed dark powers to uncover people's secrets or see into the future.

“No, no, girl, of course not. I'm not the witch Finn here says I am. I came because of the urgent message from Rory.”

“What message?” asked Finn. “What did he want?”

“I haven't the faintest idea, have I? He told me to come to the Switch House, and this is as far as I got before the ground took it upon itself to start throwing me around.”

Finn held his arm out to her, offering his support. Once she would have refused such an indignity. Now, with only a hmmph, she hooked her arm through his and they set off together, moving slowly.

The Switch House didn't appear to have been harmed by the earthquake. They climbed the spiral path and knocked three times on the door: the signal to the operator to shield their eyes from the light. This time it was unnecessary. Before they touched the door handle, Rory burst out. Behind him, a white incandescent bulb flickered away. A bulb Finn had never seen used in all the years he'd been coming there.

“Excellent, you're all here,” said Rory, as if he'd arranged the whole thing. He looked warily around and back down the path as if afraid more people would be turning up. “You weren't harmed when the earth shook?”

“Obviously not, or we wouldn't be here, would we?” said Mrs. Megrim to her remaining son. “Now, tell us what you've dragged us all the way up here for.”

“Come inside,” said Rory. “I'll show you.”

Badger snuffled around in the grass while the rest of them filed inside. In the bright light of the bulb, the Switch House looked smaller than usual. Strange to think of all the hours and days Finn had spent in the little square room. But of course, it wasn't just a room. In a way, the whole valley was in there. The valley and the wider world beyond, everything brought there on flickering beams of light.

It was immediately obvious none of the 'scopes were in use at the moment. Some were canted at wild angles, as if awaiting messages from up in the sky. Other tripods had crashed to the ground, where they lay in tangled heaps. His father was right; it would take days to get the connections up and down the valley working again.

“Well,” said Mrs. Megrim. “I leave the place for one day and look at the mess you make of it.”

Rory paid his mother no attention. He shut the door and turned to face them all. He looked troubled. In his hand, he held a scroll of paper, a line-of-sight message, which he handed to Mrs. Megrim. Silence filled the room while she studied it. An unidentified sense of dread gripped Finn as he watched the deepening frown on her old face.

“What is it?” he asked at last. “What does it say?”

Mrs. Megrim held it out for them to see.

“But it's empty,” said Finn's father. “It doesn't say anything. I don't see what the fuss is about.”

“It's a timing signal,” said Finn. “See, it has the header with all the sender information on it.”

“So? We get timing signals like that every day.”

“We get timing signals every day, but never like this one,” said Finn. “We haven't had one of these for three years now. Look at the address. See where it's come from.”

Understanding dawned on his father's face. He grasped what the rest of them had already seen. “1A11. That's Engn?”

“It is,” said Mrs. Megrim. “This is a master timing signal, sent from the central clock. Used to get one first thing every day. Strange this should come through on the same day the quake struck. At almost the same moment.” She took the sheet of paper again and examined it, holding it up to the light as if that would make it reveal its secrets. “This is the first we've had?”

“I would have mentioned it if there'd been others,” said Rory.

“Did you reply? Did you route it to anyone else?”

Rory shook his head. “Didn't get chance. I sent you a message and then sat here trying to think what to do. Then the earthquake struck and knocked all the 'scopes out.”

“So Engn is working again,” said Finn. “The rumours are true.”

“We don't know that,” said Diane. “You know better than most messages can be intercepted or altered. All we know is someone has sent a message claiming to be from Engn. It could be from anywhere along the line.”

Mrs. Megrim shook her head. “It's too good a fake. It's exactly like the ones they used to send.”

“It still might be from someone who knows what they used to look like,” said Diane. “Any Switch House operator could have produced it.”

Finn wanted to believe Diane, but dread had gripped him and wouldn't let go. He had taken these early morning messages often enough in the past. He stood and studied the square of paper for long moments, looking for some mistake in the wording, some clue it was a fake. But there was nothing.

“Engn was levelled,” said his father. “We saw it. This is some joke, some fake. It's not important. We need to get to the Moot Hall; another tremor could hit at any moment.”

Rory shook his head. “You all go. I'll start getting these 'scopes lined up. We're going to need to know what's going on elsewhere.”

“Was there anything from down the valley?” Diane asked. “From home?”

“I'm sorry,” said Rory. “As soon as it hit, we lost everything. But I'll send word as soon as I hear anything, I promise.”

“Chances are they'll be fine,” said Mrs. Megrim. “It hasn't brought any houses down here.”

Diane nodded but looked doubtful.

“We'll stay and help,” said Finn. “Get all these 'scopes lined up again.”

Rory picked up the toppled tripods. “No. I could do with you at the Moot House. We need to get that 'scope lined up so I can communicate with everyone there. Then I can start directing you around the valley to fix the repeater mirrors. Okay?”

“And what about the timing message?” said Finn. “What are we going to do with that?”

“Hand it here,” said Mrs. Megrim. “I'll burn it. There's no need to go worrying folks, is there? Probably someone's idea of a jest.”

She didn't look like she thought it was funny, though, as Finn handed her the message.

A crowd of people had already gathering at the Moot House. Some were well prepared, clutching blankets and baskets of food as if they'd been secretly expecting an earthquake all along. Other stood shivering in thin night clothes, their eyes wide. The sun was fully risen over the mountaintops now, but it brought no heat with it.

It was alarming to see everyone in this state. Finn knew each one of them, of course. They'd been there every day of his life in the valley. He'd joined in with their celebrations as babies were born or the old year turned into the new. He'd mourned with them at each loss of a loved one. He'd laughed along with them at summer feasts and winter games. Many of them had been there the day of the avalanche, joining in with the search for him and Connor. They would help each other in the days to come. They would survive this together.

Flane, the lengthsman, ticked off the names of each new arrival. Once, perhaps, Connor's father would have assumed the role, coordinating everyone and telling them what to do and where to go. But not anymore: he had left the valley two or more years ago and hadn't been seen since. Lost in grief for Connor, it was said. Now there was no king in the valley. The name had only ever been used in jest, nothing more than an echo of older days, but at times like this people needed someone to turn to for direction. It was a role Flane, and also Finn's parents, often played now.

More people arrived, and Finn saw not everyone had escaped unscathed. There was Elidh the weaver with a bandage wrapped crudely about her head, blood already soaking through. Alongside her, Matilda from the old forge. In her eyes was a look of disbelief Finn recognized. He'd seen it the day Engn had come down, and often enough before that. A gaze into an unseen distance.

Flane went to meet them, enfolding Matilda in one of his powerful arms and lending support to Elidh. Meanwhile, Finn and Diane helped Mrs. Megrim climb the short set of wooden steps into the Moot Hall. It was already busy in there, people marking out where they would sleep with blankets on the ground, even erecting makeshift walls out of sheets. Whole families were setting up in corners. It reminded Finn a little of the mines of Engn; the way they'd pegged out their squares of cloth to claim their little patch of ground. Except, here people were smiling and laughing, despite everything. Helping each other, sharing what they had. For the youngest among them, the whole thing was a wonderful adventure. Small boys and girls jumped around, delighted at the break from their usual routine.

While Diane worked on the Moot Hall's line-of-sight 'scope, Finn and his father went back outside to see what needed to be done, who needed help to make it to the hall. The woods flanking the mountainside blazed with golden light, a mist drifting off them as if they were on fire. Here and there, a gap had opened in the dense canopy where trees had toppled over in the earthquake. Shielding his eyes, Finn gazed up the slope, picking out the lip of rock where, once, he and Connor had lain and looked down. The day the moving engine had first arrived. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

His mother, Shireen, and Nathaniel arrived together, all uninjured. Finn and his father went to meet them, hugging them close. It struck Finn, as it always did, how thin his mother felt in his grasp these days.

“You managed to get out of the cottage?” she asked.

“We're both fine,” said Finn. “A few things smashed in the house. How about you?”

“Tiles down, a couple of broken plates,” said his mother. “Nothing that can't be mended.”

“Same at ours,” said Shireen. “Nathaniel's a light sleeper. We were already getting out when the quake hit fully. A chimney pot crashed to the ground near us, that was all.”

Shireen held Nathaniel's hand tight in hers. In many ways Nathaniel was still getting used to his new life, still getting over the delusions of his years in Engn. His face had the haunted expression it often bore, especially when he was outside. He'd found the wide expanses of the great grass plain deeply unsettling on the trek across. He much preferred the valley, with its high mountains like towering natural walls. Still, he preferred to stay indoors if he could.

“Put your stuff next to ours,” said Finn. “There's plenty of room. We can sit and talk later.”

Nathaniel squeezed Finn's arm in thanks. He and Shireen climbed the stairs to go inside.

“It looks like everyone is here,” said Finn to Flane, looking around.

“Everyone apart from Connor's mother up at the farm.”

“Oh, she wouldn't come,” said Finn's mother. “You know she never leaves her room.”

“Even so,” said Flane, “we should check on her. In the summer, there'd be a few laborers helping out on the farm, but not this time of year.”

“I'll go up and see if she's okay,” said Finn. He had never, in fact, visited Connor's childhood home. Had never spoken to Connor's mother or even seen her. He'd often wanted to. Wanted to tell her everything that had happened at Engn, tell her in his own words what wonderful things Connor had done. There were matters that still puzzled him, too. Connor had risen through the ranks of the masters with such ease to become the Director's apprentice. More than one person had mentioned Connor's contacts at Engn, but no one had explained what they were. Now only his mother could shed any light. But she, bedridden and reclusive, saw no one.

A look passed between his parents as they considered the wisdom of Finn's plan.

“I'll go,” said his mother. “She might talk to me.”

“No,” said Finn. “You're needed here. And I can get her 'scope lined up while I'm there.”

His father studied him for a moment, then nodded his head in assent.

Back inside the hall, Finn found Diane helping a young family with baby twins set up their temporary home. He touched her lightly on the arm. “I'm going to check on Connor's mother. Want to come?”

Diane brushed a stray curl of hair from her eyes. “There's a lot to do here. I'd best stay and help. Where's Badger?”

“Helping to greet everyone who arrives. She's having a wonderful time.”

Finn and Diane embraced, holding on to each other, absorbing the welcome reassurance of each other. He was still shaking slightly, shaking as the valley had shaken, but Diane's closeness calmed him.

“Take care up there,” she said. “You know what they say about the farmhouse. It's already half falling down. Don't go inside if it looks dangerous.”

“I promise,” said Finn. He held onto her for a moment more, then turned to leave.