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The Language of the Night: Of demons and heroes [1]

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Date: 2025-05-05

The moral complexity of Anuket City is on display in T. Kingfisher’s The Wonder Engine. Instead of being a walled city, like the Dowager’s currently-unnamed city, it’s an open city-state where there may be law enforcement, but it can be bought off, and there may be a governing structure, but it too can be bought off. More to the point, the senators who run the place really have no power — that lies in the hands of the wealthy business magnates who “own” the senators. Here’s an interesting side point: the fact that the Dowager’s city is never named, not by Slate, Caliban, Brenner, or Learned Edmund, but also not by anyone in Anuket City. It’s a whole city that is never named, It’s the target of a war, and from the viewpoint of the aggressors, it’s as if the place doesn’t exist. There has to be a reason for this and it’s one that I hope will eventually be revealed. For there to be a place in a fantasy novel that remains unnamed — that’s an authorial decision, a deliberate withholding, and I do hope the reason it’s unnamed is more than “do you think anyone would notice if….”

Anyway, here we are at the end of the Clocktaur Wars duology, some of us arriving later than others (ahem, glancing in the mirror and muttering, “yes, well, moving on...”) and I, at least, have a couple of thoughts. In The Wonder Engine the romance comes to dominate the plot and it’s hard about as hard to ignore as it is to ignore my cat who has taking to chewing on my notes when I don’t pay sufficient attention to her — she’s a soft and evil little beast — but I would rather ignore it, mostly, and pay attention to what’s going on around the two lovers. It’s not that that aspect of the novel isn’t compelling, it’s that it’s foregrounded and obvious.

In the past. I’ve generally sneered at romance as a genre, and I’m trying to be better. I’ve come to understand that its purpose, its aim, it’s reason for being read, is somewhat different from the reasons I usually read, and that’s a perspective I can get behind: that there’s not something wrong with the genre, but there is something wrong with my expectations.

Instead, let’s look at the philosophical center of the novel and the reason why Brenner is the hero.

We have three moral viewpoints, and all of them have their limitations. Caliban wants to vanquish evil — it’s a simple goal and a worthy lifestyle: evil exists, so let’s overcome it and send it back to hell. But his moral compass is worthless in Anuket City, where amorality rules. Caliban exists to vanquish a particular kind of evil — the demonic kind — and there are no demons in Anuket City. Cruelty and mundane evil outrage him, but he’s a paladin, so there’s not a lot of gray between his moral poles (although that starts to change). There’s lots of evil in Anuket City, but it’s a kind of evil he’s powerless to fight. He has to lean on Brenner to navigate both the Grey Church and the city itself.

Learned Edmund wants to learn everything and to discover things that will make him famous in the service of his god, the god of knowledge. Edmund learns that knowledge can be a weapon when he figures out the source of blight and realizes that if he shares the truth he will condemn the gnoles to genocide, because panicky people don’t go in much for nuance. Outside of Learned Edmund’s knowledge, Kingfisher hammers home the point that the pursuit of knowledge untempered by any moral compass is dangerous in the example of Brother Amadai’s fate:

“The world...the whole world...my servants...will go everywhere...I will see...everything...everything...the bone ones will walk and I will sssseeeee...” Caliban’s throat worked. Slate saw him try to form words, his lips curling in disgust. “What will you see?” “...everything...” whispered Amadai, swinging back and forth on the chain, the bone arms rising and falling. “Every...mystery...will be...flayed open...my general...” …. “I am become the Many-Armed God. I see...everything...” — p. 255

Brother Amadai trades everything, including his life and his humanity, for knowledge, and his discovery threatens the world. It’s quite the cautionary tale

The third viewpoint is Grimehug’s, and it’s pretty simple: the universe is random and we do our best. Anything more than that is twisting whiskers, that is, worrying about things that can’t be changed.

“Where else is a gnole gonna go?” He spread his hands, rags flapping. “Humans here, wild boars over there. Maybe a clocktaur steps on a gnole. Maybe a gnole starves. Something bad everywhere a gnole goes.” — p. 8

Each one of these moral poles in inadequate for the world’s complexities, although Grimehug’s is probably closest to Kingfisher’s own: it’s the same one we find in the followers of the White Rat, and in Digger. It’s arguably summed up as: The world is random and cruel, so it’s up to us to do our best. Or, as Jerry Garcia put it, “Somebody has to do something and it’s pathetic that it has to be us.”

And then there’s Brenner.

Brenner is an enigma to us. He’s not a viewpoint character, so we see him only through his interactions with Slate and Caliban. He is not an honest or transparent character, like Learned Edmund who tells us what he’s thinking and what he knows. No, to get to Brenner, we have only hints to follow.

He wants to be seen as dangerous and amoral; after all, he’s an assassin, and very good at it. But he’s the one who kills the woman with the blight-killed baby, and makes it quick and clean. Why? Because he knows that the Dowager’s squeamish guards would botch the job and make a suffering woman suffer more.

Brenner sees the growing relationship between Caliban and Slate and, despite his jealousy, he doesn’t interfere, beyond trying a bit of misinformation that’s actually quite weak, telling Caliban that Slate keeps him in the dark about her past and telling Slate that Caliban’s demon has gone quiet, making her think that maybe Caliban has made a deal with the rune’s demon.

His role changes subtly but substantially after the encounter with the rune, like a small miscalculation at the start of a straight-line journey will dramatically alter the destination (and if you don’t get that simile it’s because, like me, you’re challenged at both geometry and target shooting). Because Brenner isn’t a viewpoint character, we don’t notice that the rune shaman’s demon is in Brenner. In fact, the only indication that anything is amiss is that Caliban’s demon has gone vewy vewy quiet, and that could be explained by the fact that there aren’t any demons in the city itself. When the group is putting the clues together, it’s Brenner who states what is (to him) obvious:

“There are demons in the clocktaurs,” said Brenner. “Doesn’t it make sense? THe one trapped in the hills said there were.” [Learned Edmund asked,] “They’re binding demons into the clocktaurs in place of souls?” “Could they do that?” asked Slate. She was watching Caliban and actually saw his lips start to form the word, “No,” and then he stopped. He closed his mouth and looked at the ceiling for a minute instead. He finally said, “A year ago, I would have said no. They aren’t supposed to inhabit unliving things. They can only enter something with a soul.” “And now?” said Slate. He lifted his hands and let them drop. “They aren’t supposed to die inside someone’s soul, either. They aren’t supposed to be able to bind each other. SO I don’t know if I can say, any more, what they’re not supposed to do.” — p. 249

In that scene, it’s obvious (in hindsight, anyway) that Brenner is withholding information but, as Caliban has explained before, in a willing possession, the demon and the host work together to achieve their common aims. Until they don’t. The rune demon lies quietly in Brenner until the clocktaur threat is managed, until the tattoo won’t eat Brenner, and only then does it reveal itself to Caliban.

Brenner had not a drop of magic in his veins, and even though he was certainly not fighting the demon, he was also not putting his full skills at the creature’s disposal. Caliban could be reasonably sure of this because, for one thing, he did not currently have a throwing knife sticking out of his head. — p. 295

So...why do I believe that Brenner is the hero? Because he makes the deal with the demon to get the group away from the rune settlement. And once Caliban binds the demon and Brenner is allowed to speak freely, he tells Slate he made the deal freely, and that he knows his death is coming. And then he delivers the definitive evidence that he’s the one to save them and fulfill the quest:

“No water here. Sword’s...quicker...anyway. Don’t have much...time...” He rolled his eyes up to look at Caliban, still standing over both of them like a carving of a vengeful god. “Hey, Caliban….How many demons can you fit...in one soul…?” … “Think...you can fit...six...in here?” — p. 307

He helps Caliban bind the six remaining Clocktaur demons and, at the end, he releases Slate and dies laughing, and leaving Slate and Caliban to clear up the last details.

He’s an interesting hero — not the group leader, not the scholar, and not the paladin who, after all, finds his god returned to him.

I’ll have more to say about this later, because it all ties back to world view and competing moral codes. But it’s been a busy month and I’m pushing tonight’s deadline as it is.

So, what do you think? I have to confess that on a first read I thought the quest burden was a shared effort — and it is, at least to some extent — but I had not realized how central Brenner was to its success. I hadn’t realized how unselfishly he stepped aside and guided Caliban through Slate’s rescue not because he wanted to revive their relationship (although it’s clear he would have welcomed that) but because he realized, or thought he realized, that Caliban needed her more than loved her. In that, he made a miscalculation, but one that a proud man, a pragmatic man, could make.

And now for something completely different: the Locus Award nominations are out. You have to find/buy the novels and novellas. Most of the nominated short stories are linked, though, and well worth reading. I haven’t read them all yet but, of the ones I have, Nghi Vo’s “Stitched to Skin like Family Is” is my favorite. Sublime and lovely. Happy reading — it is, after all, the thing we do.

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