‘A story? Quite,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me I haven’t given you enough time to prepare.’ He sounded annoyed, as though she had summoned him here inconveniently in the middle of the night.
She folded her own arms, unconsciously mimicking his stance. ‘I have nothing to say. I’ve already told you, I won’t betray my friends.’
‘On the contrary, you have a great deal to say. Let’s start with Stenwold Maker’s plans, for example.’ Now he was finally rising to her words, but his ire was fuelled from something within.
What’s eating at you, Captain?
‘He never told me any of them,’ she said. ‘For this very reason, I suspect. He didn’t tell any of us and I wasn’t even supposed to be leaving Collegium. If your thugs hadn’t burst into our house that night I’d still be there.’ Still be whining about not going, too, I suppose. Oh, what I didn’t know, back then.
‘What a loss that would be. And your companions, those that are still free — the Spider wench and the half-breed — you have a great deal to say about them, I imagine.’ He was leaning forward against the table, and she matched him across it, almost nose to nose. She had been a penned-up slave all day and she was not in the mood, whereas he was off balance already, and suddenly she found herself pushing.
‘You’ve found out as much as I could tell you,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you have agents at the College reporting back to you?’
‘Listen, girl, this is your one remaining chance to exercise your own free will in this business. Tell me what you know.’
‘What I know? I know some history, Captain, and applied mechanics, a little medicine and a bit of nature lore. I have nothing else to tell you.’ She could sense the coiled spring of his temper.
‘Miss Maker-’
‘What? I know they’re my friends, and they would help me if they could, and I hope they’re all right, and I’m glad you haven’t caught them because they’re my friends, and that’s how it is between friends. I care for them. I hope they care for me. That’s friendship.’
Some barb, some unknowing dart in her speech made him flinch as though she had drawn blood ‘Don’t play games with me, girl,’ he warned her. In a detached way she could see the anger rising in him was not anger focused on her, but had been in place before she was even brought in front of him. The entire conversation was taking second place to some other struggle in his mind. He had locked her up, then had her dragged here before him, and he wasn’t even paying proper attention save when some chance word got in the way of his thoughts.
‘Games? Who’s playing games? What’s this then, if not a game of yours?’ she got out. ‘I’m your prisoner. Am I supposed to forget that and just give you my life story? If anyone’s playing games it’s you, Captain. Your whole life must consist of them.’ She was stammering a little, choking on her own boldness. Something she had just said had touched a nerve, made him pause to think. He stared at her with almost desperate loathing.
She had taken enough. She could not stop herself. ‘What’s the matter, Captain?’ she asked, not quite believing that he was letting her get away with it. ‘Maybe you should tell me about it. Maybe that would help, because I have nothing to tell you.’
‘Now is a poor time to discover rebellion,’ he said, his voice taut.
‘Better now than not at all, I think-’
A muscle twitched in his face, and the table exploded. She was flung backwards across the room in a shower of wood shards, striking the wall hard enough to leave her breathless. She saw him stride towards her over the wreckage. The palms of his hands were black with soot, wispy with wood-smoke.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ he said, each word through clenched teeth.
‘You can’t blame me,’ she said, gasping, and knew he understood her but did not care.
‘And if I chose to take it out on you, who would stop me?’ he said. He was standing over her now, and his hands were still smoking.
‘What use would. . what good would killing me do for your Empire?’ She had never been really afraid of him — not until now. He had spoken to her previously, and he had been civilized. Now that civility was gone from him. She peered into his Wasp soul with all its hard edges and hungry fires.
His eyes were so wide she could almost see his torment as a living thing. Sparks crackled across his fingers and she hid her face from them.
‘The Empire needs a happy Thalric more than an unhappy Thalric,’ he grated, each word snapped out with all the control he could muster. ‘And right now I think it might make me happier to make a corpse of a Beetle maid who will not talk.’
But he did not and, after a pause, she cautiously looked up at him. His face was still stern, remorseless, and there was no humour there when he said, ‘It is the scourge of my people, Miss Maker, this temper of ours. I have a stronger rein on it than most, but do not presume.’
With shaking hands she reached up, plucked a three-inch-long splinter from her hair. Her heart was still stuttering: he had been so close, was still so close to killing her. ‘Captain Thalric-’ She heard her voice shaking and hated herself for it, hated herself more for the next word. ‘Please listen to me. I don’t know anything you want to know. I don’t know Stenwold’s plans, or where he is now, or what he wants. I don’t know anything that can help you. Can’t you. .’ She got a hold on herself before she actually said it.
As he watched, she rearranged her clothes, brushed the sharp flecks of wood from them. ‘Salma and I,’ she went on, her voice now almost steady, ‘we are just ordinary students of the Great College, and we have stumbled into something monstrous. What harm could we be to your Empire? You only. . frustrate yourself, in this questioning. How would it hurt your Empire if you freed us, aside from saving it the cost of feeding us?’
He barked a laugh at that suggestion, but his face was still barren as the Dryclaw Desert, when she dared to look at it.
‘Miss Maker, you are Stenwold’s creature, and he is the Empire’s enemy. Whatever meagre help you could render to him, you would. Rather than let you loose to cause trouble I would have you killed without a thought. In fact, if there were even fifty-one out of a hundred parts of you that opposed the Empire I would thrust a knife beneath your chin rather than set you free.’ He turned away. ‘You are lucky, then, that you are still useful to us as a source of information.’
‘And after that?’ she said, forcing herself to her feet. ‘And what about after that? What hope have I then?’
At the word, ‘hope’ he laughed at her, shaking his head, half turning away, and the look on his face — of disdain, derision — was such that she attacked him.
She did not know how she did it, only that she believed him, then. She was a dead woman whether now or later, a woman totally without hope. Without any premeditation she went for his knife hilt and found her hand closed around it. Her other fist cracked against his jaw as she drew back to stab.
He had a hand on her knife wrist instantly, and for a second they swayed back and forth, as she used both hands to try and force the blade into him. He was far stronger than she was, however. She saw the muscles cord on his bare arms, and he was now pushing her back until she slammed into the wall. The knife fell from her fingers, ringing in her ears as it struck the floor, and he had a hand under her chin, where he had said he would stab her. She felt his thumb and fingers dig in there, and waited for the crackle and sear of the fire.
But it did not come. His temper, that had been only a scratch-depth from the surface a moment ago, had not stirred all this while. In fact, when she opened her eyes, he was even smiling slightly. She was horribly aware of how close he was to her, how strong.
‘Very good,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘And what then? My guards are outside the door. My people are all over the palace. My Empire owns this city. And what hope, you say? No hope whatsoever, even if you had it in you to kill me.’