But even an Aviator can’t see through brick walls; at least not without an enhancer. I took a deep breath and once more pressed my eye to the peephole. The other Aviator was a stocky, grizzled man, also with a gun lying across his knees. Like his partner he wore a heavy jacket and trousers of red leather trimmed with black, clothing much worn and stained—the uniform of the NASNA Aviators. His head was cocked as with great interest, as he listened to someone I couldn’t see. Giles, I assumed. I turned my head so that my ear rested against the cold mortar and listened.
It was disorienting, not being able to watch and listen at the same time. Their voices were muffled, and Giles in particular spoke so softly that sometimes I couldn’t hear him at all; but eventually I was able to put together most of what they were saying.
“…trouble in the west.” That was the woman speaking. Her cool, precise diction made each word seem to hang in the air before melting away. “Trouble everywhere these days.”
“We hadn’t heard.” Trevor’s drawl was exaggerated to a complaining whine. “It’s been a bad winter here—no visitors except yourselves and a few janissaries from the City.”
The next words rang out so loudly that I jumped, as though they had been spoken directly to me.
“Araboth has fallen. There were almost no survivors, and the Orsinas and all their advisers were killed.”
I heard Giles exclaim, and Trevor turned so that I could glimpse his face: taut, as though containing some terrible grief—or joy.
How can they not notice? I thought. God, he hates them!
But they didn’t notice; or if they did, they had their own reasons for ignoring it.
Trevor asked a question, and the woman Aviator said something else I couldn’t understand. I placed my eye back at the peephole. She and her companion had lowered their heads and were speaking confidingly to Trevor, still clutching their weapons. Through a doorway hobbled the servant, Mazda. It bent to pick up a small tray of glasses and a decanter, then left. I changed position again so I could listen.
“No, I am not mistaken: Captain Patrocles and I received our orders from him at Cisneros.” It was impossible to tell if the woman’s icy tone held rage or pride. “He has been made Imperator. It would take more than a tsunami to destroy Tast’annin.”
Tast’annin?
I clutched at the wall, the mortar crumbling between my fingers. My head reeled; I felt as though a huge mouth gaped at me in the darkness, waiting to swallow me if I moved.
“I thought he was dead!” exclaimed Giles.
For the first time the Aviator named Patrocles spoke. “He was.” His next words were incomprehensible. I finally made out, “…regeneration in Araboth. His investiture was held before the City fell. Colonel Aselma was there.”
Colonel Aselma broke in angrily. “It is an insult to us! He is a rasa, a walking corpse. How was it that he escaped when the domes collapsed at Araboth, unless he abandoned his post as Imperator? It was a madness of the Autocracy, to have him regenerated—he betrayed us in the City. He will betray us again.”
“I don’t think so,” Captain Patrocles said. “He is a brilliant man—”
“A rasa,” spat Colonel Aselma.
“A brilliant leader,” Patrocles went on coolly. “And what ever he is, he has never been a fool. He has his reasons for sending us on this mission….”
His voice trailed off, and I pressed myself even closer to the wall, struggling in vain to make out Trevor’s next words. But the Aviators’ news had so incited everyone that for a few minutes I could hear nothing clearly, just snatches of phrases—“always mad,” “HORUS colonies,” words that sounded like “enemy network.” When I pressed my eye to the hole again, I saw that Trevor had jumped from his chair and was pacing the room, clutching something in one hand and staring at it with furious intensity—a ’file foto, I finally realized. Once he stopped and raised his enhancer, so that the foto seemed aflame with blue light. Whatever the foto showed, it disturbed him greatly. After another minute he turned and shoved it into Giles’s hand. I went back to listening.
“…set up a search for her,” said Patrocles. Giles interrupted him with a question that I couldn’t understand, and the Aviator continued, “Absolutely. It was his last command before he left Cisneros.”
“He’s gone to HORUS,” the woman’s voice rang out. “To Quirinus, I believe. But he will find no one there, no one but energumens—he will be assassinated within the week,” she ended triumphantly.
“All the more reason to carry out his orders,” Captain Patrocles said in a voice like silk. “I’m afraid that’s not a very good image we’ve shown you, but it’s the best we could find—the records library at HEL was in a shambles. We were fortunate to find anything at all.”
At the word HEL I began to tremble uncontrollably. I drew away from the wall, nausea and a mounting fear clawing at me, then gazed out once more. Even from where I crouched, I could see that Giles had gone white. I thought the Aviators must be blind not to see his obvious terror as he handed the foto back to Colonel Aselma. I turned to listen again and heard him say, “We’ve seen no one who looks like this.”
“Look again,” urged Colonel Aselma. “It’s not a very good image.”
“Oh, I would remember—” Giles’s voice was stubbornly insistent, but also desperate. “You heard Trevor—it’s been a bad winter, no visitors—”
“Now, Giles,” Trevor said calmly. “They realize that. They’re just following Commander Tast’annin’s orders.”
“ Imperator Tast’annin,” said Captain Patrocles. “He says she is the last of the original group they had developed at the Human Engineering Laboratory. With proper intervention she can be of great use to us.”
“ If she is still alive,” Colonel Aselma said with disdain. “With that janissary rabble keeping order in the City, we’ll be lucky to find anything at all.”
“Oh, he’ll find her,” said Captain Patrocles. “By now the entire NASNA corps has received that ’file image, and there’s a bounty on her. She’ll be lucky if some overzealous janissary doesn’t blow her brains out—”
“They’d better not,” Colonel Aselma said darkly. “Her brain is the only part of her the Imperator cares about.”
I drew back from the wall and crouched in the darkness. My shaking hands clutched at my knees.
Tast’annin was alive. Jane’s bullet must not have killed him, or else the Ascendants had found some means to preserve his life—that single word regenerated rang in my ears like a warning tocsin.
He was alive, and he was looking for someone.
He was looking for me.
My breath came in such deep bursts, I was afraid the Aviators would hear me through the crumbling bricks. Light headed with fear, I tried to stand, nearly fell, and caught myself against the wall. They would hear me if I wasn’t careful; but all I could think of was that monstrous figure in the Cathedral—sacrificing children, using my twin, Raphael, as my own bloody image to lure the hapless Paphians to their deaths.