Except someone was there, quietly waiting for him, like a spider in its web. When he unlocked his door and pushed it open, a Beetle-halfbreed woman sitting on his bed regarded him with a hard smile.
Instantly he had a hand out, palm towards her, ready to demand some explanation, and in the back of his mind the knowledge that the door had been secured with the lock he himself had installed.
She met him with a similar gesture, and the words, ‘I wouldn’t.’
For a long time Averic stared at the palm she was training on him, then at her face, the dark skin, something of the features of a Beetle-kinden, but then they were a variable breed, and what other heritage could he discern there…?
He went cold all at once, for she was a Wasp. Not a Beetle at all, not even a little of one, but pure-blood Wasp. He would not have believed it possible. Some sort of dye had been used to colour her skin a deep, rich brown, painstakingly applied so that the palm she showed him was paler, but not as pale as a Wasp’s should be. She had padded out her cheeks a little, applied some manner of tape to flatten her nose. She must have walked past hundreds of Collegium citizens to get here, without one of them seeing her as he now did. Who looked closely at halfbreeds, after all?
Had she been a man, she could probably not have done it, but everyone knew that the only Wasps for export were men. The idea of a Wasp woman infiltrating the city went against all the carefully hoarded stereotypes that the Collegiate citizens were so fond of.
‘Averic, isn’t it?’ she noted. ‘You can call me Gesa. Glad to meet you. You’ve done a great job here, I’m sure.’
He could not stop staring at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Here you are, in the heart of Collegium, a student at their vaunted College. Have you any idea how hard it’s been to get agents entrenched in this city recently, with Stenwold Maker on the war path?’
He felt as though a hammer blow had struck him, inside. ‘I’m- I’m not an agent.’
‘Of course you are.’
She said the words with such assurance that he needed a moment to regroup his own certainties.
‘No.’ He was aware that she might kill him — her hand was still up, while his had fallen to his side — but he could not allow her to redefine him in such a way. He could not let her remake him so casually into the thing the Collegiates already muttered that he was.
She was now smiling broadly. ‘But, of course, you understand that a deep cover agent must live his cover, Averic. It works best of all if he does not know it himself. Why do you think you were sent here, if not for that?’
The hammer fell once again. ‘No, my parents…’ And the words were damning, treasonous, but he was under attack, with only the truth to defend himself with. ‘They sent me here because they believe we can learn from the Collegiates — and more in peace than in war.’
‘Is that what they told you?’ Her expression was pitying. ‘As I say, how better to place you in the bosom of the Beetles?’ She shrugged. ‘Or perhaps you’re right, but then we would have to make sure something happened to your oh-so-prestigious family, wouldn’t we? You won’t know this, but the actual truth is always an abstraction in my game. What’s important is that you’ll do what I want. You don’t need to decide whether it’s because your people sent you here as an agent, or because they didn’t, and they’ll suffer for that unless you obey me.’
I’m agreeing to nothing. Just saying the words does not make me theirs. I… ‘What do you want from me?’ I should kill her now, the moment she turns, loses focus. One sting and she’s dead and nobody need know…
Despite his basic army training, Averic had never killed anyone: not an enemy of the Empire, not even a rebellious slave. She was right when she said his family had wealth and power, and as a result he had never been required to use his Art or a blade against a living target. And, if I killed her I would be a traitor to my people.
So what am I if I disobey her?
‘I want you to be ready, Averic. I want you to get over all your little qualms and become a man at last, and do a man’s work when it’s asked of you. I’m here now so you can get your angst and agonizing out of the way, and remind yourself what kinden you belong to. When the orders come to you, you’ll execute them swiftly and efficiently. And when you report to General Tynan, he’ll clap you on the shoulder and tell you that you’ve done well. Or else you’ll die trying to further the Empire’s cause — the only death a Wasp-kinden should aspire to.’
He formed the question, What if I tell them? but he could not force the words out. Yet she read it on his face as if she was a magician.
‘Tell them you’re a traitor to them, after all this time? And become a traitor to us at the same time? Oh, Averic, I’m not sure how far you’d have to run to escape the landslide, if you did that.’ Her look could almost be construed as kindly. ‘Grow up, Averic, and put aside childish things. Remember who you are.’ She stood up. Her palm was no longer directed at him but he had no ability to act on that, stepping back like a good subordinate as she walked to the door.
‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ she told him. ‘Just be ready.’ Then she was gone.
Gesa, who normally went by the name of Garvan, was cautiously satisfied with her work so far. She was playing a dangerous game, and all the more so for the disguise she had chosen. Her great secret, her vulnerability, her own private treason flaunted so openly. It wound her up inside like a clock, tenser and tenser, but the Collegiates did not care, and she made sure not to meet face to face with the other Imperial agents here, simply to leave them messages at the agreed-on drop points. She should have felt freer, here, walking as a woman even if she was forced to hide her kinden, but the habit of secrecy was so deep ingrained in her that she lived every moment on a knife edge, waiting for someone to decry her, not for her race, but for her gender.
Averic would serve, she judged, and he was well placed. The Empire had never tried to infiltrate the College before, but to Gesa that was a grievous omission that had been amended just in time. One could get up to so much mischief in those halls of academe.
The Rekef had been broken against the walls of Collegium more than once. During the brief conflict with the Spider-kinden, an entire Rekef operation had been uncovered and sent home to face disgrace and punitive interrogation, leaving behind barely a trace of Imperial influence in the city. If the Empire had not been able to borrow some intelligence from its new Spider allies, then the war would have been considerably more difficult — and who wanted to have to rely on Spiders?
For that matter, who wanted to have to rely on the Rekef? Army Intelligence was now suddenly at the cutting edge of the agent war. Her heart swelled with pride to think that her mocked and abused corps was suddenly at the core of things, and so was she.
But there was so little time. The insertion of her people had come late in the day, only the influx of refugees from the Felyal giving sufficient cover to accomplish it. She and her fellows now had a great deal of work to do, and precious little time. She was having to allow her subordinates more independence than she liked, as there simply wasn’t enough time for her to mastermind everything properly. She had to trust in her peers, and trust was not something that came naturally to her.
It was worth it, though, for this chance to outshine the Rekef. There were Army Intelligence colonels back in Capitas who would salute her with a tear in their eyes, when she came back from winning Collegium for the Empress. Army Intelligence would succeed where the Rekef had only chalked up repeated failure.