He found that he could barely bring their likenesses to mind.
He saw the names of four lecturers who had taught him, three of whom had plainly resented doing so. Oh how I’ll make them twitch when they find out I’m no victim to be slighted. How I shall get even with them. But there was no fire in that thought. He could not muster the bitterness. Instead he foresaw the acts involved: saw himself stepping through a sequence of patient murders with the same focused attention he had applied to all of his College work. The burned man was right. For all their sneers and insults, they would never expect him to come after them.
He felt full of a venom that had corrupted him without him knowing. Reaching the end of the list, he closed his eyes.
‘Bold and swift and bloody,’ came the voice of the Beetle-kinden. ‘Say it.’
‘Bold and swift and bloody,’ Averic echoed. He was holding himself deliberately still, because otherwise he would be shaking. He had read to the end of the names, the last addition seeming almost like an afterthought.
The bed lurched as the man stood up suddenly. ‘When the army breaks the wall, surrender to the first soldiers you see, ask to be brought to Colonel Cherten for debriefing. They’ll spot you for one of their own. I’ll have a tougher job, believe me. We won’t meet again before then.’ He clapped Averic on the shoulder, startling the youth into opening his eyes, staring up into the man’s own gaze with a determination tempered like steel.
‘Good boy,’ the Beetle said, approving, and then he was at the doorway. ‘Good luck.’ And he was gone.
Still sitting in that dingy, wretched room, Averic stared after him, only now allowing himself to start to shake. Traitor, I’m a traitor after all this time. Any doubt had fled him, leaving only a terrible emptiness in its wake. He was going to betray them all.
Eujen Leadswell, was the last name on the list, surely only added after the Student Company had been formed.
In a small study, almost lost in the upper storeys of the Amphiophos, far from the main bustle of governance, Jodry Drillen stared at the desk before him.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘Nothing’s changed,’ Stenwold told him. ‘If we agreed before, we agree now. It’s necessary.’
‘I didn’t have this in front of me before,’ Jodry whispered. The room was ill lit, neglected, more a storeroom for unwanted records than a place for scholars or Assemblers. ‘Stenwold… they’re never going to forgive me.’ The man’s pudgy hands were shaking, rattling the Speaker’s seal and the reservoir pen.
‘Then let me,’ Stenwold decided. ‘I’m used to the city thinking ill of me. Now that everyone agrees with me, I don’t know where to put myself.’ He managed tp raise the ghost of a smile, but Jodry merely shook his head.
‘It must be me,’ the Speaker said, ‘because it must be obeyed. If we cannot have a full decision of the Assembly — and we can’t, I know — then I must put my hand to it.’
‘Then do it. And then I’ll sign it, too. All the authority we can provide, and the blame can be shared. I’ll say I forced you to it, if you want.’
‘What will I say to them, Stenwold? The relatives, the homeless. I never thought of this happening, when I put my name forward in the Lots. I never thought that I’d be responsible for… that I’d fail them and do so knowingly, eyes open. I thought it would all be trade disputes and paperwork.’
‘You’re doing well,’ Stenwold told him solemnly. ‘Better than I’d have thought. But I wouldn’t ask this of you, if it wasn’t needed.’
Jodry nodded tiredly. ‘Banjacs is ready?’
‘He will be by tomorrow night.’
The fat man looked up at him, horrified. ‘He says that? He’d better be ready. I’ve written him an open pass to the cursed Assembly Treasury to get his bloody machine working. If he pisses away the chance we’re buying him — at such cost! — I’ll strangle the old bastard myself!’ A deep breath. ‘And their agents?’
‘Those that I have identified have been passed the story, by the most indirect channels I could devise. Word should already be heading for the Second, regarding our problems, our weaknesses. And tonight will bear that word out.’
‘Will it? And we’re gambling on what you think they’ll think? Why not, given all the other things we’re throwing the dice on? Why not, indeed?’
Stenwold regarded at him without any words of comfort or consolation — and he sensed that Jodry did not want to be comforted, did not believe that he deserved it. They were about a terrible business, a betrayal of their own for reasons of brutal pragmatism, and both of them felt the brand of it burning their skin.
Jodry took the seal, clicked at the top until it welled with red wax, and then stamped it down hard. A shudder went through him, but he took up the pen and signed boldly, with hardly a quiver, before moving on to the next document. Stenwold took out his own pen and added his name to each in turn, the Speaker and the War Master — as much weight as they could give to their conspiracy.
The first order differed from the others, addressed to the Sarse Way airfield, and it read: By the order of the Assembly of Collegium under the emergency powers granted for the time being the Sarse Way contingent of the Collegiate Air Defence are ordered to: engage the enemy air forces when so prompted by the Great Ear; upon engagement fall back towards the city; upon reaching the skies above the city remain in contact with the enemy for no longer than ten minutes before seeking to land and take shelter; during the course of all contact with the enemy concentrate on preserving yourselves and your machines in priority to attacking the enemy. Further, you are not to return to the defence once you have quit the fight.
The pilots of Sarse Way would assume that this was some manoeuvre involving a counter-attack by the complements of the other airfields, and would obey dutifully, relieved perhaps to be out of the fighting early and trusting to men such as Jodry and Stenwold to know what was best.
The other missives were all identical and, under the same heading, gave the order: Do not take wing under any circumstances. You are expressly ordered to keep your machines under cover and out of sight. You are instructed not to participate in any action against the air forces of the Empire on this night, without exception.
Jodry and Stenwold stared at each other, and at last the fat man folded each order, sealing them one by one with more bloody wax, and reached out to summon Arvi.
‘No,’ Stenwold told him.
‘What? If Arvi’s a traitor then anyone is,’ Jodry snapped.
‘I will take them myself,’ Stenwold told him. ‘I will instruct the officers not to open them until dark. They will see me and know me. There will be no possibility that this might be an Imperial ploy. We are losing too much, by this, to risk any compromising of our plan.’
‘And after that?’ Jodry asked him.
‘I will go home,’ Stenwold explained. ‘And I will wait there, and listen, and live with the knowledge.’
The nearest Wasp soldier touched down only yards away from Laszlo’s hiding place, stalking through the gnarled, scrubby trees that were barely taller than the man himself: a knotty little grove of stunted olive trees sprouting where some fault in the earth gave them access to water. To a Wasp, only the trees would offer any cover at all, but the ground was loose and crumbling about the roots, and Laszlo had been able to excavate a hollow down beneath one of the trees, digging and digging frantically during the last two hours of the night, bitterly aware that their time was up. Beside him, Liss stirred, biting her lip, and Laszlo could not say whether her shivering was from fear or the fever of her wound.