‘You expect me to believe that you’re on the books?’ The captain’s insignia marked him as Army Intelligence, but he could easily be Rekef Inlander as well.
‘My name is Averic, sir. You’ll find it there.’ Still so very steady, every breath measured carefully and his fear fought down. Because he might just live. Because they might just leave him intact. Because it might be true.
They had approached him, when the Second had marched on Collegium the time before. First a Wasp woman, then a Beetle man, calling him one of their own, telling him that he had been sent into Collegium under cover, the best sort of cover. He had believed himself a student but instead he had been intended as a spy.
They had told him the time had come to betray his fellows. He had believed them then. Perhaps he still did. Perhaps it was true.
He was unlikely to find out any other way than this.
His family, he had believed, were liberals who disagreed with the Empire’s belligerent relations with its neighbours. He had therefore been sent to Collegium to learn the Beetles’ ways, so that he could bring them back to the Empire.
Or else he had been sent to Collegium as an agent, living a lie all unknowingly, but the purpose was the same: to learn the Beetles’ ways and bring them back. The seeming and the real danced about each other like Spider-kinden Aristoi, and he could not say which was true. For sure, he had turned aside from the Black and Gold when called on, but that bridge might not be burned. He could yet live. They might not torture me.
The captain’s face was still as blank as glass. ‘Why didn’t you come forward once we took the city?’
‘There wasn’t the chance, before this kicked off,’ he found himself saying. ‘And when it did, there was no chance of getting word out.’ A lie, an unbelievable lie. ‘So I did what I could, sir.’
A snort. ‘And what was that?’
‘I brought their leader to you, didn’t I, sir?’
The captain considered him like an anatomist regarding a cadaver. ‘Did you,’ he said without inflection. ‘Averic, is it? Well, perhaps we’ll get you to the table right away, boy, just in case, mind. Because if you turn out to be trying to save your worthless hide by lying, I’m going to take it out of you a finger-joint at a time. You don’t mind, do you, soldier? You don’t mind my going to make sure?’
Despite his position, Averic managed an awkward shrug. ‘I’d expect it, sir.’
A couple of soldiers marched in at the captain’s direction and, without complaint, Averic let them strap him to the table, his hands secured palm-down on the metal surface, where he would burn only himself if he tried to sting.
Then they left him to his thoughts.
He thoughts were mostly, Eujen, I’m sorry.
Eventually the captain came back, engineer and all, and stared at him, and Averic met his stare levelly, all his fear and regret pushed deep down. There was nothing more he could do for himself now.
‘You,’ the captain told him, ‘are now going to have to answer more questions than anyone actually lying on the table.’ Responding to an irritable gesture, the engineer began releasing him, a band at a time, grumbling under his breath. ‘Such as what the pits you’ve been doing all this time. And don’t give me that rot about your precious cover. A spy that won’t break cover ever is no use to anyone.’ From the man’s disgusted tone, it seemed that Averic’s case was only reinforcing the man’s past experience with agents. ‘For now, get yourself cleaned up. Get some food inside you. We can go over your sorry story in the morning.’
Something rang leaden in Averic’s heart, on hearing that. So it’s true, he thought numbly. I was a spy after all. And my family: were they victims of this trick, too? Or did they know? Perhaps my own family didn’t trust me enough, but let me come here still believing that I was merely seeking peace and understanding.
And that is what I found.
Small wonder, then, that I became what they intended me to feign.
He swung his legs over the side of the table, gripping his hands together to work the stiffness out of them.
They must have reckoned that weak, insipid Collegiate philosophy could never overcome my kinden’s love of Empire.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘I’d like very much to return to uniform.’
The nod the captain gave him was proprietorial and pleased, and it made Averic hurt inside.
He didn’t have time to go rouse a quartermaster for some armour, but they found him a uniform tunic that fitted well enough, and then he received directions to the barracks which, as soon as he was out of sight, he totally ignored. Instead, he circled back to the repurposed counting house, doing his best to look like a soldier who had every business to be there.
The rear door was left unguarded — a low little affair meant for deliveries, leading to a cramped backroom store that the Wasps had cluttered with furniture removed from elsewhere in the house. Averic stepped lightly through it, constructing in his mind the layout of the place. The clerk’s room he had been taken to could not be too far from here, and if they were now questioning Eujen. .
Ahead of him, someone crossed the main counting house floor, an engineer from the look of him. Averic ducked back out of sight, realizing he would not have the nerve to bluff this out. Stealth it must be.
There came voices from outside, but just the usual murmur of soldiers in a camp, he guessed. The thought of what he would do once he had Eujen out of the building was something he was staving off, moment to moment. They were a long way from anywhere that could be called safe, and even though there were Beetles in the Imperial army, Eujen would never pass for one. .
In front, a line of four doors, two of them standing open. If Eujen was to be found easily, it would be here. Averic inched closer, ears alert for the sound of anyone else entering the building.
He heard a clatter of metal from behind one of the closed doors.
Before his thoughts could deflect him, he was at the door and hauling it open, a hand extended to sting. The suddenness of his action surprised him, leaving him bewildered and shaken.
There lay Eujen, right there.
They had him secured to a table, and the injuries he bore so far were shallow and superficial, the result of a precise art that aimed at combining longevity with pain. They had not got to that later stage, where a subject’s willpower is broken by irreversible damage. Two fingers of one hand were splayed at broken angles with exacting care, but the rest of the work had mostly been pressure on joints and a little surface cutting.
Eujen was weeping quietly. He had been stretching the fingers of his other hand towards the torturer’s tools — knives and clamps and irons — that had been left almost within reach. One was on the floor, nudged perhaps by the furthest extent of one finger. His eyes were pressed closed, his body shaking with misery.
Averic set to work instantly, loosening his friend’s bonds, ignoring the blood on Eujen’s dark flesh. The Beetle’s shuddering calmed, as he worked until the last manacle loosened. Then Averic met his eyes.
‘You’re here,’ Eujen whispered, his eyes flicking to the black and gold uniform.
‘Don’t you doubt me, not ever,’ the Wasp told him. ‘We’re getting clear now.’ An awkward pause. ‘Can you walk?’
‘Going to have to.’ Eujen lurched off the table, grabbing one-handed at it for support, and stood a moment with his face twisted in pain. After a deep breath, he forced himself to stand upright. ‘I’ve had worse.’ And the patent untruth of it almost made Averic weep. ‘We’re moving?’
‘We are.’ Averic was already at the door leading to the counting-house floor, and still nobody had come to continue their work on Eujen. They were leaving him to stew, of course, to consider his fate, and the door was unguarded because. . well, because Averic’s kinden were contemptuous of anything a manacled Beetle might achieve.