Syl wondered if the Illyri had somehow become infected by the residue of violence in the walls of these old fortresses, places where pain had been visited on the defenseless for centuries. The Illyri ruled from former bases of the Roman Empire, which crucified those who opposed it; from old Crusader fortresses, where men, women, and children were put to the sword for worshipping the same god by another name; and from places like Oslo’s Akershus Castle, and Prague Castle in the Czech Republic, buildings haunted by their association with the Nazis, who sent millions to ovens and gas chambers as part of their plan to create their own empire. Have these sites tainted us, thought Syl, or were we always just as cruel as the humans but found a way to hide it from ourselves?
Gradus had ordered that the gallows be built strong, because they were destined to remain in place for years to come. He was convinced that there would be no shortage of candidates to test the hangman’s rope. Perhaps he was right, but a plan was slowly forming in Syl’s mind. It was a plan with little hope of success, but she could not stand by and do nothing to stop this terrible thing from happening.
Lord Andrus turned to his daughter and began to question her about what had occurred during her time with Syrene.
“It’s even more important that you remember now, Syl. More important than what’s happening here on Earth; I fear the very peace of the Illyri race may be at stake. We need every tiny detail you can call to mind.”
“But I don’t remember,” said Syl. “We were talking, and then . . .”
She frowned in concentration. It was something like a dream, a dream in which Syrene seemed to separate into two parts, one of which had tried to bore into her mind with a terrible remorseless ferocity. She tried to explain it to her father, but she couldn’t form the words. It was as though a lock had been placed on her tongue.
Puzzled and concerned, Lord Andrus turned his attention to Ani.
“And you? How did you come to be involved in all this?”
“I just felt strongly that Syl was in trouble,” said Ani. “I don’t know how. I told Meia, and she believed me.”
Andrus looked to Danis, who shrugged.
“She’s always been like that,” he said. “Maybe some Illyri are just more sensitive than others.”
“Well, you’re clearly not among them,” said Andrus. It was the first hint of humor he had shown since the events in the Council chamber. “And I suppose that we now know why Syrene is here: the Sisterhood has secured its grip on Illyr, and it wants Earth as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if Syrene starts building a replica of the Marque on Calton Hill and populating it with novices.”
“So what do we do?” said Danis.
“Nothing, for now,” said Andrus. “We wait. There is much happening here that we don’t yet understand. Until we know more, it’s better to watch and to listen.”
“So we are to be Gradus’s dogs?” said Danis.
“We are, but we still have teeth, and our chains are long,” said Andrus. “In the meantime, you can rest assured that Gradus will make mistakes. It is in his nature to act hastily. If he insists on imposing a harsher rule on the humans, then they will rise up against him. The incidents of violence will increase, and the Corps’s hold upon Earth will start to slip. When that happens—and it will happen, sooner rather than later—the Military will be waiting to take back the mantle of power.”
It was Syl who spoke next.
“You said there were two boys sentenced to death, Father,” she said. “But that is not our way. It’s wrong. You must help them.”
Her father looked at her sadly. “There’s nothing I can do for them,” he said. “If I act against Gradus and the Council of Government, I’ll find myself in a cell alongside those boys.”
For the first time in her life, Syl felt real disappointment in her father. It was not only that he could do nothing for Paul and Steven; he wanted to do nothing. She saw the truth of it now. The public execution of two young humans, broadcast to the world, would incite widespread fury, and this was Lord Andrus’s only hope. Even those who had resigned themselves to living under the rule of the Illyri, continuing their lives much as they had done before, would rebel. Gradus and the Diplomatic Corps would be faced almost instantly with a full-scale rebellion in country after country. The Diplomats would not be strong enough to deal with such an insurrection, even with the aid of the Securitats, opening the way for the Military to step in as the force of reason and restraint. By next week, the brief rule of the Diplomats on Earth might already be over.
And Syl’s father was prepared to sacrifice two children to make that happen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
M
eia sat in the darkness of Edinburgh Zoo, listening to the calls of the beasts and the birds. The nocturnal animals were now active, and Meia felt a sense of commonality with them, for she was a night creature too.
“There used to be ravens here, you know,” said a voice from behind her.
Meia’s hand tightened on her small blast pistol, but she did not move. She had heard the man approaching long before he had revealed himself by speaking, and she knew that he was alone. She was in no danger from him, not here: this was neutral territory. Still, it paid to be careful. Trust was like money: it shouldn’t be spent foolishly.
The man walked past her and stared at an empty cage.
“For some reason,” he continued, “the people who came to visit didn’t seem to find ravens interesting enough, but I always did. They’re smart, ravens. They find prey for wolves, and then feed on the leavings once the wolves have gorged themselves. The wolves always leave something for them, but I often wonder what would happen if the ravens didn’t find prey for a time, or if one of them fell injured before a wolf.”
He turned to face her. He was a big man, taller than she was, but slightly hunched. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his overcoat. Meia knew that he had a gun in there somewhere, pointed at her. It would be small caliber, probably no bigger than his fist. It wouldn’t make a very big hole in her, but then it wouldn’t have to.
“It’s a dangerous business, making deals with wolves,” he concluded.
“And which are you?” asked Meia. “A raven or a wolf?”
“That depends,” he replied.
“On what?”
“On whom I’m making the deal with.”
He slowly withdrew his hands from his pockets. One was empty. The other contained a small silver hip flask. He unscrewed the top and drank from it. Meia could smell the whisky from where she sat. The man didn’t offer any to her. They knew each other too well for that by now.
His name was Trask, and he acted as a channel of communication between the Illyri—or that branch of the Illyri represented by Meia and her kind, the ones who moved through the shadows—and the Resistance. This was not unusual. Even in the worst of wars, or the kind of hit-and-run conflict in which the Illyri and the Resistance were engaged, it was often necessary for the opposing sides to be able to communicate. It was a way of ensuring that truces, temporary or otherwise, could be negotiated and prisoners exchanged, along with information when necessary. In the case of Trask and Meia, they had found a way to keep the violence on both sides to a minimum. There were those in the Resistance who might have called him a traitor had they known of some of the deals he had struck with Meia, and there were those among the Illyri who might have said the same of her. Meia suspected that Trask was more deeply involved in the Resistance than he pretended to be, but it did not concern her. She preferred to deal with someone in authority, someone who could make a decision quickly, rather than with a foot soldier.
Trask sat beside her on the bench. A skimmer, one of the long-range craft that the Illyri used for intercontinental travel on Earth, crossed the moon, heading east.
“Off to deliver misery to some other corner of the globe, no doubt,” said Trask.
“You had plenty of misery before we came,” said Meia. “If you were in the right mood, you might even concede that we have brought some of it to an end: hunger, disease, environmental damage.”
“At the price of our freedom.”
“You were never free, not really. We just rule more obviously than your own kind ever did.”
“At least they were our own kind.”
“Must we go through this every time we meet?” asked Meia.
“I wouldn’t want you to go mistaking us for friends.”
“After the incidents of the last couple of days, I think that’s unlikely.”
“If you’re talking about Birdoswald, that wasn’t us.”
“Really?”
“I won’t lie to you, Meia. I told you that a long time ago. If I can’t tell you something, then I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I won’t lie. There’s no point to these meetings otherwise.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Highlanders.”
“Near Carlisle? We’ve never known them to come so far south before.”
“They’re a law unto themselves, and they don’t share their plans with us. They think we’ve grown soft, that maybe we’re too close to the Illyri.”
“I can’t imagine where they’d get that idea from,” said Meia drily.
“Nor me, not unless they’ve been visiting the zoo after dark.”
“Why Birdoswald?”
“Why not?”
“There are easier targets for them, closer targets. Also . . .” Meia paused. She had to be careful here. “It seems to me that they might have been trying to take the Illyri commander of the garrison alive.”
“Well, it didn’t work, then,” said Trask. “I hear that he blew his own head off.”
“So you have been in contact with the Highlanders?”
“In a way. We expressed our concern at having them come on to our territory and start blowing up bases—not to mention some very nice Roman ruins—without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“And what did they say?”
“Two words. The second was off. I’ll let you figure out the first.”
“And the explosions on the Royal Mile?”
Trask took another sip from his flask.
“That wasn’t us either.”
“You’re sure?”
“Certain. And it wasn’t the Highlanders, I can tell you that.”
“They managed to blast their way into Birdoswald without too much trouble.”
Trask laughed. “They pointed a truck filled with explosives at the gates and hoped for the best. It’s a wonder they didn’t blow themselves up by hitting a pothole in the road long before they ever got near the border.”
“A splinter group, then, one of which you’re not yet aware?”
Trask gave her a look. “You wouldn’t be talking to me if you thought there were splinter groups of which I wasn’t aware. As soon as you start believing there might be gaps in my knowledge, you’ll have me arrested or killed, and you’ll find someone else to keep you company on your trips to the zoo.”
“Then who did it?”
“Maybe you ought to look closer to home,” said Trask.
Meia showed no surprise at the suggestion. That Trask felt as she did about the source of the attack simply confirmed her own suspicions.
“The Diplomats have no love for your lot,” Trask went on. “Anything to sow a little unrest in the ranks. By the way, who was the woman in red?”
For all the precautions that Vena had taken, the Resistance still knew of the new presence in the castle.
“A member of the Nairene Sisterhood.”
“I didn’t think they left their big library in the sky. What’s she doing here, then?”
“Sowing some of that unrest in the ranks.”
“Huh,” said Trask. “My turn: what do the Illyri want with the dead and the dying?”
“What?”
Trask smiled. He liked it when he found out something that Meia clearly didn’t know about.
“The figures at the crematorium don’t add up,” he said. “There are more bodies coming in than are going into the flames. It’s not a big difference, just a few here and there, mostly homeless and old people. But we notice these things, just as we’re wondering why the Corps removed half a dozen old people from Western General, put them in a truck, and drove them away. Someone assumed they wouldn’t be missed, because they were poor, and ill, and had nobody to care about them. But we care! And we’ve heard similar reports from other parts of the country.”
“I’ll look into it,” said Meia.
“You do that. Are we finished here?”
“Not quite.”
Meia stood. She didn’t like being close to Trask for too long. She knew that what he had said earlier was right: when he ceased being useful to her, she would kill him if only to protect herself. He would try to do the same to her. It was just a matter of who got there first. It was a shame. She had grown to like him.
“We have a problem,” she said, and heard him shift in his seat. She could almost picture him reaching for his gun. She let him see that her hands were empty.
“What kind of problem?”
“The Diplomatic Corps is bringing back the death penalty. . . .”
“I wasn’t aware that it had ever gone away,” said Trask. He knew that the Illyri, and particularly the Securitats, were prepared to kill Resistance members if they couldn’t capture them alive, and sometimes even if they could, just as the Resistance’s snipers were happy to kill any stray Illyri that wandered into their sights. When you thought about it, the death penalty was being applied every day.
“For children,” Meia finished.
“You can’t mean that!” said Trask. “What about Andrus? He’s the law in this land. He won’t stand for it.”
“We have a new president back on Illyr,” said Meia. “The change of leadership has brought with it a change in policy. As of today, the Diplomats have effectively assumed control of Earth. The age of the gentle hand is coming to an end.”
“And when does this new policy come into effect?”
“The first executions are scheduled for the day after tomorrow, on the Esplanade. Two boys, Paul and Steven Kerr, will be hanged for the atrocities committed on the Royal Mile.”
Meia saw Trask react to the names.
“I know those boys,” he said. “They’re good lads, and they’re all that their mother has. More to the point, they had nothing to do with those explosions. I’ve told you already: that wasn’t the Resistance!”
But Meia was watching him closely. The Kerr boys were important to Trask; maybe personally, but probably professionally too. Why? Assuming that Trask was telling the truth and the Resistance had not planted the bombs on the Royal Mile, why had the Diplomats chosen to pin the crime on those two humans? How had they been found?
“They were working for you, weren’t they?” said Meia. “Those boys were on a mission for the Resistance when they were picked up.”
Trask nodded.
“What was it?” asked Meia.
“Tunnels,” said Trask softly. “There are tunnels beneath Edinburgh. You lot have been digging them, and we wanted to find out why. That’s what the boys were doing. Looking for the tunnels.”
“Tunnels?”
“You didn’t know? You’re losing your touch.”
This was Corps work, thought Meia, all of it: the arrival of Syrene and Gradus, the bombs, the move against Lord Andrus, and perhaps even these tales of tunnels and bodies, all linked to the Diplomats.
“What about those boys?” said Trask. “You can’t let them hang.”
“I’ll think of something,” said Meia.
“You’d better,” said Trask, “or I promise you, you’ll be wading through rivers
of Illyri blood.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
S
yl spent a sleepless night, tormented by dreams in which she tried to stop her father from being hanged but couldn’t get to him in time because thick ranks of Securitats held her back, their uniforms no longer black but a deep blood red. She woke before dawn, convinced of a presence in her room, but she was alone. Her temples throbbed, though, and when she looked in the mirror, two circular marks bracketed either side of her head, almost like burns.
She touched me. Syrene touched me, and I burned.
It was the weekend, which was of some comfort. The Illyri had taken certain human traditions to heart; among the best of them was dispensing with education classes at weekends. Althea appeared shortly after nine, bustling around the room, tidying where no tidying was required.
“I heard you were involved in quite an adventure yesterday,” said Althea.
“Was I?” Syl answered carefully, uncertain as to what exactly Althea might be referring to. She wondered where Althea had been for most of the previous day; it was unlike her to be away from her charge for so long, especially amid so much upheaval.
“Indeed you were. They say you spent time with the Red Witch.”
“Yes,” said Syl, “although I don’t remember too much about it. Althea, where were you yesterday evening?”
“I had errands to run.”
“Errands? What errands?”
“Never you mind. Your curiosity will be the death of you if you’re not careful.” She gave Syl a strange look when she said it, as though daring her to deny that she was curious at all.