‘As one of the Captain’s officers, you do, yes.’
‘So? How’s it going?’
She gave him an awkward look, then gestured to one of the shelves which covered two walls of the office from floor to ceiling. Black and red leather ledgers were piled up all along it, looking as if they were about to slide off. By the archive hall’s standards, it was akin to anarchy. ‘This is my investigation. I’m working through every variant of Nigel I could think of registered in Erond county.’
‘And you haven’t found him?’ Slvasta sighed.
‘No. Certainly not a trader as you described. However, there are some boatowners who have similar businesses, although none of them is called Nigel.’ She smiled.
Slvasta liked that smile, it animated her. ‘Ah, excellent. Can I see their files?’
‘These are just the registration ledgers,’ she said. ‘The actual files are still in the vaults. I haven’t requested them yet.’
Slvasta looked at her, seeing the smile fade. Looked round the woeful office. ‘You have a lot on. I understand.’
‘Oh,’ she blushed. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. If it’s really urgent I can order the files up. They’ll be here in a week. My supervisor has to approve the request.’
Slvasta started laughing. ‘Rushing it through, huh?’
‘It’s really quite quick.’ She shrugged. ‘By archive standards, anyway. It’s just . . . things are done in a certain way.’
‘Because that’s the way they’re always done.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I thank you for putting in the request. Can I ask another favour?’
She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘I’d like to take you out to dinner. Tonight, if you’re not doing anything.’
Bethaneve blushed again as she gave him a startled look, but her gaze didn’t stay on his empty sleeve for very long. ‘Um, well . . .’
‘Please say yes. I’ll have to go out with my fellow officers if you don’t. Would you really wish that on anyone?’
‘That’s a trick question,’ she said, her voice challenging, not a clerk’s voice at all.
‘Not really. I’m just a country boy, posted to the city and finding it hard. Take pity on me, please.’
‘My landlady locks the door at ten thirty.’
‘Quite right, too. Can I pick you up at seven?’
‘Yes. Thank you. That would be nice.’
And so very worth enduring Arnice’s dismay at abandoning their double date.
*
Bethaneve had lodgings on Borton Street, an area where housing was a lot cheaper than anything on Rigattra Terrace. But not quite working class, he decided as the carriage pulled up outside the neat three-storey blue-brick house. Borton Street was formed by old, classically tasteful houses, with cracks running up the brickwork and walls starting to bulge. In another century or two they’d be demolished and replaced, as they had replaced those that stood here before. Such was the cycle of continual regeneration. The city didn’t get any bigger, though Arnice claimed each cycle built a little higher than the last. Like the society it housed, Varlan craved stability.
The landlady answered the door when Slvasta pulled its bell cord. Now, she would have been perfectly at home in the hall of archives, he thought. A puffy face that looked perpetually miserable, dark dress made out of stiff fabric, greying hair in a tight bun. Her gaze and ex-sight ran up and down Slvasta’s plain grey suit. ‘This door is locked at ten thirty,’ she said primly. ‘I insist that my girls are back by then. If they’re not, I will assume they no longer require residence here – and frankly if that is how they choose to behave, I wouldn’t want them under my roof anyway.’
‘An admirable philosophy,’ Slvasta assured her.
Bethaneve appeared in the hallway. She’d changed into a green dress with a skirt whose hem hovered around her knees, and a white cobweb shawl wrapped tightly round her shoulders. There was a pink rose in her hair. Hints of mischievous thoughts slithered about beneath a shell that was tantalizingly thin.
The landlady gave a snort of disapproval and closed the door.
‘You kept a straight face,’ Bethaneve said as they walked to the cab. ‘Well done.’
‘She does seem rather imposing.’
‘She used to work at the Tax Office. You develop a certain attitude if you stay long enough.’
The cab driver opened the door and helped Bethaneve up. When she sat on the bench and removed her shawl, Slvasta did a classic double take. The green dress had a square neck cut almost as low as the one Lanicia had worn yesterday. He cursed himself for being so obvious, but Bethaneve grinned knowingly.
‘So, where are you taking me?’ she asked.
Slvasta paused on the verge of answering; was he imagining a double entendre? ‘I’ve heard good things about the Oakham Lodge.’
‘I’m in your hands. Oh—’ Her hand covered her mouth, and she blushed. ‘Slvasta, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—’
‘Trust me. After having your arm amputated without narnik, figures of speech don’t really register as terribly upsetting.’
‘Without narnik?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Great Giu, tell me all about it!’
*
When Bethaneve smiled, her lips curled up. It made her look delightfully impish, he realized. Her laugh was husky. She didn’t have the formal restraint and coldness of the aristocratic daughters he’d met, a difference which was so refreshing. She knocked back beer, not wine. She was animated on a number of subjects, such as the three dams on the Yann river which ran through the city and provided water for nine districts – how the pumps were constantly breaking down and the owners weren’t obliged to compensate the households when supplies were cut off. Or the lamplight company that had the contract for Borton Street, which was doing such a sloppy job. And how the meat inspectors at Wellfield market were so crooked. And . . . And . . . And . . .
‘I shouldn’t be telling you things like this,’ she said as the main course was cleared away. They’d both had the steak-and-kidney pie that was the lodge’s specialty.
‘Why ever not?’
‘Well, you’re an officer.’
‘That hardly makes me part of the Captain’s police.’
‘No.’ She raised her beer glass and gave him a shrewd look over the top of it. ‘You’re not what I imagined an officer to be, either.’
‘How did you imagine an officer to be?’
‘Stuck up, like the rest of the aristos. Uncaring.’
‘Regiments have a difficult job, you know. Being an officer is no sinecure. It’s tough out there sweeping the countryside. And . . .’ He glanced at his stump. ‘Tougher if you fail.’
‘I get that now. It’s the uniforms, you see, all bright and expensive. I just identify you with the rich families who run everything.’
‘Some of their younger sons take commissions, mostly with the Meor regiment. That way they get to stay in Varlan – admittedly on the other side of the river. I heard there’s almost one officer for every trooper. And the Meor does pay officers about ten times what any other regiment pays. It’s called the capital weighting; life here is more expensive.’
‘Whose fault is that?’ she said sharply.
‘But there are more opportunities in a city than out in the countryside. That attracts people.’
‘Which puts up the prices, which takes opportunity away from the poorest.’
‘But you live here. You managed to get a good job.’
‘That’s a good job? Eight o’clock till five thirty, with forty minutes’ lunch break which you have to take in the canteen, which just happens to be run by the senior clerk’s family? Every day for a hundred and ten years, that’s the requirement to qualify for a full pension.’
‘Do you think you’ll last that long?’
‘No. I’m going to find me a rich landowner who’ll take me away from all this.’ She raised an eyebrow in scorn. ‘That’s what’s suppo
sed to happen, isn’t it? Sorry, do I sound bitter? I don’t mean to be. It’s just that nothing changes. And there’s so much injustice on Bienvenido, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Certainly not the Captain and all our Councils. The money they receive – sweet Uracus! I see some of the public expenditure files, you know.’
‘Doesn’t surprise me. And I’m afraid I’m not landed. My mother has a farm, but my half-brothers will inherit that now. I’m going to spend my life fighting the Fallers.’
Bethaneve slid her hand across the table and grasped his fingers. ‘You’re a good man, Captain Slvasta. You stick to your beliefs. Don’t let them take that away from you.’
‘I won’t.’ Somehow he didn’t have the courage to tell her about the committee meeting that morning, how they’d already thwarted him.
‘So who’s this Nigel person?’ she asked. ‘You must want him very badly to resort to the Tax Office for help. What’s he done?’
He explained what had happened, how angry he was at himself for being tricked.
‘That’s very strange,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘I can’t imagine anyone working for a nest, no matter how much they were paid.’
‘Me neither,’ he admitted. ‘But what else could it be?’
‘Did you know that Captain Xaxon used to destroy an egg in public every year?’
‘No.’
‘He was the seventh Captain, I think. There’d be a big midsummer ceremony at the palace, and they’d bring out this giant steam-powered guillotine device he’d had specially built for the event. It could slice a Faller egg clean in half. There were bands, regimental parades. The whole works. Quite a spectacle, so they say. Ten thousand people used to turn up.’
‘Why did it stop? There’s nothing this world likes better than its traditions.’
‘One of his granddaughters had a puppy. It slipped its lead and ran towards the egg – the lure, you see. She ran after it—’
‘Oh, crud.’
‘They had to amputate three of her fingers when she got stuck.’ Bethaneve squeezed his hand a fraction tighter, and gave his stump a thoughtful look. ‘I don’t suppose they had time to administer narnik, either. Poor girl.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Anyway, that’s the only time I know about an egg being moved anywhere by humans. Maybe this Nigel is planning some kind of victory ceremony. Is he a politician?’
‘I suppose he could stand for a Council office. It makes as much sense as anything – except this was over a year and a half ago.’ He realized they were still holding hands, and made no effort to stop.
‘I’ll do you a deal, Captain Slvasta.’
‘Go on.’
‘I will order up all the files on boatowners in Erond county and go through them for you. See if any of them fit what you’ve told me about Nigel.’
‘That sounds good. What’s my side of the deal?’
Her smile became fierce. ‘You take me to a bait.’
‘A bait?’
‘Yes.’ She was looking at him intently, ex-sight examining his shell for hints of his reaction.
‘Very well.’
She drained her beer glass, then dropped the pretty rose from her hair into it. ‘Come on, then.’
*
Slvasta had never been to the city’s Newich district. Never had a reason to. It was a jumble of derelict warehouses and factories, broken up by bleak tenements the owners had built to house their workforce. A canal had been dug through the middle, channelling a powerful flow from the river Gossant before it emptied into the Colbal. Big factories were built on both sides of it, forming a dark artificial canyon. Each of them possessed two or three waterwheels, turning the looms and lathes inside.
The bait was held in one of them, an abandoned cloth works. Most of the building’s upper floors had been stripped out years ago as part of the demolition and replacement schedule for the whole canal – which hadn’t yet happened. Their absence left a single large enclosed space, with the remnants of the upper floors clinging to the walls forming precarious balconies. The uneven brick floor was broken up by deep, narrow trenches where the whirring leather pulley belts used to run day and night, and had now been colonized by manky, disease-laden urban bussalores. Big iron bearings were still affixed to the walls, the last remnants of the mighty looms which used to fill the factory.
Dozens of slates had slipped off the roof, allowing wide beams of moiré nebula-light to shine in. But the main source of illumination came from hundreds of oil lanterns hanging from the jagged edges of the balconies. They shone down on the bait pit in the centre of the brick floor, an arena seven paces across, made from thick timbers.
There must have been over three hundred men and women crammed inside. Slvasta had expected it to be mostly working class, residents from the nearby slum houses. But no, there were many shiny top hats and ornate dresses; he even saw a few regiment uniforms amid the crowd. The noise was brutal, the air rancid and filled with tatus flies. People were sitting along the edge of the balconies, dangling their legs over the side, tankards and wine glasses in hand. Spilt drink was a constant drizzle as they cheered on their animal down in the pit.
Slvasta stared round in amazement, letting his ex-sight drift about. One end of the factory was stacked with cages containing the animals yet to fight. There were barrels of beer set up, the brewers charging double the price of any pub, tables with wine, even some narnik traders blatantly walking round with trays of wads and fresh pipes. And bookmakers lurked in the corners, surrounded by guards armed with knives and pistols that you didn’t need to probe with ex-sense to discover.
‘Everything out in the open,’ he said, unsure if he approved or not.
‘True democracy,’ Bethaneve replied. Then she waved to someone at a small table on the other side of the pit. ‘This way.’
Her friends turned out to be Javier and his boyfriend Coulan. Javier was a big, heavily muscled thirty-year-old with ebony skin almost as dark as Quanda’s. Slvasta fought down that shameful comparison. The man had a Rakwesh accent, and the way he was hunched over the table made it look as though it’d been built for children. In contrast, Coulan was a tall lad with short-cropped fair hair and skin so pale Slvasta first thought he was albino; with his endearingly handsome features it was easy to like him at first glance. However, his shell was completely impervious, allowing no aspect of his thoughts to escape.
They greeted Slvasta with a modicum of suspicion at first, even with Bethaneve vouching for him.
‘Your first time at a bait?’ Javier asked as he beckoned a barmaid over.
‘Yes.’
‘Thought so.’
Slvasta didn’t know how to take that. Now he was sitting next to Javier, he was beginning to realize just how large the man was.
‘Any tips?’ Bethaneve shouted above the din.
‘Initie’s hound,’ Coulan said. ‘It’s a mean beast. Worth some coin.’
‘Putting it up against two mod-dogs in a while,’ Javier said. ‘I got Philippa one of them.’
‘Philippa runs the bait,’ Bethaneve ’pathed, as she nodded towards a ninety-year-old woman in a filthy silk kimono, sitting in a big armchair close to the arena.
‘Do you keep mod-dogs?’ Slvasta asked.
That earned him a snort of derision from Javier. ‘No. I find them for Philippa. Owners shouldn’t be so fucking careless.’
‘People shouldn’t own them at all,’ Slvasta replied levelly.
It clearly wasn’t the answer Javier had been expecting. He gave Slvasta a dark smile. ‘Then what would we all use?’
‘Who the crud cares? I just don’t want mods and neuts on Bienvenido.’
Javier grinned and nodded at Slvasta’s stump. ‘One of them get a bit snappy, did they?’
‘No, I lost the arm to an egg. The mods helped stick me to it; they belong to the Fallers. People can’t see that.’
Javier rocked back on his stool. ‘Crud!’
A roar came from the ar
ena’s audience. A wolfhound had been dropped into the arena, along with three mod-cats. The wolfhound charged at the mod-cats, slavering furiously. The crowd cheered loudly as its teeth closed round the first mod-cat. But the other two mod-cats, ’path goaded and in a terror-frenzy, started snapping at the wolfhound’s legs. Teeth which adaptors had formed to slice clean through rodents ripped through the dog’s flesh. The wolfhound snarled in pain and fury and clamped its jaws on a mod-cat. Locked together, all three animals jumped and slung themselves around against the wooden wall, growling and shrieking as blood made the floor slicker.
Slvasta used his ex-sight to observe the carnage. Bethaneve stood so she could see the whole gory spectacle. A barmaid delivered three tankards to the table. Javier raised his. ‘To killing mods.’
‘Wherever they are,’ Slvasta responded. They knocked their tankards together and drank.
Bethaneve rolled her eyes. ‘Boys!’ Grinning, she drank a big slug of beer, then resumed her yelling at the arena.
‘So it’s a cushy office job for you now, is it?’ Javier asked.
‘Temporary. I’ll be back sweeping for eggs soon, I hope.’
‘Politics, then? They pushed you out because you were too dedicated to your job? I can appreciate that.’
‘That obvious, huh?’
‘It’s how the rich always work. Anyone who comes along that can upset the way things are done gets taken down fast. How else are they going to keep what they have?’
‘The Fallers keep them in power,’ Coulan said. ‘This constant fight against them means people accept the social and financial structure of this world without question. We need the regiments to perform the sweeps and root out nests; therefore we pay the government to protect us. Who’s going to argue? Without that protection, you either Fall or get eaten. It’s a great incentive.’
This world – a phrase Slvasta had heard before, though he couldn’t think where. ‘But there will always be Fallers,’ he said. ‘The Forest sends them. We can’t do anything about that.’
Javier leaned over the table, suddenly animated. Mostly by drink, but anger played its part. ‘People came to Bienvenido on ships that flew through the Void – some even say they came from outside the Void. No matter; once we could fly like Skylords. Can you imagine that? Now we just sit here and cower as the eggs Fall on us like Uracus is taking a shit. How our ancestors must despise us! We abandoned all the marvels they had, we shrank and listened to the weasel words of men like the Captains who promised us this false shelter. What we should be doing is declaring war on the Forest. Take the battle up there, into the Void itself.’