The Betrayals(103)

If it hadn’t been for him, the Tempest would have been handed in ten years ago, and she couldn’t have used it, and Carfax would still be—

There’s a murmur. He doesn’t remember standing up, but he’s on his feet, his heart pounding so hard he can hardly see. He opens his mouth.

Magister Dryden has frozen. Slowly she lowers her arm.

He can’t speak. Everything above his heart feels like stone. It’s appalling, suddenly, that no one else in the hall understands: he shouldn’t have to say it aloud. But his silence can’t go on for ever. They’ll think he’s a lunatic, or that he’s been taken ill. In the corner of his eye he catches a grey-clad servant already scuttling towards him to catch him, waving frantically to a colleague. He clears his throat and he’s horrified by how it’s the only sound in the room.

Magister Dryden is still staring at him. Of course she is, he’s interrupted the Midsummer Game. But her expression is unreadable; if she’s shocked, she’s hiding it well. The high colour is still in her cheeks, but her eyes are very steady.

He steps forward, once and then again. His shoes are on the brink of the silver edge of the terra, but he can’t cross it. He hesitates. Magister Dryden tilts her head, very slightly. It’s as if she’s giving him permission to speak; but that’s absurd, if she knew what he wanted to say …

And then she makes the gesture of conjuration, inviting him into the space.

For an instant the air seems to thicken. She straightens, and there’s a gleam in her eye, a tension at the corner of her mouth. Daring him. Is she serious? He can’t believe it; an incredulous part of him wants to laugh. What would happen if he took the challenge? When was the last time anyone here even saw an adversarial game? And yet somehow he knows that it would work, that he could trust her to spin and deflect and mirror his own moves back to him, like a dance, like a duel, that between them they would play a dazzling, brilliant Midsummer Game.

All he has to do is perform the assauture. He feels the possibility of it singing in his backbone and in his shoulder blades. And if he did …

She reaches out: it’s not a grand jeu gesture, but a human one. She sees him glance from her hand back to her face. There’s something naked about her expression, as if they’re alone. Is she pleading with him not to expose her? No, it isn’t that. It’s level, intense, the look of an equal, but … what is it? He blinks. He can’t stand still for ever, but something is making him feel unsteady, eroding the ground under his feet … She looks so like Carfax – she is so like Carfax – that he’s afraid he won’t be able to speak, after all. Coward. Now is the moment to shame her, if he wants to.

She’s so like Carfax. She even plays the grand jeu the way Carfax did. What wouldn’t he give to see Carfax standing there, with the same steady eyes, the same elegance, the same hand beckoning …?

He catches his breath. A sickening note sings in his ears: the whole world has turned hollow, is going to break. He staggers. Distantly a servant murmurs, ‘Sir? May I …?’ but he jerks his arm away, unable to take his gaze away from her face. That pale bony face, the grey-green eyes, the curl of hair that’s escaped from her cap, the tiny scar below her ear. Unmistakably a woman’s face – but … It’s so familiar. The face he’s dreamt about for years. Seen in his nightmares, underlined by the great gory grin of a cut throat. No. It’s crazy. He’s crazy. His sleepless night is catching up with him.

But that conjuration … that invitation. No, he isn’t crazy.

He says, choking a little, ‘Aimé?’

Silence. He doesn’t look away from her, but somehow he knows that the audience’s attention has reverted from him to her, as if it’s her turn to move.

She holds his gaze for what seems like a lifetime. Her mouth is a little open, her cheeks slapped-red.

Then she swings round and strides out of the Great Hall, crossing the line of the terra without ceremony, as if it’s a mere crack in the stones.





33: the Magister Ludi


She walks blindly, empty of any thought except the need to get away. She can’t think about what has happened; all she cares about is putting distance between herself and Martin and the other open mouths, the hungry eyes. Suddenly black clouds boil up around her knees and sweep towards her from the far corners of the corridor. She has to stop and bow her head. A moment ago she was calm, but now she is breathing hard and drenched in sweat. Will they send someone after her? She glances over her shoulder – blinking away the billowing blackness – and sees movement in the doorway of the Great Hall. She sets off again, breaking into an ungainly, panicky run; behind her there are footsteps. A man’s voice calls, ‘Wait! Magister!’

She reaches the end of the corridor. On her left a spiral staircase leads up to the Capitulum; on her right, a door leads out into the courtyard. She feels years older than this morning, when she crossed the monochrome pattern, sick with stage-fright: but when she goes out into the sunlit heat it’s clear that hardly an hour has passed. She hurries across the court to the library.

Inside it’s dim and cool, full of the scent of old paper and beeswax. All the attendants and archivists are in the Great Hall, of course, so it’s silent and still, as though it has been abandoned for centuries. She realises with a jolt that she is breaking the rules by being here alone. If she wanted to set a fire, there’d be no one here to stop her. She laughs aloud. It has a high, hysterical note, and she covers her mouth. If anyone heard her … Her cuff smells of frankincense and amber, and she lowers her hand again, in case she gags. This morning she dabbed scent on her wrists, behind her ears and in the notch of her collarbone – like a silly girl, not a Magister Ludi. But she thought it was harmless. She’d imagined Léo Martin in the capital – thinking of her, perhaps, as he sipped coffee at a rickety table on a pavement and caught sight of the date in the newspaper; she never dreamt that he would have been asked to stay. Another surge of sweat prickles as she remembers seeing him on the front row, next to the Gold Medallists. Did she falter? Did anyone see? Not that it matters, now, after … She scrubs her wrist on her gown until the skin burns, but the perfume lingers.