The Betrayals(29)

Her brother. Her brother who was her own self, only not; so close he was like a twin, like a mirror, only so different he was always out of reach—

Who has poured all the colour in his body out on to the floor. Who has come to the end of colour, and air, and light. Has gone – has chosen—

Who is dead. He’s dead.

And it is her fault. If she had been here. If she had come straight home when he telegraphed. If she had, had not, had—

She wrenches herself back into the present. Or tries to. The Great Hall of Montverre blurs and wavers as if she is seeing it through water. She staggers to her feet. She can’t shake it off.

There is someone watching her. She spins round, damp-faced, off balance. But the doorway is empty.

Then the clock strikes, making her jump; and gradually – barely audible at first, until it broadens and swells into cacophony – a chorus of young male voices trickles along the passage, joking and arguing as if they’ve never heard of the divine or the grand jeu or death.





9: Léo


He’d forgotten what rain was like in the mountains, until this morning. It’s set in like gravity: impersonal, unchanging, the inexhaustible sky falling on and on. After an hour, it’s hard to imagine a world without it; after two hours, he stops trying. After breakfast he takes the long way round to the gatehouse to pick up his paper, but the final dash across the corner of the courtyard leaves him soaking and wet-footed. He might as well not have bothered. He pauses in the doorway to shake himself off like a dog. The porter nods at him and holds out his post. ‘Filthy, isn’t it, sir?’

He takes the proffered bundle and looks through it. A headline catches his eye: New Security Measures Welcomed. Later he’ll read the paper all the way through, but out of duty, not curiosity. These days, every edition seems the same, full of the same story, the same people. Dettler, the new Minister for Culture, announcing a festival of the arts, defending the tax on books; the Old Man exhorting the army to keep the peace in lacklustre rhetoric that no one believes. Violence. The absence of his own name … There’s a letter from Mim; he tries not to notice that her handwriting is shakier by the week. An envelope addressed in an unfamiliar hand, but franked, not stamped, and with the crest of the Ministry for Information on it – a Party circular, which must be someone’s idea of a joke. And … He hesitates, an unexpected warmth running through him. There’s a letter from Chryse?s. She has never written to him before, but he recognises her ‘e’s and ‘r’s from her signature. It’s thick, too – two pages. They parted on bad terms; perhaps this is an apology, or at least some news, government gossip or something about the latest fashions … Right now he’s hungry for all of it. He turns his back on the porter and rips the envelope open.

It’s the tailor’s bill, forwarded from his previous address. She hasn’t included a note. He crams the whole bundle of post into his pocket and stares out into the courtyard. Rain, grey light, grey stone, a sky so swollen it gives him a headache.

That’s it. He has lost. It’s not exactly that he’s made a decision: more a realisation that at some point, without noticing, he’s swallowed his pride, like a rotten tooth. There’s nothing but a sore gap where it used to be, and the weary knowledge that today, finally, he’ll go to the library and begin work on a grand jeu. He’s lasted less than three weeks; boredom has broken him faster than he thought possible. Well – boredom, and regret, and the clock that strikes every blasted hour above his bedroom. And Mim’s plaintive letters, and Chryse?s, and the way the world goes on turning without him. He hates the grand jeu, it’s a waste of time; but right now he wants to waste time. He wants time to pour through his hands like water.

He dumps the newspaper in the bin and steps out into the courtyard before he can change his mind. Rain slides down into his collar. He sprints the last few metres, ducks into the doorway of the library and pushes the door open. Drops of rain patter on the floor and the scholar at the nearest desk looks up from his work, frowning.

Léo puts his hands in his pockets. Good God, the smell … Dust, books, damp wool and male bodies, and under it all a perverse woody sweetness. He draws to a halt, his stomach tightening, tempted to leave again. But the door has already swung closed with a clunk. Instead he makes his way to the stairs that lead up to the Biblioteca Ludi and the archives. The attendant is making a note; he finishes it before he glances up. ‘Yes?’

‘Léo Martin. I have permission to work in the archives. From Magister Dryden.’

The attendant says nothing until he has found the right ledger and flipped to the right page to check his name; then he nods and stands up to unlock the door. So Magister Dryden kept her word; Léo isn’t exactly surprised, but he isn’t grateful, either. She’s the sort of woman he would never have looked at, in his last life – not beautiful or charming, not even amiable – and he resents being indebted. She thinks she owns Montverre, but she was never a scholar here; he’s the Gold Medallist, and one who could have been in her place, now, if – well, if he’d wanted to be. He used to be Minister for Culture, damn it. Why should he—

‘Sir?’

‘Yes?’ He hopes he wasn’t thinking aloud, in a petulant childish whisper. He summons a reassuring smile to show that he’s not a madman.