The Betrayals(79)

She goes back to the trunk of papers. She is letting herself get distracted. Somewhere in here … Come on. Where is it?

She draws out an exercise book. On the front is scrawled, A. Carfax de Courcy, and underneath that, Tempest. She hasn’t looked at it for years. She opens it at random: pages of notes in Artemonian, and longhand comments. Link back, prefigure, L says too overwhelming? Next there’s a page in classical notation and opposite it an annotated graph, analysing the arc of the movement. The distant, sober part of her notices that it’s a feinted septime, which is arcane, for a second-year – but then, if you’re a de Courcy, you learn grand jeu moves in the nursery. A is for artemage, B is for botte secrète … She and Aimé learnt Artemonian at the same time as the alphabet, and spent days squabbling over who’d used the last of the coloured pencils and gold ink decorating their ‘Gold Medal’ games. When he was eleven, Aimé spent a whole month composing fugues, hunched over the jangling piano like a little old man. She begged and begged for a turn, but he refused to let her have even an hour at the keyboard; one day, after trying to drag him away, she barricaded the door so that he couldn’t get out, crying with fury. Later, when they were both big enough to play on the Auburn Mistress, they argued about that too, bickering like two rival lovers competing for favours. Small wonder, she thinks, that the de Courcys go mad.

She turns another page. There’s a paragraph of dense writing; at the bottom, halfway through a sentence, the pen has left a long trail as if the writer’s hand was knocked away from the paper. Underneath, Léo Martin’s handwriting says, I’ve had enough, going to bed, see you tomorrow.

She flips forward again. It’s familiar, of course, like a map of a country she’s visited. The melodies intertwine in her head; her fingers twitch, picking out silent bars of Beethoven. And it’s good. It would have got sixty-five, at least. If it had only been submitted …

She takes a deep breath. There’s no point getting angry. Not now. The point is that it’s promising. A game that no one here has seen – except Léo Martin, but he won’t be here for the Midsummer Game. So if she were to use this … not as it is, obviously. But with eight weeks’ work … Yes. She can imagine how it will go – the motifs she wants to emphasise, the subtle intricacies she can introduce, the movements which need to be pulled back from adolescent excess. She can transform it from a competent sixty-five to a Midsummer Game. She closes her eyes and imagines herself on the silver-outlined terra of the Great Hall, her arms raised. How long has she been dreading it? Before, she always loved that moment immediately after the ouverture, when you feel the weight of the audience’s gaze, when you wear their attention like a cloak. She used to love the anticipation. She’s missed it. But with this game … Relief leaps inside her. She breathes out, and her bones feel soft and light. She’s been afraid so long, but now … She can do it. In two months she can present a Midsummer Game. There won’t be anything to be ashamed of. She won’t have failed.

She bends over the page, laughing softly. Why didn’t she think of this before? All this time wasted on searching for ideas, when what she needed was right here. She raises the book to her face and puts her lips against the cover. Can she smell ink and sweat? Perhaps. The passions of ten years ago, the hours spent in the library, the exhaustion and euphoria. The late nights, the sleepless nights, the white nights … Nights like this one. She tries not to think about Léo’s mouth against hers, that moment before she pushed him away. A wave of gratitude crashes over her, and for a moment she doesn’t care that Aimé’s dead, or that it was her fault. She says, under her breath, ‘Thank you,’ and then, because she can, she says it again, aloud.





25: Léo


He dreams, not of Claire, but of Chryse?s. She is in front of him in a queue, in mourning – in the dream he isn’t surprised, as if it has come back into fashion – her back turned to him, her hair hidden under an elegant little hat. They are in a hall which is both the Great Hall at Montverre and the Central Immigration Office, and they are waiting for something important. Final marks. There is a slick of blood on the floor but people step decorously around it, without commenting. They have been waiting for a long time. But whenever the queue inches forward there are more people in front of Léo, more people separating him from her, and somehow he is incapable of pushing forward. She is afraid. They are all afraid; and as well as the fear Léo is full of a creeping sense of guilt. It’s his fault that Chryse?s is here, and in black. If he could call out, he would.

She reaches the front of the queue, and the man behind the desk looks up. In that instant Léo sees that it’s Carfax. He doesn’t understand why he didn’t notice before. If he had been more observant … But it doesn’t matter. For a few flaring seconds he is full of joy, because it has all been a misunderstanding, and Carfax is somehow alive.

Then a bell rings, and it’s too late. Out of nowhere there is a glass wall between Léo and the rest of the room. He knows that he is trapped, and something appalling is going to happen, and he is going to have to watch.

He wakes in a panic. He’s been left behind, behind glass. He has done something terrible. Something stupid. He has to sit up and wipe the sweat off his face before he knows what’s the dream and what’s true. Carfax is dead but Chryse?s has gone, and please let her be in hiding or on her way to safety. He draws a long breath. Only a nightmare, the remains of the fever combined with too much to drink.