The Betrayals(90)

He turns to the Magister Historiae. ‘… over three days,’ he says, as if the interruption came from her. ‘A triptych of commissions. Short, of course, to appeal to the uneducated audience. Liberty, Prosperity, Victory. I have hopes that the Prime Minister himself will be there.’ He glances up as if he’s surprised she’s still standing there. ‘Such a pity you turned it down, my dear. A Festival like this does so much for national pride. Wonderful to get the grand jeu to a wider audience. It may well influence Ministry for Culture thinking in the longer term …’

She doesn’t trust herself. If she says anything, she won’t be able to stop. Outside in the corridor the air is cooler, and a breeze is blowing in through an open window at the far end. It smells of pine and earth, with an acrid edge. She doesn’t pause to breathe it in; she wants to get away from the others as quickly as possible. Forget it. It’s done. That was her last duty as Magister Ludi. Now she’s free for two weeks. She’s not even expected to attend dinner in the refectory; her meals will be brought to her on a tray. She’s on retreat, preparing herself for the Midsummer Game, like an acolyte fasting before a rite.

Martin is standing at the far end of the passage, looking out at the high pasture. He has his hands in his pockets, his hair over his face: for a moment he could be ten years younger. There’s nowhere to go; she’ll have to walk past him. But she stops. Why is he here? To eavesdrop outside the Capitulum, the way he did ten years ago? Before he – but her mind skirts away from the thought, because it ends with Aimé’s death. A sharp pain jabs into her skull, above her eye socket. She kneads it away and walks towards him.

‘Magister,’ he says, turning away from the window. ‘That was quick.’

‘What are you doing here?’ But she already knows: he was waiting for her. Was expecting to wait much longer … His eyes go to the hand at her forehead and she drops it with an effort.

‘I wanted to say – before you go into purdah—’

She starts walking again. He takes it as an invitation to accompany her. She speeds up until he’s bobbing in her wake.

‘How did it go?’ he says, with a cocktail-party brightness.

‘Fine. Thank you.’

‘Good. The right person won, then? I know it isn’t always—’ He stops, swallows, pushes his hair off his face.

‘It isn’t always the case,’ she says. ‘No. Sometimes the wrong person wins.’

There’s a silence. He bites his lip. There’s no need for her to say any more. But she can’t stop herself. He’s one of them; he’ll betray Montverre, the grand jeu, and her, without thinking twice. He already has. The Red game. Everything else. She says, ‘I know what you did to my brother.’

There’s a split second – a heartbeat – and then he looks up at her. ‘You mean … How do you know about that?’ He tries to hold her gaze, but his eyes flicker. ‘Did he – he can’t have told you?’ Such outrage in his voice – and something else, not quite shame. It makes her want to – what? Slap him? Touch him, anyway. But if she touches him, who knows what will happen? She doesn’t trust herself. If she lets slip that she has his diary – or anything else, anything worse, she is afraid of what she might say … It’s dangerous, this urge to dance on the edge. Almost irresistible.

‘Don’t pretend—’ Her voice breaks. Stupid, treacherous voice. ‘Don’t pretend it was because you thought – that it was for his benefit. You wanted to win, didn’t you? You would have done anything to win. And then …’

She wants him to defend himself. But he squints at the floor, as though he’s admitting that even his diary is slippery and blurred, full of half-truths and self-deception. After a second he repeats, without raising his head, ‘And then …?’

‘Then …’ But her throat closes. She can’t say it. She doesn’t know what to say.

She hesitates. Then she strides away. She turns the corner at the end of the corridor. On her left, the windows look out on the courtyard. As she walks past them, a movement catches her eye and she stops.

There’s a motorcar in the centre of the black-and-white tiles. For a second, time has looped over on itself and she’s back at the beginning of Serotine Term, full of disbelief at Martin’s arrival; then she jolts back into the present moment. He’s not down there, he’s in the corridor behind her. If this is a repeating melody, it’s in a different key, or with a single note silenced. Instead, the man poking his legs out of the shining Rolls-Royce is corpulent and dark-suited. A grey-robed servant steps forward to help him up, obscuring her view, and two others busy themselves with a leather-strapped trunk. Then they retreat – struggling under the weight of the trunk as they lug it to the Magisters’ Entrance – and the car’s engine starts with a cough before it turns in a wide U and crawls towards the gatehouse. Two men are left, one a spotty youth looking up at the towers with amiable disinterest, the fat one with his head bowed. On the other side of the courtyard, the Magister Historiae and the Magister Cartae emerge from a doorway. They hurry over to the men in suits and shake their hands. A welcoming murmur drifts upwards.

She leans forward. Her breath mists the glass and evaporates almost instantly. Are they guests, arriving for the Midsummer Game two weeks early? The school will be full of outsiders – grand jeu masters, government officials, well-known amateurs, reporters from the grand jeu magazines – but the festival only lasts for a day, long enough for the Midsummer Game and lunch but short enough for them to catch the evening train back to the capital. Why are these men here now? She dislikes them already, and not only because of their loud voices and the smell of petrol fumes creeping through the cracks in the window frame. She draws back, turns to leave, and almost stumbles into Léo Martin. He’s been looking over her shoulder; now he ducks sideways to let her past, grimacing briefly, before his gaze goes back to the men in the courtyard. He says, ‘Is that …? Surely not.’