The Betrayals(99)

She scampers up the stairs. She has made the decision too quickly to be afraid; too quickly to see how unratlike it is, or to care. She makes noise, deliberately. And then they are facing each other, at the foot of the second flight: as they were ten years ago (a lifetime ago) only reversed, with him on the lowest step, her below. He jumps and blinks at her. His teeth are bared.

He says, ‘My word.’

She lets him see her. She stands in his gaze, even though it burns. A rat would run. She should run.

And now she does. She spins and swerves, takes the grey ones’ corridor and flies along the length of it, nearly silent on her bare feet. She pauses at the end, where she could go either way: and she looks back over her shoulder. He’s following, intent, treading lightly. He is a hunter. A wave of terror goes through her; but there’s something else there too, a fierce pleasure, because (this time at least) she’ll escape, and she has led him away from Simon.





32: Léo


It’s Midsummer Eve. The air is still, like glass. The valley holds the night like a bowl, frothy with stars. The silence is as thick as deafness. Léo sits in the Magisters’ courtyard, lighting match after match and flicking them away. He could be the only person left in the world. A few nights ago – after he’d been drinking with Emile and two of the Magisters – he went past Claire’s door and stood there listening, aching to knock. But she was on retreat, and he couldn’t face the thought of her anger. Can’t we go back? No … Now, when it’s too late, he wishes he’d been braver. Tomorrow he’ll be sitting with the other Gold Medallists, another face in the audience. She doesn’t even know he’s going to be there.

Everyone else is asleep. The guests that arrived yesterday are asleep in the scholars’ cells, and for once, although it’s not midnight yet, there’s no light in Emile’s window. Léo stares up at it; he wouldn’t put it past Emile to be standing in the dark watching him. He has felt Emile’s gaze on him for days, sly and constant. Even when Léo is alone, there’s an itch at the back of his neck, a sense that he’s no longer safe. If he ever was. It’s almost better when he’s in Emile’s rooms, drinking and politicking, ignoring the others’ jokes about female Magisters: at least then he knows he’s under scrutiny, and he can perform as though he were back at Party headquarters. At least then he knows it isn’t paranoia.

But he has no right to complain. For months, he’s been the spy. Those fucking letters. Details of who was a Party supporter, who’d said something subversive, who had a weakness and might be bribed … How could he have thought that gossip was innocuous? He sees his own treachery in the way Emile smiles at him. Another thing he wants to confess to Claire and be forgiven for, somehow.

And not only is he a traitor, he’s a coward. He should have done more to help Charpentier than leave food out for him in an unlocked room: half-eaten bread and sausage and fruit piled on a plate, easily deniable. It’s not enough, but now Emile is watching him he daren’t do anything else. He’s hesitated about writing a note – leaving cash, or the contact details for an official who owes Léo a favour – but if Charpentier can get into his room, so could Emile. His skin crawls at the prospect of Emile finding incriminating evidence. So the food is all he can do; food, and an occasional sheepish prayer. Sometimes he hopes that Charpentier has absconded, but then the next day’s leftovers will disappear, and Léo guesses with a sinking heart that he’s still in hiding, slowly starving. If only Léo knew what to do – or if only he had never tried to help in the first place …

Match after match dies, until the box is empty. He closes his eyes. He’s so tired he’s light-headed. He aches to see Claire. Tomorrow he will. He wants to see the Midsummer Game. But does he want her game to be brilliant, or only good? Or does he – the question wafts into the back of his mind like a fetid smell – does he want the Magister Ludi to fail, conspicuously? No, of course not. He loves her, he wants her to silence all her critics, for ever. The way he wanted Carfax to triumph with the Red game. He swallows the taste of guilt. Somehow Claire knows about that; and she thinks he betrayed Carfax. She thinks he did it on purpose, that he’d known that the Magisters would despise the Red game for its daring, its newness, its sheer audacious genius – that he’d known that Carfax would fail … You wanted to win, didn’t you? You would have done anything to win. But that wasn’t why he did it. It wasn’t. He was shocked, wasn’t he, when he saw the marks? He can remember it now, joy – all that sleepless night he’d sat in the Great Hall, full of a dazzling rush of happiness – evaporating into numb disbelief as he saw his own name and slid his gaze down the page: Léonard Martin, Gold Medallist, Reflections— and then nothing. It was only as he scanned the rest of the page – First Class, mostly third-years, Upper Second Class, a few second-years, Paul and Emile, but most of them in the Lower Second Class – that he’d begun to feel giddy and unreal, as if an odourless gas was seeping into his bloodstream. Someone jostled him, said, ‘Get out of the way, will you, you’re blocking everyone else …’ but the voice was muffled, distant. Where was Carfax? Surely … Not in Third Class, and the only name under Pass was Felix. He splayed his fingers against the hessian-covered board, skimming the list again. He must have missed—