downwards, but his mind had been gripped by a greater terror just then – sitting there behind his desk with the report trembling in his hand, his mind in a panic at what it had just read, appalled by the knowledge that he was now infected by it, that he couldn’t very well unread the words and therefore be spared the fate most likely promised by them. Tear the bastard thing to pieces and burn them, his thoughts had jabbered in a dizzying moment of hysteria. He’d even stood and turned to the door with that very intention in mind, when he’d noticed Curzon perched behind his own desk across the room from him, peering down his nose above his spectacles; teller of everyone’s tales.
Do your job, Pedero had numbly decided in the chill loneliness of the moment. Brazen it out like you always do.
A moment of madness, he now considered, standing there in the reality of his decision. Pedero lifted his head high as though offering his throat for sacrifice. ‘I’m afraid so, spymaster. With the move, you see… we’re still getting back on our feet.’
‘Excuses Pedero? I should have you sent to the pain block for a week for this, and you should thank me for being so lenient.’
‘Yes spymaster.’
A long and weary sigh. It was hardly the most reassuring of sounds from this man.
‘Tell me. How many hands has this report passed through?’
With those words the blood drained from his face. He could feel it, the sudden coldness of his flesh; like he was dead already. He looked to the Acolyte and the house-slave, but they were avoiding his eye.
‘The listener. And myself.’
‘The listener’s name? I can’t make it out here.’
‘Ul Mecharo.’
‘And the slave woman?’
‘Her number is on the report. Top left.’
‘I see it.’
Pedero heard something strange from the stall. He realized it was Alarum clacking his teeth together, a habit his superior tended to exhibit when trying to coerce some detail from his memory.
‘I know this young man,’ he mused through the wall of the stall. ‘Or at least I used to know his mother, when I was young. She was a Sentiate back then, still is, I think. Not one of these dead-eyed girls you get now either. No, full of fire and claws this one. Had to stop seeing her after she fell pregnant, though. Couldn’t stand the taste of her…’
‘It does put a rather strong question mark over this Diplomat’s state of mind,’ Pedero tried. ‘He signs his death warrant with such talk, once the Section receives the report.’
‘I rather suspect, Pedero, that his death warrant was signed the moment the details of his mission were first disclosed to him. He knows too much now. We must assume the Section will have him killed as soon as his mission is completed, one way or the other.’
Pedero bit his lip, wondering how to press the spymaster further. He had known the man for several years now. Alarum had always demanded frank discussions with his staff, most of all by his own sometimes brutal candour; he considered it a necessary requirement of their job if one was to remain in anyway level headed.
Pedero glanced to the Acolyte and then to the slave, but both seemed to spend their lives here staring unfocused at the floor. He took a step closer to the stall again, almost pressing against it. ‘Is it true?’ he asked his superior, his voice nearly a whisper. ‘What he said, I mean?’
Alarum’s response came loud and sudden. ‘Leave us,’ he commanded, and at last the Acolyte and slave looked at Pedero, then both headed for the door.
‘You would really wish to know, if it were?’ asked Alarum when they had left.
‘I rather have the feeling a noose is around my neck anyway.’
‘Oh? Then what of me? Haven’t I now laid eyes on this report also?’
‘You may be part of it already,’ said Pedero, bravely. He knew it was long past the point for caution.
A soft wheeze came from the stall. Pedero decided that it was laughter.
Why is he laughing? What is it in the smallest of ways that could be funny about any of this?
‘My superiors, perhaps,’ came his voice at last. ‘This Diplomat’s handlers within the Section, certainly.’
Pedero dabbed his moist lips. He had stopped breathing, it seemed. Just then he found himself thinking of the brick of hazii weed that awaited him in his private chambers back in the Temple District, and the long evening of pleasure he had promised himself with his newly acquired body-slave. He wondered if he would even make it home alive.
It was a hard stare he gave as the document glided through the stall’s doorway and came to rest on the floor.
‘Bury this in the files somewhere. Say nothing of it to anyone. Is that clear?’
He could have thrown himself at the Alarum’s feet, so grateful he felt in that moment. The relief that flooded him was like a flush of sexual pleasure.
‘Of course, spymaster,’ Pedero replied as he hurriedly bent and scooped the sheet of paper from the floor.
‘And – Pedero?’
Breathlessly: ‘Yes spymaster?’
‘What does this Diplomat look like?’
‘I believe his description is in his file.’
‘Bring it to me.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Assassin
Ash failed to notice the batwings flying towards him at first, for they were mere specks in the distant haze above the city.
He was working through a series of stretching exercises beneath the warming morning sky, loosening his muscles and easing the aches of his knees and back in preparation for what was to come, for he knew, deep in his guts, that today she would be coming out from her high raven’s nest at long last.
His attention was wholly focused on his movements, and on the sound of his own deep from-the-belly breathing. Ash was paying little mind to the sky, never mind to the noisy streets below him, even though they were thronged with people in their thousands. The early light seemed harsh to his eyes, the onset of another headache, he knew. He hoped it would not be a major one.
It was when he squatted down to stretch his ham and back muscles that at last he spotted them, a formation of batwings gliding low over the rooftops towards the Temple District, ranged across half a laq. He stayed low as one of them soared directly overhead, so close that he caught a glimpse of the rider slung underneath the wing and heard the rattle of metal and harnesses before it was past. It left a little stirring of air that narrowed his eyes.
Ash caught a flash of white in the edge of his vision, off to the left where a building rose opposite the western side of the playhouse. He ducked even lower, and sidestepped across until he was pressed against the parapet for cover. He raised his head slowly and ventured a look.
An Acolyte was moving on the far building, a longrifle perched over his shoulder as he strolled around the rooftop, occasionally stopping to look down on the streets below. Ash turned around, surveying the other nearby roofs on the other side of the playhouse. On many of them, those which were flat, he saw white-robes emerging into the daylight.
Before him, the door began to squeal open.
Ash froze on the spot.
The door of the playhouse roof was located in the great concrete hand that stood at its centre, and on the far side from where he was squatting. Ash glanced to the base of the hand, where his spare cloak lay wrapped around his weapons.
