*
After a long and tiring ride from Woolport across to Almont, Eleanor tied her horse in a quiet alleyway and ducked inside an open doorway to change into an outfit of cleaner and smarter clothes. She entered the Assessors’ College by a top-floor window, and casually asked the first passer-by where she could find Lucille’s office. He pointed her downstairs, and a moment later Eleanor was knocking at a half-open door.
“Eleanor?” Lucille could hardly believe her eyes when she looked up. “What in all the Empire brings you in here?”
“I needed to talk to an Assessor,” Eleanor said. “So you seemed like the obvious choice. May I?”
“Of course, by all means. Can I get you a drink?”
“No, I won’t be long.” Eleanor sat in the empty chair, facing her friend across a cluttered desk. “I just came to ask you a favour.”
Lucille stacked the papers she’d been working on and looked up. “What is it?”
“I need some assignments changing in time for this summer. I know it’s short notice, but there are certain students – Level One students – who need to be given Level Three assignments.”
“What? Why?”
“Do you remember a very long time ago, when we were just girls, and Gisele told us a story about assassins and some very strange recruitment processes?”
“Those old myths? Sure, I remember.”
“It’s not a myth, Luce. I was one of those students.”
“An assassin?” Lucille’s eyes widened.
“After a fashion.”
Lucille shook her head. “Of course I can see you’d have the skills, but honestly, that’s not a real job. I would have heard about it.”
“Well, it’s not really got much to do with assassination – that’s just the bit that makes good stories to scare schoolgirls. There’s a lot more to it than that.”
“But the whole thing’s a myth. It’s just a childhood story. Even Gisele never believed it when she told it to us.”
“Of course she didn’t believe it, but it’s not a myth.” Eleanor pulled a knife from her wrist-sheath and handed it across the desk. “Even you can see that’s no military design. The Empire would never spend this much on making their weapons beautiful.”
Lucille held the knife cautiously in both hands, using thumbs and forefingers to grip both the handle and the flat of the blade. “It’s very pretty,” she said, tilting it to make the gems sparkle in the lamplight. “But I’m not sure what that’s supposed to prove.”
“I can’t prove anything to you. But I also can’t think of any good reason why I’d lie about this.”
“So assuming you really are an assassin – or whatever you’d prefer me to call it. Why are you here?”
“Well, the thing is, there are some students that will have been picked out already, and someone needs to downgrade their assignments to make sure they get something thoroughly unsuitable. I was hoping you could make that happen.”
“What?”
“I need you to find out who my students are, and change their assignments.”
“From One to Three?”
“Precisely.”
“Are you really asking me to go against the system? Against my own job?”
“This was part of the system, till this year,” Eleanor said. “Until the Empress decided... well, let’s not go into the politics. The thing is it’s always been this way, we’ve just lost our official route. But I’m sure the list is still somewhere in this building.”
“You’re asking me to choose sides in a tussle with the Empress.” It wasn’t exactly a question, but there was incredulity in her voice.
“You can’t avoid making a choice. Sitting there and doing your job, keeping things as they are, is a choice you make every day.”
“But that’s a harmless choice. You’re asking me to go against everything.”
“No decision is harmless. You might not have seen the signs yet, in here, but there’s war on the horizon. A real civil war that’s going to come to everyone, whether you like it or not. No-one gets out of making that decision.”
“I can’t,” Lucille said. “My job is to place people where they’ll be happiest and most productive. I can’t do something so wrong.”
“You wouldn’t be giving people assignments they’d be completely unhappy in. Just something below their level – so that they’d know, if they thought about it in the right way, that there might be a better option.”
“And this is what happened to you, to make you turn down your assignment?”
“Yes.”
“What were you offered?”
“Something in the local police in Port Just.”
“And you’re trying to tell me that that wouldn’t have made you completely unhappy? It would have driven you insane.”
“Yeah, it would,” Eleanor admitted. “I would’ve gone slowly mad. But that’s why I turned it down, you see? It’s sort of a test.”
“Eleanor, people don’t throw away their lives because something seems a bit beneath them. To make someone do that the alternative has to be hateful, and I can’t do that. I’m sorry.”
“You have time to think,” Eleanor said, getting to her feet. “I won’t hurry you.”
“I’m not sure there’s a lot to think about. It’s just wrong.”
“This the only way to make sure we get the best people where they belong. Write to Gisele – she should be back from Faliska by now. I know you’ve always trusted her judgement more than mine, but I saved her life last year. Maybe she’ll have something to say.”
“And she knows about this strange job you claim to have?”
“She does now, yes. Write to her, or drop in for tea. I’ll come back in a couple of weeks.”
“But if I did agree to help you – just imagining I did – wouldn’t I lose my job?”
“No-one needs to find out, and they certainly wouldn’t know it was you. This has been part of the assignment system since the first days of the Empire, so someone will already have identified the right students. You only have to make a couple of switches.”
“I’ll write to Gisele,” she conceded. “But I can’t promise anything.”
“Just promise me you’ll think about it.”
Lucille nodded. “Okay.”
Eleanor left the College by a more conventional route and walked her horse across the city until she reached the Old Barrel Yard. She went in via the stables and sat down; Ade recognised her and put a tankard down at her table before she even had chance to take a seat. She waved him into an empty chair beside her and he sat, puzzled. Though she’d briefly been a regular patron of the tavern, she’d never been one for initiating conversations.
“I think we’ve known each other long enough to speak openly,” she said. “At least while we’re alone.”
“What d’you wish to speak of?” he asked.
She glanced around to check no-one else had come in behind her, then leaned towards him and whispered one word: “Revolution.”
“I’m not sure I’ve much to say on that subject.”
“You must’ve noticed there’s a war brewing. The rebels are getting restless.”
“True enough.”
“But without proper organisation, they’re just making noise. The Empire continues to crush every uprising.”
He nodded, though his expression was still cautious.
“My people want to make sure this goes the right way.”
“Who are your people?”
“I don’t think you need to know that yet.”
He opened his mouth to object, closed it without speaking, and thought for a moment. Then: “What are you offering?”
“A plan.”
“And your price?”
“This isn’t about money.” She slid one perfect throwing knife from its home at her wrist, spun the blade quickly in her fingers, and sheathed it again in one smooth motion. The whole display took only a couple of heartbeats, but she watched as the flash of th
e knife caught his attention. “But I need people who’ll follow me – any strategy will only work if we get the majority of rebel factions on board.”
“Tell me what you need from me.”
“You understand the different factions in a way that I don’t – I’ll need your knowledge in time. But right now, I just need to get the word out. There’s no shortage of rebels in the city here, and plenty of others in hiding across the archipelago, but this will only stick if everyone’s working to the same plan. I need people to commit to joining the revolution, and I’ll need to know how many soldiers I can count on.”
“You can’t ask me to make a list of people the Empire would like to see dead.”
“No, not a list of names. I trust you’d never be so stupid. But I need an idea of numbers, and we’ll create a set of secret challenge phrases to identify the new order.” She pulled out a sheet of parchment on which she’d already inscribed a dozen question and answer pairs. “Oh, and we need to put a stop to all the little acts of vandalism until we’ve agreed our common goals.”
“You’re asking a lot if you want rebels to stop rebelling.”
“Setting fires and smashing windows isn’t a meaningful rebellion – it’s just spite. I want to see that energy put to good use.”
“And you really have a plan?”
“Yes. Will you help me to spread the word?”
He nodded.
“Find the leaders if you can,” Eleanor said. “We’ll have a meeting here on the night of the full moon, when we’ll lay out a little more detail, but we want to keep it small for now. We don’t want to attract attention from the Imperial forces just yet.”
“The full moon? I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you. Meanwhile, my horse is in your stable, and I’d very much like to take a small room for a few nights.”
Revolution (Chronicles of Charanthe #2) Page 44