by Lucas Bale
At that moment, Weaver caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He glanced towards it and saw a weasel or a stoat, some kind of vermin. An idea formed in his mind. He scoured the ground with his eyes, his body perfectly still, until he found a loose stone. A small, smooth thing, damp with dew. It was a little way from the tree, but Weaver thought he could reach it without being seen. Slowly, he stretched out a hand and took it.
The dog began to bark again.
He tossed it at the weasel, or whatever it was, aiming for its tail or the ground behind it. In his haste, he missed. But it was enough. Startled, the weasel bolted and scampered between the trees at the edge of the forest. The guard followed it with the rifle until the weasel vanished back into the forest. Then the man jerked the leash and continued walking.
Weaver waited a while before he relaxed, watching to be sure the guard was gone. When eventually he was satisfied, he ran over to the fence and short-circuited a section with a simple device he retrieved from his hold-all, a device he had instructed Rankin to provide. Then he began to cut. Silent alarms would have been triggered the moment the electricity was interrupted, and patrols would soon be diverted to this section of the fence. The dog patrolman would be questioned with little sympathy. His superiors would realise that whoever had cut the fence had waited in the forest for him to pass, and that he had missed them. Weaver doubted the man would confess to having seen something moving beyond the fence line.
Once through, Weaver kept to the shadows thrown by low warehouses, walking quickly but watchfully through the industrial grounds of the estate. Overhead, he caught the distant rumble of an approaching gunship, and behind him, the baying of dogs desperate to hunt. They would soon catch his scent by the cut section of the fence, and would begin their chase, but it was early morning and there was little in the grounds of the estate to detain him. He began to jog.
When he turned out of the narrow passages between the warehouses, into a walkway where the Conduit ran and citizens began their day of serving the Republic, he relaxed a little. He slipped into the crowd, dissolving easily into the throng. The dogs would soon lose his scent amid the many hundreds around him. Yet, as he walked among citizens for the first time since Jieshou, a tight knot of tension coiled in his gut; in truth, it took him by surprise. Here, he realised, he had returned to a shadow of normality, his old life just beyond his reach. Suddenly, here, among these people, what he was doing on Theia was stark and real.
He was no longer Caesteri; no longer enjoyed the protections of his former status. He was not meant to be here, like this. He was prey now—they would hunt him like an animal. It was too easy to imagine himself tied down on a table somewhere, his body suffused with pain and stim, bright light searing his eyes as they asked their questions.
He searched every face in the crowds surging along the walkways, seeing the Seneshal’s reach in their eyes. He breathed deeply in an effort to calm himself, then headed to Laurentian Park on foot. He kept his pace even, ignoring the inexplicable temptation to run. He tried to let the sounds of the city fade into the background behind him. He knew cameras watched him, knew they would have no reason to alight upon him in particular as a threat—his intentions were hidden deep inside him—but each time his eyes fell on a camera, his heart kicked. He was relieved when he eventually reached the park.
He had timed it well enough. Whoever he was meeting ought to be nearby. He entered the park and stood under the shade of a small cluster of trees. He didn’t have to wait long before a short man with thin, dark hair approached him. The man’s clothing marked him as a warehouseman, a member of the lower castes.
‘Where have you been?’ the man said.
Weaver wondered for a moment how the man knew who he was, then he remembered the synpol mask and realised the man would have been told who to look out for. ‘Getting out of the port took some time,’ he replied.
‘Your shoulder—’
‘Will be fine,’ Weaver said, cutting him off, although in truth it ached too much for it to be an injury he could simply shake off. He hadn’t realised he’d been rubbing it. ‘We don’t have time. We need to get off the walkway.’
‘Yes,’ the man replied. ‘They’re watching us now. Come with me.’
They walked quickly, taking a circuitous route through the passages and walkways, until eventually the man led him into a thread of small, low domiciles on the outskirts of the canton of Marmara. A working man’s estate, with narrow passages beneath rough stone archways, built and always intended for the lower castes; it was away from the tall, glistening tavara, situated instead beside the warehouses and industrial plants that fulfilled Marmara’s duties within the Republic. There were still surveillance cameras here, but fewer, and they were found more sporadically. The Magistratus had recognised that cameras were too easy to circumvent, or even destroy, so eventually, it had changed its tactics. Here, Peacekeeper patrols became more frequent instead, their physical presence more demonstrative of the Quorum’s power in a place like this.
The man ushered Weaver to the door of a simple domicile, all the while searching the passages and archways for any sign that they were being watched. Even here, Weaver thought, there would be those who might see some benefit in reporting suspicious activity to the Magistratus. He kept his head low and his hood up as he ducked through the doorway and into a small living space.
A middle-aged woman stood in the middle of the room, her face freighted with tension. She clasped her hands together in front of her, rubbing her thumb along the edge of her forefinger. When she saw him, she swallowed, and her hollow, sunken eyes widened slightly.
‘Welcome,’ she said, attempting to smile. ‘You must be hungry.’
‘I am,’ Weaver admitted.
She nodded falteringly and disappeared from the room, returning a moment later with a plate of cold meats and pickled vegetables. She set it on a small table and bade Weaver to sit.
‘Where did you get this?’ he asked. ‘Do you not eat in the refectory?’
‘We do,’ she said. ‘But sometimes we eat together here. We are not all permitted to eat in the same refectory—men and women are separated, as are our children. Sometimes, we try to eat as a family.’ She shrugged nervously and blinked twice. ‘Our little rebellion.’
The man hovered beside him. He nodded to the woman—his wife, Weaver supposed—and she disappeared again from the room. The man passed him a hold-all. As Weaver opened it and began to search through it, the man explained. ‘There are two more synpol masks inside. Identification, should it be needed—study the cards. You must know the details, but of course, if anyone stops you…’ He trailed off, both of them knowing what that would mean, then continued. ‘There is some food as well, until you find somewhere else to eat. We have made notes of the gunship patrols in the area.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You may sleep here tonight,’ he said quickly. ‘We are told you will leave in the morning. I was asked to give you this.’ He handed Weaver a folded piece of paper. ‘I have not read it.’
‘Thank you.’
The man paced around the room and his eyes darted from the window to the door constantly. But mostly, he stared at Weaver. Weaver saw contempt in the Marmara man’s eyes, as though Weaver were an unnecessary risk—an affront to the pipeline that had been built by this man and others like him. Weaver found himself wondering how he and his wife had been recruited, what they stood to gain from their actions. The man watched him eat, then turned away and shoved his trembling hands into his pockets.
Weaver turned to him when he had finished and asked, ‘Why are you doing this?’
The man stopped pacing and stared at him. He smiled thinly. ‘The Peacekeepers took away one of my neighbours yesterday,’ he said. ‘A good man. He worked with me in the metal plant. He was always the first to arrive in the morning and often the last to leave. He was a supervisor, but he treated us well. We liked him. One of the senior supervisors left early most days, so my neighbour
reported it, as was his duty. They came for my neighbour in the morning, and when I arrived at work, the senior supervisor was still in his office. He left early again that afternoon.’
Weaver said nothing, and the man continued. ‘There are places you can go,’ he said. ‘To sleep and eat. You will need to arrange a room for whatever it is—’
‘It’s fine,’ Weaver said quietly. ‘I already know what I need to do.’
‘Yes, I suppose you do.’
‘Are you in danger now?’ Weaver asked, already knowing the truth of it.
‘We always have been,’ the man said. ‘Today is no different.’
Weaver was about to speak, to offer him some words of thanks, but the man stopped him.
‘No, don’t say anything. Your words will mean nothing to me, and they may even be offensive. They told me your task was important. So do it well. That’s all I ask.’
C H A P T E R 37
WEAVER STOOD on a walkway in a hectic district of the city—a strip in the canton of Barents that had always sung to him. He wore a long coat and bland clothing that would, even to someone who took more than a passing interest in him, allow him to be largely ignored. Yet still he was uncomfortable, felt naked even, despite the weight of the pistol he had tucked into his belt. As though the city were alien to him, and he were a stranger within it. He experienced a sudden detachment from this place he had lived in all his life. The Caesteri and the Seneshal would be searching for him; their own crows, their black-hearted informants, would be scouring the walkways and galleries and the underground taprooms and theatres for any word of his return. Considerable time and trouble, and risk, had been taken to ensure there would be none, but that wouldn’t last forever. No, he could not avoid carrying the weapon.
And, of course, they would be watching the tavara that stretched up into the sky ahead of him. Rain had begun to fall, heavy and thick and a little warm, and he ducked back beneath a low gallery for shelter—not just from the rain, but from the noise and the garish blue light that spilled from the tavara and the Conduit nearby. In this part of the city, there were communal places that the Magistratus allowed to exist. Not quite bars or taprooms, as there had been in Jieshou, but common rooms where citizens could gather and converse. Regulated and continually monitored, and therefore acceptable. Places where implants would be scanned at the door, and where the tiny transmitter just above his kidney, designed to mimic an implant and dampen his own, would be tested. Places he used to go when he didn’t want to be alone—when he wanted to watch the world turn around him. But he hadn’t come looking for somewhere like that.
Why am I here? he asked himself then. Why am I taking this foolish risk? He stared up high at a tall window above the fifth gallery—a window that, unlike many of the others, was still in darkness. Behind that window there would be a chair, carefully placed so that the view across Theia from this, one of the tallest tavara in Barents, could be savoured. He closed his eyes, and suddenly he was sitting in that chair again, the soft harmony of the music he loved, the music that calmed his heart, drifting around him like a mist made of silk.
They will be watching this tavara, he told himself. They will be expecting you to come back here at some point. It’s dangerous even to be standing here.
But this is my home. It’s all I have left.
A great sadness cocooned him. He knew it was coming, but he could do nothing to stop it. Here, now, in front of his home, the doubt that had been gathering inside him overflowed. It engulfed him, suffocated him, as though he were drowning in an infinite ocean of black. He had believed in the Republic and his place within it, but that seemed so long ago now. He had believed that justice was fundamental to the survival of mankind. How much of his belief was not in fact his own, genuine, perception of the truth, but instead an unknowing surrender to his indoctrination? He had allowed the navigator to live—a woman who by her own admission was a murderer and still dangerous. Who am I now? What justice do I believe in now? He had allowed her to escape anything that might be said to be justice, whether his own, that of the Magistratus, or that of any right-thinking human being. She had killed, but she had not been punished.
Yet he knew in his heart—a voice he had refused to heed for a very long time—that although she was dangerous, she was no more deserving of the Republic’s justice than powerful, connected citizens he had seen escape it. She had risked her life to save others, and he believed she felt the guilt of her crimes keenly. He couldn’t say if he believed her story—that she was not herself when she had killed up in Brauron, that some darkness had overtaken her and driven her hand. But from the violence of the attack, Weaver thought it might just be possible. It had been the product of a wanton, uncontrollable rage. Perhaps she is telling the truth. Perhaps she is just as alone as I am.
The ground beneath his feet swayed a little, and he felt suddenly dizzy. He placed a hand against the wall to steady himself. Nausea washed over him. Nothing is the same, he thought. Nothing is as I thought it would be. What can I do now?
He caught sight of a woman watching him, concern on her face rather than suspicion. He nodded to her and smiled. An expression he hoped told her that he was fine; that there was nothing to worry about. But had she looked more closely, through the mirror behind his eyes, she would have seen precisely the opposite.
The rain continued to fall.
He glanced up at the cameras that watched him, that monitored the walkways around him, the lobby of his building. Were there Seneshal in there, right now? Had his room been the subject of some complex tetrabit surveillance even he didn’t understand? Almost certainly. He raised a hand and touched the synthetic polymer of the mask on his face. He was hiding from them, taking every precaution to avoid their prying gaze. Yet his purpose—at least one of the reasons he had returned to Theia—was to attract their attention. He grimly appreciated the irony as he turned away and stepped onto the Conduit.
#
Weaver watched Elias from the platform of the Conduit, across the width of a broad walkway. He scrutinised him with new eyes, seeing now that he was much more than a crow. The manner of his movement, the economy of it; the way he continually scanned his surroundings without seeming to; how he kept to the shadows as though it was the most natural thing in the world. For the first time, Weaver saw the conscientia in Elias, and he rebuked himself for not having seen it before. More than a crow, Weaver thought. If anyone can find out what I need to know, it is this man.
He walked away from the platform and towards Elias, filtering through the crowd smoothly and without attracting attention. When he reached the small man, standing in the quiet of a passage between the tavara, he stopped beside him and waited.
Elias smiled bitterly but didn’t look at him. ‘I wondered if I would see you on Theia again.’
Weaver snorted. ‘So sentimental. Would you miss me?’
‘Last time we met, you had your hand at my throat. How then should I answer that question?’ Weaver noticed the man’s hands flex slightly, saw them ball into half-fists, then relax.
‘I doubt you would give me the truth.’
‘You always were perceptive.’
‘Not perceptive enough,’ Weaver admitted. ‘We met for over a year, and I had no idea who you really were. You hid yourself well.’
Elias said nothing, and Weaver smiled thinly. Yes, you had me fooled then, he thought. But not now. I know exactly who you are now. ‘You know what happened out there on Jieshou, don’t you?’ he continued. ‘It would be amateurish for you to have made no enquiries of your own. And I don’t think you’re an amateur.’
Elias’s lips tightened. ‘I know what happened.’
‘Did you know before you sent me out there?’
‘I didn’t send you, I—’
Weaver cut him off. His skin was cold with anger. He shook his head before he spoke. ‘We’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other, and the circumstances will be such that we both need to trust each other. I’m not even
sure that’s possible, but if you lie to me now, it certainly won’t be. We both know what’s at stake.’
Elias paused and turned slightly towards Weaver, searching his face. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I was not told the purpose of my meetings with you. Whether you believe that… is a matter for you to decide.’ His eyes narrowed slightly, then he turned away and continued to watch the walkway. ‘But yes, I know now what happened there.’
‘This is a considerable risk for you—meeting me like this. Working with me at all is something of a risk, considering who I was and my… status now, but the risk increases without an end when you consider what it is we’re doing.’
Elias licked his lips. ‘Is there a point to be made?’
‘I’m wondering what your motivation is? It’s not simply loyalty to your master.’
‘My motivations are my own. I could say the same of you.’ Elias dropped his eyes to the polished stone of the walkway, and for a moment, Weaver saw a break in the façade—a flicker of something at the corner of his eyes. He couldn’t say what it meant, what emotion had been stirred in Elias, but there was something else prevailing on him, moving him to act.
‘So how does this work?’ Weaver said. ‘Your praxis—the conscientia. How will we remain in contact?’
‘In your pocket is a note. I placed it there. It contains simple enough instructions. Memorise them and burn the note. You know enough to make sure you are not followed?’
Weaver reached into his pocket and felt the paper. He smiled despite himself. He hadn’t felt a thing, or seen even the slightest movement. ‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Your craft must be perfect.’ Again Weaver saw a flash of concern in Elias’s face. Not much of it—Elias was too careful to display emotion so obviously—but Weaver was looking for it. He had been studying the faces of those with a great deal to hide for thirty years. He knew what too look for, what tiny subconscious betrayals the human face was capable of.