10. The Accords for Soldiers
The Accords for Soldiers
After breakfast, Riss marches us up the flights of stairs, all the way to –
We stop at a dead end, where there’s a vaulted door that reminds me of the one that kept the crown jewels safe back in the Palace. Riss pulls a rope, which rings a bell, and a moment later Dezeeves appears.
“We’re here for their plans,” Riss states.
“Excellent. One moment.”
He closes the door, but reopens it a second later, placing two small leather-bound books into her outstretched palms.
“There is also this.” He hands her an envelope.
“What is it?”
“An invitation to a Captain’s Dinner. Tonight.”
Cosmer stiffens. “We’ve never been invited to one of those.”
“You’ve never been keepers before,” Dezeeves counters. “And I’m sure you’re aware that non-attendance will result in instant failure of Integration for your charges.” He peers over Riss’ head at Drake, then me. Brightly, he says, “We look forward to seeing you.”
The four of us say nothing as we step back through the passage and over to an archway protected by a kind of iron grate. Only there does Riss stop and rip into the envelope. She studies the letter inside, then thrusts it at Cosmer, along with the book that must be Drake’s.
“We’ll have to take them.”
“I know,” he replies tightly.
Something seems off.
“What’s wrong with going to a dinner with the Captain?”
“We’re not first officers. The only reason we’d get an invite is if it’s a test for your Integration.” She pockets my book. “Let’s not worry about it now. We still have a whole day of duties to get through. We might all fail by then anyway.”
“Right,” Cosmer states. “And they both seem determined to do that.”
I quickly correct him. “We don’t want to fail. Neither of us want to be executed.”
We just don’t want to pass Integration, either. It’s different.
“I guess it’s goodbye for now,” she says to Cosmer.
“Good luck,” Cosmer replies.
She indicates her radio on her belt. “I’ll stay on the usual frequency if you need me.”
“Don’t let Ara tell you she can’t do something. She can.”
I’m right here, I feel like saying again. But what would be the point?
“And you keep your ego in check.”
“What does my ego have to do with anything?”
“How about, keeping him alive?” she says, eyeing up Drake.
“Oh. That little inconvenience.” He blinks at Drake. But then his features relax. “We’ll be fine, won’t we, Drake? Bygones can be bygones. Since your life is now completely dependent on my actions.”
“Is it?” Drake asks, a little coolly. “From where I’m standing, it looks rather like yours is dependent on mine.”
Cosmer takes a step forwards. “You’ll follow my instructions, or I’ll make you follow them.”
Drake smiles. “Please,” he says. “Tell me how you would plan to do just that. I doubt signing out a weapon just to threaten me with it would constitute Approved Use. Or perhaps you will deny me your ship’s entirely unappetising and non-nutritious food.
” His smile deepens. “Yet there must be other places to get it, seeing as you haven’t perished from hunger yourself. ”
For a second, we’re all still.
It’s as if Riss and I aren’t even here. Cosmer is glaring at Drake with a hatred I’ve never known him to have for anyone else before. Drake looks more amused than angry, but somehow I sense something harder, rockier, in his eyes.
Cosmer’s edged reply finally comes. “I’ll tell you why you’re going to follow my instructions.” He nods in my direction. “If you and I fail, it’s highly likely she will, too.”
Seemingly at the same time, they both look at me. I instantly prickle from the attention.
Drake turns away first. “Not much of a threat. I hardly know her.”
I feel my face go slack.
He’s not supposed to say that. We said we were friends.
But maybe he’s just trying to rebuff Cosmer’s threat – more of this inexplicable mental game they seem to be embroiled in.
“You seemed pretty comfortable with each other when I arrived yesterday,” Cosmer says.
That’s enough, I decide.
Barely looking at them, I say, “Stop it. I know this is far from an ideal situation, and seems impossible right now. But unless there are any loopholes that we don’t know about for avoiding Integration—” I glance at Riss, who shakes her head in answer to the question.
“Then we just have to go along with this. For now.”
Riss chimes in, her tone prickly. “Absolutely. So, no more fucking about. I haven’t once failed a mission, and I’m not going to start now, because you two couldn’t stop measuring yourselves.”
It strikes me as an odd thing to say – but it does have the effect of shutting them both up. They actually – or Cosmer, at least – look a little outraged.
Then, she takes my arm, steering me fast towards the grate.
There, she uses one of two keys hanging from a long cord around her neck that had been tucked under her shirt. Cosmer has a key on his neck too – he’d used it to lock his ship once we’d all got out of it.
I turn back. Cosmer and Drake haven’t moved yet. I suppose they’re waiting until Riss and I are safely inside.
How gentlemanly.
I nod stiltedly in their direction, as if to say goodbye.
But I’m not sure to whom.
“What do their measurements have to do with anything?” I whisper to her. “They seem the same height to me.” I contemplate it. “Drake is maybe a little taller.”
That makes her snort with heavy, nasally laughter.
“You’re rather sweet, really, aren’t you?”
Last night, she’d thought she was the idiot in the room.
I guess that honour is actually mine.
Inside the room, about twenty people at one-man desks are tapping away on typewriters or scribbling on paper, steel-nibbed pens flying off the pages.
They’re all wearing leather headbands that cover their ears, like the one Dezeeves wore in Cosmer’s ship.
Each band is connected by a tube to an enormous long-range radio at the far side of the room.
It’s the kind of large, free-standing radio with half a dozen long antennas I call pipe organs, because that’s what they remind me of.
The combined sounds of the pens, typewriters and faint voices filtering through each headband make my skull itch. I don’t know how Riss can stand to be in here with her own more sensitive hearing.
“It’s pretty simple,” Riss states, at a normal volume, as if the noise doesn’t bother her at all.
“Put on your radio. Tune into your frequency – I’ll allocate you one – probably one we refer to as red vine, because that’s one of our Hevallan pilot frequencies, so you shouldn’t hear anything too confidential.
I’ll be able to hear the same messages you can anyway, with these annoying things.
” She taps her ears. “Write down everything that you hear, even if it seems irrelevant. Write or type, you choose. And if anything seems to be a code – crack it.”
Pretty simple? How in the name of the Sisters am I going to crack codes? I’ve never done anything like that. I didn’t even know I could speak and understand other languages until yesterday.
If I really was a traitor to Hevalla, wouldn’t this be rather like throwing in a fox among the chickens?
But I suppose that doesn’t matter, does it? In under a week, I’ll either be loyal to Hevalla, or I’ll be dead. So, who would care if I’d been exposed to some sensitive knowledge about the war effort?
There don’t seem to be any choices I can make here for myself, my country – or anyone, or anything else – and it makes me feel hollow, like my insides have been scooped out from me.
“Oh,” Riss calls. “If you really wanted to impress us on your first day, you could give that a stab. It came in yesterday. We haven’t cracked it yet.”
I look to where she’s pointing. A chalkboard has been marked with a message. If the guests are ready, I am happy to serve dinner. Signed, Mother.
I read the sentence once, then again, while she hands me a headband and fits her own.
“Any ideas?”
“Was it spoken in Hevallan or Rhavnan?”
“Hevallan,” she replies. “From a Rhavnan frequency, though.”
“Serve dinner… Could that just mean, drop bombs?”
Riss plops down at the largest desk in the room. I realise for the first time that she’s the most senior person here, among these mostly older men, which is impressive.
She stretches her long neck. “We did consider that. Seems a little too obvious, though. And doesn’t explain why Rhavna would be waiting for ‘guests’ before it can drop them. We don’t know of any hostage exchanges due to be taking place, or anything like that.”
I frown. “Have there been other messages like this?”
“Yes. And they’ve been increasing the last few weeks. It’s like…” Her lip curls.
“Like what?”
“Like we’re being mocked.” She sniffs. “We don’t like it.”
“Is there a record anywhere of all those messages?”
“Of course,” Riss says, before she adds, “But the answer I’m going to give you if you ask to see that record is no way in Cosmos. You know that, right?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
“Ask me again when you’ve FI’d. Okay?” She beams. “I like the enthusiasm, though. I’ll add that to your report. You’re off to a great start!”
She flicks through my Integration book. While scribbling something into it, she gestures with her head towards a stack of typewritten pages on her desk.
“Oh, and you can spend some time reading that, if there’s nothing coming in on your frequency. It’s The Assembly’s Accords for Soldiers. We all need to know them inside out. And you might get tested on them.”
Listening in to conversations on my frequency goes from being mildly interesting – like when two Hevallan soldiers spend a while ranking the scrambled-together meals on the ship – to being mind-numbingly dull.
Two hours go by without anything coming in on my frequency at all, and I can only sit in silence, as intelligence analysts aren’t permitted to speak to each other in case they miss a message.
But it does mean I can concentrate on reading The Accords. They’re full of over-long sentences, acronyms and terms I don’t yet know. The rules are never-ending, split into whole chapters and then separated by articles.