Chapter 12 #2
What were they doing here? I half turned away, trying to force my legs to obey me. Then the realization finally registered: The remaining half of Emment’s debt…of course they’d have chosen this as a meeting place.
I ducked my head, feigning a sip from my glass, hoping my mask and new clothes would conceal me. And sure enough, when the quartet swept by, none of them picked me out from the crowd.
Pulse racing, I hurried after my contact, toward one of the heavy velvet curtains. There, the lion-masked man held it open, brow raised at the delay. I shook my head, panting.
Within, I found myself in a dim, pokey cubbyhole: no more than a round booth with a low, curving ceiling, a bench, and a table with a burning candle. There were etchings of birds in the wood on the wall—a sandpiper, a falcon, an osprey. And a shearwater.
“Interesting choice of mask,” said the man as he slid in after me, closing the curtain. His tone was light, his voice youthful. “A cuckoo might have been more apt.” He cocked his head and studied me with interest, a small smile on his lips, just visible beneath his mask.
“Why?” I said. “And who are you?” After that close call, and with sunset imminent, I was keen to get on with it. “I found a note inviting me to come here—”
“Yes,” he said, businesslike. “Placed by our cuckoo in Arbenhaw. And you’ll be our newest one—we hope—on Bower Island.”
I stared at him. The candlelight flickered on his jaw.
“I’m sorry,” I said slowly. “How can a person be a cuckoo?”
But with a creeping horror, I was beginning to understand.
“That’s what Leadership have taken to calling us,” he said, leaning back, stretching one arm along the bench. “A bit of a dig at the Hundred, I suppose. You know that cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests?”
I shook my head, but not because I hadn’t known it—more to ward off the revelation I knew was coming.
“ ‘Stay close to your enemy and you have more chance of tripping him.’ That’s why they place us, or recruit us, right under their noses.
Parts of the system we’re determined to bring down.
” He paused. “Don’t tell me those Instructors run such a tight ship that none of you have ever even heard of the Cage? ”
“Of course I’ve heard of you,” I whispered skittishly. “You want better rights for Orha, like they’re getting in Breova, but you blow things up to try to get your way.”
“Sometimes violence may be necessary to shock an oppressive system out of stasis.”
Under my blouse, the hairs on my arms prickled.
It was said the Cage were named in defiance of the Hundred, a riposte to their tradition of taking birds as namesakes.
It was said they wanted to corral the Houses, to hamstring them, to curb their influence.
And some said the Cage Orha wanted that influence for themselves.
That it would go to their heads, just like before the Great Revolt.
“Actually,” he said, “we’re people who want fairness.
We’re not just Orha but common folk, too.
The histories are clear on what caused the Great Revolt—Orha amassing too much power, abusing it—but who wrote those histories?
The Hundred did. When their ancestors got their hands on laconite, realized just what they could do… ”
He left the disturbing line of thought hanging.
“Anyway,” he added, “the Revolt was centuries ago. We want a fresh beginning. To start from first principles.”
I was suddenly acutely aware of the curtain, of the feet occasionally passing beneath it. The words he was saying could get us both killed, but the music and the laconite together drowned our voices.
“Why here?” I said, glancing around, feeling trapped, knowing that Llir and Tigo were out there somewhere. “Why couldn’t we meet in an alley somewhere?”
“Why here?” he repeated, grinning. “I work here.”
I took in his servant’s uniform, its crest: a masked jester. “You’re pretending to work here? Won’t somebody notice?”
His eyes flashed a brilliant blue through his mask.
“No, I really do work here,” he said, grinning again.
“Cuckoo, remember? I hear a lot, treading these floors. The Cage always has someone stationed here. It’s a place the Hundred can ‘disappear’ for the evening…
talk business, or pleasure, without showing their faces. ”
Somewhere beyond the curtain, a woman laughed shrilly. It reminded me of Vercha. My abdomen clenched.
“I don’t know what this is,” I said, shifting away from him, “but they’re waiting for me.
The Shearwaters. I can’t stay here.” I began to clamber awkwardly from the booth.
“The note said you had information about my friend, but I didn’t realize…
” That it had been from the Cage. That these rebels—murderers, the pamphlets said—wanted me to do something for them on the island.
A weight had settled on me, dark and miserable.
Did they even know anything about Zennia at all?
Or had the note just been a way to lure me here?
“Ah, yes,” the man said. “It was…Zennia, wasn’t it?”
My chest constricted. “What do you know about her?” I whispered. I wanted to rip off that lion mask, try to read in his features whether he was stringing me along.
“An information exchange,” he stated. “That’s all we’re proposing.”
I gazed at him, unable to respond.
“You tally the types and quantities of laconite on Bower Island and report on the family’s usual movements, and in return, we tell you what we know about your friend.
” He watched me in the wavering light from the candle.
“It’s information only a resident of the island can provide accurately.
There may be laconite in their fortifications that we can’t see; they’ll have garments with it, armor, maybe weapons…
And to properly study the family’s routines?
” His eyes twinkled. “Well, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the island’s location makes spying…
somewhat difficult. Unless you’re a member of the family’s inner circle, or otherwise, one of their trusted servants. ”
His eyes flickered over me, perhaps wondering if I was yet trusted enough.
“Laconite,” I repeated, my thoughts moving sluggishly.
“The Cage is going to do something. Something to the Shearwaters. I don’t understand—what could destroying them achieve?
There are ninety-nine other Houses out there, some much worse.
” I thought of Crake. Of Shrike, whose innocent-looking namesake was infamous for impaling its prey on spines and twigs…
The man merely smiled, infuriatingly good-humored.
“You’re not going to destroy them,” I said, scrutinizing him. “It’s something else.”
“We cuckoos don’t get told a whole lot. Probably because, like I said, we’re right under the Hundred’s noses. I don’t know any more than I’ve just passed on to you.”
I didn’t believe him, but I let him go on.
“And if you were thinking of reporting me—which it looks like you might be—you should know there are only a couple of contacts I could give up, and the authorities would be hard-pressed to find them, assuming they believed you. Then, of course, I’d meet my death, whether by my own hand or that of the Cage, or the Hundred.
” Along with any chance of finding out more about Zennia. “It’s a risk I—we are willing to take.”
I wondered what it must feel like—to be ready to die for an idea. Something that seemed so impossible, so utterly unachievable. The Hundred’s grip on Nenamor was strong as nabyrium. Wasn’t it?
A cold thought clawed at me, memories now surfacing: Zennia’s musings about running from Arbenhaw.
Her mutinous mutters about her mother’s noble clients.
“How do you know what happened to my friend?” I said, my voice dipping to little above a whisper.
“Did she seek you out? Did you know each other?”
His gaze, behind his mask, didn’t alter. “I said it was an information exchange,” he replied. “But I suppose there’s no harm in telling you this much: We played no part in the death of your friend.”
At that word—death—my stomach dropped. And then, for the first time, his gaze flicked to the curtain. The candle was burning low, inviting in the shadows. “Your answer,” he said. “I need it now.”
I felt hemmed in, like a sheep being herded. I thought of Owyn, of his swift disappearance, and wondered whether that would be my fate if I accepted.
But the knowing glint in the man’s eyes made me pause.
To walk away now might be to walk away from Zennia, from ever finding out what had happened in the bay.
I tried to imagine getting on with my chores, living out my placement, getting to Mawre’s, then Tigo’s, age.
Never knowing what had befallen my near sister, but knowing I’d had the chance to find out—and squandered it.
And Rexim…as a master, he didn’t exactly inspire loyalty.
Though the thought of him discovering I was a spy was terrifying, I couldn’t deny that some sort of comeuppance was tempting.
I remembered his steely face staring down from the clifftop.
His readiness to half drown me and make a spectacle of it.
Trying to ignore the roiling of my insides, I nodded shallowly. “Fine. I’ll do it.” I eyed him warily. “How do I get you the information? And when?”
He surveyed me critically, seeming to ponder. It was the same look he’d given me when he’d spoken of “trusted servants.”
“We need to be sure you’re really in on this,” he said, “and that you possess the skills to do it. At pallwater, send a tally of what you’ve found so far, by crow, to the Veil, marked with a ‘K.’ Keep it simple. Vague. Just a list of numbers. There’ll be no way to tell it’s come from the island.”
K. His first name’s initial, I guessed. I rapidly counted off days in my head. “Pallwater’s only a week away,” I said.
“Events are happening in the Chamber, among the Hundred, that mean we need to act quickly on this.”
The Chamber.
Whatever the Cage was planning must have something to do with the vote. I remembered the letters Rexim had brandished. The strain in his face. “Ballots to be cast in just a few weeks…”
My pause must have seemed like hesitation, because he added, eyes glinting, “And by the way, if I don’t receive that note, this deal is off the table.”
My stomach jumped. I couldn’t let that happen.
“All right,” I said thinly. “Pallwater, then. And what happens after? I tally the rest?”
“Exactly,” he said, glancing again at the curtain. “I’ll write back to you with details of a second meeting, where you can hand over everything else we need.”
“And you’ll tell me about Zennia,” I stated, staring at him.
He held my gaze and gave a bare nod.
My clothes were damp with sweat where they clung to my skin as my contact stood up and reached for the drapes. “Come on. I’ll show you a servants’ exit you can slip out of.”
It was over so quickly I felt dizzy, stunned, and I almost stumbled as I shuffled from the booth. The warmth, the music, the hum of laconite: It all assailed my senses, making my head buzz. But the prospect of that second meeting stood out like a beacon in my mind.
If I just did as he asked, and did it quickly, I’d find out what had happened to my friend.
Wouldn’t I?