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