Much as she loathed the old boys’ network that allowed men like Harker to attain high positions without any real qualifications or competence, Roger was the one case where she had used her own rank to help a friend. He had applied to the Service twice and been rejected. The argument against him was that he had associated with dubious characters during his time as a journalist in Hong Kong. To Rachel, that only meant he had been doing his job properly.
She had gone to Sir Vernon, the head of the Service at the time, and suggested that Roger be allowed to apply one more time, and that she would vet him informally and take responsibility for him. As a result, he became her assistant. He had never given her cause to regret her decision—he was a conscientious researcher with occasional flashes of brilliance, and she had been happy for him when Blenheim snapped him up. Still, it did not hurt to be cautious.
‘No,’ she said finally. ‘Just a codename. FELIX.’
‘I see. To be honest, Rachel, I don’t think that would be enough. Death has made those reprobates cautious like old women. They all want to preen their feathers in front of C. You need something more solid to convince them. Besides, Jasper may not know his arse from his elbow, but he has a point. Maybe this Russian chap was sent here to cause havoc. You know I have tremendous respect for your judgement, Rachel, but—’
‘But what?’ She could not keep the edge from her voice. She was cranky and exhausted after the sleepless night and the meeting with Harker, and the last thing she wanted to hear was Roger agreeing with the brigadier.
‘Steady on, now.’
He held up his hands placatingly, then took out a carton of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, offered her one, took one himself and lit both with an ornate gold-plated lighter decorated with a dragon.
‘What I am saying, Rachel, is that maybe you should wait this one out. I know Liddell and Vivian respect you. They might go to Sir Stewart. I would put good money on this backfiring on Jasper.’
‘Liddell and Vivian need a scapegoat for this mess just as much as Jasper does.’
Rachel took a hasty drag from the cigarette.
‘Well, I may be in a position to do more for you, in a little while,’ Roger said.
She stared at him.
‘They say it does not hurt too much, especially with barbiturates. Trying to memorise the Ticket gives me headaches, though. I think they put extra twists and turns for the Court especially.’
‘That is splendid, Roger. I am happy for you,’ Rachel said, her voice flat.
‘I am not ungrateful,’ he said quietly. ‘I owe it all to you, Rachel. Just lay low and I will spread the word that it was all Jasper’s fault. People will believe that. A few months with Miss Scaplehorn, what is that? You can handle it. Do some busywork and relax with Joe in the meantime.’
‘The stakes are too high! I may have issues with Harker, but what if the Summer Court is compromised? If there is the faintest chance that the source was telling the truth, I have to do something.’
‘But we do not know that. We do not know who the mole is, or what they have access to. It’s not as bad as you think. You are overreacting because this brute hurt you, I can see how shaken you are. Think—think rationally for a minute—’
‘Oh, is that it? Jasper just finished telling me that my natural limitations make me unsuitable for this work. You think I am upset because the big, bad Russian hurt me? Thank you very much, Roger. I am so very glad that you explained it to me.’
‘For God’s sake, Rachel, I know you have nerves of steel. I just do not think you understand the Winter Court at all.’
‘I have been here half my life. I think I understand it well enough.’
‘With all due respect, perhaps you don’t allow yourself to understand. You don’t want to believe that incompetents like Harker get all the glory while we do all the work. But they are also petty and fight amongst themselves. That is something we can use to beat them in their own game.’
‘Sounds like it worked out for you, at least.’
What was wrong with her? She should have been pleased for Roger, but when she opened her mouth, only bitter words came out.
Roger sighed. ‘It’s all because you trusted me, once, Rachel. I am just trying to return the favour and protect you.’
‘I don’t need to be protected.’
‘Only from yourself. Do you remember what we talked about, after that tennis game?’
Rachel’s cigarette was a flaking cylinder of ash. She dropped it into the wastepaper basket. She felt numb and tired and empty and said nothing.
‘You asked me about Hong Kong, what it was like in a different country with a different language. I told you it was hard, how even after a long time you could never tell what people really thought, there was always this invisible wall of glass between you and them. That it was lonely. I think you have to decide which country you want to live in, Rachel. I’ll be here if you need me.’
His cough echoed hollowly down the corridor as he went.
* * *
Rachel sat alone for a while, looking at the faded pencil lines on the wall she used as an impromptu blackboard. Roger was right, she knew. Keep your head down, seek allies, cash in favours, bide your time. That was how it worked. And that was exactly what Bloom was exploiting.
Kulagin’s face rose up in her mind again, and behind it, another being loomed like a malevolent planet, a broad forehead, a neatly trimmed, sharp-tipped spade of a beard, larger than life, made of darkness and the souls of the dying. She thought of the agents lost in Spain. She thought of her mother in Summerland and her memory garden, her voice on the ectophone. The Empire had conquered what was once the most terrifying frontier of all, and the SIS were the Empire’s guardians. When she joined the Service during the Great War, all those years ago, everyone had understood that. They were so young, so alive. No one minded that a Registry clerk like her had stepped up and started analysing radio transcripts when they were a man short.
If you had something more solid, Roger said. And then Harker’s voice: We know his people.
Who knew Peter Bloom’s people? Who had vetted him?
It was late, and she still had access to the Registry. She sat down at her desk, excavated her ectoterminal from beneath dusty papers and typed in a query. Half an hour later she was on her way home, a brown Manila folder in her handbag.
When Peter Bloom awoke the next day, his house in Undermay in the Summer City had forgotten what it was supposed to be.
When he opened his eyes, he lay naked on the floor of a bare, twilit room with rough sandstone walls covered in chalk symbols and dark rusty stains. It looked like a torture chamber. The air smelled of sharp sooty smoke.
Peter swore. He must have fallen asleep, and the house had taken advantage of his slumber to revert to its previous existence.
Like everything permanent in Summerland, the house was made of souls. Each one of its bricks was a luz stone, an adamantine kernel that remained when a soul fully Faded and thought and memory were gone. Millennia ago, the Old Dead—the eschatologists’ name for the lost civilisation preceding the modern era—had gathered them and used them to create the Summer City. Then the ancient builders had disappeared. After the invention of the ectophone opened the afterlife for exploration at the turn of the century, England’s dead had arrived. Aethertects had reshaped the city, including Peter’s house, which had become a Victorian residence fit for a gentleman. But the bricks retained other memories, too, and if you didn’t show them who was the master, they leaked out.