She crouched next to the corpse, a savage grin on her face. The exhilaration of the hunt filled her. That had been worth the wait. Now she wanted more.
But no. She had a task. Stay focused.
Looking around quickly, she saw that she hadn’t been observed. The walkway was protected on both sides by a parapet. As long as she stayed low, no one could see her. Secrecy was the thing. She remembered that.
What now, then? The rope. Yes, the rope, so the slow ones could follow her. She tied it up and dropped it over the wall, then forgot about it. She turned instead to the dead man, took his chin carefully and tilted his head this way and that, studying his face. Blank eyes stared upwards. She tried to feel something and couldn’t. This corpse was meaningless. Would hers be as unimpressive?
Malvery came clambering over the wall, huffing like a bellows. Just like Jez, he was dressed in a beige cassock, though his barely contained his belly. His omnipresent glasses were missing, his bald pate gleamed with sweat, and the sign of the Cipher had been carefully painted onto his forehead in blue ink.
He stood with his hands on his knees, heaving in breaths. ‘Ain’t never gonna live this down,’ he wheezed.
He flopped down against the parapet, looked over at Jez, and then at the dead man. His expression became grim.
‘You really have to do that?’ he asked.
Jez was puzzled. ‘He was in our way,’ she said.
‘He was just a boy. You could’ve knocked him out.’
Jez thought about arguing, but the words wouldn’t arrange themselves. Speech was clumsy and irrelevant and tiresome when she was like this. She turned away instead. What was his disappointment to her? He didn’t understand. None of them understood. Except perhaps Pelaru.
She watched as the whispermonger slipped lithely over the parapet. He didn’t so much as glance at her. But he knew she was there.
She’d expended a lot of thought on Pelaru but come up with very little. He’d taken a half-Mane for a lover, yet he left his sundered corpse to rot when they found him. He’d carried her out of the shrine in Korrene — they’d told her about that — and he’d as much as said that he loved her, yet he was so angry about it that he could hardly bear the sight of her.
She’d never been at home with strong emotions, never knew how to talk her way around them. She couldn’t decipher him. She wanted to explore this new and painful and wonderful sensation, but she felt she lacked the ability.
Pelaru was a blank to her. She caught snippets of the others’ thoughts now and again, mental monologues drifting unbidden into her mind. But not Pelaru’s. He was a blind spot. Something was clouding her perceptions, keeping her at a distance.
Who are you?
Once they were all over the parapet, they threw the rope over the other side and threw the corpse off after it. The edges of the compound where it ran up against the wall were poorly lit, and a building screened them from the camp. They climbed down. Jez untied the rope and dropped down after them.
She found them stashing the corpse in an out-of-the-way spot. They were all wearing the cassocks that Ashua had stolen for them. Some wore the white-and-red of Speakers, some the grey of Sentinels. Real Speakers had the Cipher tattooed on their foreheads, not painted, but they’d pass as long as nobody looked at them too closely. She noted that Frey had gone for one of the Sentinel robes, which meant he only had a Cipher stitched on the breast rather than displayed on his brow. Captain’s privilege. His vanity wouldn’t suffer the kind of disfigurement he’d put Malvery, Jez and Pinn through.
The only one who’d escaped the humiliation was Silo. He’d been forced to remain outside, watching the gates. A Thacian could pass as a Vard with a bit of luck, but a Murthian stood out anywhere outside of Samarla. They left him with Pinn’s earcuff, just in case, but they had little doubt the signal would be lost once they got inside.
When they were ready, Frey addressed them. ‘Alright. We’re here now, so let’s get out there and poke around. Try to look like you belong here. Jez. .’ He gave her a pitying look. ‘You’re kind of giving us away, Jez.’
She realised that she was standing in a predatory crouch. ‘Sorry, Cap’n,’ she muttered, and stood up straight. It was so hard to keep her mind on things.
They stepped out into the open. Storage depots and garages clustered nearby. A dirt road ran inward from the gate, splitting off in different directions to head away across the sprawling compound. There were several more Overlanders parked up, and some smaller buggies and tractors.
The buildings they could see were a mixture of old and new. Some had been here for a while, long enough for mould to grow and the rain and sun to weather them. Between them, clumps of tents alternated with simple prefabricated portable cabins, flown in on freighters. Men and women passed this way and that. All of them wore cassocks. Outsiders were not permitted inside the compound, it seemed.
‘What are they up to in here?’ Malvery wondered aloud.
‘It takes a lot of paperwork to run a war,’ said Pelaru.
‘You think this is the command centre for the Awakener forces?’ Ashua asked.
‘It may be,’ said Pelaru. ‘Their strongholds are too obvious a target. They have no air superiority. Their best tactic is to hide themselves.’
There was a sense of fevered industry in the air. The Awakeners walked with hurried steps. Jez noticed it, and the Cap’n did too.
‘Trinica told me the Lord High Cryptowhatever might be dropping in,’ he said. ‘Maybe that’s why they’re hustling.’
Ashua whistled and looked aside at Frey. ‘The boss? When you get us in the shit, you really get us in the shit, don’t you, Cap’n?’
‘Never let it be said I don’t take you to the best places,’ Frey said. ‘Let’s find Trinica. Wherever she is, that’s where the answers are.’ He listened again to his earcuff, but evidently heard nothing.
‘How do you reckon we’re gonna find her in all of this?’ Malvery asked, surveying the compound.
Jez pointed. ‘There,’ she said.
They followed her gaze to a blocky stone building, rising above its neighbours on another side of the camp. It was ugly and simple, with sloping sides and an imposingly martial look to it.
‘Any special reason?’ Frey asked.
‘I can. .’ She stopped. ‘I can feel something from it.’
She couldn’t find the right word, but that was the gist of it. There was something unsettling about that building. Something that buzzed at her consciousness. She didn’t like it.
They others looked at her sceptically, unconvinced. Then Pelaru said ‘She could be right. I mean, it’s the logical place if you want to impress somebody. And that is the purpose of summoning the captains, isn’t it?’
Unexpected as it was, Pelaru’s backing was enough to convince the others, who had no better ideas. They took a roundabout route towards the building, skirting the edge of the compound. They saw other Awakeners, but they were only one group of robed figures among dozens and nobody paid them the slightest attention.
As they got closer to the building, the buzzing in Jez’s head got stronger, and she knew that she was right. Her skin prickled. There was a power in there, something sinister, daemonic. It was strong enough to muddle the weak daemon thralled to the earcuff in Trinica’s pocket. If Trinica was in here, that would explain why they lost contact.
‘Something. .’ she said, but once again the words didn’t come easily. The daemon in her was still too close to the surface, roused by their encounter with the Imperator and now this new threat. ‘Something bad ahead,’ she said, her voice strained.
‘Ain’t there always?’ Malvery commented, gazing up at the building. He glanced at Frey. ‘Hate to be the one to bring this up, Cap’n, but you might want to consider the possibility that we’re walkin’ into a trap. Wouldn’t be the first time Trinica stitched us up.’