Bryck sat back. It was a performance of sorts. He had never acted in one of his own theatricals. While he had been quite skilled at creating words to fit into actors' mouths, he had never had any desire to speak them himself before an audience. Yet here he was, performing his part as the leader of the Broken Circle. He only hoped he was convincing in the role.
While he let the dramatic pause settle over the group, he furtively eyed Quentis sitting on a chair at the far side of the room. He hadn't forgotten the night she had visited him as he lay on his bunk, the night she had more or less offered herself to him. Bryck had relived the incident quite a number of times in his mind, redirecting the action, changing the words she said, changing the words he said. He had followed each altered scene to its conclusion, and though he was somewhat ashamed of himself for it, he had by now imagined in detail making love to Quentis more often than he would ever care to admit.
She gazed back now with her amber eyes. He could read nothing there, and it irked him. Did she still have feelings for him? Or had his one rejection spoiled everything? The puzzlement made a small agitation in his stomach.
Once, before he had married Aaysue, Bryck had enjoyed a reasonably libidinous young adulthood, one bolstered by the status and privilege of his noble bloodline and the wealth that accompanied it. In those long bygone days he had given little thought to specific matters of romance or carnal recreation. If one potential bed partner fell through, he glibly sought out the next. He couldn't recall ever seriously brooding over any individual female, no matter how alluring he might have found her at any given time. Not until he'd met Aaysue, in fact, had he given the possibility of love and true emotional depth any credence.
So why was it that now, when he was twice the age of that promiscuous lad, he should be experiencing such classically adolescent feelings as he was having toward Quentis?
Bryck blinked. He still had the full silent attention of the room, and he had been holding it until that silence had grown distinctly awkward.
He rallied. "If any of you new people can't accept the consequences of what we do," he said before his point was lost, "then now is the time to quit."
Again he looked over the new faces. He and Tyber had recruited them, picking ones that appeared able-bodied, intelligent, and committed.
"I will not quit," said Scaullit, tone firm now.
"Neither will I," Minst said. He was a thick-limbed male, with a hunched posture, but was evidently nimble enough to have scaled the Registry with Scaullit.
"The Felk took my sons," said the third one of the recruits. She was named Cancallo. "Whisked them off into that army. I don't know if I'll ever see them again. But I'll fight the Felk until my boys are back with me."
Bryck looked to the fourth new member. The man's eyes were wide, white showing all around their soft color. This was the one who had beseeched him and Tyber most ardently when the two of them had roved Callah's streets a second time in costume and face paint, furtively displaying the Circle's symbol. Bryck, circulating through the crowds that gathered to watch Tyber's juggling, had rekindled that false rumor about an uprising against the Felk in the neighboring city of Windal. Bryck had murmured about its success, about how the people were slaughtering the Felk, retaking their home.
This man had most wanted to become a part of the Broken Circle. His name was Setix.
Bryck could see now that Setix was having a change of heart.
"I—I..." the man fumbled as all eyes turned toward him. He squirmed under the pressure. Perspiration shone on his wide forehead. "I don't know if—I'm not—I—"
A quiet and implacable dread closed over Bryck. This at least was one eventuality he had foreseen and prepared himself for. Which wasn't going to make it any easier to deal with.
Setix was standing at the edge of the group. He came forward now, involuntarily it seemed. His hands shook at his sides.
"Do you wish to quit?" Bryck asked, the question flat, barely inflected.
Setix offered that same beseeching look as he had when he had asked to join the Circle. His mouth worked soundlessly a moment, then the words started to spill. "This is very difficult. I don't want to show any disrespect. But I didn't count on all this. On someone being killed for actions we did. Next time it could be me doing the thing that would lead the Felk to take another innocent life. That would make me a murderer of my own people. That's not what I bargained for. I hate the Felk. I want them driven from this place, from my home. But I just can't... I just don't... it doesn't seem right that—"
He blundered on awhile after that, the fragments of sentences piling up, choking him, until he was making only whimpering sounds.
Bryck stood. He didn't want to stand. He wanted very much to remain sitting, to give the necessary order and then look away while it was carried out. But even his most ludicrous comedies had their moments of pathos, and he knew how this needed to be played.
He had discussed this particular eventuality with Tyber. Though the man was fairly aged, he was the strongest, in body and perhaps spirit, among this company. Bryck caught his eyes.
"Take him," he ordered.
It was swifter than he could have imagined it. Bryck himself had taken a life, that luckless Felk soldier he'd killed in that alleyway with a single murderous blow. Death could happen very quickly. He knew this. But to watch it occur. To be the spectator. To see the knife drawn and slammed into the body, knowing it was going to happen and still barely able to follow the movements. That was what sucked the air out of Bryck's lungs.
Setix gasped. His final instants of life were filled with surprise at what he could only just be starting to comprehend was happening to him. Then, when Tyber had wrenched loose his blade, the body dropped heavily to the floor. It bled and did not move.
"He was in a position to betray us," Bryck said. "Our identities, our location. We could not afford that."
He waited. No one had anything to add to that. No one in the room contradicted him. His assertion was logical. The truth of it was as plain and unpleasant as the corpse that lay at everyone's feet.
"It's my fault." Bile still burned his throat. "I should have chosen better."
Quentis put a hand to his arm. Bryck felt the warmth of it keenly, that peculiar human heat. But was it a caress or a neutral pat? He shook his head. He had just vomited, slipping outdoors to do so. Only Quentis had noticed. Setix's body was being disposed of. Bryck lingered near the doorway, shaded by the building's eaves.
"He was a danger. You were right." Quentis's tone was gentle.
Bryck spat into the dust. "Things are only going to get more dangerous. More violent. More murderous."
"We are all prepared for that," she said.
He looked into her eyes. Emotions roiled within him, out of the safe control in which he normally kept them. Setix's murder, necessity or not, had unsettled him at a fundamental level. It was actually more disturbing than when he'd personally killed that soldier. This time he had merely ordered it and stood there while his will was carried out.
"Do you understand that alone we can do nothing?" Bryck heard himself whisper.
Quentis blinked at him, a small furrow appearing between her brows.
He should not be divulging this. Even as a playwright he had known not to reveal everything to the audience. Horrified, he felt his mouth moving, more words rasping out. "We can't go against the Felk. Our little group, stand against the full strength of the garrison? They have weapons and numbers and organization. And more so, they have the mental supremacy of having conquered this city. The people are beaten already. In order to rise against the Felk they have to feel they are worthy of the victory."