27th of Thema

There was mud everywhere. In my hair, creeping into my jumpsuit, under my nails, on my face. Not all the mud was mud. I closed my eyes, stifling the urge to add vomit to the stench of the privy ditch. It figured that I would get my information out of the Paradazh, and then die of some horrid disease.

The searchlight swung by overhead, scything through the dark, picking out the boards of the wood pile above my head before gliding smoothly on out into the no-mans-land beyond the fence. With a sigh, I dragged myself forward a few more feet, then found the string and tugged on it.

A moment later, a soft sound announced movement in the pipe on the other side of the fence, and the string tugged back. A hoarse Illyrian whisper came with it, "We need patrols and troop numbers for the Southeast wall. Blueprints would be good. Anything you can get."

I took the vial of medicine out of the carrying tube and replaced it with the tightly wound strip of paper that contained the information I had gleaned from my visits to Headquarters. "I'll cross the branches when I've got something," I called under my breath.

Then I tucked the vial in the hidden pocket in my jumpsuit collar, waited for the searchlight to swing by again, and started crawling back toward the privy hut.

~~~

It was well after midnight by the time I stumbled to my bunk, and it felt like my eyes had only been shut for a second before the morning klaxon sounded. I had just shoved my aching, weary bones up off my matt when Rushidi sat herself down on the bunk across from mine. Meera sidled over to stand at the end of my bunk.

"So listen, I need you to do something for me," she said, casually.

I gave her a tired glare before bending to pull on my shoes.

"Meera needs to be on fence repair tomorrow."

Frowning, I looked up at her. "The Kreighvalden is the one who makes the schedule. How am I supposed to—"

"You have to get ahold of the daily assignment sheet and change it." Her lips curled up at the corners in a chilly smirk. "Gillidhe did it all the time. And let's be clear. Karalli might need you in the head office, but I'm the one who arranged to get you there. All it would take would be a little word in the wrong ear, and I'd have someone else in there in a heartbeat." She leaned forward, her smirk disappearing. "When I say I want to have Meera put on fence duty, you find a way to put her on fence duty. Got it?"

I held her gaze for a second, reading the threat plain on her face. I had been anticipating this exact thing for weeks but had been hoping to avoid it a while longer. It was one more brick on a teetering load, one more way to get caught, and I hesitated.

At the lack of instant submission, Rushidi raised an eyebrow and tilted her head, her eyes widening slightly. "Got it?" she repeated. Slowly.

"Yes, Chain Leader," I made myself say.

Rushidi smirked again. "That's what I like to hear."

~~~

The autumn sky was flawless outside, and bright morning sunlight was beaming in through the front door of the Agriculture Sector Headquarters.

It was giving me a headache. I whispered one of Arramy's choice words under my breath and closed my eyelids tight, trying to force moisture back into my aching, gritty eyeballs.

There was no easy way to get ahold of the daily assignment sheet.

The Kreighvaldens submitted them weekly to the Stadhepheravalden, and he insisted on dividing things up himself. The original was kept in his desk before he put each day's assignments up on the tattle board out in front of the building. There was no in-between stage I could intercept.

How had the girl before me done it?

Her name was Gillidhe, and she's probably dead.

I stifled a growl behind clenched teeth. That is not helpful. Think, you idiot. What if you came at it from the other side?

She could have copied the list and made the changes to the copy, then gotten the copy into the case.

Sanjar had the keys to the case. He also had the S.P.V.'s authority stamp, which wasn't exactly easy to forge.

I raised my head and studied Sanjar, who was sitting innocently at his desk, tapping away at his rollopress machine, doing what he was supposed to do.

He had to have made an arrangement with Gillidhe. He wasn't unkind, but he knew the rules. He was just as mercenary as anyone else and wouldn't have given a favor if he wasn't getting something out of it. What would he want in exchange? Could I just ask for the key and hope he'd let me pay it off later? Or should I find a way to steal the key from him?

My exhausted brain was muddling through that swamp of questions when the rumble of an engine out in the parking yard announced the arrival of a military vehicle. A moment later, a man pushed through the front doors, marched quickly into the foyer, and stopped in the middle of the orange and black carpet.

For a beat too long, Sanjar and I stared at the silver braid on the man 's shoulder before Sanjar got to his feet in a rush and bowed low.

I did the same, my stomach churning around the tea cake I had just eaten. High General Erkhaldt wasn't going on through into the Stadhepheravalden's office, and a frisson of warning prickled the hair at my nape. The prickle turned into a wash of ice as high general ignored Sanjar, looked right at me, and announced in clipped Low Altyran, "Miss Anderfield, you will accompany me to Headquarters."

With that, he turned on his heels and strode back outside.

I glanced quickly at Sanjar, meeting his questioning frown with shake of my head and an apologetic quirk of my lips as I stepped out from behind my desk and started after the general. There wasn't anything else I could do. I tried to come up with an excuse to stay but could only draw a blank the whole way out into the parking yard.

The general was in the traveling compartment already, studying a binder full of documents, and didn't look up when I slid I onto the bench seat next to the driver and the door clunked shut behind me.

The driver didn't speak the whole way down into the valley, leaving me to sort through my snarled-up thoughts. I wasn't going to be able to get Meera's shift assignment changed. That meant that I would have to face Rushidi when I was done at the Headquarters. I was going to the headquarters. Maybe I would be able to find something for my Illyrian contact.

The split in focus was taxing my scant resources, and that headache started really digging in behind my eyes.

In a way, that was a good thing. It gave me a distraction from what was going on. I was relatively calm when, instead of stopping at the main gate and crossing the courtyard, we approached the Headquarters from a narrow private drive that took us around to the other side of the building and into an underground parking yard.

The driver brought the engine to a stop near a pair of heavy accordion lift gates, and the High General got out, striding swiftly toward the gates, leaving the driver behind.

The driver looked at me expectantly.

I was supposed to get out. Moving quickly, I got the door open and hopped down to the pavement, barely closing the door before the driver threw the engine into gear and pulled away.

"Miss Anderfield," the High General called. He was holding the lift gate open for me.

"Yes sir, sorry sir," I stammered, hurrying to catch up with him. It was only then that I realized the man hadn't brought an attendant or any other staff with him. It would be just the two of us in that lift.

I ducked past him and scuttled into the corner across from him, my heart clamoring in my throat. I was alone with the high general of the Coventry. And apparently, I didn't pose much of a threat, because he closed the lift gate and toggled the up lever, then leaned against the wall and flipped his binder open again, his brows drawn into a deep scowl as he began studying his documents again.

He looked like one of the barristers who wrote contracts for my father in Edon. Normal. Calm. Sane. Handsome, even. No one would know just by looking at him that he regularly tortured and killed people in the headquarters basement.

I chewed the inside of my lip, my breath coming quicker. He had a long-barreled pistol in a holster on his left hip. His military jacket covered it, but he was preoccupied. It wouldn't take much to snap a kick at his left knee and grab the gun while he was off balance. I had never killed anyone before, but it would only take one bullet, and the man who had ordered the assassination of my father would be dead. He wouldn't hurt anyone else.

My muscles tensed. An icy sweat broke out between my shoulder-blades. I flexed my fingers. Took a breath. But then a rough Northlander brogue whispered, "Think it all the way through, kid. Is this a short-term fix for a long-term problem? Did ya consider every angle?"

I paused. Then I rolled my eyes. He was right. There wasn't a way to escape the lift, and I didn't know how much time I had before we got to where we were going. Taking out the high general would be the last thing I did, and it wouldn't be enough. He was just one cog in a many-geared machine. The Coventry would replace him and keep right on rolling.

Forcing myself to relax, I settled back against the wall of the lift just as the thing came to a creaking, grinding halt. The sudden clank of chains sent my stomach lurching up into my ribcage, panic skittering it's million tiny claws over my skin.

But nothing happened.

The high general snapped his binder shut, opened the lift gate, and stepped out into an unfamiliar hallway, moving at a swift pace that had me nearly running to keep up.

There was only one doorway at the very end of the hall, guarded by two very tall, very burly patrolmen. They bowed to the general, then gave me a thorough pat-down before letting me through into a large, spacious room that vaguely resembled the overseer's office, with neat lines of desks arranged along a central aisle that led to a set of doors at the back. This room, though, was completely enclosed. There were no windows, only blank marble walls and gas lamps.

High General Erkhardt ignored the wave of bowing and saluting from the Communications staff when he walked in, and proceeded down the aisle, marching straight to the doors at the back, and into a smaller room that also had several desks arranged in a neat line.

There were only three desks, though, each of them mostly taken up by some sort of large instrument, with lights and dials and toggles and tubes. There weren't any staff people at the desks, either, and when the door shut behind us, the noise of rollotypes and the rustling of papers died away to nothing.

"You will be here," the general said into the sudden silence, aiming a hand at the station closest to the only other door in the room. "You simply listen to what you hear on the sonulator earpiece and translate it into... whatever language you can write in... on these report sheets here. Give the time and date of each conversation. You will then bring those reports directly to me every hour. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," I managed, nodding rapidly and dipping into a bow.

"Good," the high general said after a moment. Then he shifted closer, close enough to loom over me. My breath promptly snagged in my throat, panic jolting through my chest, but all he did was whisper, "I hope you realize that working in this office is an incredible honor, Miss Anderfield, normally reserved only for those who have earned it through years of study and exemplary service, and only given to those who have demonstrated trustworthiness and loyalty to the great purpose we serve." He paused. "Do not disappoint me."

"Yes, High General," I rasped, unable to keep my voice from breaking.

The high general straightened and moved out of my field of vision. He opened the other, smaller door. "I will be through here. You may leave your reports on the table to the right of my desk."

Then he was gone.

I dragged air into my lungs and straightened, letting my breath out on a long, shaky sigh.

I had pulled it off. I was in.

But victory didn't taste sweet. Victory tasted more like I needed to be sick in the nearest bin.

~~~

There are five mice when the seagull is crooked.

Giant fish.

Make green things when black things go east.

Tiny fish.

I put down my pen and stared at the nonsense I had just jotted down, dread beginning to pool in my middle.

The voices on the other end of the sonulator were indeed Illyrian. I had no idea how the Coventry was able to access whatever line of communication the Illyrians were using, but they obviously were able to pick up conversations between Illyrian operatives. And the Illyrians were speaking in code.

At first, I had been relieved. Codes had to be cracked, which would take time. But the longer I worked, the more I realized there was a very large, very dangerous hole in that theory.

From what I had put together, 'seagulls' were ships. 'Five mice' was a reference to Illyrian folklore, and I could guess that it probably referred to a shipment of supplies or, more likely, troops, since the original story was about warrior mice. 'Crooked' was probably just a word thrown in to replace 'arrived.'

It was rudimentary, to say the least, and counted much too heavily on the Coventry's ignorance of Illyrian. Once translated and handed to the codebreakers out in the Communications office, it would only be hours before they cracked it.

I swallowed hard. I wouldn't be able to keep that from happening. There was a spotlight on me. The High General was already watching me like a hawk, and he wasn't an idiot. Far from it. If I wasn't giving him real information, he would find out. Then I wouldn't be any good to anyone. I'd probably be on a slab in the medical sector. I was going to have to give the Coventry information that would be useful, and if it was useful to them, it would get someone killed.

I ground my teeth. The timekeep above the door was about to tick over the hour. I was running out of time before I handed my reports in. Come on! Think! I couldn't just hand in everything. I would have to pick something, and hope it would turn out to be a list of boot sizes, or an operation that the Coventry wouldn't be able to do anything about.

An idea began taking shape. It was insanely simple, and it could backfire all over the place. But it was all I had.

Working as fast as I could with my cold, shaky fingers, I sifted through all my entries, picked the piece of information I was going to hand over — the one about the ship-seaguls — then rewrote the other pages with entries that really were nonsense. For lack of anywhere else to hide them, I tucked the real translations at the bottom of my pile of blank papers, grabbed the fakes, and shot out of my chair, opening the door to the high general's office just as the timekeep dinged.

He was standing at a tall, narrow window overlooking the courtyard, and turned to face me when I came bowing in. "You are late."

"Yes sir. I'm sorry sir. I was in the middle of the last one," I said, hoping I didn't sound as terrified as I felt. There was a table to the right of a large metal desk. I shuffled forward and made to place the pages on it, only to freeze when the high general plucked them from my hand instead.

There was a long moment of silence. Then, low and ominous, "What is this?"

"It's what they were saying, sir. I only wrote down what I heard," I whispered. I clenched my hands in my skirt, trying to disguise the tremors in my shoulders as he took in a long, deep breath and let it out on a sigh.

Then he moved to his desk and dropped the pages on his blotter. "Thank you. You may return to your duties."

I dipped into a deeper bow, and shuffled back out. The door latched behind me and I stood up straight, reaching for the wall as a wave of dizziness hit, making the room spin.

Getting into the headquarters was supposed to be the answer. Instead, the tightrope I was walking had just gotten thinner, and started to fray in every direction. It was only a matter of time before something broke. No matter what I did, someone was going to get hurt or die because of what I was doing.

I swallowed back a surge of nausea. Then I lifted my head and shoved away from the wall. I needed to talk to my Illyrian contact again. Soon. Tonight. There had to be a way to feed the Coventry information that wasn't going to wipe out the Illyrian forces. They could build it right into their messages. Maybe I could salvage some of the damage I was undoubtedly about to do.