The Traitor Game Read online

  Francis swallowed. His face was very white. ‘That’s not true.’

  Shitley laughed. ‘Oh, really? Isn’t it?’ He flicked his cigarette over his shoulder and one of his gang flinched out of the way. ‘Thompson seemed pretty certain.’ He watched Francis’s face with a sort of avid malice. ‘Mind you . . . why anyone would want to come on to him is beyond me.’ For a second his voice was almost sympathetic. ‘That must make it even worse. To be turned down by Thompson, of all people. What a loser.’ He added, as though it was an afterthought, ‘Actually, I’d be surprised if he had a dick at all.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Shitley raised his eyebrows lazily. ‘Wow. Sore spot, is it, Harris?’ His tone was lewd, like he wasn’t talking metaphorically. ‘Seriously, though, you must be desperate. Sounds like you don’t care who you suck off. As long as there’s someone . . . And at least with Thompson there wouldn’t be much to lick clean afterwards.’

  Michael heard the punch before he understood. He registered the sound of bone on bone, saw Shitley lurch back clutching his face, even saw the blood start to flow, before he actually believed that Francis had hit him. Bloody hell. Francis had hit someone. And as he saw the other members of the gang advance on Francis he was still making sense of it, still rerunning the moment like film in his head. Jesus. Francis hit Shitley. And it was a proper punch, too, straight on Shitley’s nose with all Francis’s weight behind it. There was blood everywhere, now, over Shitley’s face and trousers and the grass. He was spluttering and spitting great gouts of it. Michael watched Shitley gasp and splash red on the ground and thought, Good man, Harris, well done, he deserves it.

  Then someone hit Francis. And the others joined in.

  Michael sensed it in his own body, the force of it, the damage, like someone had swung something hard into his chest. He felt the separate punches, the moment when Francis dropped to his knees, the kick that knocked him forward, scratching for breath. Francis raised his arms to protect his head, just taking it now, not fighting back, and cold haemorrhaged into Michael’s stomach, burning him. Christ, make them stop, make them stop . . . They were battering him. They’d kill him. Stop, please, stop, make them stop . . . But he couldn’t move, couldn’t run forward. He was stuck there, like in one of those nightmares. He couldn’t even breathe. Please, God . . . But there was nothing he could do. He waited.

  They didn’t stop all at once, but slowly, very gradually, they started to drift away. It seemed to take hours. Shitley was standing, now, bloody hands cupped over his face like a mask; once he saw they’d started to get bored he picked up his bag and walked away. A couple of kids exchanged looks and followed him. One of them lit a cigarette; another one got out his mobile and started to jab at the keypad with his thumb. There was only one boy standing over Francis now. He glanced up like he’d realised the fun was over and gave Francis a last vicious kick in the small of his back. Michael saw his shoe leave a mark on Francis’s blazer. Then he jogged off to catch up with Shitley and the others, limping as he ran as if he’d stubbed his toe.

  Michael watched them leave, strolling unconcernedly back towards the cricket pavilion, and took a deep breath. His hands ached from trying to hold on to the wall. He thought, idiotically, Thank you, thank you . . .

  Now there was only Francis there, folded over himself on the grass. Relief rose in Michael’s throat like nausea. He swallowed. He was weak at the knees. He could move, now. He stepped forward.

  Francis stretched his hands out in front of him without looking up, pressing his palms into the ground like he was checking he was still there, still alive. Then slowly he stood up, rolled his shoulders, explored his face with his fingertips, raised an arm and checked his ribs with the palm of his hand. He had blood on his shirt, and smeared across his tie. He took a deep breath and winced. Michael stood and watched him. He was OK. Thank God.

  Francis turned. He saw Michael.

  Jesus, his face. His expression . . . an expression that would have been blank if there hadn’t been a bruise across it. The skin was already darkening. There was a vertical runnel of blood from his nose over his top lip. The bottom lip was beginning to swell. One eye socket was outlined in scarlet, but the eyes themselves were steady, and cold, and unreadable. Michael met his gaze and felt something inside him die. He forced himself to meet Francis’s eyes; thought desperately, Say something, for God’s sake, Thompson, say something . . . But nothing came. It was like someone had turned the sound off. There was no noise, anywhere. The whole world had gone quiet. Francis’s face was utterly still, watching Michael: a long relentless look of – what? Hatred, and resignation, and fatigue, and maybe something else, something Michael didn’t understand. Francis blinked. then he turned his head to one side and spat. He lifted one hand to his face and wiped his mouth. Michael saw the spittle glint redly in the grass.

  I’m sorry. Please. I can explain. I didn’t mean, really, I’m so, so sorry . . . but he couldn’t say it. He stared at Francis and thought, Please, you can’t think I did this on purpose, please, Francis, you can’t do, you know I’m not like that . . . Underneath it all, sorry, sorry, sorry, pounding in his head like a pulse.

  Francis turned his head away, breaking his gaze. He started to walk, slowly, aiming just past Michael’s shoulder, as though he didn’t exist. For a second Michael almost believed he’d disappeared, and Francis really was on his own.

  ‘Francis . . .’

  Francis turned, wearily, stiffly. He didn’t say anything; just waited for Michael to carry on.

  ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Save it.’ Francis shrugged with one shoulder, and winced.

  ‘I can explain –’

  ‘I said, save it.’ His voice was so cold, so final, it took Michael’s breath away. It said, Don’t even bother, Thompson. There’s no point. And Francis turned away again, deliberately, like a door closing. Then, unexpectedly, he turned back. For a moment Michael’s heart expanded – he’s going to listen, it’s going to be OK – but as soon as he saw Francis’s face he knew he was wrong.

  ‘I don’t want to speak to you ever again, Michael. But there’s just one thing.’ Francis’s eyes flicked away, then back to Michael’s face. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Know – what?’

  Francis looked to his right, turning his whole head to one side in a strange, precise gesture of contempt. When he met his eyes again Michael could feel the anger coming off him like a thick, hostile fog. ‘For God’s sake . . . you slippery, treacherous shit.’ He swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘How did you know I’m gay? What did I do?’

  ‘But you’re not gay.’ He wasn’t. He couldn’t be. Michael had just – it was just something to say, something to tell Shitley . . . ‘You’re not gay. You’re not.’

  Francis narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You’re not – gay.’ A dreadful slow-growing panic started to tug at Michael’s heart. ‘You’re not. Gay. Are you?’ He couldn’t be. Except that it would explain – oh God, that’s what he meant when – in Canterbury – what he was talking about when – no. No.

  ‘Jesus, Thompson . . . what the fuck . . . ?’ Francis gave a harsh, painful-sounding laugh. ‘What do you think this is all about?’

  Not that. It wasn’t about that. It was about Evgard, and Luke, and – wasn’t it? I thought you betrayed Evgard, Michael thought, it was always about Evgard, I didn’t mean . . .

  Francis shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re playing at, Thompson. Frankly I don’t much care.’ A tiny, tiny pause. ‘Have a nice life, Michael.’

  He started to walk away again. This time he didn’t turn back.

  .

  .

  Llas

  – I am not faithless, sir, but over-true,

  And lieganced to more than one affection.

  – Why, ’tis the same thing . . .

  (from The Counterfeiters’ Tragedy, trans. MT)

  He turns back to look at me, and his face
is so innocent, so childlike, that it makes me catch my breath.

  The daylight from the window is blue-grey, dim, so that the shadows on his skin are the colour of slate, and his eyes are so dark you can’t see what colour they are. But it’s not the light that gets to me, or even the sudden beauty of his silhouette against the sky, the arch of stone behind him. It’s the expression on his face: pure, absolute delight – wide-eyed, excited, open. It’s the way Ryn looked, the first time she climbed the woolbarn roof; how I suppose I must have looked, the first time I won at shek. It’s so unlike Columen’s ordinary manner that I almost want to laugh.

  ‘Nix,’ he says. His voice is so jubilant that at first I don’t hear the word; only the tone, the excitement that reaches out to me like a hand. Then I catch sight of the sky behind him and it makes sense. Snow.

  Snow. It’s just started to fall, a few sly flakes floating towards the ground. If you weren’t watching for it you’d hardly notice. It isn’t settling yet, but the flakes that fall on the window sill stay white for a long heartbeat before they fade into water. By tomorrow it’ll be deeper than the breadth of my hand. The first snowfall: the advance guard of the winter, the gate that shuts you into months of misery and boredom and fear. I draw back into the room, as far as I can. I can smell the chill on the air, the kind of cold that picks you up by the scruff of your neck and shakes you into bits, the kind that gets into your bones. I pull my clothes round me, more thankful than ever for the furs and padded silk, even if they do smell of Evgard, the musty, buttery smell of too much wealth. My hands are already tingling, remembering old chilblains. But Columen turns his whole body back to the window, leaning out into the freezing air, face upturned and eager. He reaches out with one hand, as though he’s offering something to the sky, and pauses for a moment, suspended. Then he whips round, showing me his open hand and the grain of white where the lines meet on his palm. It melts before I can focus on it and he laughs and shakes the water off his skin.

  ‘Snow, Argent!’ he says again. His eyes are shining.

  ‘I know.’ I glance to the window again and try to summon some kind of excitement, some enthusiasm, to mirror his. But outside there’s only the snow, heavier now, swirling down in a great bewildering swarm. If you fell asleep in that you’d never wake up.

  ‘I love it . . .’ Columen tries to catch another snowflake, cupping his hands together like Ryn’s little brother after a butterfly, his face creased with concentration. I’ve never seen him so unguarded. I’ve never heard him use the word love. Then, as he turns back to me, showing the droplets on his hands, laughing at himself, it comes to me. Of course. He’s never actually been cold; the way he’s never been hungry or tired. Not properly cold: only chilly, only enough to make him pull his furs closer round himself, to make him grateful for the fire in his hearth. For him, the snow’s a toy, a novelty – sometimes, maybe, a nuisance. But that’s all. It’s never killed anyone he knows.

  Now, staring at the blizzard, I can imagine what it must look like to him. It is wonderful, I suppose, the way it silences everything, the way you almost see shapes rise towards you through the flakes: a face, a ship, an eagle . . . And you could love the endlessness of it, the patterns that come and go, the great blank lovely mercilessness of it. It’s clean. It shocks me, somehow, that I can understand him so easily. As though we’re not that different. I turn away, gaze into the shadows in the corner of the room. I can still see snow whirling and eddying like dust in front of my eyes.

  Someone’s at the door. As soon as I hear the latch my heart clenches in a sudden surge of fear, but Columen’s hand is on my shoulder, pressing down. It says, Relax, you don’t need to move. His touch is firm, matter-of-fact, so impersonal that I don’t flinch away. He clears his throat, and I hear the steel come back into his voice. ‘Come.’

  It’s Iaspis. She’s in the room before he’s finished speaking, pulling the hem of her dress clear of the door as she closes it behind her. From the way she walks towards us it’s clear that she would have come in whatever he’d said. Columen’s hand is still holding my shoulder, forbidding me to move. I look down, at my feet, anywhere but at her eyes. She sits down on one of the cushions on the sill next to Columen and her dress flares out in a puddle of bluebottle-coloured silk.

  ‘What are you doing?’ She uses te, the singular form; she’s not including me in the question.

  ‘Watching the snow.’

  Her eyes flick to the window, to the delicate curtain of flakes that’s started to blow in. Suddenly she smiles, and for a moment she looks human. ‘Snow!’ Her voice has the same breathless delight as Columen’s.

  Columen smiles back at her, and she laughs, a lovely unexpected chuckle, and looks at me, still smiling. I wait for her expression to change to disdain, but it doesn’t. It’s the first time she’s ever looked at me without scorn in her eyes. I feel a deep swell of warmth start in my gut and push upwards, and I know I’m grinning at her like an idiot. She spins round, her skirt twisting out in a flare of blue, and runs towards the door. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Where?’

  She swivels round again impatiently to face us, half laughing. ‘Outside, of course!’ She holds out her hand, the way you would to a child or a lover. Her rings flash in the winter light. ‘Hurry – before it stops!’

  ‘It won’t stop any time soon,’ Columen says, but he’s already swinging himself down from the window sill, landing lightly on the rushes. Even so, Iaspis has gone by the time he gets to the door. He looks each way down the corridor and says over his shoulder, ‘She’ll have gone to the North Tower. Bet you. Come on, let’s go.’

  The North Tower isn’t as high as the Ghist, but all the same I’m out of breath by the time we get to the top. For the last few hycht I’m only concentrating on the next breath, trying to keep up with Columen, who’s going up the steps in front of me. My heart’s pumping. I stare at his feet, his gleaming leather boots striding inexorably up the stairs two at a time, and make myself keep the same rhythm. That’s all I can think about, so that when we come out on to the top of the tower it’s so different it feels as though I’ve stepped on to the moon. The world swirls and glitters, beautiful and bitterly cold. Everything’s white: the ground, the sky, the air. You can see right over the North Quarter of Arcaster. The buildings appear and disappear through a fog of snowflakes, as though they’re not quite real. I blink, letting my eyes adjust from the half-dark of the staircase, the dull glow of torches on stone walls.

  The top of the tower’s as big as Columen’s antechamber and privy chamber combined. Already the snow’s deep enough to show footprints, but we’re the first people here and the space stretches out in front of us, white and white and white.

  Columen breathes out a sigh of delight. ‘Hiu . . .’ I don’t know if that’s just a sound, or if it means something; it sounds like Ryn, the way she’d clutch my arm and say, ‘Gesh . . .’ when there was lightning or summer stars or my father brought home a whole silver piece.

  We stand there for a few seconds, still, silent, watching the snow. This is how the sky would fall, gently, interminably . . . I’m not cold any more. I could watch it for ever.

  But suddenly Iaspis is at my side, materialising out of the blizzard like a sheehan. I turn to look at her, and she swings her arm up, fast, pushing a fistful of snow into my face. I reel away, gasping with the blind out-of-nowhere cold. I can’t see anything. There’s icy water running down my face and down the front of my shirt. She laughs. I splutter and try to clear my eyes, and before I know it I’m laughing too and crouching to scoop up snow in my bare hands. I’m about to throw it into her face but she turns and runs a few steps, yelping and shrieking with laughter as though she’s ten years old. Then something cold hits me on the side of my neck and I whirl round to see Columen smirking at me, already stooping for another handful of snow.

  ‘Hey –!’ It comes out in Mereish, hoi, but he’s ducking away, dodging my flung armful of snow, giggling like a child.

  I
haven’t played in the snow since I was tiny. At home it’s something to hide away from, to endure, like a siege. But somehow it still comes naturally. Before I even think about it, I’m shaping a rough ball of snow in my hands, packing it loosely, ignoring the bite of the cold. Columen’s holding his hands in front of his face as a shield. I wait until he relaxes and lowers them slightly, peering through his fingers to see what I’m doing. Then I lob it. It lands smack on his cheekbone, exploding into a dense swarm of white powder. He jumps back with an exclamation. Then he stoops and straightens, flinging two handfuls of snow at me without bothering to pack them into spheres. They hit my tunic, leaving white streaks. We’re both laughing now, hooting with merriment like children. I’m fighting for breath as I scoop up a whole armful of snow and chase him, dodging away from Iaspis as she tries to grab my collar to put snow down the back of my neck. I score a direct hit on the back of Columen’s head and yell, ‘Ybreda!’ He springs round to face me, one arm outstretched, and suddenly I’ve got a mouthful of snow, clean-tasting, squeaking between my teeth. He punches the air.

  Iaspis calls, ‘Over here!’ Like a fool I turn to look. A snowball glances off my shoulder and another one skims my ear. She’s crouching behind a little pyramid of snowballs, her splendid dress wet and grimy. There’s no time to retaliate; I turn on my heel and run, uselessly, because there’s nowhere to go, scuffling and zigzagging, kicking up snow like water, brushing snowflakes out of my eyes. I feel a couple of snowballs hit my back, but when I look back, panting, she’s run out of ammunition, and there are little marks around me in the snow where she’s missed her target. She brushes her hair out of her eyes, giggling. Her face is wet, and pinker than usual. I lean forward, catching my breath, and for a moment we’re laughing at each other, easily, unselfconsciously, like friends. I can’t take my eyes off her. It’s only when she looks down, finally, and her giggles subside, that I notice Columen standing behind her. His grin has faded a little. Now he looks more like his usual self, although he’s still flushed from running and his hair is plastered to his forehead. I catch his eye and he smiles coolly. After a while he glances away.