“Get her out,” repeated Camilla, and for the first time, there was a raw edge of desperation to her voice. “Corona can’t lie to her.”
We Suffer looked at her. For a moment Nona thought she would really do it. Without the goggles and mask, it was so much easier to translate her. She had a trick of keeping her eyes perfectly even—pretty brown-green eyes with a touch of evenly applied black stuff on the lashes, very glamorous to Nona—but you had to watch the mouth. The hesitation showed in the thinning of the lips, just briefly.
Then it passed. We Suffer pressed a button and said briskly, “Eyes on the area. Are the crowds being held back? Keep the militia on the showboaters. I do not want any stray bullets catching the car or anyone coming out of the building … Yes … No, we’ll keep her to audio, the system cannot stand the strain … Yes. You have your orders.”
Camilla clinked back against the wall. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head downward so that her fringe, which really needed a trim by now, fell over her eyebrows. Then We Suffer put the receiver down and twiddled a button, and the audio leapt in the speakers. Nona unscrewed the top of the cap of the bottle of water and took a long pull from it, which rinsed away the sour acid taste on her tongue.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the audio, exaggeratedly loud, suddenly tuned in to traffic, a car insistently honking so that people let it through. The audio crackled. Someone was breathing, hard, a little too fast. The engine sounded like you were standing right inside it. But you could hear everything, you could even hear hands sliding over the car wheel. People were yelling outside the car. There was the noise of a big metallic bump, and then Crown’s voice, indignant, barely a mutter: “Stop throwing things at me, you jackasses.”
Her voice and the breathing sounded weirdly disconnected. But everything sounded huge, and strange for being huge. The car wheels sounded like they were bumping over something, moving to different terrain. Then Crown said, “I’m through,” and a cranking sound screeched over the audio as the ignition suddenly died. The car door opened like a bomb going off. Crown’s boots clattered on the ground. The yelling sounded far-off now but was still there, like a background radio.
It was interrupted by a distant voice, speaking House— “No step further.”
Crown’s voice, much more explosive and near on the speakers: “I’m unarmed! I’m unarmed! I am a citizen of the Nine and I ask for sanctuary in the name of the Third House—in the name of the Emperor Undying, please! For the love of God, I’m a sitting sniper target out here!”
There was a moment of absolute silence. Crown’s voice went from panicky to tetchy: “My name is Coronabeth Tridentarius, crown princess of Ida, heir to the Third! My mother was Violabeth Tritos, my sister is a Lyctor, and my brain is about to get spattered on the tiles unless you open this gate and let me drive through!”
There was another clanging. Something opening and shutting. Someone said hoarsely, “Coronabeth Tridentarius has been dead for over a year. Get in your vehicle, turn around, go,” but another voice, even feebler, said, “Look at her.”
Crown, sounding desperate: “My sister is in the Cohort compound. She can positively identify me. Hurry up.”
“Look, you understand—”
“I understand, Lieutenant—Lieutenant, right?—and that’s why I’m saying get Ianthe! Get my sister! She can identify me, or identify my body, whichever you decide! Get me out of this crowd!”
There was another pause. Crown’s breath was much softer now, less laboured, less strange. There were clangs and bangs that Nona couldn’t parse. She took another swig of water and looked at We Suffer, who had one hand on her flip-top as though it were the trigger of a gun, and then she looked at Camilla. Camilla’s eyes were closed and she was shifting weight slowly from foot to foot—one to the other—so gradually that her shackle didn’t even clink.
There were far-off shouts on the speakers. More clanging. Voices saying something Nona couldn’t hear. Then there was a silence made up of all these background noises—a nonsense of sounds stuck together. Another far-off clangour. Then Crown drew the longest breath that Nona had ever heard anyone draw.
“Corona,” called out someone new. Nona had heard that voice once before, on the broadcast.
Footsteps, evolving into running feet. Something hit Crown with a big thump. A mess of sounds—clothes rustling, a sobbing, the audio squeaking as it tried to keep up—and Crown, sounding unlike any Crown that Nona had ever heard before, two voices trying to speak at once: “Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me.”