“You’re a dick,” said Crown, half-crying, half-laughing.
We Suffer’s eyes slid to Nona’s, or maybe they had always been there. Nona sat there with a mouthful of water, slowly going warm. A door opened and closed on the audio, close to where the voices were coming from. There was an unmistakeable click.
The flip-top was held to We Suffer’s ear. Someone was speaking over it. We Suffer said quietly to Camilla: “They’re lined up. They can take the shot.”
“Don’t.”
“Our lives are at stake.”
“Don’t take it,” said Camilla.
Over the line, Crown’s voice suddenly changed. Her mouth had moved in some other direction. She said, “Oh my God! No!”
The other voice drawled, “Don’t freak out, darling. He’s a tame Lyctor … he won’t hurt you. He can’t really hurt anyone anymore. You and your little firebrands took him in as a pet, didn’t you? Well, I’m taking him back to Poppa as a gift … that is, if Poppa can look up from his mid-dismyriad crisis long enough to pay attention.”
A new and wonderfully familiar voice ground out, in tones that were unfamiliar— “Silence.”
“Shan’t. You might be the Saint of Duty, but I’ve been on call as Teacher’s whipping girl for the last six months, so fuck to you,” the other voice said. “I can say what I like about him. Anyway, what do you think? Do we take in the gate-crasher, or what?”
“Kill her,” said the voice. “Deadweight.”
Crown said, “I’ll walk back out to the streets and let the people have me if you touch a hair on her head. And I’m not going anywhere with … him.”
The drawling voice despaired. “Fine. Get her inside. But he comes too, that’s not negotiable.”
“He told you about … Harrow? He told you about Cam?”
“He’s told me everything.”
The new voice said impatiently, “Get the fishhook out of the fish. Second earring. Right ear.”
The last thing the audio recorded was a blurry “Ow,” and then the line went dead.
Nona thrilled with recognition and relief; the new voice had been Pyrrha’s.
21
WE SUFFER LISTENED FOR a few more minutes, and then, in an unusual display of temper or misery or both, threw her earpiece at the table. Then she put her mouse-coloured head in her hands.
Nona, confronting the fact that she had too much in her mouth to swallow, hastily began gulping it in the tiniest of polite gulps she could manage, but her effort came to nothing. Her throat made a noise a little bit like the noise of a gull on the beach trying to get down a whole sausage, and it was really loud. We Suffer put down the phone and looked at Camilla and Nona with wild eyes: a wildness not far off the one that Nona had seen in Hot Sauce’s face. But that didn’t matter. Camilla said, “Don’t move so quickly,” which Nona thought was silly.
“But Cam,” she said, “we’ve got to go to Pyrrha, you heard her. Didn’t you hear her?”
“I heard,” said Camilla.
The door slammed open. An Edenite in a mask but with panicked, uncovered eyes said: “The last shift got knocked out and locked in the infirmary. The necromancer’s gone. The checks weren’t done in order—the disturbance—”
“Leave your excuses. Go and tell Cell Commander Call,” snapped We Suffer.
“Yes’m.”
The door slammed shut again. When they were alone, Camilla said levelly, “That went better than you deserved.”
“You are saying to me it went well?” We Suffer’s voice jumped upward. “In my opinion, Lieutenant Crown has betrayed us all with a promptness and the eagerness you do not normally see outside cheap plays at the theatre. And I believed … she swore a thousand times … she made the sniper order, you see. The headshot was not intended for the Lyctor. She ordered the headshot for her if she was found out … And I believed her. I have seen people call for the headshot before, and their eyes are not all like hers were. She had the conviction. Then to steal Deuteros from under our noses … and to have lost Pyrrha Dve without the slightest right of recourse. I knew we should have chipped her. Now they ask for you by name! We are betrayed doubly.”
Nona was immediately annoyed. “Don’t say that about Pyrrha,” she said. “Pyrrha wouldn’t betray us.”
“Child, your opinion doesn’t—”
“I wouldn’t make her mad,” said Camilla calmly, and to Nona’s great shame, We Suffer hesitated. Into that hesitation Cam said: “Scan the frequency. Check for active bugs in the location.”