‘Yes.’

‘Then I thank you for putting in the request. Can I ask another favour?’

She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘I’d like to take you out to dinner. Tonight, if you’re not doing anything.’

Bethaneve blushed again as she gave him a startled look, but her gaze didn’t stay on his empty sleeve for very long. ‘Um, well . . .’

‘Please say yes. I’ll have to go out with my fellow officers if you don’t. Would you really wish that on anyone?’

‘That’s a trick question,’ she said, her voice challenging, not a clerk’s voice at all.

‘Not really. I’m just a country boy, posted to the city and finding it hard. Take pity on me, please.’

‘My landlady locks the door at ten thirty.’

‘Quite right, too. Can I pick you up at seven?’

‘Yes. Thank you. That would be nice.’

And so very worth enduring Arnice’s dismay at abandoning their double date.

*

Bethaneve had lodgings on Borton Street, an area where housing was a lot cheaper than anything on Rigattra Terrace. But not quite working class, he decided as the carriage pulled up outside the neat three-storey blue-brick house. Borton Street was formed by old, classically tasteful houses, with cracks running up the brickwork and walls starting to bulge. In another century or two they’d be demolished and replaced, as they had replaced those that stood here before. Such was the cycle of continual regeneration. The city didn’t get any bigger, though Arnice claimed each cycle built a little higher than the last. Like the society it housed, Varlan craved stability.

The landlady answered the door when Slvasta pulled its bell cord. Now, she would have been perfectly at home in the hall of archives, he thought. A puffy face that looked perpetually miserable, dark dress made out of stiff fabric, greying hair in a tight bun. Her gaze and ex-sight ran up and down Slvasta’s plain grey suit. ‘This door is locked at ten thirty,’ she said primly. ‘I insist that my girls are back by then. If they’re not, I will assume they no longer require residence here – and frankly if that is how they choose to behave, I wouldn’t want them under my roof anyway.’

‘An admirable philosophy,’ Slvasta assured her.

Bethaneve appeared in the hallway. She’d changed into a green dress with a skirt whose hem hovered around her knees, and a white cobweb shawl wrapped tightly round her shoulders. There was a pink rose in her hair. Hints of mischievous thoughts slithered about beneath a shell that was tantalizingly thin.

The landlady gave a snort of disapproval and closed the door.

‘You kept a straight face,’ Bethaneve said as they walked to the cab. ‘Well done.’

‘She does seem rather imposing.’

‘She used to work at the Tax Office. You develop a certain attitude if you stay long enough.’

The cab driver opened the door and helped Bethaneve up. When she sat on the bench and removed her shawl, Slvasta did a classic double take. The green dress had a square neck cut almost as low as the one Lanicia had worn yesterday. He cursed himself for being so obvious, but Bethaneve grinned knowingly.

‘So, where are you taking me?’ she asked.

Slvasta paused on the verge of answering; was he imagining a double entendre? ‘I’ve heard good things about the Oakham Lodge.’

‘I’m in your hands. Oh—’ Her hand covered her mouth, and she blushed. ‘Slvasta, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—’

‘Trust me. After having your arm amputated without narnik, figures of speech don’t really register as terribly upsetting.’

‘Without narnik?’

‘Uh huh.’

‘Great Giu, tell me all about it!’

*

When Bethaneve smiled, her lips curled up. It made her look delightfully impish, he realized. Her laugh was husky. She didn’t have the formal restraint and coldness of the aristocratic daughters he’d met, a difference which was so refreshing. She knocked back beer, not wine. She was animated on a number of subjects, such as the three dams on the Yann river which ran through the city and provided water for nine districts – how the pumps were constantly breaking down and the owners weren’t obliged to compensate the households when supplies were cut off. Or the lamplight company that had the contract for Borton Street, which was doing such a sloppy job. And how the meat inspectors at Wellfield market were so crooked. And . . . And . . . And . . .

‘I shouldn’t be telling you things like this,’ she said as the main course was cleared away. They’d both had the steak-and-kidney pie that was the lodge’s specialty.

‘Why ever not?’

‘Well, you’re an officer.’

‘That hardly makes me part of the Captain’s police.’

‘No.’ She raised her beer glass and gave him a shrewd look over the top of it. ‘You’re not what I imagined an officer to be, either.’

‘How did you imagine an officer to be?’

‘Stuck up, like the rest of the aristos. Uncaring.’

‘Regiments have a difficult job, you know. Being an officer is no sinecure. It’s tough out there sweeping the countryside. And . . .’ He glanced at his stump. ‘Tougher if you fail.’

‘I get that now. It’s the uniforms, you see, all bright and expensive. I just identify you with the rich families who run everything.’

‘Some of their younger sons take commissions, mostly with the Meor regiment. That way they get to stay in Varlan – admittedly on the other side of the river. I heard there’s almost one officer for every trooper. And the Meor does pay officers about ten times what any other regiment pays. It’s called the capital weighting; life here is more expensive.’

‘Whose fault is that?’ she said sharply.

‘But there are more opportunities in a city than out in the countryside. That attracts people.’

‘Which puts up the prices, which takes opportunity away from the poorest.’

‘But you live here. You managed to get a good job.’

‘That’s a good job? Eight o’clock till five thirty, with forty minutes’ lunch break which you have to take in the canteen, which just happens to be run by the senior clerk’s family? Every day for a hundred and ten years, that’s the requirement to qualify for a full pension.’

‘Do you think you’ll last that long?’

‘No. I’m going to find me a rich landowner who’ll take me away from all this.’ She raised an eyebrow in scorn. ‘That’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? Sorry, do I sound bitter? I don’t mean to be. It’s just that nothing changes. And there’s so much injustice on Bienvenido, and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Certainly not the Captain and all our Councils. The money they receive – sweet Uracus! I see some of the public expenditure files, you know.’

‘Doesn’t surprise me. And I’m afraid I’m not landed. My mother has a farm, but my half-brothers will inherit that now. I’m going to spend my life fighting the Fallers.’

Bethaneve slid her hand across the table and grasped his fingers. ‘You’re a good man, Captain Slvasta. You stick to your beliefs. Don’t let them take that away from you.’

‘I won’t.’ Somehow he didn’t have the courage to tell her about the committee meeting that morning, how they’d already thwarted him.

‘So who’s this Nigel person?’ she asked. ‘You must want him very badly to resort to the Tax Office for help. What’s he done?’

He explained what had happened, how angry he was at himself for being tricked.

‘That’s very strange,’ she said when he’d finished. ‘I can’t imagine anyone working for a nest, no matter how much they were paid.’

‘Me neither,’ he admitted. ‘But what else could it be?’

‘Did you know that Captain Xaxon used to destroy an egg in public every year?’

‘No.’

‘He was the seventh Captain, I think. There’d be a big midsummer ceremony at the palace, and they’d bring out this giant steam-powered guillotine device he’d had specially built for the event. It could slice a Faller egg clean in half. There were bands, regimental parades. The whole works. Quite a spectacle, so they say. Ten thousand people used to turn up.’