The Abyss Beyond Dreams (33 page)

Join the club
, he thought, and stomped out.

*

It wasn’t that far to the National Tax Office, a walk down Walton Boulevard towards the palace, then cross over at the junction with Struzaburg Avenue where the statue of
the Landing Plane stood – a weird triangular sculpture, badly worn by time and constant bird droppings. Half a mile along Wahren Street, the granite façade of the Tax Office’s
hall of records loomed over the delicate bundwine trees with their ruddy spine-leaves waving in the wind. Eight storeys of offices and archives with small dark windows that didn’t open.
He’d been told there were more archives below it as well – ten basement levels, apparently.

The circular entrance galleria was clad in a drab brown marble, with broad stairs spiralling up all eight storeys, where it was topped by an elaborate glass cupola. There were two receptionists
behind the curving desk, and five civic guards. If it hadn’t been for his uniform, he doubted he would have been allowed through the door.

‘Do you have an appointment, captain?’ one of the receptionists asked. He was an elderly man in a black tailcoat with a grey striped waistcoat. His glasses were thick pebbles. The
whole place with its silent, timeless existence was draining Slvasta’s anger and determination away fast.

‘I’d like to see a clerk called Bethaneve, please,’ he said, hoping his rank was enough to ensure compliance.

‘Is she expecting you?’

‘She is dealing with a case for me. It has become an urgent matter for the Joint Regimental Council.’

‘I see.’ The receptionist wrote something on a small chit and handed it to a mod-dwarf, the smallest one Slvasta had ever seen. The creature disappeared into a little archway behind
the desk. ‘If you’d like to wait, captain.’

Slvasta sat on one of the two wooden benches, which looked out of place in the big space. By the time the mod-dwarf returned, all his early determination had gone, evaporated into the cool air,
and he was feeling slightly foolish at his impetuosity. But the setback in the policy meeting had been infuriating. He wanted to
achieve
something today. Just for once.

‘Bethaneve will see you,’ the receptionist said. ‘Office five-thirty-two.’ He gestured to one of the guards.

The five flights of curving stairs made Slvasta realize how long it had been since he’d done a run. He was breathing heavily when they started walking down one of the long corridors on the
fifth floor. They must have passed fifty doors, his ex-sight revealed clerks sitting behind desks in their individual offices. The long rooms between them contained row after row of shelving, with
every centimetre crammed with files and ledgers.

‘No ex-sight perception, please,’ the guard told him. ‘Tax material is classified.’

Slvasta almost protested that ex-sight couldn’t read entries on paper even if he could distinguish individual sheets, but of course that was one of the rules. It didn’t matter if it
was relevant or not.

The guard knocked on a door.

‘Come in,’ a ’path voice said.

The guard opened the door. ‘I will wait until you’ve finished, then escort you out,’ he told Slvasta, and indicated a wooden seat back at the last junction.

Bethaneve was a surprise. He’d been expecting someone at least as old as the receptionists downstairs. Instead she was about his age, with thick unstyled auburn hair that hung just below
her shoulders. She wore a green cardigan over a shapeless blue polkadot dress which had a slim white lace collar and a skirt that fell almost to her ankles, but allowed a view of her black leather
shoes. It was the kind of outfit he would expect to see on a centenarian. But then it fitted the location, no matter how young and bright the wearer.

‘Thank you for seeing me,’ he said.

‘I’ve been here seventeen months, and nobody has ever asked for an appointment before,’ she said with a small smile. ‘Actually, I don’t know anyone on this floor
who’s ever had a visitor. I’ll be talked about for weeks in the canteen.’

He smiled back. Bethaneve wasn’t as pretty as Lanicia. Her features were too broad, and her nose larger – which was an unfair comparison, he told himself sternly. For Bethaneve had a
lightness which was especially noticeable in this small dreary office with its single high window.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It was just that I did put in a review request four months ago. You sent me an acknowledgement and said it was underway. I’d appreciate a progress
report.’

‘Yes, that was unusual. We’ve never had a request from the military before.’

‘Is that a problem? I was told I had the authority to make the request.’ It was Arnice who’d suggested it as a way of tracking down his elusive quarry after he’d found
nothing in the Erond regiment personnel records. Everybody on Bienvenido had a Tax Office file, the one inescapable constant.

‘As one of the Captain’s officers, you do, yes.’

‘So? How’s it going?’

She gave him an awkward look, then gestured to one of the shelves which covered two walls of the office from floor to ceiling. Black and red leather ledgers were piled up all along it, looking
as if they were about to slide off. By the archive hall’s standards, it was akin to anarchy. ‘This is my investigation. I’m working through every variant of Nigel I could think of
registered in Erond county.’

‘And you haven’t found him?’ Slvasta sighed.

‘No. Certainly not a trader as you described. However, there are some boatowners who have similar businesses, although none of them is called Nigel.’ She smiled.

Slvasta liked that smile, it animated her. ‘Ah, excellent. Can I see their files?’

‘These are just the registration ledgers,’ she said. ‘The actual files are still in the vaults. I haven’t requested them yet.’

Slvasta looked at her, seeing the smile fade. Looked round the woeful office. ‘You have a lot on. I understand.’

‘Oh,’ she blushed. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. If it’s really urgent I can order the files up. They’ll be here in a week. My supervisor has to approve the
request.’

Slvasta started laughing. ‘Rushing it through, huh?’

‘It’s really quite quick.’ She shrugged. ‘By archive standards, anyway. It’s just . . . things are done in a certain way.’

‘Because that’s the way they’re always done.’

‘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.’