2
I started back, almost falling. The guards tensed to spring, but I held up a hand quickly. “It’s okay.”
They relaxed, but I could tell they didn’t recognize the man. I edged forward again and those green eyes found my face. Not much sanity in them. Four months tramping around the forests of Europe clearly hadn’t done much to restore his wits after all those months of torture at the hands of the EuroGov. But then his gaze wandered up to my forehead and stayed there. Fixed on the cross he’d carved into my flesh.
I swallowed. “What do you want?” Not the most gracious way to put it, but short and simple.
His brow wrinkled in an agonized attempt at thought. “I have to…I have to know. Have to…” His head sunk back, eyes half closing. What little skin visible under beard and grime was going dead white—was he about to pass out? A thread of compassion stirred—so hard to connect this pitiful creature with the man who’d…
My hand rose to brush the scar on my forehead. Still… I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “Say sanctuary and we’ll look after you.”
Eyelids fluttering up a little, he stared uncomprehendingly, as though I was speaking Chinese.
“Say sanc-tu-ary.” I spoke very firmly.
He frowned like a puzzled child. “Ss…sank…ry?” His head fell to one side; his eyes closed.
I sat back on my heels. Eduardo had left Pope Cornelius corralled inside a ring of Swiss Guards and loomed on the left; more guards and a few curious enough to leave their pews gathered around elsewhere. Unicorn hovered right beside me—no doubt he’d heard what I said.
“This man has claimed sanctuary,” I said clearly. “And I think he needs a doctor.”
“Who is he?” Eduardo hadn’t missed my moment of recognition.
“Major Lucas Everington. I dare say you’ve heard of him?”
Unamusing as it might be to have this particular individual passed out in front of me, the look on Eduardo’s face was. “Are you sure, Margaret?”
Major Lucas Everington, disgraced former Commandant of Salperton Facility where I’d been imprisoned, was supposed to be rotting in a forest somewhere, several months dead, according to the best guesses of all official and non-official sources.
When I nodded, Eduardo crouched to stare at the matted collection of hair and mud that was the man’s face. “How can you tell? Could be anyone.”
“He has very distinctive eyes.” I could clearly picture those eyes as he’d stood over me in the Lab, for once removed from his precious garden, though his gardening gloves had still been tucked through his belt, just beside his Lethal pistol.
“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to take your word for it for now. Sanctuary. Great.”
“Personally, I think it saves everyone a lot of time and argument,” I said dryly. “He’s under sentence of death. No way we’ll actually hand him over, but that won’t stop some people talking about it until trumpets sound.”
Eduardo shrugged, eyed me rather closely, glanced at Unicorn—whose poker face made it clear he’d no intention of breaking bodyguard’s confidentiality—and started patting down the unconscious man. One of the Major’s ragged mittens fell off as Eduardo rolled him over, and I gasped. Unicorn swore, then went red and crossed himself.
“What?” Eduardo was there in a flash.
I drew up the Major’s jacket sleeve to get a better look. His hand was a claw, his arm a bone with skin stretched over it. I’d never seen such emaciation, except perhaps on old video footage of twentieth-century famines.
“Where’s that doctor?” snapped Eduardo.
“He’s coming now,” said someone, as Doctor Frederick shouldered through the crush with his first-aid kit.
“Fellow collapsed?” He caught a glimpse of the hand, and his eyes widened in incredulity. “Did he walk in here? Never mind, never mind… Doctor Carol?”
The couple of doctors and nurses who’d trailed in behind him got busy, and the unwelcome guest was soon whisked away.
“Do you know his name?” asked Doctor Frederick over his shoulder, “On the off chance he wakes up?”
“Uh…Lucas,” said Eduardo blandly, and prowled after Doctor Frederick when he galloped off without waiting for more.
“Is it really who Jon thought you said?” demanded Bane, when I got back to our pew.
“The Major. In the flesh. In the skin and bone, anyway—he doesn’t seem to have any flesh left on him. S’pose I shouldn’t call him Major anymore, now that he’s been stripped of rank. The not-so-departed Mr. Everington, anyway.”
“How on earth?” said Jon. “Four months in the forest? What did he eat?”
“Nothing, by the look of him.”
“He must’ve eaten something.”
“Well, yeah…oh, shhh, I think we’re carrying on.”
Eduardo hadn’t returned by the time morning Mass ended, but Grass Snake, a VSS agent and former “Animal” Liberation team member who’d been my bodyguard on the other three trips to Free States that I’d made since Bane was well enough to be left, came over to me as soon as I got up from the kneeler. “Have you got your suitcase ready, Margo?”
“It’s all packed. But we’re not leaving for an hour and a half, are we? So I’ve got time to pop and see what’s going on with our…um…guest. I’ll be there at VSS HQ on time, don’t worry.”
Bane was glowering at the marble floor.
“Um…coming, Bane?” I asked as brightly as I could.
For a moment it seemed he’d agree, then…was he recollecting all those long, unfamiliar corridors, leading to the place where he’d spent an agonizing few weeks waiting for a miscellaneous patchwork of skin grafts to grow into place? Or just too furious with me for going on this trip, period?
“No. Think I’ll go back to the apartment until it’s time to see you off. Jon…are you…going back that way?”
From his expression, Jon had been planning to hotfoot it to the hospital with me. But he just said, “Yeah, I’m going back that way. See you in a few minutes, Margo. Or maybe not, I’m on cleanup duty after breakfast.” Tactfully telling me he couldn’t stay with Bane for long. Not quite tactfully enough: Bane bristled at the reminder that Jon was proficient enough to be part of a cleanup team. Feeling useless and angry all over again?”
“Okay. I won’t be long, Bane.”
Not right now, said the grumpy twitch of his brows, but what do you call a three-day trip to Malta? He didn’t say anything, but his face wore that familiar expression of hurt that I was leaving him and anger that it bothered him so much.
Uh oh, my brother Kyle was moving in my direction. With a hasty mutter of, “I’m off then, see you in a minute,” I headed for the door into the private section of the Vatican.
But Kyle caught me up just inside the corridor, cassock swishing around his legs. “Margo! Wait up! I want a word.”
“Another one?”
“You’re my sister. I’m allowed to want to talk to you, aren’t I?”
“Talk, yes. Lecture, no.” I tried to keep my voice down.
“I’m not going to lecture you. Look, Margo, seriously,” he dropped his voice, “how’s Bane treating you these days?”
“Everything’s fine, Kyle.”
“Don’t give me everything’s fine, Margo. You were crying in Mass; what was that about?”
“Look, I’ve got to go—”
“Did Bane upset you again?”
“We upset each other regularly, it’s called marriage, as you will no doubt understand when you’re ordained and get to counsel married couples.”
Kyle looked annoyed. “What you were talking about in February didn’t sound like normal marital spats—”
I whirled on him, but spoke as calmly as I could. “Look, Kyle, you seem to forget that a year ago, I was locked away waiting to be chopped up as spare parts, and the only reason I’m not still there in Salperton Facility—or already dismantled—is Bane. Bane got me out. Me, Jon, everyone in that place. He got me and Jon all the way across Europe with the EuroArmy hot on our heels. Then he started the Liberations and freed thousands more reAssignees—he was your Liberation team leader, for pity’s sake! And you think I should abandon him just because he’s hit a rough patch? Have you forgotten why he lost his eyes? Because he handed himself over to the EuroGov to try and whip up dissent and save everyone in the Citadel—and it worked! He saved us all! But at such a terrible cost! And now I should turn my back on him?”
“Past goodness is no excuse for what’s going on now, and if you’ll only stop defending him and look at the situation for a moment—”
“I’m sorry, I haven’t got time right now.”
I walked determinedly away from his infuriated, “Margo!”
I knew, deep down, that he was just worried. But he was only focusing on how the situation affected me; he didn’t seem to be able to open the eyes he was lucky enough to still have and see Bane’s needs as well. He acted as though Bane should’ve simply had a good cry, then shrugged and said, “Well, it was only my eyes,” and gone on just as normal.
Of course, the other reason I was getting so angry with him these days was because I was trying not to lean too hard on Jon, and I desperately needed Kyle’s support instead—but all I was getting was criticism of my husband. By now I’d about given up on getting anything else.
I galloped on up to the hospital wing, trying to work off some of my annoyance with my brisk pace. When I arrived, it was an oasis of calm. Just what I needed. Did they know, yet, who they’d admitted? The nurses directed me to a private room at the end of the corridor, next to the one Jon had had, a million years ago, when we’d first stumbled into the Vatican, refugees ourselves.
The frail figure in the bed scarcely raised the blankets. Eduardo was examining the mound of removed clothing—the remains of a lady’s all-weather jacket among other things, its lining stuffed with pine needles for extra insulation, needle-tips sticking through the fabric. “Margaret? All ready?”
When I nodded, he went on, “So what was the fellow’s state of mind, would you say?”
“He’s still out of it—that’s the impression I got, anyway.”
The fellow in question lay in a nest of tubes. Some familiar, from Bane’s and Jon’s stays in hospital—oxygen and fluids and stuff—and another tube that must be a feeding tube. The nurses had shaved him and hacked off most of the excess hair, probably to make it easier to get the tubes in place—the cadaverous face now sparked a ghost of recognition of the man I had known. Ghost was the word: I’d never seen anyone so fragile.
“Well, I’m putting a guard on the room,” said Eduardo. “Mad or not, this guy waltzed out of a high-security detention Facility, survived for four months on the run and found his way here, so forgive me if I’m slightly cautious.”
“Cautious, fair enough,” snorted Doctor Frederick, coming in, “but the guy’s got no muscles left. He’s not going anywhere.”
“He just walked across St. Peter’s Square and into the basilica under his own steam, muscles or not. The guard stays.”
Doctor Frederick shrugged. “Well, I doubt it will be a long assignment.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Doctor Frederick looked surprised. “Well, he’ll be dead by morning. We’ve done what we can, but he’s about had it.” He shot me a quick look. “Er…not a friend of yours?”
I stared at the almost-dead man in the bed, whilst Eduardo tried not to look amused. “No. Not exactly.”
“Look, you’re going to hear it from somewhere fairly soon,” said Eduardo. “His name’s Lucas Everington, but I don’t want that to affect the care he receives in any way.”
Doctor Frederick looked affronted, then the name registered. “Everington? That EGD Security man?”
No doubt he, like practically everyone in Europe, had watched the televised show trial where the EuroBloc Genetics Department attempted to prove that Everington was the mastermind behind the mass breakout actually engineered by two teenagers—Bane and me. They’d eventually succeeded in reducing the Major to a pathetic deranged figure huddled in a corner of the courtroom whispering a mantra of, “I need to know, I need to know, I need to know”—but never managed to make him look at all guilty.
Eduardo clearly remembered the show trial too. “That’s the one. He’s claimed sanctuary.”
Doctor Frederick scowled, his eyes moving from the man in the bed to my forehead. As my doctor, he knew better than most what I’d been subjected to. Perhaps it was time for the unsaid to be said: it might clear the air a bit.
“Thousands of innocent reAssignees owe this fellow their lives, you know,” I told him.
Doctor Frederick looked at me as though I’d taken leave of my senses. “Owe him their lives? He oversaw the deaths of hundreds of reAssignees, to say nothing of all the Underground prisoners that were executed on his watch.”
“But the Liberations were dead in the water and going nowhere until that top secret EGD Security manual was anonymously mailed to me—I’m not sure if you ever heard about that? We had to keep it pretty quiet. I don’t know why Everington did it, but I know it was him.”
“Indeed,” Eduardo backed me up. “All but one of the Liberations were planned with the information provided by the—once—Major Everington. But that’s still confidential, just in case we lose the vote and have to start Liberations again, so I’m afraid you can’t pass it on.”
“Well, we’ll do all we can for him,” Doctor Frederick sniffed, his Hippocratic impartiality returning. “But he’ll probably die, and you can’t blame us for that.”
It would simplify my life—and quite a few other people’s—if the man did just die. All the same…Bane had wondered out loud while watching the trial what the man wanted to know so badly, and I was getting quite curious myself.
I meant to head straight back; have a spot of breakfast with Bane before I left, but one of the nurses commandeered my assistance with washing the patient’s hair: I’d helped with Bane often enough. I’d really no doubt Everington would have been looked after anyway, but it still felt like I’d dropped a load of extra work on the hospital, so I didn’t like to say no.
“The water must be good and warm,” she said briskly, “and then you must blow dry his hair—at once—he’s no energy to spare getting cold. But it’s got to be done, and it’ll be a much nicer job now than when he’s…well, grab that bowl.”
Than when he’s dead. Right. He was so pale and still, it was uncomfortably like preparing a corpse as it was. I imagine.
It took three washes and even more rinses, but finally his hair was clean and I set to work with the hairdryer. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much hair after its impromptu trim—kind of satisfying watching it dry to that familiar pale blond.
“You know, I’m not sure I like you much,” I found myself murmuring to him, not that he could hear me over the hairdryer, “but I do wish you’d live. Seems rather sad for you to make it all the way here, only to die in this hospital bed, y’know?
“Anyway…that’s all dry and fluffy as a baby chick’s down.” A flattering way to put it—his hair was thin and dry, as starved as the rest of him. I tried to flatten it into its customary neatness but it was no use. “Oh well. That’s my duty done. I’d better— Oh Lord, the time! I’ve got to get back!”
I dumped the hairdryer on the bedside table and scampered.
“Where have you been?” snapped Bane. “I thought you were leaving anytime now?”
I fought not to bristle. He was sitting alone on the sofa and must’ve been there for almost an hour. “I’m sorry, every person I met on the way back wanted to talk about this morning’s little drama. And I was longer at the hospital than I expected. I’m back now. I’ll have to make do with a coffee and biscuit for breakfast. Do you want the same?”
“No,” he said sulkily.
I waited a beat, heart aching. I didn’t want to go off with things like this between us…
He hung his head and said almost inaudibly, “Yes. Please.”
I went into the kitchenette and put the blind up to let the daylight in. “Coming right up. Do you think you could open the curtains? It’s dark in here.”
Another moment’s silence. A rather flat, “Okay.” At least he was up and doing something. There were so many things he could still do, but he was so fixated on what he couldn’t.
We sipped and munched in mutual silence, mine hurried, Bane’s moody.
“How’s our mysterious benefactor, then?” he asked at last, wiping his face with repeated—almost paranoid—swipes of his hands to make sure he’d removed any biscuit crumbs. He looked like a mouse washing its whiskers, but I wasn’t going to say it.
“Doctor Frederick doesn’t think he’ll make it. He’s almost starved to death—body’s eaten up his own muscles to stay alive. No protein, you know.”
“Huh. Know all about that, don’t we? So how was he walking around this morning?”
“Stubbornness, I suppose.”
“Yeah, he is stubborn, isn’t he?”
Thinking about that farce of a trial? “He’s that, all right. But he’s like a skeleton. As much as Doctor Frederick tends to the negative, I’ve a nasty feeling he may be right.”
Bane shrugged. “Oh well. It’s one final poke in the EuroGov’s eye that he made it this far. He must’ve walked straight past the EuroArmy.”
The section of wall and the gates that sealed off the square, though originally built by the EuroBloc, had been turned over to the Vatican. But the EuroGov maintained their white line a few meters away, guarded at all times, especially in front of the gates. What for, who knew? Did they think I’d try and stroll out past them or something? “He’ll certainly have given them a red face. Again.”
“So why was he looking for you, Margo?”
Should’ve seen that coming. Lots of people had expressed puzzlement as to why Everington had asked for me, but it hadn’t occurred to any of them that I might know any more than they did…until now.
Bane’s ears were practically pricking up as he strained for any clue why I hadn’t replied. “I can see why he’d throw himself on the Underground’s mercy, in his situation,” he persisted, “but I’d have thought you’re the last person he’d dare get near.”
What to say?
Bane’s voice held certainty and the beginnings of anger. “You know why he asked for you, don’t you?”
“Sorry. Yes. Um, during my interrogation, after he…well, when he was about to leave…I said… Well, I didn’t even think about it, it just popped out, so it sounds better than it really is—but…I said I forgave him.”
“You what?”
“I told him I forgave him, okay?”
“Not okay! That creep carved up your face and you told him you forgave him?”
“Love your enemy, Bane. Anyway, it was mostly the Holy Spirit, I think. But I imagine that’s why he’s looking for me. Assuming he’s got a rational reason. He’s still loopy.”
Bane continued spluttering his indignation.
“Look,” I said firmly, “I’ve never said anything about this because you haven’t exactly been very understanding where that man is concerned, but I’m pretty certain he was actually trying to help me avoid Conscious Dismantlement by torturing me, okay? In a really twisted way, but he’s a twisted guy.”
“Help you? By cutting you up?”
“He was trying to force me to answer his questions—but if I answered them, he was going to give me the normal anesthetic. Then I would’ve been out like a light during the Dismantling, instead of conscious as the EuroGov intended.”
Bane stopped spluttering, the memory of the three long days of torture he’d endured pinching his temples. How he must’ve longed for the anesthetic. “Would he really have given it to you?”
“Yes. I was sure he was going to, at the end, even though I wouldn’t answer. I think the questioning was mostly an excuse. But dear Doctor Richard interfered.”
Bane was silent for a long time. I’d thought nothing could reconcile him with Everington, not with this scar on my forehead for him to feel every day. But…he understood so much better, now.
“Is the guy comfortable?” he asked at last.
“He’s unconscious. He’ll go peacefully, no doubt about that.”
Bane nodded, once, and felt cautiously for his coffee mug. Subject closed. The animation left his face, and he just looked glum again. I checked my watch. Time to go.
“You know these trips are stupid,” said Bane, as we walked down to VSS HQ.
“Bane!” I protested. Were we really doing this again, right now? On a good day he would admit that his opposition to my trips out of the Vatican was based almost entirely on a selfish fear for my safety. But good days were so rare, just now. “They’re not stupid. Why did we stay in Gozo instead of going to Africa? Because refusing to run away inspires people. And they’re not that dangerous. I’m going to a Free State; it’s not like I’m going into the EuroBloc. That would be stupid.”
“The EuroGov hate your guts, Margo!”
“Yes, but they don’t want bad press right now, do they? Assassinating me in a Free State would not go over well. You know how touchy everyone is about the autonomy of independent states after their little spate of annexations.”
“In other words, you’re staking your life on the EuroGov’s good sense,” he said sarcastically.
“Eduardo agrees, Bane,” I said tiredly. “And so does Pope Cornelius. He’s the one who suggested the trips, after all.”
“And their opinions count for far more than mine, naturally,” snapped Bane.
“Bane. I value your opinion more than anyone else’s. But when it comes to this, you’re just not thinking objectively.”
Here we were at the door to VSS HQ. Thank goodness. Bane let the subject drop as we showed our pass cards and went in.
Sister Krayj waited with my disguise. The trim eastern European Sister wasn’t Vatican Secret Service, but until the vote was decided, the State was being run by the minimum number of staff possible—since if we lost the EuroGov’s retribution would be inevitable—and lethal. With her ex-Resistance past, she’d been a key member of the Liberation teams, and Eduardo had no hesitation about calling on her skills.
“There,” said Sister Krayj, holding up a mirror a few minutes later.
I checked myself carefully. Blonde wig pinned over my fastened-up hair. Glasses with blank lenses. My scar covered with makeup, with a sun hat over it, just for good measure.
“So convincing, my own mother wouldn’t recognize me,” I said to Sister Krayj. My mother… Bad choice of metaphor. I still didn’t know if my parents were dead or alive. I swallowed and turned to Bane. “I’m all disguised, love. Nothing to worry about.”
He simply scuffed a shoe moodily on the floor. He knew he was being selfish. He just needed me so much right now.
A bearded older man swept in from a side room, dressed in a lightweight summer suit. A new arrival? Oh… No. It was my ‘Uncle Conrad.’ Belatedly, I bobbed a curtsey. “I didn’t recognize you, your Holiness.”
“That’s the whole idea, isn’t it?” Pope Cornelius smiled.
“Everyone ready?” Eduardo stuck his head into the room. “Good, come along…”
When we reached the entrance to the secret passage, and Eduardo swung the huge old painting away from the wall, Bane unbent enough to give me a long hug and kiss me goodbye. “Please be careful…” The shaky appeal in his voice made my heart ache again.
Grass Snake stepped up to me and gave Bane’s shoulder a quick, comradely bump with his fist. “Don’t worry, Bane; no one will hurt her while there’s breath in my body.”
Bane managed a silent smile of thanks and tried to look reassured. Where was…ah, finally. Jon was just coming along the passage. “Bye, Jon,” I called, as Eduardo shepherded me impatiently through the hole in the wall. “No wild parties, you two! I don’t want to find the place a mess when I get back.” Bane really couldn’t manage everything by himself yet, so Jon was staying at our apartment while I was away.
Bane managed a rather forced laugh, and Jon sniggered at this, then Eduardo shut the portrait again, and it was just Pope Cornelius and his two Swiss Guards, Fox and Foxie, plus Unicorn and Grass Snake, who were my bodyguards, though Unicorn was in overall charge of Pope Cornelius’s security as well. Hard to be stealthy with any larger party.
As we set off along the dimly-lit passage, I tried not to feel like I’d got an unexpected reprieve from lessons or something. It’s just something you’ve got to do, Margo. In truth, despite what I’d said to Bane, I’d much have preferred to stay within the Vatican. I wasn’t so worried about something happening in the Maltese Free State, but we had to cross a thirty kilometer strip of EuroBloc territory to reach Ostia and the boat…
“Almost no one knows we’re going, Margo,” said Grass Snake. The light level clearly wasn’t quite low enough to hide my face. “No way the EuroGov could know.”
“I’m fine, Snakey. That’s just my default expression when I think about the trip to Ostia. You should know that by now!”
Grass Snake grinned, the glow from the wall lights bouncing off his shaved head. He’d been so supportive of Bane, these last few interminable months. Some of the guys clearly felt awkward around Bane now, not knowing what to say. But Snakey and the Foxes, and Unicorn, of course, had been brilliant.
“Here we are,” said Unicorn after a while, unlocking a door. We went out into a basement garage, and got into the large people carrier parked there. “Everyone got their ID cards?” Fakes, needless to say. We all nodded, so he aimed a key fob at the garage doors and they began to open.
Here we went again…