Intrigue can be a potent drug. I spent my evening in a state of nervous excitement, preparing for tomorrow’s rendezvous. I hunted through the piled suitcases in my bedroom for old clothes that wouldn’t look too out of place on a university campus. I scanned the Indeleon Times-Gazette for news of any recent raids at the Metropolitan University. I studied a street atlas, trying to figure out a route to Fourth Watch which avoided the major Inspectorate checkpoints. I cleaned and loaded the snub-nosed revolver which I’d kept hidden in my nightstand since I first moved to Indeleon. It seemed appropriate to bring a weapon to this kind of thing, if only as a talisman.

I almost began to feel like some sort of secret agent. One of the dashing wartime spies from the adventure serials, who infiltrated Nilen’s mightiest fortresses to steal atomic secrets. Then I remembered I was a forty-year-old watchman, chasing up a blind lead in desperation, and all I felt was foolish.

At least my foolishness would only damn myself. I’d left Jandra a message with Erkasri, apologising for swapping out tomorrow’s shift, and claiming that I had received an urgent call from my mother’s carers in Fort Amrinn. As cover stories went, it was thin, but serviceable. Jandra’s anger might work to my advantage; she wouldn’t be minded to come after me. Assuming that the note wasn’t a trap, I could explain myself to her when I returned. Whether she would forgive me was another matter entirely.

Before heading to bed, for the first time in a long while, I knelt to pray. It had been years since I set foot in a chantry for anything other than a funeral, but I was a Kauln boy, born and raised in the Sacramental Faith. I still remembered the words I’d learned at the evening services in Harranthaen. I whispered them into my clasped hands, while watchcar sirens warbled over the city below.

I prayed not for myself, but for Jandra Beikar, who deserved better than I.

I slept with the loaded revolver under my pillow. It was a silly affectation, and I knew it. I could hardly shoot my way through an Inspectorate raid team, and if the silver machine got me in its sights, I’d be slashed in half before I could even fire a shot. But it made me feel better. I managed to drift off sober for once, and my dreams that night were no worse than usual.

The following day turned out cloudy and humid. The overcast sky was like a lid over the city, heavy and lowering. It promised rain, but none fell, leaving only an oppressive, muggy heat. I stayed in until the afternoon, pacing around my sweltering apartment and half-listening to a boxing match on the radio. I re-read the note over and over, until I came close to losing my nerve.

An hour before the rendezvous, I tucked the little revolver into my boot and took the elevator down to street level.

Sweat dripped down my back as I set off for Fourth Watch in the Hawker. I was wearing my most nondescript civilian clothes – faded old denims and a drab checked shirt. I was much too old to pass for a student, but I could probably be taken for a campus workman, or maybe one of the scruffier faculty members. Or so I hoped, anyway.

It was a slow drive south along my chosen roundabout route. I found myself scanning the roads restlessly for watchcars, Inspectorate rigs, and suspicious-looking passers-by. I chided myself for such useless paranoia. There was no point in looking out for songbirds; under the new Security Act, anyone could be an informant. And, so far, I’d given nobody any reason to suspect me. I was an off-duty watchman going for a peaceful afternoon drive, as was my right. Still, I tensed up every time I heard the buzz of a drone overhead.

The southbound arterial took me into the city centre, where elevated intersections branched like concrete stars between the soaring glass walls of office blocks. House-sized billboards jostled luridly for attention, advertising fancy emporia and luxury-brand cigarettes and the tropical beaches of Vayen Isurro. Here, everything was huge and loud and new, and everyone was in a perpetual hurry. The sightlines stretched off miles into the exhaust-hazed distance, out to where the factory chimneys reached for the clouds. Car horns echoed through canyons of tinted glass and steel, while surveillance drones circled the broadcast antennas high above.

It was everything the state channels promised – the city of tomorrow, the grandeur of Greater Kauln made manifest. The illusion only faltered once, when I spied the distant black outline of the cathedral in the gap between two high-rises. I could see grey daylight through the ribs of its shattered roof. Reflexively, I averted my eyes.

Waiting in traffic on the newly-renovated Martyr Alikh Bridge, I tuned into the Fourth Watch precinct band. The Inspectorate channels were encrypted, but any fool with a ham radio scanner could eavesdrop on the City Watch. I listened to a few operator checks, and heard what I was sure was Movar’s heavy accent at one point. There was no mention of any student protests or brawls on campus. Fourth Watch was having a quiet day of it, and I thanked the Almighty for that. The risk of running into someone who might recognise me was, if not zero, then at least acceptably low.

I crossed the Velmiris, showing my badge at the one Inspectorate checkpoint I couldn’t possibly avoid, and headed into the bustling avenues of the south bank.

Indeleon had two universities, located at opposite ends of the city. The Royal Technical, tucked away in the quiet northern suburbs, was mostly a vocational college, training up nurses and electricians. There was never much trouble from those students. It was the Metropolitan, on its sprawling pre-war campus south of the river, that tended to cause headaches for the City Watch.

At any big university, you’ll get drug dealers, sex pests, vandals and firestarters. But more than that, you’ll get radicals, and that was where we had to walk a fine line.

There was a general understanding among us watchmen, and it seemed even among the Inspectorate, that the Metropolitan students were to be treated with kid gloves. These were the lawyers and doctors and engineers of the future, after all, and plenty of rich landowners from the farming shires sent their kids there. We could arrest them, rough a few of the rowdier ones up, dole out a few chastening nights in the holding cells. But no baton charges, no concussion grenades, and above all, no live ammunition. After the bloody mess at Ryvalan University in ‘07, the higher-ups took a dim view of lethal force on campus.

That was fair enough. The problem was that, as far as some agitators were concerned, that gave them free rein to stir trouble. Protests that would normally be shut down inside of an hour were allowed to rage all night in the Metropolitan’s grassy quads. Topics that every Indeleon native knew not to discuss were loudly debated in the student bars. They seemed to take pride in testing our boundaries, seeing how much they could get away with. Every time Fourth Watch hauled some shaggy-haired ringleader off to the lockup, he became a martyr, returning to his halls to rousing cheers and adoring girls.

Over the past couple of years, the protests had been getting bigger, and more frequent. The kids marched against the wars in Tletora and Zegir-Kuya. They marched against the occupation of Mar-Ilhande. They marched against the fusion bomb tests in the polar oceans. When they were feeling particularly brave, they sang syndicalist songs and paraded crude effigies of Inspectorate men. So far, they’d stopped short of anything that would get them in real, mortal trouble. But that had been before the new Act. The boundaries that they believed were so flexible were hardening, calcifying around them. They were about to enter the world that the rest of us inhabited, where the wrong word could fit a noose around your neck.

They were going to have to learn silence, the greatest virtue of the Kauln.

*

I followed the meandering river to a leafier stretch of the south bank. Here was another cultivated illusion, a flashback to the sunny decades before the war. Those old wrought-iron lampposts still stood beside the river, beneath the overarching canopies of young plane trees and blossoming valley pears. Even on a grey day like this, it was a pleasant drive, for a few quiet minutes.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

It would have been nice, I thought, to share it with Jandra.

I drove into the Metropolitan University through the main gates. It was the first time I’d been on the campus in years. It was certainly one of the prettier sights in Indeleon. The faculty buildings, ornate and copper-domed in the Imperial Ralkan style, stood amid acres of chequered lawns. The campus waterfront was given over to lush ornamental gardens, with tiered flowerbeds stretching right down to the river’s edge. Herringbone brick pathways linked the clustered departments and auditoriums. Driving uphill towards the central plaza, I could see students relaxing on the shaded grass beside the halls of residence, smoking and sipping coffee in small companionable groups. It was hard to believe that an atomic bomb once detonated just six miles north of here.

But when I drove past them, I saw the looks on their faces. Fear and dismay, hidden behind a paper-thin mask of nonchalance. It was different from the loaded tension I’d seen elsewhere in the city. These kids knew that their comfortable little bubble was about to burst.

Leaving the Hawker in the visitors’ parking lot, I wandered along one of those picturesque brick paths, diligently avoiding eye contact with any students. I didn’t dare ask for directions, so I ended up walking a circle around half of the campus until I found a noticeboard with a reasonably clear map. It guided me around the back of the main administration building, through a series of flagstoned arcades, and finally to the prim little courtyard they called Elvander Quad.

My contact was leaning against one mosaic-tiled wall, shaded by the sprawling catalpa tree that grew in the middle of the quad. She was a small, pale, round-cheeked young woman with untidy dark hair, wearing a matronly blue dress and the promised red dotted scarf. She stared at her shoes while she puffed on a cigarette, with an expression that rather reminded me of how Jandra looked on a bad comedown.

She flinched a little when she spotted me. I, on the other hand, relaxed slightly. There was nobody else in the quad, and this twitchy kid didn’t look much like an Inspectorate agent.

Neither did the halved man, I reminded myself.

I walked up and offered her my best attempt at a non-threatening smile. She didn’t reciprocate. “Sorry I kept you waiting,” I said. “Got a little lost.”

“I didn’t think you would actually come.” Her voice was lower and huskier than I’d expected. It sounded too old for a girl her age. “I was starting to worry the Inspectorate had gotten hold of my note. You’re here alone?”

“Yes. I didn’t tell anyone at the precinct. I can spare you a few hours.”

She looked warily over my shoulder. “Sure you weren’t followed?” Then she gave a hollow chuckle. “Oh, He Above, listen to me. Like I’d even recognise one of his spies. They could be all over campus already.”

His? “I avoided all the big checkpoints on the way,” I reassured her.

“It’s not only the black-bands I’m worried about,” she replied, exhaling a whorl of smoke. I could see her eyes were sunken and bagged from lack of sleep. “I’m Helina. It’s my real name. I’m not gonna bother giving you some dumb alias.”

“Me neither. I’m Evaris. Seventh Watch, but you already knew that.”

She nodded, avoiding my gaze. “Car Thirteen. I saw you on Martyr Ostande Street the other night. You almost saw me back.”

I thought of the curtain I’d glimpsed fluttering in the lamplight. “You were up in the window on the other side of the road, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.” A strange look passed across her face, at once fearful and guilty. I realised at once that she had done more than just witness the killing.

“What were you doing up there?” And why do you want to tell me, of all people?

“Come up to my room.” She stamped out the stub of her cigarette and glanced around the quad. “I don’t want us to be seen out here together.”

“People might think I’m your secret lover. The handsome older man,” I said, attempting to lighten the tone.

Helina made a thoroughly unamused face. “Unlikely. Everyone here knows I’m not particularly interested in men, handsome or otherwise.”

I felt a sting of surprise, mingled with awkward pity. Homosexuality no longer carried the death penalty, but it could certainly earn you a long stint behind bars. Everyone joked, half-seriously, about the Metropolitan University being a den of queers. A real vice crackdown wouldn’t be so funny for the likes of Helina.

She took me out of the quad, through an arched brick passageway and up two echoing flights of stairs, to a hall of residence that was considerably nicer than my apartment block. We passed other students hurrying to and from their rooms, clutching books and rucksacks and bottles. I got some funny glances, but none of them said anything. They were all still digesting the news of the Security Act, and the last thing they wanted to do was ask awkward questions.

Helina’s room was on one corner of the quad, looking down through the spreading branches of the catalpa tree. The place had a strong smell of cigarette smoke, thickened by a definite hint of cannabis. “You’ll forgive me the mess,” she said as I followed her inside. “Tidying hasn’t been high on my list of priorities.”

The place was overflowing with books. They were stacked high on her desk and bedside table, piled messily against the walls, spread out over the fraying carpet, lined up along the windowsills. Some of them were her dour-looking sociology textbooks, but I saw far more novels. The usual High Kauln and Gausimene classics were there, along with plenty of Ralkan titles in brightly-coloured dustjackets. I even saw a hardback book covered in Zegiri runes, all pothooks and interlocking spirals. I had no doubt that Helina had some highly illegal political treatises in her collection.

There were some posters tacked up on the walls, interspersed with dog-eared family photos and a relief map of the supercontinent. The usual student-radical slogans were up there – FREE MAR-ILHANDE and KAULN OUT OF ZEGIR-KUYA and NO BLOOD FOR THE CROWN – along with a couple of stylised syndicalist flyers. I noticed that none of them said THE STARS ARE COMING DOWN.

“Big reader, are you?” I asked, finding one of the few clear spots of carpet to stand on.

“I wanted to study Ralkovak literature,” Helina replied. “My parents wanted me to go to medical school. We agreed on sociology as a compromise.”

I took a nostalgic moment to examine her wildly unsorted library. As a boy in Harranthaen, I’d been an avid reader. My father bought me boxed sets of all the great children’s authors. We would read them together on winter nights, over sweet tea and oat biscuits. It was always the highlight of my evening, quickening my steps as I trudged home from the chantry school.

I hadn’t read a book for pleasure since I came to Indeleon. The desire was gone from me, like so much else.

Helina distractedly unknotted her scarf and tossed it on her bed. “I’d offer you a drink, or something, but…”

I shook my head. I was here for a reason. I doubted she wanted me to linger, any more than I wanted to myself. “You said you have information on the murder.”

She walked to the window and took a deep breath. “Yes. I saw it. I know who did it. I know what did it.”

I thought of the eerily perfect cut through the dead man’s torso. It was very little comfort to have my suspicions confirmed. “Did you know the victim was an Inspectorate informant?”

“Yes. That fucking maggot,” she muttered. She glanced back at me. “I’m not sorry he’s dead, you know. He sent people to the black cells. People who never hurt anybody, people who just asked questions.”

“I don’t think anyone’s crying over him,” I said. I was surprised by the coldness in my own voice. “But it’s an Inspectorate case now. You took a hell of a risk, passing that note to me.”

“I know. I’ve been expecting a knock at the door for days,” she replied dully. “Haven’t slept a wink.”

“So why do it? Why not stay quiet?” Why not be a good Kauln citizen, rather than paint a big fat target on your own back?

Helina looked down at the book-strewn floor. “The Security Act. Those amendments. I suppose you’ve heard the news?”

“Making everyone in the kingdom inform on their neighbours? Yes, I’ve heard. Everyone on your campus looks like they’re waiting for the hangman already.” I leaned back against the closed bedroom door. The hidden revolver was an uncomfortable presence inside my boot, digging into my ankle. “It’s not any more popular among us watchmen, believe me.”

“People here talk about solidarity. Not a word to the law, even under torture, that’s the line.” Helina shook her head with a sardonic sniff. “Easy to say after a few beers. I wonder how many of them would still say it in the black cells, with a knife to their throat.”

“So you figured you’d come forward now, before someone else did it for you?”

She nodded, gulping. “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought of running off, far out into the province…but where would I go? I’ve got no money of my own, and half a sociology degree. And the black-bands are everywhere now.”

“They certainly are,” I replied, remembering the drones buzzing like murderous insects over Itan Lake.

“I thought…oh, fuck, it sounds so stupid now. So fucking desperate.” There was a pitiful quaver in her voice. “I thought you watchmen could protect me. If I came clean to you, I figured you…you could keep the Inspectorate off me. Even if it meant locking me up.”

“We can protect you, up to a point,” I said. It wasn’t a complete lie. Orczin might be able to pull some strings, have her declared a critical witness, as long as the black-bands didn’t find out how much she knew. Except that Orczin had no idea I was even here. And I had no idea if he would be willing to take such a risk, with the Ministry audit weeks away. “But you’ll have to tell me everything. I’d have to make the case for it to my chief-of-watch, you understand?”

“I know. Fuck. I can’t believe I let myself get caught up in this. Stupid, stupid girl.” She laughed, though the laugh sounded more like a suppressed sob. “Now if the fucking black-bands don’t get me, he will.”

“Who’s he?” When she didn’t answer, I repeated: “Who’s he, Helina?”

She looked up at me with those exhausted, frightened eyes. “His name’s Modvehl. He’s the one who sent us to kill that informant. He’s the one who controls the venator.”