‘Is that amanarnik?’ an incredulous Coulan asked.

‘I got hold of some phials, yes. Clean bandages and dressings, too; they’re important.’

‘Thank you,’ Coulan’s hand was trembling as he took the satchel. ‘He spends so much energy fighting the pain.’

‘Ha, you don’t have to tell Slvasta about pain,’ Javier ’pathed. ‘This is just a few bruises. You had it worse, right?’

‘The doctors kept telling me it wasn’t as bad as kidney stones,’ Slvasta said. ‘I pray to Giu every night I never have any of those.’

‘Doctors!’

Coulan knelt beside his lover and prepared a syringe of amanarnik.

‘I don’t know the dosage,’ Slvasta said.

‘Don’t worry, I do,’ Coulan said.

‘He’s like a walking encyclopaedia,’ Javier ’pathed. ‘Despite that, I still quite like him.’

Clearly fighting back tears, Coulan slid the needle into Javier’s arm. ‘There. That should shut you up. Honestly, the whingeing I’ve had to put up with . . .’ He caressed the big man’s sweat-soaked forehead.

It was only a short while before Javier sighed. A profound sense of relief pulsed out from his thoughts. ‘Oh, wow, that feels better.’ A minute later he was asleep.

‘I’ll change his dressings while he’s out,’ Coulan said. ‘I don’t want to risk infection. There are some nasty germs on this world.’ He smiled up at Slvasta. ‘Thank you so much. Without you . . .’ he choked.

Bethaneve put her arm round his shoulders, and gave him a reassuring hug. ‘He’ll be okay, the big old fool.’

‘Yes.’ Coulan started to busy himself with the satchel.

Bethaneve inclined her head, and Slvasta followed her out. The front room was a lot bigger, with warm afternoon sunlight streaming in through the big bay window. Like the rest of the flat, the room was devoid of furniture or decoration. There was a single mattress on the floor, covered by a rumpled sheet. Bethaneve sat on it and patted her hand for him to join her. He did, with a sigh of his own.

‘You did good,’ she said. ‘Strike one against the system.’

‘And the system strikes back even harder.’

She put her hand on his cheek. ‘What’s happened?’

‘My friend. My one and only friend in the office, Arnice. You remember, the major who got burnt by a firebomb?’

‘I remember him, yes.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh, Slvasta.’ She hugged him tight. ‘I’m so sorry. But you said the burns were pretty bad.’

‘It wasn’t the burns,’ he said hoarsely, and told her what had happened.

‘Those people!’ she said in dismay when he’d finished. ‘He was one of them, and they were going to use him like that?’

‘Yeah.’ Somehow they had wound up pressed together, holding each other. ‘That little shit Davalta, who served Arnice with the summons, he didn’t even care. Suicide was actually more convenient for them. Now everything can be blamed on my friend, and nobody will clear his name. Jaix will try, but they’ll stall her and discredit her, I know it. If she ever does get her day in court, everyone will have forgotten. This whole disturbance, everything that happened, will be blamed on Arnice.’

‘They can’t blame the Wurzen nest on him.’

‘No. That was the district governor, who conveniently for the Captain is swinging from the end of a mob’s rope. Nothing will change. Everything will carry on as before.’

‘Not you,’ she said with conviction. ‘I know you won’t give up. You won’t, will you?’

‘Give up what?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Trying to get the regiments to use terrestrial horses instead of mod-horses on a sweep? Yeah, that’s going to change everything, isn’t it? It’s just so petty, a pitiful act of bureaucracy. I am pathetic. I can’t change a Uracus damned thing. I might as well join them, all those families and officials that rule this world. That way, if I’m going to live a worthless life, at least I’ll be comfortable doing it.’

‘Stop it. Stop thinking like that. I can’t take them winning. They always win, Slvasta, every time. They broke my friend, they killed yours, and there is never any justice, not for people like us. Why? Why can’t they be brought down? Why can’t the world change?’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, stroking her neck. ‘I’m just messed up by Arnice. I won’t give up.’

‘Promise me! Promise, Slvasta.’ Her face was pushed up against his. Desperation and urgency were swelling out from a mind which no longer had any shell.

He kissed her. ‘I promise.’ He kissed her again. ‘I promise I won’t give up.’

Her hands were fumbling with his shirt. He used his teekay to lift her dress off. They fell back onto the mattress, touching and caressing skin as it was freed from the restriction of clothes. When they were naked, she straddled him, surrounded by bright sunlight pouring in through the bay window behind her. He used his teekay to pull her down, impaling her. The sunlight seemed to flow around her, turning his world to a glorious white blaze as she cried out. Then she was riding him, letting him into her thoughts to reveal her body’s secret demands, pleading with him to perform them. He responded with equal intimacy, sharing his physical appetite. And a completely uninhibited Bethaneve used her hands and mouth and tongue and teekay to delight him in all the ways he’d always fantasized she would.

He held nothing back from her, and felt no shame in exposing himself in such a fashion, for she reciprocated with equal enthusiasm.

All that afternoon in the hot light they made love on the slim mattress, intent on just one thing: satisfying each other’s cravings. And all the while, thoughts churned in his mind, notions he’d thought impossible. Everything was free for consideration now, liberated from his reticence, rushing out of its cage amid the sunlight and joy.

*

‘I’m scared,’ he told her eventually.

Bethaneve was lying on top of him, hot sweaty skin pressed into his. The smell of sex in every breath. The feeling of intimacy was unsurpassed.

‘Don’t be,’ she told him. ‘This will happen again and again. As much as you want. Because I want it too – you know that. I held nothing from you.’

‘Yes. I know. But that’s not what scares me.’

‘Then what?’

‘What we both know and are too afraid to say.’

‘Then say it. To me. You can say anything to me.’

‘If there is to be change, I know of no one who is going to bring it about.’

‘So many want it. Someone will—’

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Not someone. If this is to be done, then we must do it. Right here. Right now. This is where it begins. This is the revolution. We will organize, and we will overcome.’

Bethaneve lifted herself up so she could look into his eyes. Her own were moist with emotion. ‘I am with you to the very end,’ she swore. ‘Whatever that brings us.’

BOOK FOUR

Cell Structure

1

Slvasta resigned his commission the week after Arnice committed suicide. He gave no reason, nor indication of where he was going. On his way out of the Joint Regimental Council building, he paid a quick trip to the forward deployment bunker, where he quietly removed a couple of pistols and four boxes of ammunition, carrying them out in a satchel he fuzzed. Just as he expected, no one questioned an officer.

‘We need to organize,’ Bethaneve said that evening. ‘That’s obvious.’

Slvasta had turned up at the house in Tarleton Gardens carrying just a single suitcase that contained all his civilian clothes. It was a symbolic arrival, he thought. He’d left his uniforms behind at Number Seventeen Rigattra Terrace. Bethaneve, too, had left her lodgings on Borton Street.

They sat on the bare floorboards in the back room, with Javier propped up on pillows which Coulan had arranged. The worst of the big man’s swelling had just started to go down, and one of his eyes was starting to open again. Amanarnik had reduced a lot of the pain, though Coulan was worried about the long-term damage to his knee.