Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

He listens

FARAH

Marcus runs through the debrief with the efficient cheerfulness of a man who has decided that the domestic situation in this study is not his business and is absolutely his business but he’s choosing to be mature about it.

I appreciate the effort.

I also appreciate the coffee, which I take with both hands and drink half of before he’s finished his second point, because I had approximately one hour of sleep and the morning is being aggressively real about continuing to exist.

“The withdrawn group crossed back over the border at approximately five this morning,” Marcus says, eyes on the report. “No pursuit. They know better than to give us a reason.”

“Monroe,” Caspian says.

“No direct confirmation he was present. But the coordination of it—” Marcus tilts his head, ”—that’s his signature. The east diversion especially.”

“He knew we’d go north.”

“He knows how you respond to a direct border threat. He’s been watching long enough.”

I look at the report in Marcus’s hand. “Can I see that?”

Both of them look at me.

Not negatively. Just — a beat of adjustment, the automatic recalibration of two people who are used to having this conversation between themselves.

Marcus hands it over without comment. I take it and read. It’s detailed — times, positions, the movements of Monroe’s various groups mapped against the palace’s response. Whoever compiled this has a precise mind. I read it twice, following the geography of it, the logic of the timing.

“He sent three men east,” I say.

“Yes,” Caspian says.

“But the east entrance code was wrong.”

“Yes.”

“So either his source gave him bad information—”

“Or his source gave him bad information deliberately,” Marcus finishes. “We’ve been over this.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m thinking out loud.” I look at the report. At the timing column. “The three men he sent east — what was their objective, specifically? You said residential wing. My room.”

“Most likely,” Caspian says.

“But they used the east entrance. Which puts them coming from the courtyard side, not the main building.” I look at the map sketched at the bottom of the report — rough, functional. “That’s a longer route to the residential wing. There’s a more direct access from the north servants’ corridor.”

Silence.

I look up. Both of them are looking at me with slightly different versions of the same expression. Marcus’s is openly interested. Caspian’s is the more controlled version of the same thing, which I’ve learned to read as the same thing.

“The north servants’ corridor,” I say, “is exactly where Soren’s team was not. Because Soren went north to the main breach.” I set the report on the desk. “So the east entrance with the wrong code — that wasn’t the real entry point. It was the decoy. They wanted us to find those three men.”

The study is quiet.

“While someone else,” I say, “came through the north servants’ corridor.”

Marcus and Caspian look at each other.

The look they exchange is brief and complete, the shorthand of two people who have been thinking together for a very long time. Then Caspian picks up his phone and sends a message — short, immediate, no preamble — and sets it back down.

“Soren is going to feel terrible about this,” Marcus says.

“Soren didn’t see it either,” Caspian says. “Nobody did.” He looks at me. There’s something in his expression that I’ve seen a few times and am still getting used to — the look he gets when I do something he didn’t anticipate and hasn’t decided yet how to categorise. “Except apparently you.”

“I’ve been reading your reports for three weeks,” I say. “I know the layout.”

“You’ve been reading my reports,” he says.

“You leave them on the desk,” I say. “The desk I sit at. When we’re in here.”

“Those are classified intelligence documents.”

“They’re very interesting classified intelligence documents,” I say.

Marcus makes a sound that is not quite a laugh and is definitely a laugh.

Caspian looks at me for a moment. The expression he’s wearing — the one I’m still categorising — shifts slightly into something that might, on a different face, be pride. On his face it’s more contained than that but it lives in the same neighbourhood.

“Don’t touch the ones in the red folder,” he says.

“I haven’t,” I say.

“I know,” he says. “I’m asking you not to in the future.”

“What’s in them?”

“Things you don’t need to know yet.”

“Yet,” I say.

He holds my gaze. “Yet,” he says.

I look at him for a moment — at the deliberateness of that word, the specific weight he put on it. Yet. Not never. Not none of your business. Yet, which is a word with a future in it, which is a word that assumes I’ll still be here when the yet becomes now.

I look back at the report.

“The north servants’ corridor,” I say. “Who came through it?”