The Butterfly Assassin, page 4
‘I don’t care. I’m not making the deal.’
He pushes back his chair and stands. ‘You know,’ he says easily, ‘some of my colleagues are placing bets on whether the police or Hummingbird will find you first.’
‘Which did you bet on?’
‘Neither. I’m more intrigued to see how long you survive on your own.’ He returns the contract to his briefcase and snaps the clasps shut. ‘My name’s Ronan, by the way. Ronan Atwood. I highly doubt this will be the last time we cross paths.’
Isabel says nothing. At the door, Ronan turns back as if to speak, but only shakes his head and leaves the flat.
She crumples, pulling her feet up onto the chair and hugging her knees to her chest. Her whole body feels sticky, unclean; the scars under her clothes burn as though they’re days old instead of years.
They weren’t meant to come here. This flat is hers, and only hers.
But they knew all along, and they sent Ronan Atwood to deal with her.
She knows the name, even if this is the first time she’s had a face to put with it. It’s impossible not to have heard of him when he controls half of Comma; everybody knows he’s aiming to be Director one day, and he’s most of the way there. If he came to see her in person, she’s in even more trouble than she realised.
As for her parents, she doesn’t believe for one second that they’re really gone. They won’t have left the city. That Comma can’t find them is… significant, she supposes, but it doesn’t mean she’s safe. If anything, it’s the opposite.
Isabel can’t be sure how long she stays curled against the wall, one arm wrapped around her knees, but her legs are half numb by the time she stumbles into the kitchen. She opens the cupboards and stares at the contents, but she has no appetite, so she locks her shitty locks, stacks her textbooks on top of the chair underneath her door handle, and puts a clean set of bedding on the settee.
But she already knows she won’t be sleeping tonight.
5 MENSOGOJ (LIES)
The borough of Lutton is afraid. Isabel sees it in the faces of the civilians waiting for the tram, senses it in the Espera Met officers patrolling the streets and in the taut atmosphere of the school. The excitement of rumour has given way to fear now that the victim has been identified:
Ian Crampton, 21, worked as a shop assistant and was the primary carer for his sister, who suffers from a rare autoimmune condition…
Everyone wants to know who’s next. Everyone wants to know why Ian is dead.
Isabel wants to know that too – and why, having already fucked up her life beyond repair, she didn’t take Ronan’s deal. This morning, watching the police walk their pointless beat, last night’s decision feels rash. Childish. Not safe, not safe, not safe. She should have taken it. What does she have to lose?
Only the rest of her life. Only the belief that she can be anything more than a weapon.
Isabel’s afraid too, in her own way. She’s afraid of the memories that assail her throughout the school day: a mess of disconnected images, flashbacks full of ragged holes. The lab. A notebook. The spiders, always the spiders. She’d say they’re the worst of it, but she doesn’t know what other horrors lurk in her mind, nor why her memories are full of dropped stitches and moth holes, patchy and incomplete. Maybe that was deliberate, her father’s vicious cleverness taking her memories from her.
But some things remain vivid and sharp as a knife, and for a moment she’s not in her overwarm, dusty History classroom, trying to stay focused on today’s half-truths and blatant propaganda. She’s watching her younger self, as if from a distance: seeing again and again her shaking hands, the shattered flask of acid, her father furious as he takes her by the wrist and presses her hand down into the pool of liquid.
You’ve got to learn, he says, as she sobs in the corner of the lab, no strength left for screaming. You think this is cruelty, but it’s not. I’m teaching you. You won’t forget what you’ve learned today.
What she learned was that he would do anything.
And she remembers that like it was yesterday – the agony of the burn and the awful clarity of realising that no matter how hard she tried to please her father, it would never be enough to keep her safe. But that only makes the blank patches in her memories more concerning. Why does she remember this and not the rest? What did her father do?
Where did her father go?
She told Ronan she didn’t care, but she cares. She cares because as long as he’s out there, her father is a threat she can’t fight.
Closing her fingers around the scarred mess of her left palm, Isabel forces her mind back to the lesson. She doubts Mr Branagh believes half of what he’s telling them, but it’s hardly his fault – out here, in the civilian world, the real history of the guilds is often obscured. Not erased, as such, but a point’s been made of ensuring it’s more trouble than it’s worth to seek out, and certainly too risky to teach. After all, the guilds have no interest in emphasising their origins. It’s better to encourage the impression that they’ve always been there, a power without beginning or end. The emphasis, of course, on without end.
Within the guilds themselves, it’s a different story. Once you get close enough, there’s no need for lies and grandstanding: the reality of their power is everywhere, and far more intimidating than any illusion they’ve created. Espera may know the guilds first and foremost as assassins, but the contract killings within the city are the least of their bloodstained activities. The rest of the world knows them as the most powerful arms dealers on Earth, answerable to no one but the highest bidder, and their influence goes further and deeper than any Esperan civilian could possibly know.
But Bella Nicholls has no place pointing this out, so Isabel sits silently and takes notes on the version of the story she’s supposed to believe.
‘So,’ Mr Branagh continues, ‘can anyone tell me the terms of the agreement that Comma and Hummingbird signed?’
‘Not to undercut each other,’ says a student in the second row. ‘Or poach each other’s employees.’
A voice from the third row says, ‘Not to train minors.’
Isabel freezes midway through tapping her pen against the textbook. She dimly hears the teacher’s correction, the fact that they never wrote that into law, but his voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away. Of course they didn’t formally codify that. No one thought either guild would stoop so low – the verbal agreement should have been enough.
Except the promises of murderers aren’t worth the blood that paid for them. The most surprising thing about Cocoon is that it didn’t exist sooner.
Another student is speaking, but all Isabel hears is her own heartbeat pounding in her ears and the slight hitch of her breath. Her chair screeches against the floor as she stands.
‘Where are you going, Bella?’ asks Mr Branagh.
‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ She grabs her bag, already stumbling towards the door. ‘I… sorry – I’ve got to go.’
The classroom door swings shut behind her. She takes a deep breath, then trips her way down the stairs as fast as she can and into the nearest toilets, shutting herself in a cubicle.
The guilds don’t train children, said Ian Crampton, 21, who had a sister, a sister who would have waited for him to come home, who needed him…
The guilds don’t train children, he said, as if the fact that she was young would protect him, when it was never enough to protect her, so why the fuck should he get what she didn’t? Why should any of them get to feel safe, when she’s never felt safe in her life, when she can’t sleep in her own bed and she’s got nowhere left to run?
The Fraser was meant to be safe, whatever that even means. It was meant to be a new start – a place that Comma couldn’t follow her and a route to another life, a civilian life, like the one the rest of these kids were given without having to fight for it. She could have been Bella Nicholls for real and left it all behind, if only she hadn’t fucked it up.
Isabel wants to laugh, and she wants to cry.
She does neither. She fumbles the lid of the toilet open and throws up until it feels like there’s nothing left in her stomach. Shit. Is she sick? She hasn’t eaten yet today and acid burns her throat, but her hands are shaking too much to unzip her bag and retrieve her water bottle. She can’t catch her breath. She can’t catch her breath. She can’t breathe.
Is this how she dies? After everything she’s been through, she’ll suffocate in a school toilet that reeks of vomit?
‘Hey,’ says a voice. ‘Are you okay in there?’
She didn’t hear them come in. She left herself vulnerable, didn’t watch her back, because she’s an idiot. Every decision she’s made in the past week proves that. Isabel tries to stifle her gasping breaths, waiting for whoever it is to leave, but instead of retreating footsteps, she hears the soft rustle of a bag being placed on the floor.
‘Are you having a panic attack?’ they ask.
Just leave, she thinks, but she doesn’t have the lung capacity to say it aloud. Her breath hitches, her heart slamming desperately against her ribcage like it’s trying to escape.
‘Okay,’ says the voice. ‘You don’t have to talk. I want you to breathe with me. Can you do that?’ Their voice is gentle and steady. ‘Let’s hold our breath for five seconds. I’ll count them. One, two…’ Isabel fights for control of her breathing. ‘Now breathe out. Let it all go. You’re doing brilliantly. One, two…’
Isabel feels dizzy, and she’s fairly sure she’s going to throw up again, but she lets the voice guide her breathing. The tight band around her chest loosens a little, five counts at a time.
‘Can you tell me five things you can see right now?’ asks the voice.
‘What?’
‘Anything you see around you. It doesn’t matter what.’
‘Toilet,’ she says. ‘Bin. Toilet roll. Crisp packet. Graffiti.’
‘That’s great. You’re doing great. What about five things you can hear?’
That’s harder. ‘The cistern filling. One of the taps is dripping. The class next door.’ Isabel struggles to fill the remaining gaps. ‘Cars on the road outside. Your voice.’
‘Good. That’s really good. You okay?’
Isabel no longer feels like she’s suffocating, but she’s shaking and exhausted. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you come out of the cubicle and wash your face? It might help.’
She doesn’t want to be seen like this, but she can’t stay here for ever, and clearly the stranger isn’t planning to leave. It takes three attempts before Isabel’s shaking legs will support her weight, and she has to lean on the cistern to flush the toilet, wiping her face with a piece of tissue. Then, hesitantly, she unlocks the cubicle.
The voice belongs to a brown-haired girl wearing glasses and a concerned expression. ‘Hello,’ she says.
‘Hi.’ Isabel’s voice is hoarse.
‘I’m Emma.’
She manages, after a moment’s thought, to give the correct name. ‘Bella.’
‘Was that the first time you had a panic attack?’ asks Emma.
‘Yes.’ No. The fear isn’t new, the crushing terror an old ghost that’s haunted her all her life. But nobody’s ever stayed with her, talking her through it. Nobody’s ever helped her come back to herself. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I wasn’t going to ask.’ Emma holds out a water bottle. ‘Here.’
Isabel’s words have abandoned her, and it seems incomprehensibly difficult to explain that she already has a water bottle, so she takes it and manages to drink a few sips. Emma watches her like she expects her to collapse at any moment.
‘Thanks,’ she says finally, screwing the lid back on the bottle and wiping her mouth. ‘I should get back to class.’
‘Maybe you should go to the nurse,’ says Emma. ‘Or at least sit on the bench outside for a minute until you feel better.’
Until you stop shaking, she means, and Isabel momentarily hates Emma for seeing her like this. ‘I’ll manage,’ she says, though she doubts she can walk back up the stairs to her History lesson without her jelly-legs giving way.
‘At least let me walk with you.’
Isabel shakes her head. ‘I can manage,’ she insists. Emma’s concern is misplaced: this panic’s entirely rational given the shit she’s in, and Isabel deserves worse. She can’t explain that, though, and if she lets Emma be kind to her any longer, she’s going to shatter before she can rebuild the walls holding her together. So instead she says, ‘You don’t even know me.’
Emma shrugs. ‘No, but I know panic attacks. Nobody should have to be alone through that.’
Being alone means not being in anyone’s debt. Means not letting anyone see her at her weakest. ‘I should go.’
Emma still looks worried, but she doesn’t try to stop Isabel as she heads for the door. ‘I’ll be in the library at lunch if you need company,’ she says. ‘You know… if you wanted to talk about it.’
The last thing she wants is to talk about the complete clusterfuck she’s made of her life. ‘Thanks,’ she says, ‘but I’m okay.’
Isabel doesn’t go back to History; the thought of explaining to Mr Branagh why she left is too much to contemplate. She walks until she finds herself outside the nurse’s office instead, and the door opens before she has a chance to overcome her hesitation and knock. There’s no opportunity to extricate herself before she’s ushered inside to be fussed over, having her temperature taken and answering a dozen rapid-fire questions.
Eventually, she convinces the nurse that she doesn’t need to call Isabel’s parents to authorise sending her home early, and then she takes the midday tram back home.
Her flat feels no safer by day, but she curls up in bed anyway, a miserable heap of blankets hidden from the world. She stays there until it’s dark outside, and then she drags herself to the kitchen table and Mortimer’s safety documentation, letting rules and regulations smooth away the fear. Finally she falls asleep with her head resting on the paper, and wakes an hour later from a nightmare with her father’s face.
The night is long and fearful, but Isabel’s only sick twice more. She counts it as a victory that when her alarm screeches it’s able to wake her, because that means she slept, but in her momentary panic at the sound, she reaches blindly for her knife and grabs the blade instead of the hilt.
Only the blood tells her she’s injured at all. She stares down at her hand for too long before reaching for a bandage, waiting for the pain. It should have hurt.
But it was her left hand, and the scarring across her palm has warped it ugly and tough enough not to feel.
6 INFORMO (INFORMATION)
Isabel has a free period, the result of her medical exemption from PE, and she’s spending it in the library, resenting her endless History homework and her ongoing nausea in equal measure. As she stares down at the textbook and tries to make sense of its lies, she finds herself remembering the insomniac nights of her childhood and how she would creep from her bedroom along the darkened corridors like a shadow. She became good at finding new places to hide. One of them was a library, if you could call it that – a small, dusty room with a few scuffed shelves of outdated textbooks. For a while it was a safe place, and she used to perch on a step stool and work her way through the tattered volumes.
You’d never find those histories in the Fraser’s library. From them, Isabel learned about the city’s origins, more than a century ago, as a research base dedicated to weapons development and intelligence operations to support the Allied war effort. Scientists and spies: those were Espera’s first inhabitants, Europe’s best and brightest, and they had a dozen languages between them, a barrier that somehow nobody had anticipated. It was a young French radio operator who suggested Esperanto as a way to bridge their differences. After all, it was a project about hope – hope of cooperation, hope of victory. Hope that the weapons they developed would kill the enemy’s children instead of their own, thinks Isabel bitterly. She wonders how the early Esperantists would feel about their language of unity becoming a tool of violence for the guilds.
But the project was successful, for a given definition of success. The trouble began when the war ended and the funding was cut. Those scientists and spies found they had a taste for death-dealing and wouldn’t willingly give it up. It wasn’t long before they realised how lucrative the business of selling their wares across the world could be. When the ministers in charge of the project objected, they killed them. When the British government tried to beg exclusivity in exchange for the English land ceded to the growing town, they raised their prices. In the space of a few short years, it went from a clandestine wartime operation to a major commercial operator in the world of weapons and intelligence, and it had no plans to go back.
What really fascinated Isabel in those books were the pictures: aerial photographs of that early complex of wartime buildings and the settlement that grew up around them, hardly recognisable as the seed of the city of Espera. It’s almost unbelievable that within a century those huts, research laboratories, and factories, separated from their Yorkshire neighbours by a barbed wire fence, could grow into a closed city that’s all but self-sustaining. But the photographs clearly mapped its rapid development, the fence posts repeatedly pushed back as the town consumed the farmland around it, until the day they became concrete walls instead. And when the walls were done, another war looming on the horizon, Espera closed its gates and issued its ultimatum of independence.
It’s hard, after all, to do anything much against a city with weapons to rival those of the bloodiest nations in the world.
In those days there was only one guild, known as Flight, but the unity didn’t last. Isabel had almost reached the chapter that explained the schism that formed the two guilds, her torch batteries running low, when the green-eyed woman flicked on the light and said, ‘Reading by torchlight will ruin your eyesight, little Moth.’
