The Ice House by Tim Clare

Author:Tim Clare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

CHAPTER 11

WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS

Butler sat up, coughing. His kaftan had holes in the chest, purple and sodden, with tacky dark scar tissue showing through.

He spat tooth fragments and a stringy gobbet of blood.

Delphine stared, her head spinning. Butler’s wounds were healing. He had the honours. He was a peer.

He retched, hacking black sputum into his palm. He wiped it off with a handkerchief and held up something between thumb and forefinger: a bullet.

‘Oh, how unpleasant,’ he said.

‘So the rumours are true,’ said the girl who had called herself Agatha.

‘You shot me based on rumours?’

‘She shot you based on my orders,’ came a crackly voice. ‘Consider yourself relieved of duty.’

‘Ah.’ Butler laughed and scratched his neck. ‘I should’ve guessed. So nice to hear your voice again, dear leader!’

A delay, then: ‘You’re a coward, Butler.’ Ms Rao’s words were coming from a speaker somewhere in the shadows. ‘Agatha – search the boat.’

‘Wait, wait, wait,’ said Butler. ‘What exactly am I accused of here?’

Another delay. ‘Defecting.’

‘What?!’ He rose, flicking blood from his clothes. A dozen carbines swung to point at his head. Slowly, he raised both hands. ‘Steady now. I heard you the first time.’

‘If he moves from that spot, fire,’ said Agatha.

‘Look.’ Butler made a show of holding his arms frozen in the air. ‘I don’t deny I’ve concealed my identity from some of our newer team members.’ He glanced down at his chest, where already tufts of wet fur grew through the holes in his kaftan. ‘Obviously. I am . . . was a member of the perpetuum. I’m sure you appreciate why I might want to keep information like that a secret.’

Delphine felt chills. Adrenaline blurred the edges of her vision. She remembered the crunch as his face had struck the van door. Something had broken, yet in all the fuss she had not questioned it. Come to think of it, she had never seen him eating.

‘But you’ve always known what I am.’ A rise in volume indicated he was addressing Ms Rao over the radio. ‘And I’ve not defected from SHaRD. Not . . . knowingly.’

Agatha shook her head and gave him a pitying smile. ‘The camp told us what happened.’

He squinted. ‘What . . . happened at the camp?’

‘You killed half the guards and escaped with all the weapons you could fit in one boat.’

‘No, we didn’t,’ said Delphine.

Several carbines swung to target her.

‘Delphine. I thought he might have killed you all.’

‘As if I’d give him the chance! And there wasn’t this . . . massacre. We left under perfectly ordinary circumstances.’ She pointed at Butler. ‘And I did not know he was one of those, those . . .’ She thought of Father, burning. ‘He lied to me, too. But we didn’t kill anyone.’

‘I didn’t lie,’ said Butler out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You never asked me.’

Agatha studied Delphine for a few moments. She turned to Alice.

‘What’s your story?’

Alice pressed her lips together. ‘Well . . . I didn’t ask to come, but I’m not a hostage or anything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.