Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

by K. Eason

  Good thing. The bruising on her torso was awfully pretty. Hate to miss it.

  The blanket and sheet puddled at her hips. She traced the silhouette of both legs to the end of the bed. Good. But the shape of the left one was wrong, too bulky.

  She dragged the bedclothes aside, found her left leg in a mobile boneset below the knee. The knee would flex, so that was good. Bonus: the leg didn’t really even hurt. (Painkillers. Probably the contents of the drip-bag). The boneset’s timer said twelve hours remaining of a programmed twenty-four. So that meant an accelerated cycle, which suggested a fracture rather than an actual break. Or maybe her nanomecha were working again. Maybe both. Also meant she’d been out at least twelve hours so far.

  A flare in the corner of her vision caught her attention. She looked, and the med-mecha was looking back, its multi-faceted array lit up like her HUD had been, at the end (another memory). Well, not quite like that. No red-flash and in-rig siren telling her she’d breached seals, Brood was leaking in.

  The med-mecha slid along its track and stopped overhead. It scanned her. Rays of translucent light, red and green and yellow, crisscrossing over her skin.

  Iari eyed it. “Hi.”

  It beeped. And then, unsurprising, she heard slapping footsteps. Getting louder. Too light to be Diran’s, too quick. Iari looked past the blanketed peaks of her feet at the curtain-door. A pair of very small feet appeared underneath, and then the curtain twitched aside.

  It was that little alw priest, the one Iari’d nearly run over in the corridor last time she’d been here. Sister what was it? Iphigenia, Iphigeniaria, something polysyllabic and pretentious and very alwar. Sister Impossible-Name hesitated a fistful of seconds, staring at Iari. Then she pasted a healer-sweet smile onto her face, and dropped her eyes to the tablet in her hand as if she’d just happened to walk into an otherwise empty trauma partition by casual coincidence. She hooked the stool with her foot, dragged it over, climbed on top.

  “You’re awake, Lieutenant. How are you feeling?”

  “Naked. Cold. Like I might’ve broken something. Sister . . . ?”

  “Iphigenia. Call me Iffy. You broke a few somethings.” She didn’t look up from the tablet. “Two ribs on the other side of your torso, joining the two you cracked in your last adventure. And you broke your left tibia.”

  “Yeah. I saw the boneset. Short program. Couldn’t’ve been a bad break.”

  “Any break is serious.” Sister Iffy pursed her lips. “But yes. You’re healing quickly. Your nanomecha seem to be working again.”

  A tiny knot let loose in Iari’s chest. “What made them stop?”

  “I can’t say for certain.” Iffy pretended great interest in her tablet.

  “Sure you can. You’re reading my file.”

  “They appear to have repaired themselves, but we still aren’t sure what caused the initial interruption in function. Sister Diran would know more about that, so don’t ask me.”

  “You mean she’s not telling you, so you can’t tell me. Sounds like Dee.” Iari ran careful fingers over her chest, over skin hot with bruises. More memory leaked back. She’d gone into that house with a working battle-rig. She’d found Tzcansi inside, very dead. And then—“What happened? I mean, why am I here right now?”

  Sister Iffy’s busy stylus stopped, mid-stroke. “You don’t remember?”

  Too high-pitched for sincerity. Iari sighed. That hurt. Scowling hurt. Her head hurt. “No. And you’re not surprised.”

  “Memory loss is consistent with concussive trauma. I know that there was an explosion and a fire and that a building collapsed on you, Lieutenant. I know your rig was breached. I don’t have all the details, I’m sorry.” She tried a smile, tight and nervous and guilty. Someone didn’t like lying.

  “Then who does have the details? Sister Diran? Maybe I’ll go ask her.”

  “You will not.” Iffy threw herself off the stool and pressed a small hand in the middle of Iari’s bare chest. “You can’t go walking around in a boneset.”

  “I can hop.” Iari wasn’t sure about that. Whatever excellent painkillers she’d had were starting to wear off. Little twinges in her leg, bigger ones in her chest.

  “You should lie down.” Iffy pushed firmly. Frowned, when Iari did not yield a centimeter. “Lieutenant.”

  “I’ll stay in bed, but I’m sitting up. Find me a tunic. Or you’ll treat me for hypothermia next.”

  “Fine.” Iffy did a credible Diran imitation, a heaved-from-the-guts sigh and eyes rolling. She made a point of stowing the tablet in her pocket—out of reach, unreadable—and ducked back through the curtain. She left it open, the width of a particularly petite female alw, which meant just wide enough someone could see in from the corridor, but that someone on the bed wouldn’t be visible if she held still, even if she was halfway naked.

  That open curtain was probably supposed to be a deterrent. Or a test. Iari side-eyed the med-mecha. “Stop me,” she whispered. “Just try.”

  It beeped softly. Shuffled those spider-limbs, rattle-click. Its array of tesla-optics held steady and green.

  Right. Her co-conspirator.

  Iari leaned over carefully, slowly (it hurt), and looked where Iffy had gone. Polished corridors. A row of curtained chambers, all open.

  The med-mecha whistled. Not an alert, like come in here, the patient is dying, but a hey, heads up. Iari glanced at it. It extended one of its limbs partway, pointing over the curtains, toward the interior wall of the trauma unit.

  And yes, there, now she heard them: footsteps on that polished, hygienic stone. An uneven gait, both in meter and weight. A limp. A hard limp, the kind you got with mecha prosthetics and a rough initial graft, which only happened when Brood slime sat too long in a wound, because you were far from the front line (or behind it), a day’s march and an aethership’s flight from the nearest priest, and even Aedian nanomecha couldn’t repair all the damage.

  That was Tobin.

  Iari tugged the sheets up over her chest. Iffy could hurry up with that shirt. She didn’t care about naked so much; but Tobin was a spacer, human, born and raised on the Darmak, and that lot was weird about privacy. Damned, though, if she’d lie down and pull the sheets up under her chin like an invalid.

  And oh, thank you swift-running Mishka: a second set of footsteps detached themselves from the Knight-Marshal’s metallic tread. Faster, skittering on the stone, propelling a breathless Iffy through the gap she’d left in Iari’s curtain. She had a bundle of washed-out colorless fabric clutched against her chest like something precious.

  “The Knight-Marshal’s coming.” Iffy shook out the tunic—one of those boxy things, open on one side and held together with strings. “Let me help you with this. You’ll have to sort of drape it, you’ve still got the needle in your arm—”

  Iari pinched the needle in her elbow gently, held her breath, pulled. On a scale of current injuries, that pain barely rated. She offered the needle to Iffy. “Trade.”

  She thought, for a beat, Iffy wouldn’t: outrage sketched out in round eyes, round lips, the rise of color in her cheeks. Then she snatched the needle out of Iari’s hand with enough force to rattle the whole metal stand. She dropped the tunic onto Iari’s lap like one might drop a sodden rat.

  “Thank you, Sister.”

  “You’re welcome.” Iffy started a vigorous rolling up of the needle tubing, not looking at Iari as hard as she could.

  Iari smothered a grin—she’d offended enough already, no need to provoke—and slid her arms into the cavernous tunnels that passed for the tunic’s sleeves. She shrugged it over her shoulders. Tried raising both arms and discarded any idea of actually tying the thing.

  Iffy left off harassing the needle stand. “Let me.”

  Iari leaned forward carefully. Held herself up on stiff fingertips, denting the mattress, as Iffy did the ties at her nape and betw
een her shoulder blades. Tobin’s tread was very close now, deliberately loud. Deliberately slowing down.

  Iffy whispered something foreign—was that Dwerig?—and obscene. “Sorry. I can’t reach this last one.”

  “It’s fine,” Iari muttered. “Thanks,” as Tobin paused outside the curtain. She could see a pair of armored boots. Greaves. He wore the full formal uniform, every damned day. That was so Tobin.

  As was the quiet, polite, sincere, “Lieutenant? May I come in?”

  And if she said no, he’d leave, Knight-Marshal and her superior or not. Which was exactly why Iari straightened (which hurt) and took a deep breath (which hurt worse) and let it out as slowly and steadily as she could manage. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  Tobin pulled the curtain open. His gaze flicked around the perimeter of the cubicle. Paused at the med-mecha, on the needle stand. Dusted over Iari without stopping and landed on Iffy.

  So serious, Tobin, pure Knight-Marshal, face stiff as a vakar’s. But his voice was gentle, courteous.

  “May I have some time alone with the lieutenant, Sister Iphigenia?”

  “Sir. Yes sir.” Iffy bolted in a flutter of scrubs.

  Tobin waited until her footsteps receded to silence. Then he blew a breath through his nose, not quite exasperation, and dragged the stool to the bedside in a jarring shriek of metal on stone.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Knight-Marshal.”

  “You do realize that this is the second rig you’ve destroyed in a day.”

  “Yes sir. Have to dock my pay.”

  “Or give Jorvik a raise.” Tobin leaned forward and his smile dropped off. “Sister Iphigenia says you don’t remember what happened.”

  Iari frowned at a blank spot of blanket. “Not entirely, sir. I know there was an explosion. Phlogiston, I’m guessing.”

  Another slice of memory: a roiling mass of coils, arcing plasma where Brood and riev collided. Her HUD bleeding alerts, her rig (her?) screaming as the seals ruptured. Brisk Array going down in a spray of Brood slime.

  “Oh, voidspit. Brisk Array.” More memory crashed back: coils in slick blackish violet, plasma sparks, her whole rig flashing alerts. “There was a tunneler, sir, in the house, Brisk Array took it on. He okay?”

  “No. He is not. We can’t find his remains—we assume he was pulled into the void after the tunneler after it killed him.”

  Or there wasn’t enough left to find, Tobin did not say, but Iari understood anyway. She’d gotten lucky. She found her fists rolled up tight. Made her fingers uncurl, one at a stiff time. “And Corso?”

  “The ambassador got him out before the explosion. He is, as far as I know, fine.”

  Iari’s eyes flicked past Tobin, as if the vakar was lurking out in the corridor. “Gaer? What was he doing there?”

  “Exactly what I asked. Evidently when you called your code red, Char overheard, demonstrated initiative, and went to render assistance. The ambassador chose to go along.” Tobin’s face settled back into you can’t read me lines. “Is any of this sounding familiar?”

  “Some, sir.” There were big smears of nothing where that fight should’ve been. The back of her neck ached a little, right at the socket. She reached back. You had to know where to find it. Flush with the skin, tucked between vertebrae. Cooler than the surrounding flesh, most of the time. Hers felt hot. “Sister Iffy said the memory loss was trauma-related.”

  “Iffy?” Tobin’s eyes crinkled, and the edge of his mouth. Then his features crashed sober again. “She might be right. But I think it’s more likely you’re feeling rig feedback. Iffy wouldn’t know about that. She’s too young to’ve been in the surge. It’s something you get from too much synning. I lost most of what happened at Saichi.”

  After he’d killed the Brood hulk, he meant, after it had damn near ripped him in half and dropped him into the mud. There’d been a lot more of that after. Iari remembered the cluster of templars around him, the remnants of Tobin’s rig like petals peeled away from flesh and winking bone. The look on Sergeant Neem’s face, doing the calculus of lives and risk and chances.

  The sergeant had never said, leave the captain behind. That decision had killed her, and Corporal Uesh, and Beren, and—ungentle Ptah, Hrok’s freezing breath—all of them, except Iari.

  The march back to the Saichi plain, back behind allied lines—that had been the real after. And what, Iari wondered, must that have been like for Tobin: to yield up consciousness (or have it taken, rig feedback and injury conspiring together) and come back ten templars down, missing most of a limb, missing how those people died and only knowing that they had done, and for his sake.

  Iari had all those memories. Rain slashing down, mud pulling at her rig. The hike out of the ravine, the howls of the pursuing boneless. Tobin’s body across her shoulders, because of the remaining templars, she was the one big enough, strong enough, whole enough to carry him. The rest of the unit, her friends, buying her time to haul Tobin out.

  And afterward: a curtained space (in this very room, but closer to the door) and a med-mecha hovering over Tobin, touching and monitoring. Tobin’s profile, eyes pointed straight up (at this very ceiling, speckled and smooth). His quiet, raw, what happened, Private? and her quiet, raw recitation.

  Mishka’s mercy that he didn’t remember it.

  Tobin’s throat moved (then and now). Human males could grow facial hair, you could see where it would go, the dark shadow tracing jaw and throat and cheeks. It looked like a bruise in this light, from this angle. He stared somewhere else, somewhen else.

  She steered them out of that place.

  “Sir. Here’s what I do remember. Tzcansi’s dead. Looked like a boneless did it. That’s bad enough, Brood in B-town—a boneless, plus the swarm from before. But the boneless only went after the people in one house, and the swarm stayed in the tavern until we flushed them out. I’ve never heard of Brood doing targeted assassination before. That suggests they’re controlled.”

  “Gaer insists there was an arithmancer present at Tzcansi’s house, who was responsible for the explosion. He might be the one responsible for the Brood, too.” Now Tobin’s anger showed, if you knew where to look. The cracks around his mouth. Around his eyes, themselves gone glittering and sharp as splintered polysteel. “The Brood presence and the attack on Aedian personnel give us cause for an official investigation. I’ve already informed the peacekeepers that we expect their full cooperation.” It was Knight-Marshal Tobin looking down at her now. “When you’ve recovered, you’ll assume responsibility. You report to me, and me only, for the time being. Clear, Lieutenant?”

  Damn good she was already on her ass. “Sir?”

  His brows stabbed upward. “That surprises you?”

  “I’ve broken two rigs, lost a riev, and gotten our prime suspect killed.”

  “On the contrary, Lieutenant. Tzcansi might have killed Pinjat, but her murder suggests there’s another killer out there. If someone’s controlling Brood, I think it’s more likely the arithmancer who tried to kill you. And then there is the altar in that warehouse.” The Knight-Marshal—because this man was all rank right now, all armor—looked at her with that mask he’d perfected after Saichi, whenever anyone asked how he was. “This is a multi-faceted investigation, Lieutenant. We might be dealing with the beginning of a new surge, which is cause enough for alarm. But the murders, the altar, the arithmancy Gaer is investigating, and the possible breach to riev security, all appear to be connected. We don’t know how, but until we do, we need to limit the number of persons involved. The uncertainty of events, coupled with the novelty of our suppositions, would invite speculation from people less well informed of the situation. Do you understand?”

  Oh, ungentle Ptah, this was above her rank and pay grade. Probably five levels of classified to which she was not entitled. And there was only one way to answer. “Yes sir.”

 
; “Good.” Then the Knight-Marshal splayed his fingers, spacer reflex, spacer shrug, and became Tobin again. “I’m putting you in charge of the new initiate. Char,” when she stared at him. “Mother Quellis could find no doctrinal reason to refuse their enlistment.”

  Mother Quellis was a small woman, human, gentle-voiced, a priest of Mishka by temper and calling. An excess of pastries had rounded her silhouette. But you thought soft about her at your peril. A priest didn’t get her own Aedis, even on a backwater tenju seedworld, by being lax with doctrine. Tobin must’ve argued himself hoarse on Char’s behalf.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He raised a brow. “There’s more work in it for you. Ordinarily we’d send Char to train at the facilities at Windscar, but given their unique circumstances, Mother Quellis and I agreed it would be better to handle them here. She and I will devise a curriculum, and I will oversee the implementation, but I will delegate their direct oversight to you. You’ll have to find a way to make that fit in with your current assignment. I’m going to give you Corporal Luki to help.”

  Void and dust. Gaer had alleged that she was Tobin’s favorite (and she was, she knew that), but that didn’t mean failure came with no consequence. She’d expected a reprimand, or temporary reassignment to nightwatch. And here Tobin was giving her a tacit promotion.

  With a riev initiate. With a civilian contractor and a SPERE operative. With poor Corporal Luki, who probably didn’t deserve this notoriety. Not exactly a conventional command, not the sort of thing that got notice from the Synod, or led to offworld postings. But better than patrolling the walls on nightwatch for the next six months.

  Also politically dangerous, if someone up the chain decided Tobin should’ve done something different.

  Her mouth felt full of sharp stones. She swallowed them. “Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Tobin took a small bite of air. “Don’t thank me yet. I also agreed that you should spend the next thirty hours here in the hospice for observation.”

  “Sir.” Iari hoped she kept the look of horror off her face. Knew she’d failed when Tobin’s eyes wrinkled up at the corners.