Nightwatch on the Hinterlands

by K. Eason

  Iari eyelocked Corso. Cracked tusk. Blood all over his face where the lip had split, where he’d smacked a cheekbone on something. He’d got through his enlistment and the whole surge with his face intact. Not so much on the inside.

  But he was looking at her now like everyone looked at templars: expecting her to do something, unspecified what. Not sit here beside him and wait for her syn to ebb enough she could bandage his hands.

  Not sit here at all.

  There were twenty-two war-forged weapons with mangled command lines and fledgling sapience in that warehouse. Decommed and disarmed, but dangerous. Jich’e’enfe could come back online. Or someone else could. Keawe’s solution was the simplest, and the safest.

  Iari set the roll of polymesh down on the bench beside him and stood up. “Iffy, when you’re done with Gaer, Corso needs some help. Make sure they both get to the hospice safely.”

  Iffy made a grinding noise in her throat. “Of course I—wait.” She paused, turned her head. Her hands, gloved and stained and holding Gaer’s face together, never moved. “Where are you going?”

  Iari ignored her. “Char. Luki. You’re with me.”

  Iari could see questions moving around in Luki’s eyes, in the flexing of silent lips.

  “The riev, Corporal.” Iari walked past her. “We’re going to get them.”

  Char asked nothing and followed her down the ramp. After a beat, Luki came too, probably choking on questions. Or concerns. Or wondering what the hell her lieutenant was up to now, when they’d just gotten to safety.

  Iari wondered that herself, as she walked back to the warehouse.

  “Sir,” Char said, in what passed for a low voice. “Corso is correct. I heard the Knight-Marshal’s orders.”

  Oh, Ptah’s unkind mercy.

  “Over comms, you heard her.”

  “Yes.” Char hesitated. Then, more softly, “There are riev scouts with more advanced surveillance than I.”

  So that meant the rest of the riev knew about Keawe’s orders, too.

  Iari gagged as the syn flared again. She held its (her) panic down to a brisk march, not quite running back into the warehouse.

  Keawe met Iari two meters inside, forewarned, no doubt, by the hopper pilot and the templar who’d tried to stop Char. She jabbed a finger back toward the hopper.

  “Lieutenant. I thought my orders were clear.”

  “They were, sir.” Iari was very aware of Char behind her. Of the riev clumped together in the ruins of what had been Peshwari’s barricade of crates, that they had destroyed on their way inside. She pitched her voice to carry—the riev would hear it, let the riev hear it. “Sister Iphigenia has the wounded in hand. I’m here to collect the riev and return them to the Aedis.”

  Keawe’s visor was still raised. Her face might as well have been Char’s, for all its expression. “We’ve got the riev handled.”

  Luki made a strangled noise. Keawe shot her a puzzled glance. Refocused that narrow stare on Iari.

  Who said, much more quietly, “I know what you’re planning, sir. I’m asking you not to do that.”

  Keawe was so very much bigger. Hulking. Almost Char’s height and breadth. She took a step closer, then two. “That decision’s been made.”

  Templars didn’t fight each other, Iari reminded herself. They were like the riev that way. Iari’s syn wasn’t convinced. It sparked along her nerve and tugged at her breath.

  “Are those Knight-Marshal Tobin’s orders, sir?”

  What Iari would do if they were, Chaama’s bones, Mishka’s blood, she didn’t know. Stand down. Stand aside. Go back to the hopper.

  Courage is facing that which is within your strength to face; but doing so does not guarantee your victory.

  But then Keawe said, “Knight-Marshal Tobin’s not here, Lieutenant. I am,” and Iari let her breath go. Cold, clear relief flooded through her.

  “Yes sir. But where it concerns the safety of B-town, my directives come from him. These riev are citizens of B-town. I’m going to bring them back to the Aedis for their safety. Sir.”

  Keawe’s lips went white where they pressed against her tusks. “Their safety. You look around, Lieutenant. Look at the doors. If they’d met resistance here, what do you think would’ve happened?”

  “But they didn’t, sir. They aren’t dangerous. They’re not like Sawtooth.”

  “Yet. You said they had Oversight again.”

  “Yes sir. They did. I don’t think it’s working anymore. There’s no one giving orders.” Iari choked on a mouthful of honesty: she had only the riev to confirm that. But if there were, then Gaer would likely be dead, and this conversation wouldn’t be happening.

  “We’ve lost custody of both the altar and the wichu who presumably activated their Oversight. What’s to stop her from reactivating it?”

  “We can’t kill them because of what they might do. We owe them better, sir. They fought in the surge, same as templars. Same as soldiers.” She kept back what Gaer would’ve said: that they might’ve been soldiers, before wichu artificing. “Some of them are older than we are. Char is. Some of them were at Saichi.”

  “I don’t need a history lesson. Void and dust, you are so very much Tobin’s.” Keawe’s gaze broke. She speared a scowl at the riev, who stood like it was another day at the docks, and they were waiting for day labor. Except for the wall of templars, they might’ve been. “So your solution is to ask for their cooperation.”

  “Yes sir.” Loudly. Let the riev hear it. “It’s worked so far. Asking.”

  Keawe glared at Char, standing silent and conspicuous on Iari’s flank. “All right. Ask. If they’ll go with you, fine. If they don’t.” She spread her fingers, spacer-shrug. “Then my orders stand. Are we clear?”

  “Yes sir. Th—”

  “Don’t fucking thank me.” Keawe made a slicing gesture. “Void and dust.” Then, “Fall back,” she said louder, not bothering with helmet comms. A battlefield shout, for when comms failed and visors broke. “Fall back. Let the lieutenant through.”

  Iari stepped around her then, and marched up to the templar line, which drew aside and made room for her, for Luki, for Char.

  The riev were waiting. Only their optics moved, tesla eyes or sensor arrays or whatever they had. If Char could hear through helmets, then the riev would’ve heard everything.

  Iari picked a familiar face, and the only name she had. “Winter Bite.”

  The blank mask-face tilted toward her (all the riev did, out of sync). “Lieutenant.”

  “Did you hear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then will you come back to the Aedis with me?”

  Winter Bite’s head moved. They might’ve been looking at Char, or at Keawe. Or just at nothing, while the riev did their internal, networked consultation. Then Winter Bite’s chin dipped again.

  “We will go to the Aedis, Lieutenant.”

  We, now. Pronouns spreading like plague.

  “Excellent.” Iari swallowed a mouthful of dust. “Corporal, you’ve got point. Riev next. Char, you and I will bring up the rear. Let’s move out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The aethership Rishi hovered over the dock in the Aedis courtyard. Heat waves shimmered at the plasma ports, but the big coil-drives were offline. That was just venting, that heat. All the ship’s buoyancy now depended on hexwork.

  Iari couldn’t see the equations, but she knew they were there, same as she knew the stars were, above the brassy blue, daylit vault of the sky. That was faith, maybe. Gaer would say it was knowledge; faith was in what you couldn’t see, couldn’t touch, couldn’t prove.

  If that was true, then what Jich’e’enfe had done in the cellar with the altar and the fissures would fall into the realm of prayer, because damn sure it wasn’t arithmancy or alchemy. Let that premise hold, and what Iari’s own implants had d
one—that whitefire column, that smite—was prayers answered.

  She hadn’t told anyone. Not Diran (rather eat the shattered remains of Gaer’s visor than do that). Not Iffy, which was a little harder, because Iffy had those big blue eyes. Not Tobin, which made her guts knot up with guilt whenever she saw him.

  Yet, she consoled herself. I haven’t told Tobin yet.

  Neither had Gaer or Corso. Not a planned conspiracy of secrets, exactly; when Keawe had arrived with that hopper full of templars, there had been too much else to do—secure the site, collect the dead. And after—Corso had stayed in the Aedis long enough to get his hands seen to, his tusk capped, before returning to B-town. Gaer, whose face was all over polymesh, who had a concussion and two cracked ribs and all manner of soft tissue damage and med-mecha’s near-constant surveillance, hadn’t said anything either for the eight days he’d been in the hospice.

  And, truth, why would he say anything? He’d expect her to report it. Good templar, dutiful, who attended prayers in temple even at the inconvenient hours, who believed those prayers. Who had faith in the Aedis’s basic goodness and rightness. She should’ve reported it first thing.

  Templars scuttled in the aethership’s shadow, moving crates out of the hold. Armor, gear, belongings. Rishi had just gotten back from a run to Windscar to retrieve templars to reinforce—replace, absorb—the remains of Peshwari’s unit. Keawe had said they were a loan, but Iari thought they might be more permanent. A hand-picked transfer between Knight-Marshals, with the approval of the involved Aedis Mothers, didn’t need Seawall’s approval (or interference). And bypassing Seawall meant no political assignments, no let’s-send-the-fuck-ups-north-to-B-town. Keawe’s people were experienced templars, or at least well-trained, Keawe-trained amateurs, to pad out B-town’s garrison.

  The templar in charge of the unloading barked orders and stomped around and side-eyed Iari. He’d stripped down to his undershift, bare-armed and bare-chested, as if it were high summer and not watery autumn. He might be trying to identify rank—she was uniformed—from that distance. Or, no. He was grinning at her.

  Sweet sizzling Ptah.

  “He’s certainly fit,” Iffy observed, and sipped her mug of tea. Steam came off the cup, reminding everyone (except that Windscar templar) that it was autumn, not high summer, and the sunlight was more light than heat. “He’s trying very hard to impress.”

  “Huh.” Iari studied the empty bottom of her own mug. “You or me?”

  “Oh, please. You. There are stories going around the barracks about you. His name is Notch, by the way. Not his real name. But that’s what everyone calls him, including Keawe. Lieutenant Notch.”

  “The hell do you know this?”

  “I hear things. Are you going to ask what kind of stories they’re telling?”

  “No.”

  “How you took down a tunneler. How you fought off a whole pack of boneless in that cellar. How you killed a rogue riev.”

  “There were four boneless, which barely counts as a pack, and Gaer helped. Char killed Sawtooth and Swift Runner.”

  Iffy rolled her eyes. Iari pretended not to notice.

  From here, in the lee of the kitchen doors, she could just see the pair of small, temporary flood-teslas, now dimmed for daylight, and the hastily erected tents across the courtyard. The B-town riev stood outside the tents, collected together like a sheaf of armored wheat. Su’seri, from Windscar, said they were intact, uninfected; and Char said there was no Brood taint. They were—well, not exactly free, because riev never had been. Tobin had asked, very deliberately, for them to stay in the Aedis, to which they had agreed. Iari suspected Char’s hand in that decision.

  There had been debate about fences. Barriers. Tobin had insisted that guests were not confined anywhere. Mother Quellis had concurred. Keawe had called them both reckless.

  Iffy shifted a little closer. Her eyes floated over the rim of her mug like blue moons. “So. I hear there’s a meeting this morning.”

  “You hear a great deal.”

  Another eyeroll, this one with a side of smirk. “Is it about the stasis chest in quarantine?”

  Sawtooth’s chip. Iari shrugged and looked for a place to put her own mug. “What do you know about that?”

  “Oh, give it to me.” Iffy took the mug from her and fit it, somehow, in her tiny hands. “I don’t know anything. That’s why I’m asking. Sister Diran acts as if Mishka herself delivered a directive of secrecy.”

  “Not Mishka. Knight-Marshal Tobin. People get them confused sometimes.” Iari shrugged. “The contents are classified. For once, Dee’s not being dramatic.”

  “Yes, she is.” Iffy waved a hand. “Don’t tell me, then. Fine. I understand.”

  “No.”

  Iffy stopped, mid-wave. “No?”

  “No, the meeting this morning is not about what’s in the stasis chest.” Prior meetings had been. Su’seri had looked at Sawtooth’s chip and demanded to take it to Windscar. Diran had objected. Now the chip sat in stasis, to Su’seri’s dismay (and promise to protest, through official channels). “This meeting’s about the ship coming from Seawall and the Five Tribes embassy delegation on board. They want to take Gaer back for medical treatment.”

  Iffy stiffened to her full height, plus a centimeter of pure indignation. “What, now? It’s been eight days! If Gaer were critical, he’d be dead already. He’s getting better.”

  “I think that’s exactly why now.”

  “They can’t recall him. Or reassign him. Or, or take him. I’ll put a medical stop on his transfer.”

  Trust Tobin, Iari wanted to say. Trust me. It’ll be okay.

  But it might not be. Gaer was in trouble for reasons that had nothing to do with reason and everything to do with politics.

  So all Iari said was, “I’ll see you later,” and started the not-nearly-long-enough walk to Tobin’s office. The tea felt solid in her gut, as if she’d swallowed stones.

  The templar-on-loan (Notch. Hrok’s breath, what a name) grinned as she walked by. Elements help everyone, he started to walk toward her.

  Iari’s syn twitched, like a cat’s ear when it hears something but doesn’t care enough to open its eyes. Iari raised a hand, greeting and warning, and this Notch stopped like he’d slammed into Char. His stare followed her long after she passed under the aethership’s shadow.

  * * *

  —

  Tobin had rearranged his office. There were three chairs now in front of the desk. The new addition, conspicuously in the center, was smaller and less aggressive and of a decidedly Seawall design: all whorls and smooth waves and the shapes suggestive of fishes. Oh, Blessed Four. That meant Quellis was coming to the meeting, which meant something official, Aedian, something beyond Knight-Marshals shuffling troops.

  Iari’s guts curdled. “Am I early?”

  “No. I wanted to talk to you first.” Tobin pretended serenity, fingers folded on his desk, face blank. Pretended, because his fingertips were bloodless where they pressed his knuckles. “Iari. I need you to be honest.”

  Her guts coiled, clenched, turned cold and solid. Oh Ptah, oh Hrok, he knew. Maybe Corso had told after all. Or Dee had seen something on the med-mecha’s scans. Or Gaer had—no, not Gaer. He wouldn’t.

  “Yes sir.”

  Tobin gave her one of his flickering half-smiles. “I don’t mean to suggest that you’d lie to me. I mean, I need an accurate opinion.”

  Dust in her mouth. Ashes. “Sir.”

  “How well do you trust Gaer?”

  Iari blinked. “He’s kept his word to us so far.”

  “Yes. To the Aedis.” Tobin’s gaze drifted toward the door and hung on nothing. “But now things will become more complicated. How well do you personally trust him?”

  Gaer was SPERE, an arithmancer, an alien. As a group, no, trust vakari as far as you could throw them into the
Weep. That was historical precedent, and Jareth’s advice, and sense if you’d read any history, ever.

  But Gaer wasn’t any vakar. He was arrogant and capable and currently hanging in the hospice wing in one of those vakari slings (you don’t put someone with dorsal spines in a bed) because he’d acted when he did not have to act, and risked his life in so doing. That was bravery, by even cold Jareth’s standards. Bravery was a virtue. And where there was one virtue, there would be others. Loyalty, maybe.

  Faith, again: “Sir. I trust him. Completely.”

  “All right.” Tobin’s face gave her no hints. Full spacer mode. But before she could ask him what he meant, what this was about, the door rattled under Keawe’s knock, and when Tobin called come in, Mother Quellis was there, too, waving Iari back to sitting.

  “As you were, Lieutenant. Please. Knight-Marshal Tobin. A pleasure, as always.” Quellis climbed into her smooth-sided Seawall-shaped chair and perched, templar-straight. She fired a jacta-bolt smile at Tobin. “I appreciate all of you taking the time to attend this meeting, although I thought, Knight-Marshal Tobin, that it would be just the two of us.”

  “I thought Knight-Marshal Keawe and Lieutenant Iari would bring useful perspectives to our conversation.”

  Keawe dropped into her chair. She fired a look at Iari over Quellis’s head, eyebrows up, and scowled. “Conversation about what?”

  Tobin’s face didn’t move. “We have two requests for custody of the ambassador. We need to discuss which one to honor.”

  “There is nothing to discuss,” said Quellis, “except the accommodations for the Five Tribes delegation while they are here, and the degree of access we will allow them to the ambassador while the Synod decides how to respond to the charges. This is not our decision to make.”

  “Wait. What charges?” Keawe’s hand spasmed, spacer for something very emphatic, ending in a fist. “What are you talking about?”

  Tobin’s own hands stayed knotted together. “The wichu representatives to the Synod charge that Gaer murdered the artificer Jich’e’enfe on orders from Five Tribes Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. They are demanding we arrest and remand him into their custody. To the Vashtat, as happens.”