Jen nodded sympathetically. “It’s only natural that they’d want to know, I suppose.”
“Of course it is. It’s not just the officers, either. Val and Mor are lifers; they’re used to this sort of thing. But what about the recruits?” Marcus shook his head. “Most of us Old Colonials got sent to Khandar because we’d pissed off the wrong person, but the recruits just signed up on the wrong day and drew the short straw. How long are they going to stay here? Until we catch the Divine Hand and the Steel Ghost? That could be years—or never.”
“Have you asked him about it?”
“Asked who? The colonel?”
She nodded and raised the bottle toward him. He hesitated, then held up his glass, and she poured a generous portion for both of them.
“I’ve never had the chance,” Marcus said. “I barely see him anymore.”
“Why not?”
Marcus shrugged. “He spends his time in his room, or in with the prince.”
“Has he ordered you to stay away?”
“No,” Marcus said, uncomfortably. “But—”
He suddenly wanted to tell Jen about the underground room. The mysterious Names, so important that they warranted a royal command. She might know what Janus had meant. She might be able to help—
Don’t be a fool, something whispered at the back of his mind. She’s Concordat. They’re killers, spiders, eyes and ears and knives in the dark. She works for the Last Duke, not for the king, and certainly not for the colonel. Tell her anything and God alone knows what she’ll do with it. But looking at her, her head tipped as she studied the glistening brandy through a thin fall of brown hair, he found it hard to picture her in the company of the sinister figures in leather greatcoats that haunted the sets of bad dramas.
He raised his glass abruptly. “To Adrecht.”
“Captain Roston, you mean?” she asked.
“He got me my first sniff of this stuff, way back at the dawn of time.”
Jen paused. “Is he still . . .”
“He stopped a saber for me at Weltae. It didn’t look awful at the time, but it went bad on him. The cutters took his arm off last night. As of this morning, he was looking a little better, but . . .” Marcus closed one hand into a fist and stared at it.
Jen nodded and raised her glass. “To Adrecht, then.”
They drank. After a moment’s respectful silence, Jen said, “I wanted to ask you about him, after the battle on the road, but . . .”
“But?”
“I figured you’d assume I was fishing for the Ministry and clam up.”
“Ah. You might have been right.”
“Do you mind if I ask now? I swear it isn’t for . . . official purposes. I’m just curious.”
Marcus looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged. “Go ahead.”
“When the colonel wanted to arrest him, you threatened to resign.” It wasn’t a question. Marcus wondered if Janus had told her, or if camp rumor knew everything by now.
“I did,” he said.
“Why? The colonel could have had you shot.”
“He’s my friend,” Marcus said. “We were at the College together.”
“That was a hell of a thing to do for a friend.”
Marcus paused, staring into his empty glass. What the hell? he thought. Even if she does put this in her report, I can’t see how it would matter. He held out the tumbler, and Jen silently refilled it.
“He saved my life,” Marcus said, after a few moments’ contemplation.
“Ah. In a battle somewhere?”
Marcus shook his head. “Long before that. You’ve read my file, I suppose?”
“On the way over.”
“How much detail does it go into?”
She shrugged. “Not much. Even the Ministry can’t keep track of everything about everyone. It says you’re an orphan, top quarter of your class at the College, requested assignment to Khandar.”
“An orphan.” Marcus turned the glass on the tabletop, watching the colored light refracted through the liquor. “I suppose I am.”
Jen said nothing, sensing that she’d stumbled into dangerous territory. Marcus took a deep breath.
“When I was seventeen,” he said, “about a year after I left for my lieutenant’s course at the College, there was a fire at home. It had been a dry summer, apparently, and something touched off dry grass on the lawn. It spread to the house before anyone noticed. The whole place burned. Mother was always telling Father it was a rickety old firetrap, but he said it was historic and it would be a crime to renovate.” He tapped the brandy glass and watched the patterns of light ripple. “They were both killed. My sister, Ellie—she was four. Most of the servants, too, people I’d grown up with.”
Jen touched his arm, very lightly. “God. I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. “Adrecht was with me when I got the news. I . . . didn’t take it well. I started sneaking out, spending a lot of time in the foreigners’ bars, drinking too much, starting fights. I didn’t even realize he was keeping track of me, but one night he cornered me in a back garden by one of the passages we used to get past the sentries. He handed me a pistol, and he said . . .”
Marcus smiled slightly, remembering. “He told me that if I wanted to kill myself, I should do it here and now, because the way I was trying was taking too long and causing everyone a lot of trouble. I was furious with him, told him there was no way he could understand, but he kept at me, asked me if I was too scared. Eventually I put the pistol to my head, just to show him. I don’t remember if I meant to pull the trigger or if it was just my hands shaking. But I still remember the little click as the hammer came down.
“It wasn’t loaded, of course. When my heart started up again, I realized Adrecht was right.” Marcus picked up the glass in front of him and drained it. “I went back to class, did well, got my silver stripe. After my tour as lieutenant, Adrecht told me he was going for captain, so I did, too. Then he got himself sent to Khandar, and I told him I would come along. He tried to talk me out of it, but I said, ‘What the hell is there for me here?’” He set the glass down with a decisive click. “And here we are.”
There was a long silence. Jen took her own glass, refilled it, and held it up.
“To Adrecht,” she said.
WINTER
Winter laid her hands flat in front of her and took a deep breath. “All right. We need to talk.”
“I know,” Bobby said, almost inaudibly. She seemed drawn in on herself, shoulders hunched, staring at the lamp in the center of the table. “I think . . .”
There was a long pause. Then Bobby looked up, and Winter was surprised to see that there were tears in her eyes.
“I think I’m going mad,” she finished, all in a rush.
The girl’s face was drawn and haggard, and bags under her eyes hinted that she hadn’t been sleeping much. Feor sat beside her, resting her splinted arm on a stack of cushions.
They were in the upper room of a Khandarai tavern, the one breed of business that had weathered both the Redemption and the Vordanai reconquest with the equanimity of cockroaches. This one was typical, furnished with only a few threadbare pillows and a low wooden table, but Winter wanted privacy more than comfort. She’d tipped the hostess not to let anyone else up to the tiny second story.
Winter ventured a cautious smile. “Why do you say that?”
“Something happened to me in the battle,” Bobby said.
“Getting shot, you mean?”
“I thought so. It certainly felt like it at the time.” Bobby shook her head miserably. “I remember thinking, this is it. I’d always wondered what it would feel like, and it didn’t seem so bad. Like someone had kicked me. I fell on my ass and watched the rest of you march away, and I tried to get back up to follow you, and then it hurt.” Her lips quivered. “It hurt like . . . I don’t even know how to say it. So I lay back down and thought, ‘Oh, okay, I guess I’m dead, then.’ And I closed my eyes, and—”
She broke of
f as the hostess entered carrying a tray with three clay mugs, each half the size of a man’s head. Winter had to use both hands to lift her drink. Khandarai beer was thick and dark, and bitter enough to take the uninitiated by surprise. It wasn’t her favorite, but she’d gotten used to it. Both Bobby and Feor stared into their mugs as though they weren’t sure what to do with them, and Winter took a swallow to provide an example. Neither followed suit, and she gave an inward sigh.
“I don’t remember very much after that,” Bobby said. “Bits and pieces. I kept waking up and wondering if I was dead yet, and then I’d open my eyes and see the smoke still drifting up and think, ‘No, not yet,’ and then close them again. Once I remember the pain getting worse, so much worse, and I thought that had to be the end. Only I woke up afterward, and I felt . . . okay. Good, even.”
Winter, who was watching for it, saw the corporal’s hand stray to her side, where the wound had been.
“And ever since then,” Bobby went on, “I’ve been seeing things. Or hearing them. Or . . . something. It’s hard to explain.”
“Seeing things?” Winter said. That she had not expected.
“It’s not quite seeing,” Bobby said. “Feeling, maybe. Like there’s something out there, pressing on me, but I can’t quite—I don’t know.” She stared into the depths of her drink. “Like I said, I’m going mad.”
Winter glanced at Feor. The Khandarai girl was regarding Bobby intently.
“She says she’s seeing things,” Winter translated, and Feor nodded.
“She can sense others who possess power,” Feor said. “Me, for example. And perhaps some of Mother’s children remain in the city. All who are touched by magic can do this to one degree or another, but . . .” She sighed. “As I told you, obv-scar-iot should have been bound to someone who had trained from girlhood to accept its gifts. What it will do to someone so completely unprepared I do not know.”
Winter turned back to the corporal, cleared her throat, and realized she had absolutely no idea how to begin. She’d planned for this, but everything she’d practiced in the privacy of her room had flown out of her mind. She took a long swallow of beer to cover it, coughed a bit at the bitter flavor, and cleared her throat again.
Finally, she said, “All right. The thing is . . .” She trailed off again.
“The thing is?” Bobby prompted.
Winter sighed. “You’re not going crazy. But I suspect you’re going to think I am. Just listen, okay?”
The corporal nodded obediently. Winter drew a long breath.
“You got hit on the climb,” Winter said. “You know that much. We found you afterward, and it . . . looked bad.”
“You promised me,” Bobby said in a small voice.
“No cutters,” Winter agreed. “Folsom carried you back to my tent, and Graff did what he could.”
“Did he—” Bobby’s features screwed up as she tried to find a way of asking whether Graff had discovered her secret, without revealing that secret in the process. Winter took pity on her and nodded.
“I know,” she said.
“Oh.” Bobby’s eyes were wide. “Who else?”
“Graff, obviously. And Feor.”
“That’s why you brought her along,” Bobby said. “I was wondering.” She hesitated. “And . . . are you . . .”
“We’re not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you mean.”
The relief was plain on Bobby’s face. She dropped her eyes and, apparently noticing her drink for the first time, ventured a sip. Her lip curled in disgust as the taste registered.
“It takes everyone that way the first time,” Winter said automatically.
“What makes them try it a second time?”
“Stubborn curiosity, I think.” Winter shook her head. “Anyway, I’m not finished.”
“So Graff patched me up?”
“Graff told me you were dying,” Winter said, “and that there was nothing he could do. It was after he left that Feor . . .”
She stopped. This was the sticking point, after all, the bit where any sane, modern, civilized person would listen to her story and laugh. She didn’t think Bobby would—after all, she could see the evidence for herself—but Winter’s cheeks colored anyway.
“Feor healed you,” she forced out. “With . . . magic. I don’t pretend to really understand it.”
“Magic?” Bobby looked at the Khandarai girl, who met her eyes calmly. “She . . . prayed, or something? She is a priestess, I suppose—”
“Not like that.” Winter closed her eyes. “I know this sounds mad, but I was there. It was real, and . . .” She trailed off, at a loss for words, then shook her head again and glared at Bobby. “That patch of skin. It’s still—odd, isn’t it?”
Bobby nodded. “But that’s just a . . . sort of a scar, right?”
“It’s not. You know it’s not.”
There was a long silence. Both of them turned to look at Feor, who appeared unruffled by the attention.
“So . . . ,” Bobby said. “She’s a wizard, then?”
“Like I said, I don’t understand this any better than you do. She calls herself a naathem, which literally means ‘one who has read.’ The spell she used—she would say naath, ‘reading’—if I’m getting this right, it’s called obv-scar-iot. Beyond that . . .” Winter spread her hands. “I don’t know if this means anything to you, but she asked me for permission before she did anything. She thought you might not want to live under those circumstances, I guess. I told her to do it. So if you’re angry, you can be angry at me.”
Bobby just stared. Winter gulped from her beer.
“I brought her along because I thought you might have . . . questions,” she said. “I can translate for you.”
The corporal nodded slowly. Feor glanced at Winter.
“I told her,” Winter said in Khandarai.
“I guessed that from her face,” Feor said. “Ask her how she feels, aside from the odd sensations.”
“Feor wants to know if you feel all right,” Winter translated. “The visions, she says, are a kind of side effect of the spell.”
“I feel fine,” Bobby said.
Winter rendered this for Feor, who said, “She will be stronger now and require less sleep. Injuries will heal very quickly.”
Winter blinked at her. “You didn’t tell me any of that.”
“There wasn’t time,” Feor said.
Winter nodded slowly and translated for Bobby. The corporal looked a bit shaken.
“So this thing is . . . still in me?” She looked down at herself. “How long does it last?”
When that question was put to Feor in Khandarai, she shook her head. “It was not merely a healing. Obv-scar-iot is bound to her. It will not leave her until her death.”
“Forever,” Winter said to Bobby. “Or until you die, anyway.”
Feor looked uncomfortable, as though there were something she wanted to say but could not. Bobby was staring down at her hands. The silence grew and grew, until it was unbearable, and Winter couldn’t help but speak.
“As long as we’re sharing secrets,” she said, “I feel like you ought to have one of mine. It should balance the scales a bit.”
Bobby blinked and looked up. “Secrets?”
Winter nodded. Her throat felt suddenly thick, and she had to force the words out. “Secrets.” She took a deep breath. “I am a—”
“Oh!” Bobby interrupted. “A girl. I know.”
Winter deflated, feeling an irrational anger rising. “You knew? How? Does everyone know?”
Bobby raised her hands defensively. “It was nothing you did. I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t already know. I mean—” She put her head to one side, realizing that last hadn’t made much sense. “If I hadn’t known, in advance, that you were a woman, then I would never have guessed it just by looking at you.”
Winter sat openmouthed, rage replaced by shock. “You knew . . . in advance?”
“Not exactly knew,” Bobby said. “It
was more of a rumor. But once I got here and I saw you, I thought, ‘Well, that has to be her, doesn’t it?’”
“You’d—” Winter broke off and looked sharply at Bobby. “Where did you hear this rumor?”
“I don’t remember exactly,” Bobby said. “But everyone at Mrs. Wilmore’s has heard of Winter the Soldier.”
• • •
“I,” Winter said shakily, after a long silence, “need a drink.”
“You have a drink,” Bobby pointed out.
“I need a better one.”
In the time it took to go into the corridor, find a hostess, and order a bottle, Winter did her best to compose herself. By the time she sat back down at the little table, she felt almost calm, and her voice barely wavered when she said, “You were at Mrs. Wilmore’s?”
Bobby nodded. “Since I was ten.”
“And they’ve heard of me?”
“Of course,” Bobby said. “It’s like a school legend. Every new girl hears it eventually.”
The hostess stepped in with another tray, this one bearing a fresh set of clay cups and an unlabeled bottle of murky liquid. Winter grabbed the bottle, poured herself a cup, and drank it in one go, feeling the vicious stuff burn its way down her throat and into her stomach.
“What exactly does this legend say?” she ventured.
“I must have heard a dozen versions,” Bobby said. “But they all agree that there was an inmate named Winter, and that she escaped from the Prison, which no one had ever done before. I heard stories that she’d gone to Vordan and become a thief, or that she ran off into the country and made herself the concubine of a bandit chieftain, but most people seemed to think that she dressed up as a man and joined the army.”
Anna and Leeya must have told someone. Her friends had sworn up and down that they would take the secret of her escape to the grave, along with her tentative plan to be free of Mrs. Wilmore’s clutches forever by using the army to get beyond her reach. Looking back, though, Winter could see that was a lot to expect from a couple of teenage girls. I’m not sure I could have held my tongue, if I were in their place.
The Thousand Names Page 39
