Insurgents (Harmony Book 1)

by Margaret Ball

  Isovel smiled slightly. “As you wish. As it happens, my reputation among colonials is not one of my primary concerns. And I know that I’ve nothing of that sort to fear from you.”

  “Indeed?”

  “My dear sir! One cannot spend several years as a hostess for Professor – now General – Dayvson’s formal dinners without learning to tell a gentleman from the sort of sleazy little toad who tries to steal kisses in dark corners.”

  “Ah – and have you had to deal with a great many of the latter sort?”

  “Even one is too many.” Isovel took a sip of the mint-flavored sludge soup which was the first course. “Fortunately, my classes at finishing crêche included basic self-defense. Limited, of course; very few of us have the strength and reach to fight even an average man. But we did learn enough to surprise and discourage anyone with wandering hands.”

  Colonel Travis choked on a sip of water but recovered quickly.

  “You don’t think I can do that?”

  “My child, I haven’t the slightest doubt of your capabilities. I’m just surprised that such measures are necessary in your home country. It all sounds most unharmonious.”

  “Sadly, not all our Citizens have as great a dedication to harmony as one might wish.” Isovel looked the colonel in the eyes. “But most of us do. For example, there are very few Citizens who would approve the brutal measures taken by Governor Serman, if they only knew of them.”

  “In that case, it’s a pity they are not allowed access to uncensored news reports.”

  Ouch. Colonel Travis had hit a sore point there. But the principle was still correct, wasn’t it? “In this case, I suppose it is. But in general, it is part of the Central Committee’s responsibility to see that the news is not distorted by sensationalism and falsehoods. One can’t expect ordinary Citizens to, to…”

  “Distinguish between truth and lies? No, it would seem not, at least in your country.”

  Isovel decided to concentrate on not spilling her soup.

  On the night of the next dinner a heavy rain precluded leaving the tent flap open. Tactfully, the colonel included three bright young men who were, unfortunately, as well trained as Colonel Travis in giving away nothing of their plans. It was an evening of light, sparkling wordplay; every attempt of hers to find out about the actions two of the young men had returned from, or the raid planned by the third, was deflected by outrageous compliments.

  “I can see that I’ll have to warn all my officers,” Colonel Travis said after his guests had taken their leave and he had ordered the front tent flap rolled up again.

  “Against leaking military secrets? I don’t think you need to.” Isovel stared into the dark surface of the kahve in her cup. “They are depressingly good at that already. Anyway, even if I did find out something about your plans, how would I tell my people?”

  “True. But I was thinking more about warning them not to fall in love with you.”

  Isovel laughed. “They’re charming boys, but I’m sure they’re much too sensible to interpret light conversation as anything serious.”

  “One hopes so,” the colonel said. “They’re intoxicated by the presence of an attractive young woman, but they must know there’s no point in dreaming about the daughter of General Dayvson. I place more reliance on that than on their age. A minor discrepancy in age is no barrier to attachment, as you have good reason to know.”

  “I do?”

  “Gabrel Moresco,” the colonel said.

  “But he’s practically the same age as –”

  “Ah. You didn’t know, after all. I had wondered.”

  “His men tease him by calling him ‘the old guy.’”

  “Ah. That nickname came about because he’s sensible, cares about keeping them alive, and doesn’t approve flashy high-risk plans. He is, in fact, one of my brightest rising stars. One of my objects is to end this war before he has enough military experience to start lusting after my position – although I expect he’s too sensible for that too. No matter how brilliant he is, soldiers who haven’t worked with him personally would have trouble being commanded by a boy of twenty-five.”

  “He’s twenty-five?”

  “I was assuming two more years before he became ambitious. At the moment he’s only twenty-three.”

  “Oh. Ohhh!” Isovel was consumed by sheer rage. Her hands started shaking; she put the kahve down before she could spill it.

  Or throw it.

  “How dare he! Making me look a fool! He told me he was ‘still the right side of thirty.’”

  “Technically true,” Colonel Travis pointed out.

  “But totally misleading. I thought he was my age or I’d never – never have allowed myself to –” Fingernails dug into her palms.

  The Colonel patted one of her clenched hands. “Does it matter so much? From my perspective, you are both very young. And young people, thrown together, are prone to imagining that mutual attraction is the same as a serious attachment – especially when they are safe from the consequences of their feelings.”

  Isovel relaxed slightly. “You’re quite right. Naturally, I never imagined any – any long-term attachment.” She hadn’t thought about the future at all. Hadn’t wanted to. “Given that he’s a rebel, and that my father was sent here to put the rebellion down. Those would seem to be insuperable obstacles to any – relationship – between us.”

  “Exactly so.” Colonel Travis rose and bowed to her. “I’m glad we had this little chat.”

  “I too,” Isovel lied. Well, you should be glad. What did you expect? Whatever his age, he’s still one of the enemy. When did you start to imagine that you could just wish that away?

  ***

  If Gabrel didn’t feel his ears burning that night, it was only because all his concentration was dedicated to listening over the drumming rain for the whistle that would tell him the advancing column was close enough to attack. The invading army’s supply train was moving extremely slowly on its first encounter with the serious mountains beyond the foothills; his estimate of when he needed to set up the ambush had been off by hours. Who’d have thought they’d be stupid enough to try and march after dark? He’d be lucky if none of his men fell asleep during the prolonged wait. It was already starting; at least, his right foot was asleep, and he dared not move to shake off the pins-and-needles sensation when at any moment he expected to hear the clanking harness of the army’s pack donkeys. And the bush above him had dumped icy rainwater on the back of his neck more times than he could count. Well, at least that kept the rest of him awake.

  There it was at last; a distant sound of feet and hooves on the treacherous, crumbling stone of the river bank. And just one hundred breaths later, the low whistle telling him that the leading edge of this part of the supply train had passed his lookout. Gabrel counted to thirty and fired his blaster down towards the column on the widest possible beam setting, where it served more to illuminate the targets than to do any serious damage. Almost immediately, lower and tighter-focused blaster fire shot out of the low scrub ahead and to the left side of the column. Cries of alarm – an unfortunate beast squealing – shouted commands followed the first attack.

  Gabrel holstered his blaster and sprinted for the bare rock above this patch of shrubbery. The whole plan depended on his getting across that stretch of rock before the enemy lit it up – and he could not feel his right foot. He stumbled, caught himself, took three strides across the smooth rock and slithered into the welcoming darkness of the crevice he’d noted earlier. He’d been lucky beyond his deserts, and he knew it; if the enemy hadn’t been surprised and disorganized, he’d never have reached this shelter in time. He hoped the others had been as lucky in scattering to their preselected hiding places.

  Return fire lit up the left bank of the river and the rocks ahead that condensed the stream into a narrow, rushing torrent. One shrub blazed up into a sudden fire that was quickly extinguished by the rain and the dampness of its own leaves. But no one cried out, and while
the enemy’s blasters lit up the way forward, isolated spots of fire leaped out on the right bank. Gabrel used his own blaster continuously at the wide-angle setting, to destroy the enemy soldiers’ night vision and to distract them from those tiny, almost unnoticeable lances of light where his men, sheltered by rocks, drilled into the enemy forces with tightly focused narrow-beam shots.

  The wide beam of light from his own blaster began to dim after several minutes. Losing charge already! Good thing we’re all double-armed. But it wouldn’t do to leave his men in place and firing until all their weapons were discharged. Gabrel flicked on the safety, holstered the failing blaster and drew the spare with his left hand in one smooth movement. Three needle-beam shots into the milling center of the column were the signal to disengage.

  Unfortunately, three shots from the same position also gave somebody down there a chance to target him. The first shot missed; Gabrel ducked behind his rock shield and watched unhappily as it began to glow from concentrated blaster fire. How many weapons do these bastards have? They haven’t even brought up the heavy stuff yet and already we’re in trouble.

  There was a piercing whistle from well above the tree line and a volley of wider light that distracted the enemy from firing at Gabrel’s rock. He eeled out of the crevice, lost his balance and caught himself with one hand on the heated stone, hissed in pain and threw himself forward, half-falling away from his position and, damn it, totally exposed on yet another rock face. Patrik scrabbled down the rock towards him. “Stop!” Gabrel hissed. “It’s not safe here.”

  “Chief, war isn’t safe.” Patrik reached down and grasped Gabrel’s arm with one large, warm hand, pulled him up to where he could find footing. A desperate scramble got them both out of the exposed position. They found shelter in the minuscule creek Gabrel had chosen for his escape route.

  “You know what, Chief?” Patrik whispered under cover of the shouts and cries from the invading column.

  “What?”

  “Remember the First Law of Raids, everybody scatters and takes a different way back to camp? Sorry, but you’re going to have to share this creek with me until we get a long way from the river.” Patrik began crawling over the wet sand of the creek bottom, and after a moment Gabrel followed him. Wondering just who was supposed to be the leader here.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  For the next few days Isovel made a point of carrying on light flirtations with almost everyone the Colonel invited to his select dinners. Her eyes were bright, her smiles inviting, and her repartee – should any of her victims show signs of taking her seriously – dagger-sharp. More than one young man left the Colonel’s tent half intoxicated with half-promises and veiled suggestions, only to find on his next visit that he was held off with a wall of verbal thorns.

  Colonel Travis complained once, mildly, that she seemed to be trying to get all his best officers tied up in emotional knots. “Sorry,” Isovel said, “I guess I’m just shallow. It’s so hard to resist all these charming gentlemen.” Nobody – nobody – should have any reason to think that she was languishing over that rat, that treacherous liar, that infant Gabrel Moresco. At the next dinner party Isovel behaved twice as outrageously as before and wrapped a middle-aged captain of artillery around her little finger. Annoyingly, the colonel’s other guest merely sat back and watched the byplay with a quiet smile.

  “Lieutenant, I’m afraid we bore you with this frivolous banter,” Isovel attacked directly after a coruscating exchange with the captain in which she’d been likened to a mountain nixie who stole men’s hearts to keep in her cave of treasures.

  “Not in the least,” said Lieutenant Mirez. “I’m simply an unlettered Colonial, unable to keep up with this dazzling display of literary references.”

  “What a pity,” said Isvel, and resolved to make young Mirez regret his failure to pay homage. She ignored him just up to the point where she could be accused of rudeness, and lavished attention on the captain of artillery – who did not, she learned, actually have any artillery at his disposal. Colonel Travis had simply assigned him to that position in case the rebels happened to capture any heavy weaponry from Harmony’s army. That would be an interesting bit of information for her father… if she saw him before the war was over. Colonel Travis had been blandly uninformative when she asked if he’d even begun negotiating for her return.

  “I dare say, in return for letting me go, my father would be willing to postpone direct attacks on the mountains.”

  “No good leader would allow personal motives to dictate his actions,” the colonel had replied, exuding a satisfaction that made Isovel wonder if he, like Gabrel, actually wanted to be invaded. Perhaps there was a streak of insanity among the deportees who’d populated Esilia.

  Just at the end of the dinner, though, Lieutenant Mirez caught Isovel’s complete attention. While she and the captain played a game of pretending to be desolated by their upcoming parting, Mirez said something in an undertone to Colonel Travis. Isovel heard the Colonel’s reply: “I give Moresco a free hand; even I don’t know where he’ll strike next. If anybody can guess what he’s planning, it would be Renzi.”

  “The librarian?”

  “He and Gabrel grew up together, and I understand he was the guiding light behind more than half of their insanely complicated pranks. I’d hoped to use his brilliance to inform our strategy, but since the Dun Valley campaign…” The Colonel let the sentence trail off into silence.

  “He’s never really recovered from that campaign, has he?”

  “Physically? He’s as strong as he’ll ever be. But … when we talk strategy and tactics, it’s like he’s brain-damaged; he just stops thinking. All he’s said is that he will never again order men to die for any cause.” Colonel Travis sighed deeply. “So I’ve put him in charge of the Library for now. Maybe some day he’ll recover to the point we can use his talents; maybe not. At any rate, while he stays at the base I can keep an eye on him.”

  There was so much Isovel didn’t understand about that interchange. She catalogued her questions while she resumed mechanically flirting with the captain. What had the Dun Valley Campaign been about, and why had it driven this Renzi half mad? What was a librarian? What kind of thing was this “library,” and where on the base was it located?

  ***

  On the next day Colonel Travis conferred with his senior officers and Isovel was free to locate the “library.” It wasn’t difficult; the first person she asked was happy to provide directions, and added, “So you’re going to do a little reading? Good idea!”

  She stood uncertainly outside the tent she’d been directed to until a passing man encouraged her to go in. “Even when Renzi’s not there, anyone is welcome to go in there and read.”

  The inside of the tent puzzled Isovel. It was illuminated by no fewer than three solar lanterns, making it the brightest tent she’d been in since coming to the camp. All the references to reading had made her expect to find e-readers, but nothing like that was on the table in the center; only a few antique boxes. On either side, a roughly built bookshelf held more such boxes.

  Could those be the readers? Perhaps it was the fashion in Esilia to design bulky, ornate reader cases. Isovel touched the top of one of the boxes on the table, but nothing happened. Well, some of the old-fashioned readers, like the one that lived in Gabrel’s pocket, turned themselves off automatically and didn’t respond to a touch until you pushed the power button. She ran a finger around the top edge of the box, frowning: there was nothing to push or slide. She tried swiping two fingers across the screen, double-tapped it, and pushed one finger down from the top to open a menu. Nothing worked.

  “Can I help you?”

  Isovel startled for a moment, then recovered her poise. The plump, fair-haired young man who’d come into the tent didn’t look anything like what she’d pictured. Of course, it had been stupid to imagine that he would resemble Gabrel; the Colonel had said they were friends, not brothers! All the same, she realized now that she’d been sub
consciously expecting a lean, dark man, just her height, with black curls and a bad shave.

  “Um.” Great start to a conversation. What happened to your tongue? “I was just, um, looking for something to read, but I don’t seem to be able to turn your reader on. How do the controls work?”

  Renzi’s polite smile turned into a wide grin. “I’d heard that you Harmonicas are so leashed to your electronic devices that you don’t even recognize a book when you see one, but I never really believed it.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I know what a book is. I have hundreds of books on my reader at home!”

  “Come around to this side of the table and sit down,” Renzi said, opening up a camp stool for her beside his chair. “I’ll demonstrate.”

  Isovel watched as he drew the box close to him and placed a forefinger under the ridge of the lid. “You open it like this.” He flipped the lid and it swung as if on hinges, coming down along the left side of the box and leaving the contents exposed. Was the actual reader inside the box? No, it appeared to be filled to the top with a thick stack of printed flimsies.

  “I don’t get it.” Isovel shook her head. “Gabrel had a normal reader – well, not a recent style, but at least it had a touch screen. How do you make this work?”

  “You’ve seen Gabrel?” Renzi looked about fifteen when he beamed like that. Grew up with Gabrel – huh. This boy would never have been able to fool her into thinking he was nearly thirty. “Oh, of course, you’re that Harmonica of his. I missed him when he brought you in, he didn’t stay long. How is he?”

  “I’m… not sure,” Isovel said. She didn’t want to speak of Jesse’s death, so she fell back on the physical facts. “He twisted his knee badly a couple of weeks ago, and it was hard to keep him still long enough for it to heal. It should be all right now, but… well, he’s still overdoing it, you know?”