Fifth Quarter

by Tanya Huff

  Her squad. Their squad. Hers and Bannon’s.

  *Vree?*

  *No.*

  *But I …*

  *Just no, okay? Be quiet.*

  They’d be easier to pass than strangers because she knew their habits. Harder because she knew them and there was no way to even say good-bye. She had no idea why that should matter, but it did.

  As she drew even with the fire, a burly shadow shambled off the road and straight toward her. Corporal Emo. She froze, trusting the night to keep her hidden, eyes narrowed to slits so that the whites would not betray her. He continued to come directly at her. They’d served together five, nearly six years. Did he know something?

  Then, less than a body-length away, he stopped. And there was a dagger in Vree’s hand.

  *Kill him!*

  *I know what I have to do.* But as she hesitated, Emo hiked up his kilt, reached into his sling, and directed a stream of urine practically at her feet. *He doesn’t see me, Bannon.*

  *He’s probably too soaked to see anything.* Vree could feel relief under the derision. *What if he’d aimed six inches higher?*

  *Then I’d have killed him on principle.* She felt almost giddy. *How can he piss for so long?*

  *How can he drink so much?* Bannon asked in turn, a shrug implied.

  Emo finally tucked himself away, belched, and turned to go. Then he stopped, frowned, and stared into the shadows. Vree felt his eyes meet hers, saw recognition dawn, and she slowly stood. His gaze dropped to the dagger in her hand, then went back to her face.

  He knew her speed, he knew her skill, and he wasn’t so drunk that he didn’t know, at that moment, how close he stood to death.

  No one in the squad would be surprised if Emo died in the bushes, too drunk to have seen the enemy. Vree could feel the weight of the dagger she held, feel the familiar grip under her fingers. This close, she couldn’t miss; could close her eyes and with a flick of her wrist still bury it in Emo’s throat.

  You don’t see me, she mouthed. I wasn’t here.

  *Vree! What are you doing?*

  Emo stared at her, startled. She wondered what he saw. Who he saw. Finally, after several lifetimes, he nodded. I don’t see you.

  * * * *

  *You’ve brought the hunt down on us,* Bannon snarled when the watchfire had faded to a glow in the distance.

  Vree remembered a younger man with large callused hands and a ready laugh; Emo before the wineskin became his constant companion. *He won’t say anything.*

  *How do you know?*

  *He was a friend.*

  *He was my friend, too, but I’d have killed him.*

  That was not an argument she wanted to get into. Bannon hadn’t been the one with the dagger in his hand and those kinds of choices were easier to criticize than to make. *There was no need to kill him.*

  Bannon gave a mental snort. *You think he’ll keep his mouth shut just because you used to fuck him? Think again. They’ll know you didn’t die in the city. They’ll come hunting for you, Vree, and when you die, I die, too.*

  All at once she was very, very tired. *So we’ll try to get your body back before that happens.*

  * * * *

  They hadn’t caught up to Aralt when dawn began to elongate the shadows and brush the cloaking night away. But neither had there been any indication that they themselves were being followed.

  *Keep going! He can’t have gone that much farther!*

  As Bannon’s thoughts bounced around her head, brittle and beginning to shatter, Vree realized how tightly his sanity had been tied to finding Aralt quickly. What if he lost it? Would he drag her down with him, or would madness dissolve their unnatural union and send him screaming off as a disembodied spirit?

  *Vree!* Her name echoed in her skull as she moved farther away from the road. *What are you doing?*

  Locking her fear away, she chose her words carefully because her calm appeared to be the only thing holding her brother together. “I’m taking advantage of this water hole,” she murmured, as her approach sent a trio of wild goats bounding away. “I’m going to take a long drink, and then I’m going to make myself a little less obvious for day travel.”

  *But we have to catch Aralt!* His protest was shrill enough to be almost painful.

  “We will.” Her tone suggested she spoke to a small and frightened child, not a young man only a year her junior. “But it’s going to be hot, and I don’t know when we’ll find more water.”

  *Slaughter it, Vree, don’t patronize me! I hate it when you do that. I’ve always hated it!*

  Always hated it?

  Pursing her lips, she pressed her face against the water and carefully sucked from just below the surface. It was still night-cool but with a faint, flat taste of the heat it had held the day before. Fortunately, the goats hadn’t had the chance to stir up much of the gritty silt. Vree drank past desire, until she sloshed when she moved, then took a dagger to her tunic and breeches.

  First the long sleeves, then the high collar, then a double hands span ripped ragged from the bottom of each leg—the fine, closely woven cotton, dyed and redyed to match the darkness, tore easily. She knotted the narrow ends of the sleeves and filled them with the weapons she could no longer hide as well as the supple ankle boots that were a better indication of her profession than any number of concealed daggers. A fistful of damp sand scrubbed the charcoal from hands and face.

  After a thorough roll in the pale dirt, Vree bent and forced herself to take one last drink. As she lifted her head, she frowned at a shadowy indentation, newly delineated by the rising sun. *Bannon, look there.*

  *I look where you look,* he muttered. Then she felt his mood change as he saw what she saw. On the other side of the watering hole, an earlier visitor had braced his weight, leaned forward to drink and left a clear impression of the heel and thumb of his right hand. *Mine. That’s my handprint. He came this way, Vree! I told you so! We’re almost on him. Get up! Get going!*

  She’d trusted her brother’s judgment in a thousand situations where a mistake would mean both their deaths. She trusted it now although she could see nothing familiar in the curves pressed into the damp earth. Securing her narrow pack with the silken length of her garrote, she slung it across her body and hurried north.

  It was mid-morning when Vree heard the sound of a horse approaching from behind. She turned, shaded her eyes against the glare from above and the stone dust glare from below, and squinted back down the South Road. “Courier.” The word was flat, inflectionless, but her heart began to pound a little faster. They should have expected this; in this part of the Empire the South Road was the only road the army bothered to keep way stations on. In this part of the Empire, it was the only road that went anywhere. “The marshal’s probably sending news of the governor’s death to the garrison.”

  *The governor isn’t dead.*

  “He is as far as the Sixth Army is concerned. There’s a body and there’s no one to lead the rebellion. What more do they need?”

  *Us?*

  “If Emo squealed, we’d have had to kill someone long before now.”

  *Yeah, but Emo’s a drunk, Vree. We can’t count on him not to spill his guts the next time he crawls into a wineskin. Or the next time. Or the time after that.*

  “You’re right.” She started back the way they’d come. “Let’s go back and kill him.”

  *What are you doing? We have to find Aralt!*

  *Then you shut up about Emo! Maybe I should’ve killed him, okay? But he’s alive and he knows and there’s not a slaughtering thing we can do about it!*

  As the courier rode closer, she dropped her head and continued slogging north, shoulders hunched, bare feet splayed out against the heated stone, nothing in her bearing suggesting she’d ever marched behind the Empire’s banner.

  She needn’t have bothered. The courier trotted past, the sunburst pennant on his lance tip snapping, eyes under the crested helm locked ahead on the distance still to be covered. One skinny, filthy tr

aveler meant nothing to him. After all, the Empire had built the roads to be traveled on.

  As horse and rider and road disappeared behind an outcrop of faded pink stone, Vree scrubbed at a dribble of sweat between her breasts and shook her head. “Bannon, this is impossible. We need more to go on than Aralt went north. Didn’t you get anything else?”

  *I don’t know.*

  Very slowly, she set her right foot back down on the road beside her left. “You don’t know?”

  *Come on, Vree, there were a lot of memories and stuff thrown at me …*

  This emotion, she recognized. In the past, jobs had always been weighted toward her planning and his instincts. He always wanted the overview and hated dealing with the details.

  *… and I haven’t exactly had a chance to sort them out.*

  “Do it now.” Vree lowered herself into a slice of shade.

  *But Aralt …*

  “Could be anywhere. I’m not moving until you’ve sorted things out.*

  *But …*

  “No.”

  *Look, he’s in my body!*

  “And this is mine, and it’s not moving until you give it a direction.” He believed weariness where he would have argued with anger. She listened to the high-pitched whine of a buzzbug protesting the heat, scratched the top of one foot with the heel of the other, and waited.

  *Did we pass something that looks like this?*

  An image of a jagged ridge, half the face sheared off and huddled at the base, was shoved in front of her mind’s eye. Vree jerked her head back and slammed it against the rock behind her.

  *Ow!*

  “You felt that?” She raised a hand and gingerly touched the lump coming up on her skull.

  *Of course I did. Well?*

  The ridge. Vree frowned, remembering. “It was off on the left side of the road about an hour ago, just past the last milestone.”

  *There’s a valley behind it, with a spring. Aralt has a villa there. That’s where he’s gone.*

  “But he isn’t …”

  *He instructed the servants to follow the orders of anyone showing up with his signet.*

  Vree nodded and stood. “Smart.”

  *Not smart enough. He didn’t plan on me surviving.*

  * * * *

  *Nice place.* Vree wiped sticky fingers on her thighs. The oranges had been bitter, but she’d been too hungry to care. At the head of the valley stood a sprawling, single-story house, its thick mud walls bleached a pale cream color by the constant sun. There were stables, and gardens, and the less attractive buildings that housed Aralt’s servants. One slope of the valley held olive groves while the other grew oranges.

  *How do you think we should go in?* Bannon asked.

  If she didn’t turn, she could believe he was crouched beside her. *We’ll follow the line of trees to those currant bushes, behind them to that building, up onto the roof, a short jump up onto the house, and down into the central courtyard.* There had to be a central courtyard—there were almost no windows in the outside walls.

  *They’ll be able to see us from the kitchens.*

  Vree squinted down at the open-sided building. *It’s noon,* she said. *And hotter than a garrison whore. Everyone’s asleep.*

  *Everyone except us.*

  *Mad dogs and officers …* In spite of everything, she grinned at the quote and felt Bannon’s grin as he responded.

  *What does that make us?*

  The grin faded. *Desperate.*

  They listened to the heartbeat they shared for a moment. Finally, when it became obvious that Bannon wasn’t going to break the silence, Vree started toward the villa.

  * * * *

  *Vree, there’s a dog.*

  *I see it.* Half rolled on its back, one paw in the air, the huge animal snoozed in the shade of the stables.

  *Are we upwind?*

  *I don’t think there is a wind.* The air hung down from the searing heights of a yellow-blue sky like the beaded curtain in the governor’s stronghold—not quite solid but a physical barrier nevertheless. Vree could almost feel the heated beads brush against her skin.

  One foot on top of the low stone wall; both hands flat against the tiles; bare toes dug in for purchase; and she was on the first roof. The dog twitched but had no intention of abandoning its dream.

  It would take a running leap to reach the roof of the main house, and during that one exposed moment disaster would be a single person glancing upward.

  The windows in the servants’ quarters stared like eyes. Vree could feel them watching her as she gathered herself for the jump. They can’t all be asleep…

  *They have to be.*

  The run.

  The jump.

  The landing, nearly silent against the earth packed onto thick supporting logs.

  A pigeon burst out of its shadowed corner, wings beating noisely at the air. Below, the dog jerked awake.

  *Slaughter it! It’ll wake the dead, let alone the servants. We should have killed it.*

  *Shut up, Bannon.* Pressed flat, trying to push herself into the roof, Vree tried to hear past the dog’s frenzied barking. It wasn’t easy. Either the animal really hated pigeons or it had seen them. Her.

  “Shaddup, ya stupid mutt!”

  The dog yelped in pain.

  “Hey, shithead! Don’t throw things at my dog!”

  “No problem.” Something metal and hollow—a brass pitcher from the sound—clanged off a wall.

  “Hey! Ya coulda killed me with that!”

  “Not likely, I was aimin’ at yer head.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Feis, leave the dog along and come back to bed.”

  “Ya gonna protect her when I rip her apart, Sova?”

  “Touch my Feis and I’ll rip you apart, you dickless wonder.”

  The three voices began to weave an intricate cacophony of name-calling and it no longer mattered just what the dog had been barking at.

  *Time to go.*

  Vines hung from the trellises that edged the deserted courtyard and in the center, a shallow pool reflected the sky. Quickly, her weight spread over as much area as possible, Vree moved to one of the carved pillars supporting the trellis and climbed down it. Training and experience turned her toward the rooms unmistakably occupied by the master of the house.

  *What if he’s not in there?*

  *Then we search the rest of the place.* She kept her mental voice matter-of-fact as she padded across the cool tile to the louvered doors.

  *What if he’s left already.*

  *He was up all night. He has to sleep.* No point in adding she’d also been up all night because she couldn’t sleep, not yet, so why think about it.

  Through the angled slats of faintly scented wood, she could see a northern style desk and chair and the low, cushion-piled rectangle of the bed. On the bed lay a body. Bannon’s body? There wasn’t light enough in the room to be sure. Fighting the tremors that racketed through her in the wake of her brother’s nearly chaotic emotional response, she slid a long, narrow dagger from its sheath on her thigh.

  *What are you doing! That’s my body! Mine!*

  Her hands began to spasm. *Bannon, stop it! No one tries to run with a knife at his throat. I’ll hold him, you get back in.*

  Slowly, he calmed. Vree could almost hear him panting. *My body,* he repeated. *Mine.*

  Slowly, more out of concern that Bannon would try to take control again than any fear of discovery, Vree pushed open one side of the louvered doors just far enough to slide through. With the scorching heat of midday unable to penetrate the narrow windows and thick walls, the room had a cavelike feel about it. No longer instantly evaporating, sweat plastered her filthy clothes to her skin as she crossed silently to the bed. Just before her toes hit the edge of the cotton pad, she stopped and stared at the naked man stretched out amidst the cushions.

  It was Bannon’s body. Aralt had bathed at some point, for the short brown curls sprang crisply back from his temples and the taut sheath of dark olive skin stretched over lean muscles seemed almost oiled. There the scar where the barbed Ohkan spear tip had been dug out; there where a dying rebel had managed to open a line across his ribs; there the puckered rosette on the crown of his knee where at nine he’d knelt on an ember. Her gaze lingered on the long muscles of his thighs, moved upward, swept past the soft protrusion of his sex—in spite of a sudden urge to linger she knew came from the brother within—and locked on his face. His chin came to less delicate a point than hers and his cheekbones angled higher and sharper. Combined with the arc of his brows, the length of his lashes, and the wide bow of his mouth, they gave him a feral beauty that would look at home in any shrine of the Wild God. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a rack of horns sweeping up off his brow.

  Bannon remained quiet, almost withdrawn, while she stared down at his body. Although his curiosity was unmistakable, he was wrapped too tightly for her to separate out any other emotions. She supposed that was for the best as her own emotional fabric had begun to fray. This is my brother. This is not my brother.

  *Mine …*

  *Hush, Bannon, I know.*

  There was something wrong, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She’d seen Bannon asleep a thousand, a hundred thousand times, but…

  But Bannon never slept on his back.

  Shifting her grip on the dagger, she reached down with her free hand to lightly touch the broad chest that rose and fell to another man’s rhythm.

  He opened his eyes.

  They were still so dark a brown that they seemed to be all pupil. They looked like they always had and were, at the same time, completely different.

  *Now, Vree! Now! The knife!*

  Her instant of hesitation was all he needed. Vree suddenly found herself caught up in an iron grip and flung to the floor. She twisted to avoid his knees slamming at her gut, shoved a foot into his armpit, and kicked out hard. She’d sparred with her brother many times in the past, but this time he had all the advantages. He was obviously trying to kill her. She couldn’t hurt him. He was rested. She was exhausted. He had a single life driving him. She had two, for Bannon kept flinging bits of her about.

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