The Thousand Names

Chapter Seventeen

MARCUS

Marcus pushed open the door and found that he was the last to arrive. Val, Mor, and Fitz were all seated in flimsy wicker-and-wood chairs around a lacquered monolith of a table that even the Redeemers had found too heavy to move. Mor was putting a deck of cards through an elaborate shuffle.

“Finally,” he said, as Marcus entered. “We were about to start without you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Val muttered. “If it was just me against you and Fitz, I might as well hand over my purse and be done with it.”

“So I’m the other sucker, is that it?” Marcus said.

“Every table needs at least a couple,” Mor said.

Fitz coughed. “You saw Adrecht?”

The mood darkened. Marcus nodded, and there was a quiet moment as he pulled out one of the chairs and sat gingerly, lest it collapse.

“And?” Val said gruffly. “How is he?”

“Better,” Marcus said shortly. “He’s still not awake, but the cutter told me his fever is down and there’s no sign of festering at the. . site.”

“I knew he was too irritating to die,” Mor said, a little too cheerfully.

“Liar,” Val said. “You were practically dividing up his things already.”

Marcus looked down at his hands where they lay on the tabletop. He closed his left hand slowly, then shook his head.

“It’s a shame,” Fitz said unexpectedly. All three captains looked at him, surprised.

“Course it is,” said Val.

“That’s war,” Mor said. “Or at least, it is if you’re fool enough to get within sticking range of someone with a bayonet. Getting shot I can understand, but-”

“He saved my life,” Marcus said quietly.

That brought another moment of awkward silence, which Marcus felt duty-bound to break. He slapped his palms on the table with a dull thud and put on a grin he didn’t feel. “Right!” he said. “Deal the cards already.”

Mor started expertly spinning cards across the scarred surface of the ancient table. Marcus was an indifferent cardplayer at the best of times, and this was shaping up to be one of his worse nights. Coins slid back and forth across the table, occasionally catching in a deep rut and bouncing salmon-like into the air. The first of these bounced off the top of Val’s head, to general laughter.

In the pause while Fitz collected and shuffled the cards after the first round was over, Val said, “Marcus, you’re the colonel’s right-hand man these days, aren’t you?”

Marcus shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m not sure he has one of those.”

“You’re the best we’ve got,” Val persisted. “So have you got any idea where we go now?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, come on,” Mor said. “Everyone’s been talking about it. Are we going to just dig in here, or go after the Divine Hand and his gang of malcontents?”

The Divine Hand’s escape had become common knowledge over the past couple of days. As the initial shock of the Vordanai arrival had worn off, the citizens of Ashe-Katarion had come to see how few of the foreigners there really were, and the continued resistance of the Redeemer leader and the Steel Ghost had caused some dangerous rumblings. Jaffa’s Justices were spread thin, and Marcus didn’t dare send his men out in groups smaller than a dozen.

“The colonel will have to hunt him down,” Val said. “Until we bring that bastard’s head back and put it on a spike, they aren’t going to believe we’re here to stay.”

“How many of them even know what he looks like?” Mor retorted. “I don’t think spiked heads are going to solve anything.”

“Strategically,” Fitz said, “going after him would be very dangerous. Until now we’ve been keeping ourselves fed from local resources, but if we have to leave the valley that will mean a proper supply train, which has to be based here in Ashe-Katarion. And that base would hardly be secure.”

“What, then?” said Val. “Sit here in the Palace and wait for the mob to get angry enough to storm it?”

“Yes,” Fitz said. “Rebellion has always been a fear of the Khandarai princes, and the inner city is quite defensible. Four battalions can hold it against almost any conceivable force of irregulars.”

“It didn’t do the prince much good the first time,” Marcus put in.

Fitz ducked his head respectfully. “The prince didn’t have four battalions the first time. Once General Khtoba threw in with the rebels, the inner city was already compromised.”

“There’s another bastard I’d like to see on a spike,” Val muttered. “Ungrateful son of a bitch.”

“If he’s still alive,” Mor said. “We know he was at Turalin, and the Auxiliaries lost a lot of men there.”

“He’s alive,” Marcus said. He’d known Khtoba, slightly, in the old days. “He’s not a man who’d hang around when things went sour.”

“Witness him going over to the Redeemers in the first place,” Val said. “Like I said-heads, spikes. End of problem.”

“Assuming you can lay your hands on the heads,” Mor said.

They were interrupted briefly when Fitz began to deal. Mor peeked at his hand, grunted, and dug in his pocket for a few more coins. Val sighed.

I wonder what they would say if I told them it wasn’t the Divine Hand the colonel was worried about. Whatever the Thousand Names were, Janus wanted them very badly. He says he just wants to keep them away from Orlanko, but the look on his face. . Marcus shivered at the memory. Janus had been on the point of carving up a helpless old woman to get the information he wanted, and his plan to send her to the prince’s torture chambers had been thwarted only by the fact that the torturers had all run away or been burned by the Redeemers. The two priestesses were currently languishing in cells under the Palace.

Marcus played even more poorly in the second round than he had in the first. He’d been dealt a decent hand, for once, but his attention kept wandering. By the time Val collected the cards and shuffled for the third round, Marcus had decided his heart wasn’t in the game. He was just preparing his excuse when there was a knock at the door. Fitz, as the lowest-ranking member of the quartet, got up to open it, revealing Jen Alhundt. Marcus stiffened.

“They told me I could find you here,” she said. “Gentlemen, I wonder if I might borrow the senior captain for a few minutes.”

“Hell,” Val swore, looking at Fitz and Mor, then sighed. “I suppose so.”

“I’m sorry to take you away from your game,” Jen said, when the door had closed behind them.

Marcus waved a hand. “The way things were going, you probably saved me a month’s wages.”

They walked a while in silence, Marcus awkward, Jen apparently serene. He hadn’t spoken to her since that night on the Tsel crossing, which seemed like a thousand years ago. That night, fear and the knowledge of impending battle had closed the distance between them, but here in the Palace it had opened back up into a bottomless pit that threatened to swallow any attempt at small talk.

Jen broke the impasse. “The colonel seems to be a bit. . distant recently.”

Marcus sighed theatrically. “If you ask me what he’s planning to do next, I swear I’m going to scream.”

“Oh?”

“I just got out of my last interrogation,” Marcus said, jerking his head toward the drawing room. “Why everyone seems to think the colonel confides his secret plans to me I don’t understand.”

“You do spend a great deal of time with him,” Jen said.

“Yes, but you know what he’s like.”

“Not really. I’ve read his file, but we’ve hardly spoken.”

Marcus paused, reflecting. He’d spent so much time in Janus’ company it hadn’t occurred to him that the rest of the regiment hadn’t had similar opportunities, but thinking back he couldn’t recall the colonel speaking to Val, Mor, or any of the others outside of a terse order or the acknowledgment of a report. His longest conversations had probably been with the Preacher, with whom he shared an interest in artillery, and Give-Em-Hell, who more and more practically worshipped at Janus’ feet.

“He’s. .” Marcus sighed again. “Sometimes I think he just likes being dramatic, like a penny-opera villain. It’s always, ‘Oh, you’ll see, Captain,’ or, ‘Matters will become clear soon, Captain.’” Marcus managed to produce a reasonable simulation of Janus’ erudite accent, and Jen chuckled.

“You must know something, even if it’s just from standing around behind him,” she said.

Marcus shifted awkwardly, and smiled to cover it. “If I did, I couldn’t tell you. You’re a spy, after all.”

“A clerk,” she insisted. “Just a clerk. But I do have a report to write.” She tipped her head and looked at him slyly. Stray hairs escaping from her bun hung in front of her eyes. “I’m really not going to get any more out of you?”

“I think that’s all I can say that’s consistent with my duty as an officer,” Marcus said, with mock gravity.

“The hell with it, then.” She pushed up her spectacles and rubbed her eyes, then reached behind her head and tugged at her hair until it came loose from its bun and flopped free. He’d never seen her let it down before. It fell just to her shoulders, mouse brown and slightly frizzy. “I’m officially off duty. What about you?”

Marcus looked down at his uniform. “We haven’t really worked out a duty schedule, to tell the truth. But nothing seems to be going on at the moment.”

“Come with me, then. I’ve got something special I want to show you.”

• • •

The room she led him to was furnished in the same eclectic mix of ancient and cheap as the rest of the post-Redeemer Palace. Here the ancient included a massive bed with brass poles, big enough to sleep six or seven, with equally ancient faded linen obviously scrounged from the bottom of some dusty closet. Beside it was a little table and chair, and a couple of open trunks.

Whoever was staying in the room was not very organized, and the floor beside the trunk was strewn with clothes. Marcus spotted a few undergarments of a notably feminine nature and felt his cheeks color slightly. He turned to find Jen tugging the thick door closed behind them.

“This is your room?” he said.

She grinned wickedly. “Of course. Where better to secretly murder you?” Catching his expression, her smile faded a little. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Marcus cleared his throat. “It’s just been a long time since I was in a lady’s bedroom.”

Jen arched an eyebrow. “Oh, come on. The gallant captain must have had some conquests among the impressionable native girls.”

“About the only Khandarai women who would have anything to do with us wanted to be paid afterward,” Marcus said. He reflected a moment. “Actually, mostly they wanted to be paid in advance.”

“Well, I think I can get by without a chaperone just this once,” she said. “I don’t want to share this.”

“Share what?”

She brushed past him, heading for one of the trunks. The casual touch left Marcus feeling even more awkward than before, but Jen didn’t appear to notice. She tossed more clothing aside, then a couple of blankets, and finally emerged with a wooden crate the shape of a coffin, a couple of feet long. Words had been burned onto the outside, in such an elaborate script that Marcus couldn’t read them, but he recognized the shape immediately.

“Where did you get that?” he said.

“It was a gift,” she said, setting the little box reverently on the table. “From some of my friends at the Cobweb.” She looked up at him. “Looking back on it now, I don’t think they ever expected me to come back.”

“And you haven’t opened it yet?”

“Sort of silly, I know,” she said. “If I really had been killed at one of the battles, I expect I would have regretted it. But somehow just sitting by myself didn’t seem. . I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Let me borrow your knife, would you?”

Marcus wordlessly drew his belt knife and handed it across. Jen pried up one of the thin wooden planks, which were nailed only loosely into place, and pulled the top of the box off. Inside, nestled in spun wool like a fresh egg, was a thick-bellied glass bottle that glistened amber all the way up to the wax seal at the neck. Another seal, pressed with a fanciful rendition of the charging-bull standard of Hamvelt, adorned the front.

“It always seemed vaguely unpatriotic to me,” Jen said, lifting the bottle gently from its cradle. “I mean, we’ve got brandy in Vordan. Why does everyone love this Hamveltai stuff?”

“Because it’s better,” Marcus said fervently. “You’ve never had any?”

“I could never afford it. Clerking for the secret police doesn’t pay as well as you might imagine.”

Marcus smiled. Just the sight of the bottle sent him back in time, to his days at the War College. He and Adrecht had had-not friends, not really, but cronies, men they lived, studied, and drank with. Drank with most of all. He’d sometimes thought that the War College was really a thinly disguised royal subsidy to the local tavern industry. Adrecht had once obtained a half-empty bottle of Hamveltai brandy, through some unexplained but presumably nefarious method, and there had been just about enough for everyone to have a sniff. He’d never forgotten the taste, which compared to even the best of the local stuff like pure spring water to sewer sludge.

Jen worked the point of the knife delicately under the wax, split the seal up one side, and peeled it off the top of the bottle. She’d produced a couple of glasses from somewhere, and Marcus watched as she expertly tipped two fingers of the liquid amber into each. She handed him one, held up her own, and met his eyes.

“To Count Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran,” she said. “God grant that he know what the hell he’s doing.”

“God grant,” Marcus said fervently. They both sipped. The bite on his tongue seemed to dissolve into smoke before it reached the back of his mouth. It was better even than he remembered. From the look in Jen’s eyes, she was similarly enraptured. She put the glass on the table slowly, and stared at it as though she thought it might move.

“Saints and martyrs,” she swore. “Now I am glad I didn’t get killed in the battle.”

“If only we had a bottle for every man in the regiment, they’d all come back alive,” Marcus said.

Jen laughed. “If we had that much, we could probably buy the throne of Khandar.”

“You’d be surprised. You remember those carts, the really heavy ones at the end of the train? The ones that were always getting stuck.”

“Vaguely.”

“Supposedly the prince packed them full of gold before he fled the city. All the treasures of the Exopterai Dynasty, or at least all the ones he could carry. Now he’s probably got them tucked away safe in his dungeons again.”

Not every treasure.These “Thousand Names” weren’t in the prince’s hoard. But someone else must have had the same idea as Exopter did. His mood darkened. Whatever it is, it’s clearly more important than a few sacks full of coin. If only he’d tell me, I might be able to come up with something.

Jen, sipping from her glass, watched his face. “Something wrong?”

Marcus shrugged and looked down. “Not really.”

“No?” She leaned closer, until they were only inches apart. “You can tell me. I won’t even put it in a report. I promise.”

Her tone was still light, but there was an undercurrent of real concern. Marcus sighed.

“I was just wishing the colonel would take me a bit more into his confidence. Then I might be able to say something when people ask me what happens next.”

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 off 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.

“I never thought about becoming a bandit concubine,” Winter said dully. “Maybe I should have.”

“When I got here,” Bobby said, “and you became our sergeant, I thought it had to be the same Winter. It’s not that uncommon a name, but. . it felt like it was meant to happen.” Her young face had regained some of its eagerness.

“But how did you escape?”

“I stole a bag of coin from the office,” Bobby said proudly. “And I got to know one of the carters who brought in food. After a while I convinced him to smuggle me out.”

“Sounds like you had an easier time of it than I did,” Winter muttered. Then, catching Bobby’s flushed cheeks, she got an idea of the sort of “convincing” the carter had required, and shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“I couldn’t believe I’d actually met you,” Bobby said, looking as though a weight had been removed from her shoulders. “I thought for the longest time about whether I should tell you, but it seemed like a risk. You had everyone fooled, and I couldn’t bear being the one who screwed it up. So I just went along.”

“These. . legends,” Winter said. “Do they mention anyone besides me?”

“Not that I recall,” Bobby said. “Saints, I wish I could tell the girls at the Prison that I’d met you. Sarah would just about explode.”

Winter fought down a looming specter, with green eyes and long red hair. Can you be haunted by someone who isn’t dead? Her throat was tight as she poured herself another drink. They don’t even remember her.

“All right,” she said again. “Is that enough secrets for one night?”

Bobby looked a bit startled. “I wanted to ask you-”

“Later. Right now I am planning to get very drunk. The two of you are welcome to join me.” She repeated this in Khandarai, as a courtesy.

Feor looked down at her beer. “Alcohol was not permitted among the sahl-irusk when I was growing up,” she said. “The eckmahl were fond of it, however, and I was always curious as to what they found so attractive.”

“There you go.” Winter turned to Bobby. “What about you? Ever been really drunk?”

Bobby shook her head, blushing. “Some of the girls at Mrs. Wilmore’s would sneak a little bit, but I never did.”

“Can’t be a soldier if you’ve never been really drunk,” Winter said. “I’ll get us another bottle.”

And maybe then, she thought, I won’t dream.