We Rule the Night

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  She didn’t think about finesse or delicacy. She didn’t think about whether she’d be shot later. She wanted to live.

  Revna reached for that sense at the back of her mind. She grabbed two threads with one hand and looped her arm around the Skarov’s waist. Then she pulled with everything she had.

  They shot forward. Revna clenched her fists until her knuckles pushed against her skin. The threads slid against her fingers, trying to break free and rejoin the Weave. She didn’t dare let go. She floated in her own thin universe of dust, of smoke, of destruction, and for that moment it was hard to tell whether she was living or dead.

  The Skarov yelled, digging his fingers into her arm. Living. She was definitely living. The threads of the Weave slipped through her hand, and the world rushed up to meet them.

  She hit first, landing hard on a pile of rubble and rolling onto her back. Dust puffed up as the Skarov came down beside her.

  Loose pieces of brick and mortar bit into her spine. Pain shot through her calves and the bottom of her residual limbs. Her torso was agony. Her phantom feet burned. She blinked through her tears. Pain was good; pain meant her back hadn’t broken in the fall. She tried to push herself off the rubble, but her hands only scraped on gravel and brick dust.

  Her prosthetics. Had they broken? She fumbled for the straps.

  A shape disturbed the smoke around her. The Skarov officer had gotten to his feet and was dusting off his coat. But his strange eyes never left her face.

  She should have known she couldn’t hide forever. Weave magicians were evil. How could she think that she was special, that she was different? What right did she have to ruin the world?

  It’s already ruined, she thought. Then she thought, I never meant for it to go this far. I don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to die. But there was no God to beg. So said the laws of the Union.

  The Skarov stepped forward, bracing his back foot on the ground and leaning in to grab her by her prosthetics. She groaned as they twisted and scraped on her residual limbs. He’d break them if he wasn’t careful. “Stop,” she pleaded, coughing ash.

  His hands moved up, gripping her waist just under her rib cage. And then she stopped worrying that he might break her legs, and started worrying that he might break her.

  I saved you, she tried to say. Please. But the words wouldn’t come.

  He pulled her to her feet. “Walk,” he said with iron in his voice. He gripped her shoulders, steering her.

  She could do nothing but obey.

  2

  I GIVE MY SON GLADLY

  Linné stood at attention outside her colonel’s office, cursing herself. Colonel Koslen’s voice cut through the thin walls, and she caught words such as honor, disgrace, and stupidity as he blasted the unlucky Lieutenant Tannov with the full force of his wrath. Linné’s blood sang. She’d be trembling if she let herself relax. But that was her secret to being in the army: Never let your guard down.

  That had been her secret to being in the army. Then she’d been stupid and allowed her guard to slip. Now she was here.

  The few men who walked by shot her curious glances. She ignored them all, as she’d ignored the catcalls from those who thought the humiliating discovery of her sex was somehow hilarious. When she realized the game was up, she’d swiped some brandy from under Tannov’s bed, hoping to fortify herself. She’d taken only a swig or two, but now she couldn’t decide whether it was the brandy or the fear that turned her thoughts upside down.

  The slate sky gave way to a bleed of color with twilight, and the temperature was fast dropping toward night. Clouds piled on the horizon, as they always did in early autumn, becoming darker and colder until they finally rushed in to unleash the first howling storms.

  The shouting ceased. Linné wished she’d had time for a rascidine cigarette. Maybe she should’ve taken the rest of Tannov’s bottle.

  The door creaked. Tannov’s voice came from over her shoulder. “The colonel wants to see you, Private—” He stopped. “Um, miss.”

  Miss. He said it like he didn’t even know her. They’d served together for three years. Tannov had screamed at her, sworn at her, threatened her, punished her. She’d gotten him drunk the night before his promotion, and she’d shot the Elda by steadying her rifle on his shoulder. When she roared at a charging Elda soldier, he’d laughed and called her “little lion,” and everyone in the regiment followed suit. Once, they’d sworn they’d get their Hero of the Union medals together. Now he averted his eyes and stepped smartly to the side, leaving the door open for her.

  March, soldier, she told her feet. She could do that, at least, even with the cocktail of rage, nerves, and brandy inside her.

  Colonel Koslen’s office smelled of sweat, earth, and oil. Papers lay scattered across his desk, the aftermath of a bureaucratic war. Koslen stood behind the desk, clenching and unclenching his ham hands as Linné came in. The colonel cut an impressive figure, tall and broad and with biceps the size of Linné’s head. Tannov and their friend Dostorov had joked that before the war, Koslen was a goatherd who liked the smell of goats better than the smell of women. Linné preferred to mock his glorious mustache, waxed to a curl. It twitched whenever he spoke, whenever he sighed, whenever he lost his temper, or whenever it seemed a particularly difficult thought was pushing itself through the sludge of his brain. After any ordinary disciplinary action, Linné would return to the barracks with her finger over her upper lip, wiggling it back and forth as she described Koslen’s temper.

  No one would laugh at the joke now. They’d laugh at her.

  Koslen studied her round face, her dark hair, her thin body, searching out the little touches that branded her as female. Linné pushed her shoulders back, daring him to say something.

  They stood that way for several long moments. Then he sighed. “Please, take a seat.” He gestured toward his chair, the nice chair. “Would you like some tea?”

  Linné’s palms began to burn. For three years he’d treated her like a soldier. And suddenly she was a girl. A miss. She fought to keep her face neutral. If she took his offer, she’d be relegated to the status of a woman, an outsider, unfit to serve. If she refused, he could claim that she was incapable of following orders.

  Koslen went over to a silver samovar, squeezed onto a side table next to the company’s hulking radio. Wasting precious metal had become a serious offense around two years ago, when the heads of the Union had realized just how bad the war was about to get. But officers always managed to squirrel something nice away.

  Linné slid into the hard chair reserved for the colonel’s subordinates, sitting rigid with her wrists propped on the desk. “Thank you, sir.”

  Koslen stopped midstep toward the chair she’d taken for herself. Then he turned and went to his own as though he’d meant to all along. He placed one cup of pale golden tea in front of her and took a sip from the other.

  “You’ve turned our little regiment quite upside down, miss.” His tone was all exaggerated courtesy. A gentleman could never shout at a lady.

  “Have I, sir?”

  Koslen frowned. The mustache twitched as he inhaled, slowly and deliberately. He could smell the brandy on her. She should’ve left it alone.

  He was silent for a moment, and behind his eyes she saw some sort of argument raging. Then he seemed to make up his mind. “I’m not going to waste time. If you have no shame for your actions, perhaps you should consider how you have endangered the men of your company.”

  Linné pressed her lips together. Arguing got a soldier latrine duty, or graveside duty, or watches for the witching hours.

  Perhaps he mistook her silence for contrition. “War is simply not women’s work, miss,” he said.

  Though apparently it is goatherds’ work, Linné thought. She couldn’t help herself. She imagined her next words running along an iron beam, strong and steady. If her voice shook, Koslen might think she was close to tears instead of holding back her rage. “I have served faithfully, sir. I have bee
n loyal to the Union and the regiment.”

  “You have distracted the men,” Koslen replied. “They cannot spend their time at the front worrying for your safety. Don’t you understand? You don’t just endanger their lives by coming out here. You endanger their minds, their ability to think.”

  Cowards. She recognized the lie, even if Koslen didn’t. The men were afraid that she could no longer do her job. They were afraid that she’d never been able to do her job. That every mistake she’d ever made was because she was a girl, and not because she was human.

  “I admire your heart. And your courage. And the Union appreciates the… enthusiasm with which you have risen to serve.”

  “Then why not keep me?” she burst out. Damn it, she had to stay calm. She wouldn’t let Koslen’s last memory of her be some hysterical thing who confirmed his suspicions. “We’ve just lowered the draft age. Again. I can fight better than the new recruits.”

  Koslen’s jaw clenched. “Everyone has a place in this war, miss. And I’m certain we can find a role for you. A role that suits you, that helps the men focus and provides stability and strength to the armed forces. Won’t that be best for the Union?”

  A role. He was bullshitting to get her to agree to be some administrator in the city while her friends went to the front. No one won a Hero of the Union medal by sitting behind a desk. Heat pricked at her eyes, and for the first time Linné worried she might cry in front of the colonel.

  She had to say something before her fate was sealed. But she didn’t know what.

  Koslen pulled out her file. He examined the photograph, then her. Then the photo. Her bronze skin was washed out by the flash, which only made the freckles across her nose more prominent. The photo made her look defiant. It dared anyone who saw her to underestimate her. “It is me,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The photograph. I didn’t fake it or anything.”

  “I see. But I presume Alexei Nabiev is not your real name.” Koslen dipped a smooth, glass-tipped pen into an inkwell and drew a line over Linné’s alternate identity. Three years of her life, three years of faith and loyalty, erased from record. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “Linné Alexei Zolonov,” she said. She deliberately left the feminine a off the end of her name.

  His pen jumped across the page, trailing a streak of thick black ink. Koslen cursed and blotted at the paper. Linné turned her snort into a cough, though her amusement stalled as he scrawled her real name in a free, unblemished space. He focused on her photo again, but this time he was looking for someone else. He was trying to see her tall, pale father in the lines of her face and figure. He wouldn’t find the resemblance. She took after her mother in far too many ways, including her looks. “Your father’s name?”

  “Alexei Ilya Zolonov,” she confirmed. General. Hero of the Union. Second commander of all land units in the armed forces. He’d been called the fourth-most-powerful man in the nation. At home he’d once joked that it was lucky he had such influence over the first three.

  His voice rose to a squeak. “Does… your father know that you are here?”

  Linné took a moment to savor the sheer panic on his face. “Of course not.” Her father was powerful, but even he had rules.

  Koslen’s eyes rested on the scrawl he’d made. She could see the battle raging behind them—or perhaps, more important, behind his mustache. “Would you wait outside for a few minutes, miss?”

  “Yes. Sir,” she added. Koslen ignored the jab. As she left she heard the whir of the radio starting up.

  The air outside was crisp and thin compared with the stuffy interior of the colonel’s office. Linné took a deep breath. Maybe if she thought of a convincing enough argument, Koslen would reconsider. She could tally her confirmed kills, her sharpshooter skills, her last score on a spark exam. She could remind him of the time she’d saved his life by caving in the skull of an Elda soldier. Not that she particularly wanted to remember that herself.

  Her thoughts evaporated. Tannov still stood outside the office, with the patient expression of a soldier who might, at any moment, be called back in for another verbal beating. Dostorov stood next to him, his stoic look marred by the dead end of a cigarette clamped between his lips. He’d once said he joined the army to save money on rascidine, and Linné was only three-quarters certain that was a lie. The sour smoke drifted in a perpetual cloud around his head. The fiery hues of sunset had turned to deeper colors behind them, and no doubt they had better places to be. What were they doing here? Don’t let your guard down.

  “So,” Tannov said at last.

  So what? she wanted to ask. But that would invariably lead to So, you’re a girl, which would be a stupid way to start a conversation after he’d been the one to walk in on her with her shirt off. And enough bureaucratic garbage had spewed from Koslen’s maw to fill her with rage for months.

  Dostorov spat his cigarette butt into the dirt. The barracks were quiet around them as the men went in for dinner on the other side of the base. The few living metal constructions that passed were little messengers, scuttling like brainless spiders as they ferried notes and small supplies. Linné forced herself to ignore the boys next to her rather than to wonder at their strange, silent vigil.

  They stayed that way for some minutes. Then Tannov said, “How’d you do it?”

  “What?”

  Light crackled over Tannov’s fingers, tiny pops of spark magic that flashed as they disappeared into the Weave. He’d always been the worst of them with his spark. But he wasn’t paying any mind to the way it flickered. He gazed at her with earnest, too-bright eyes. Maybe he’d been at the brandy himself. “Three years. I never thought—I never suspected—” He turned to Dostorov. “Did you know?”

  “Course not,” said Dostorov, looking up at a break in the cloud cover, where the first bright stars of night peered through.

  What little hope Linné had shriveled away. Maybe they didn’t catcall, but she wasn’t good old Alexei anymore.

  “I’ve never even seen you piss. I mean, um, urinate,” Tannov said. Dostorov punched his shoulder. “I mean—”

  “Just stop,” she snapped.

  Tannov stiffened. He looked hurt in a way he’d never looked when she’d lost her temper, or hit him, or stolen his cigarettes or beaten him at cards. And she knew why. And all the things she needed to say bottled up in her throat, refusing to come out as anything but righteous fury.

  Linné’s palms itched. She was as good a soldier as Tannov. Better, even, in some ways. She could hit a bull’s-eye every time she tried. She could shoot that ridiculous mustache off Colonel Koslen’s face without drawing blood. And she could let out a blast of spark that would knock an Elda soldier back ten feet. Yet Tannov and Dostorov and their fumbling magic would be at the front again in a few days’ time, and she would be headed north to an office and the displeasure of her father.

  The itch in her hands became a burn. She knew she shouldn’t, but she brought them forward, letting her spark form into a hot glowing orb in front of her. Women weren’t forbidden from doing spark magic. Perhaps she could set Tannov’s shoelaces on fire. He’d be sloshing around in unlaced boots for weeks until he could requisition new ones. Or she could blow up the new cigarette that Dostorov was failing to light with a flicker of his own spark.

  Why are you here? she wanted to scream. Would they swagger back to the mess when she was gone, reenacting the downfall of Alexei Nabiev?

  The door of Koslen’s office opened. They dissipated their spark like three guilty schoolboys. It flashed along the lines of the Weave, and Linné let hers go.

  Colonel Koslen watched her, with his eyebrows—and, somehow, his mustache—raised. “You two,” he said to the boys. “If you have so much time to waste, you can waste it on pot duty in the kitchen. Get out of my sight.” His voice turned slightly soft, slightly sweet. “Would you care to join me inside, miss?”

  “Yes, sir,” Linné replied. He st
epped aside, and she had no choice but to let him hold the door for her. When she looked back from the threshold, Tannov and Dostorov had already disappeared in the fading light.

  Maybe she should have said goodbye to them. But the old Alexei wouldn’t have, either.

  She and Koslen sat again. “I’ve spoken to your father’s staff,” Koslen said.

  “That was quick,” Linné murmured.

  She hadn’t meant for him to hear, but Koslen said, “He’s quite concerned with your welfare. He was under the assumption that you were at a school.”

  Which demonstrates exactly how much he cares. She had never worried that her father might come to look for her when she’d run away. His life and love was the war, and it left him no time for children.

  “It turns out that you are very much in luck, Miss Zolonova.” In luck. That probably meant her father was coming to pick her up personally. “It is still an unofficial decision at the moment, but…”

  “But what?” Linné leaned forward. Too late she remembered she should call him sir, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “There has been a decision to found a regiment devoted to women’s service at the front,” he said.

  Don’t get too excited. It was probably nursing, or preparing the dead for burial, or something else that involved staying behind the lines.

  “What do you know of flying machines?” he said. His mouth twisted, like the very speaking of it left a bitter aftertaste.

  Her heart crashed. “Airplanes? The Weavecraft of the Elda, sir. Illegal witchcraft.”

  “Hmm. Well, the commander may still have a use for you. She’s searching for girls with experience in engineering, weaponized spark, or—” Koslen hesitated, frowning. “Other kinds of magic.”

  Other kinds of magic. He could only mean Weave magic. The thought of it sent a shiver along her skin. The Weave blanketed and protected the world. But those who used it pulled its threads out of order, warping them so that swaths of land lay dead and abandoned, while the tangles fostered a dangerous crush of magic. The Elda worked the Weave and didn’t seem to care about the consequences. But Weave magic had been illegal in the Union since before it had become the Union. Were they so desperate that they’d turn their backs on their principles?