“I believe you,” Linné said.
Of course she didn’t believe her.
Linné pushed out of the mess, nearly barreling into Katya and Elena as they opened the door.
“Watch it!” Katya snapped. Elena sighed peevishly.
She didn’t want to watch it. She wanted to clear her head. She wanted to believe in her pilot. And she wanted another cigarette. Scratch that—she needed another cigarette. And she needed to talk to someone. But who? Revna was in no condition to talk to anyone. And she already knew what Tannov would say. The truth hung somewhere between them, and Linné did not know how to grasp it. Before Tammin, Linné would have trusted her Union, given it the faith and loyalty it demanded. Revna’s grief was real, but why had she faltered in the bombing of Tammin?
You faltered, too. Maybe you’re the traitor.
She clenched spark in a fist as she shoved a cigarette into her mouth. She was faithful. She was loyal. She’d proved it before and she’d do so again.
Clouds piled up against the Karavels and the wind hummed over the plains. It slapped her face and wrapped around her neck like winter’s scarf. The chill of it was enough to knock the breath out of her.
She heard a faint sniffling over the wind. Boot prints led around the side of the mess. No, she thought. No, no, no. She rounded the corner and almost tripped over the huddling figure. “Oh—” She barely stopped herself from saying shit. “Sorry.”
Magdalena looked smaller and more miserable than Linné had ever seen her. She’d drawn her shoulders in and pulled her knees up to her chin. Her hair lay tangled against her arms, and her freckled cheeks were blotchy from crying.
“I’m fine.” She sniffed. A fat teardrop slid down her jaw.
She came from Tammin, too. Linné slid down next to her, trying not to think of the mud stain she’d have to wash out of her uniform later. “You don’t have to be fine.” She drew on her cigarette, holding the sour smoke in her mouth as she thought about her next words. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever done.” She could be loyal to the Union and admit that. The war had given her purpose, hope, friends, determination. It had filled every crack in her. But now the war itself was cracked.
Magdalena leaned in. For a paralyzing moment Linné thought she wanted a hug. But then she inhaled deeply. Linné sighed in relief and dug her cigarette case out of her back pocket. “Ran out?”
“Last night. I couldn’t—” Magdalena’s fingers shook. The cigarette tumbled to the ground.
Linné picked it up and wiped off the snow. She lit it with a touch of spark and handed it over. “You couldn’t stop yourself.” She’d been there. After the Thirty-First had been routed outside Adovic, she thought she couldn’t breathe without a cigarette. “You had a lot of family in Tammin?” Shit. Have. Have.
“Friends.”
Linné winced. Friends would be even worse. She didn’t want her father to die, and not only because he ran a large chunk of the Union. But she didn’t share jokes with him. She’d never sworn at her father, or borrowed a cigarette from him, or gotten drunk with him. Her friends had been the family she needed for three long years.
And now the closest things she had were a suspect pilot and two Skarov agents.
“I don’t know what you’re going through,” she admitted. “But Revna does. She could use your help.”
Magdalena shook her head. Tears hung from her eyelashes, slid down her face when she blinked. “Not like this. I need a minute.” She sucked on her cigarette. “I need to collect myself. She needs her friends to be strong.”
Revna’s neat letters scrawled across Linné’s mind, over and over. Maybe Revna did need someone to be strong for her, to tell her that she was doing well. Or maybe she needed someone to tell her that she wasn’t doing well and that she didn’t have to be.
A man’s voice echoed inside the mess, deep and angry. It was followed by a thunk. Someone screamed.
Magdalena was up in a shot. She grabbed Linné’s hand and pulled her to her feet. They tore around to the door together and burst inside.
Revna, Katya, and several other girls stood in the middle of the mess. Revna’s face was the color of fresh snow, her lips two bruises, and her eyes dark, hateful stars. She held her palms out, almost like a peace offering. The rest of the mess stared at her.
An aviator lay crumpled against the wall. His friends surrounded him. Linné recognized the good-looking ass who’d set off the shooting contest checking the aviator’s pulse.
Linné crossed the mess to Revna in a few strides. “What did you do?”
Revna took one, two steps backward and fell into her chair. Magdalena knelt beside her and grabbed a hand. Revna didn’t seem to notice.
“What happened?” Tannov’s words fluttered in her mind, unwelcome. Treason. Revenge.
Revna wouldn’t look at her. “I did everything,” she whispered.
“Revna,” said Magdalena, shooting Linné a warning look, “it’s all right. Tell me.”
“He called us deserters,” Katya said. She wiped at a wet patch under her eye, but her voice was strong and clear. “He called us traitors.”
“I did everything they asked me to,” Revna said. Her voice was stronger, but it still trembled. “What have you ever done?”
“You crazy bitch,” Good-Looking Ass said. Time on the base hadn’t improved his temper. “You could have killed him.”
Revna leaned around Magdalena. “So what? The Union doesn’t care about you—”
“Stop it,” Linné yelled. Revna’s eyes shifted to her, and behind the grief she saw resentment. Revna thought she was siding with the boys.
Magdalena wrapped Revna in a protective hug. Revna’s pale face screwed up, dangerously close to spouting real treason.
Fear punched an icy fist into Linné’s stomach. Revna hasn’t done anything yet. Maybe this was the excuse Tannov was waiting for. Starting fights, hospitalizing fellow soldiers, and bad-mouthing the Union? None of that would look good in her file.
Faith and loyalty. The air seemed to press in against her. Being loyal to the Union meant betraying Revna. But if she tried to protect Revna, what else would the girl do in her anger?
Linné didn’t know who deserved her faith, but she wouldn’t let Revna destroy herself.
The male soldiers checked on the downed man. “He’s still unconscious,” Good-Looking Ass said as he stood.
“So do something useful and take him to the hospital,” Linné said. She was too weary to try another pissing contest. They all needed a rest.
Good-Looking Ass jerked his head at Revna. “What about her?”
“You’re not her supervisor. I am,” Linné said.
Katya’s hand closed over her wrist. Not now. She tried to shake it away, but the girl’s grip only tightened. “You can’t,” Katya whispered.
Linné maintained eye contact with the soldier. “Go help your man.”
“Linné,” Katya murmured as he turned away. “You can’t report it.”
The downed soldier groaned as he was lifted and carried out. Linné’s shoulders slumped. “It’s my job.”
“Screw your job. Screw the rules. Something bad could happen to her.”
Something bad had already happened. And lying wouldn’t make it better. “Zima and Hesovec are going to find out,” Linné said. “Everyone saw.” And covering it up wouldn’t make Revna seem more innocent. Their best hope was for Zima to pass judgment before the Skarov even heard of it. She tried to ignore the little voice that said, And I’ll be loyal, like I always am. That wasn’t the point. It wasn’t. “I have to. I’m sorry.”
Katya’s mouth turned down in disgust. “Yeah,” she said. “Right.”
Linné saw Tannov in the distance as she hurried out of the mess. She felt his eyes on her back all the way to Commander Zima’s office.
The radio dispatches had poured in all night. Accusations, demands, anger. No one had bothered to distinguish between the Night Raiders and Day Raiders. It was all the
146th. The lack of distinction hadn’t exactly pleased the Day Raiders, who’d felt their image slipping thanks to their counterparts. One had stopped to take a verbal shot at them as they huddled together in the mess. “I’ve never seen anyone train so much to shoot so little.”
“Leave it,” one of his companions had muttered.
It was too late. His ire had roused Katya. She stopped combing her fingers through her hair long enough to give him a death glare that would have made Linné proud. “We don’t need to be lectured by a bunch of flyboys who slept through the night.”
“Hey, we did our jobs. If you want to play at being deserters and traitors, you could have tried not to get us involved.” He clenched his fists, as if he was ready for a fight.
The word traitors hung thick in the air. The soldier’s friends sidled away, enough to create a gap.
“We’re not traitors,” Katya said.
“You’re certainly not soldiers. You’re pathetic,” he sneered. “Fly home.”
It was the word home that did it. Home was nowhere now; home was nothing. And he was nothing, too. Revna flicked her wrist, violently enough to send a thread of the Weave whipping forward. The edge caught him in the middle of his smug face, sending him straight back into the wall.
She hadn’t meant to hit him so hard. But she didn’t really care, either.
Everyone who had been in the mess for the fight was called up before Hesovec. Revna heard half his rant and cared about none of it. As spit flew from his mouth, she imagined him in battle, fixed to the wrong end of a bayonet. Blood spraying instead of saliva. His life was worth as much—as little—as the soldier she’d thrown against the wall. Hadn’t that been Tamara’s point? No one was too important for the war. Not Revna, not the civilians of Tammin. She felt hollow. Nothing around her mattered.
After his rant, Hesovec sent the rest of the 146th to the field to wash down the planes. But Tamara called Revna, Linné, and Magdalena to her office instead. The three of them squeezed through the door together and stood, hands clasped behind them.
Tamara poured them each a cup of tea. The thin golden liquid steamed in their tiny ceramic cups. Twelve hours ago she’d been raging at them, pounding on the Strekoza’s cockpit. Now she acted as if it had never happened.
“You’ll be happy to hear that Ludovic has suffered no lasting damage from your altercation,” she said.
“Ludovic?” Revna echoed.
“The private you rendered unconscious. From what I understand, you quite lost your temper,” Tamara said.
She guessed she had. But Ludovic had deserved it. He didn’t take precedence over the war. And he didn’t get to treat her as though she were a joke. Not after last night.
“I know Tammin was difficult for everyone. But I met the two of you in Tammin, didn’t I?” Tamara said.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Magdalena. She squeezed Revna’s arm. A sliver of anguish pierced that hollow feeling around her.
“I understand your reluctance last night. And your temper this morning.”
Revna wanted to explain. It was dark, it was Tammin, Linné made the call, it was Tammin—but one thing she’d learned from her navigator was that you put your head down and took your punishment.
“I will have to discipline you for your demonstration in the mess. But first I must be clear: Our pilots need to keep their calm. If you lose your head during a battle, it could mean both your deaths and the loss of our plane, and you know what a blow that would be to the regiment.”
The hollowed-out shell around her broke. “I can fly,” she said. “I only—he made me—”
“Are you clearheaded enough?” Tamara picked up her pen and pulled the evening roster toward her. Ready to eliminate them.
“I can do it.” Revna hated the desperate edge to her voice. But she could do it. She had to do it.
“Can she?” Tamara looked to her engineer.
“Of course,” Magdalena said without hesitating. Revna wanted to grab her hands and kiss them.
Then Tamara turned to Linné. Linné tapped the side of her cup as if she really were thinking about it. She’d say yes. She wouldn’t accept sitting around the base while everyone else ran off to fight.
“No.”
Revna’s heart dropped like a stone. “What?”
Linné turned her cup around in her hands. A flush crept up her neck. “She can’t. She needs time.”
“I can fight.” Revna leaned forward, grabbing the desk for support. “Please, let me stay on duty.”
“Look at her,” Linné said.
“Shut up,” Revna choked out.
Tamara cut in. “That’s enough. All of us feel the blow of Tammin, Revna. It’s no shame that you feel it more than others. Your team is grounded until further notice. I recommend that you try to get some sleep, then report to me for your discipline. I’ll reassess your situation in a week.” She lowered her pen and struck a thick black line through their names.
Tamara’s words left her ears ringing. A week? A scream swelled in her chest. She squashed it down. Screaming would only prove her unfit after all.
Apparently, a week was more than Linné had bargained for, too. “For all of us? Please, Commander, I’m more than capable.”
“It seems you’re more than capable of fighting. With anyone, including your comrades. I won’t give you a new pilot and ground a different navigator. If you can find someone willing to switch, I’ll approve it,” Tamara snapped. “But don’t burden me with your petty problems.” She set her typewriter on top of the papers with a thud and began to type. “Good afternoon.”
Linné was out of Tamara’s office before she’d stopped talking. Magdalena shot off after her. By the time Revna got outside, Magdalena had grabbed Linné’s wrist and jerked her around. “How could you?”
Red blazed in Linné’s cheeks, but she met Revna’s eye. “I saw how you were in the mess. Everyone else might be willing to ignore it, but I can’t.”
“And trying to abandon me?” Revna managed to say. She wasn’t surprised, but the betrayal still stung.
“We never wanted to fly with each other anyway,” Linné said. “You need time off. That doesn’t mean I do.” But her gaze dropped, and Revna heard the thinness of her voice. She was lying about something.
“I thought you cared about honor,” Magdalena said. She pushed Linné so hard that the girl tripped over her own boots and landed hard on the boards. “Your pathetic begging is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. Revna’s lucky to be free of you.”
“I’m trying to make sure she doesn’t kill herself,” Linné growled. She climbed to her feet, wincing, and shook out her ankle. “I’m trying to give her what she needs, not what she wants.” Her boots crunched over the half-frosted plywood as she limped away.
Revna’s anger boiled over. “How could you possibly know what I need?” she yelled at Linné’s back. Right now she needed to hit something, to fly as hard and as fast as she could, to leave a trail of fire in her wake. She didn’t need false friends who spent more time helping the Information Unit than helping her.
Magdalena wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll fix this,” she said.
“Yes,” Revna said. They’d fix this. But she didn’t know how.
Revna had to submit to an examination by the base doctor, and then she was turned loose for three torturous nights. Her Strekoza sat lonely on the field, quivering next to Pavi’s. Everywhere she turned she saw reminders of what happened to innocent people who ended up in the wrong place. Yet she was the most treasonous person she knew, and she still hung on to her position.
Tamara made her file papers but let her off after midnight, when Magdalena took her into the engineers’ workshop to help pack bombs in crates of hay. Linné vanished somewhere, and Revna didn’t care where.
When she couldn’t take the noise of the laboratory, she went to the mess. She tried to write. She tried not to think about flying, about how free and powerful she felt in the cockpit. When
she saw other soldiers, she tried to remember they were living instead of imagining them dead. Sometimes the cook brought her things, so she forgave him for gawking at her legs. She wished that his fixation made her angrier, but she was too used to that kind of attention.
Her reprieve came on the fourth day. Revna looked up from her blank letter as a group of engineers flocked into the mess, each arguing her own point as loudly as she could. She spotted Magdalena in the middle of them, looking grim.
“Freezing the guns will make them as useless as burning them, and maybe they’ll freeze the soldiers, too,” Nina said. “We should improve the cold design and make them battle-ready.”
“Freeze a gun one day and it’ll be working again the next,” Olya argued. “Destroy it by fire and the Elda will have to wait weeks to get a replacement, if they can even get one at all.”
“But Elda who are frozen to death can’t use the replacements, either,” Nina said.
Couldn’t they shut up? She usually found their arguments funny, but today she wanted to shake each of them by the shoulders. Didn’t they understand? The next person they froze or burned might not be Elda at all.
Magdalena broke away and headed for Revna’s table, looking troubled. For a moment Revna thought she was coming to commiserate. But she pressed Revna’s hand and said, “Tamara wants to speak with you.”
Revna’s first thought was a burst of hope. Maybe Tamara had news of her family. Her second was that they’d finally decided to send her north to Papa. Whichever it was, she might as well get it over with.
She let Magdalena walk her down to Tamara’s office. They stopped at the door. “Do you want me to come in with you?”
“No.” She had to be strong.
We Rule the Night Page 22