“I’m not telling you again,” Linné said.
“Please.”
Linné pretended to be asleep.
19
WE WELCOME THE ADVANCE OF COMMANDER WINTER
She couldn’t breathe. The cold beat in on every side, and her residual limbs ached and itched. The space under her arms felt puffy. Panic jolted through her. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t breathe—she tore her eyes open. A silhouette loomed over her.
“Don’t shout.” Linné pulled her hand away from Revna’s mouth. She picked up Revna’s prosthetics and held them out. “We have to get moving,” she whispered.
Revna pushed herself up, gasping a little as hot knives of pain stabbed through her palms and feet. Her stiff muscles faltered. “What’s happening?”
Linné spoke in a low voice as Revna pulled on her socks. “Planes have landed in the taiga. I heard them when I went out for a piss. I think it’s a salvage team.”
And only the Elda knew they’d crashed in the first place. “Do you think they’ll come looking for us?” Revna took the prosthetics and began to fit the inner sheets over her calves. Her prosthetics shivered. The right pin clicked into place; the left rattled. Her hands screamed.
“They won’t find bodies in the cockpit. It hasn’t snowed since we crashed, so there’s no cover for our tracks. It’ll be easy to find us.” Linné rummaged in the pack until she found a bit of jerky, then tossed it on Revna’s lap. “Can you eat quickly?”
Revna looked down at the jerky, then back to Linné’s silhouette, black against the glow of the snow. “I’ll never outrun an Elda search party on a broken leg.”
For a moment she thought that Linné would disagree. But she said, “I’ll think of something.”
Right. Revna nodded and took a bite. Linné folded the blanket and tarp, then shoved them back into the pack. Revna should tell Linné to go without her, to let the curse of her end in the taiga. Instead she ate her jerky and they collapsed the shelter together. When Revna broke the top layer, the cold air hit her so hard she thought her heart would stop. Sunlight had barely penetrated the canopy.
Revna shoved more snow on the remains of the fire. The cold soothed her palms. They’d crusted over with scabs in the night, and when she pressed one with her thumbnail, a thick white fluid oozed up. If her hands were infected, what did that mean for using the Weave? Revna found a strand and tugged on it. The thread seemed to cut through her, leaving a burning agony behind. A pathetic clump of snow dislodged from a tree branch and fell with a soft puff to the trail beneath.
“I don’t think that’s going to help,” said Linné.
Revna’s very bones felt bruised, and cold wormed through her torn jacket. Her heart pounded. Problem: She was trapped in the taiga and powerless. At any moment some Elda tracker would come up that path, and only if she was lucky would she die right away. “What’s your great suggestion, then?” she said as she pulled on her gloves.
Linné sat in the ruins of their shelter with a huff. She took a piece of jerky and chewed, staring at the trees. Revna strained to hear the sound of feet on the forest floor. She could almost feel Linné’s tightly wound mind spinning, searching for a solution.
“We’ll probably have two men on our trail, maybe four. Hopefully not more. But they’ll come in pairs. Pilot and navigator, right?” Linné said. Revna nodded. “If we want to overcome them—” She took a deep breath. “Hatchet or pistol?”
Revna frowned. “What?”
“We need the advantage of surprise. While they’re examining the trail, we use their distraction, and—” Linné pulled the hatchet from her belt and swished it through the air. “Hatchet or pistol?”
Revna’s stomach curdled at the thought of swinging the little hatchet into someone’s flesh. Maybe she could use the Weave, the way she had on the private in the mess. Her hands twinged. She reached for the pistol. “Better if I don’t have to dodge,” she said.
Linné nodded. “Focus on one. I’ll take care of the other.”
Revna swallowed. “What if there are more than two?”
Linné tapped the leather cover of the hatchet against her thumb. Her gloves were torn across the knuckles, exposing dry and cracked skin beneath. When she looked at Revna, her eyes were cold and serious. “If we can’t kill them, shoot me. Then yourself. No prisoners.”
“I—” The pistol seemed suddenly heavy in her hand. She knew what happened to prisoners of the Elda: interrogation and torture. All the same, she still hadn’t shot anyone yet.
Linné eyed the gun, doubtful. “Can you do it?”
The war doesn’t care about you. Or her.
“Do you want the hatchet?”
“No.” Revna’s hand tightened around the pistol’s grip.
“Not so loud,” Linné hissed.
“I can do it. No prisoners.”
They set Revna up next to the shelter’s remains. She’d have a little cover, even though she’d have to lie on her belly. Linné hid the pack behind a bush, then took up her post behind a spruce on the edge of a path. They settled in to wait.
And wait. Revna’s throat grew raw, and the front of her thighs started to numb. Her head rang with a mix of fatigue and adrenaline; her prosthetics shivered; her phantom limbs pulsed. Crows and waxwings called out from the trees, and branches swayed overhead as martens and squirrels scuttled through the canopy. Somewhere out of sight, a moose bellowed. The forest resonated with the rustling of small things, but her ears strained to hear something larger come stomping up the path.
Maybe the Elda wouldn’t come at all. Maybe the Serpent had broken free of the ice and drifted downstream, or maybe some animal had disturbed their tracks and the Elda didn’t even know they’d survived. Maybe they were going to sit here, steadily freezing until they couldn’t move anymore at all.
Or maybe the Elda would come and overpower them anyway.
Linné held a finger to her lips, then slid the cover off the hatchet. Around them, the forest stilled. Linné edged to the side of the tree, away from the path. Revna wriggled down in the snow, trying not to squeal as a few clumps got under her collar. She clenched her hands around the gun, focusing on the way they cracked and seared until they stopped shaking. She only had to shoot one man.
Unless she had to shoot herself and Linné.
Revenge. She wanted revenge, didn’t she?
Soon she heard them, too. They moved with confidence, and why wouldn’t they? The trail was hours old, and one of their quarry was clearly injured. Every so often, they spoke; their voices lilted like birdsong through the trees.
Linné’s hands shifted around the shaft of the hatchet. She leaned back, a coiled spring.
The soldiers came into view.
Revna stifled her sigh of relief. There were only two of them. And they were young. Revna could have gone to school with them in some other life. They wore their uniforms poorly, so baggy and wrinkled that even the Night Raiders would feel ashamed. The thin blue fabric was obviously no kind of winter uniform, and as they stopped, the Elda on the left ran his hands up and down his arms. He said something that made his companion laugh. They were comfortable together, friends. They could have been taking a walk through the woods.
Revna put her thumb on the hammer. One man. She could hear her own heart. And when the Elda stopped, she was half-convinced they heard it, too.
The boys examined the trail. The one closest to Linné pointed at the remains of the shelter. “Da haren de gesojvet,” he said. Then his eyes locked on Revna. They widened.
Linné sprang out and swung. The hatchet connected with his stomach with a soft thud. He doubled over, gurgling. Revna pulled the hammer back. The second Elda shouted, she raised the pistol and shot—
She missed. The forest erupted as birds squalled and took flight. The Elda tore at his own holster, turning toward her. Her fingers fumbled to find a Weave thread. Linné roared, swinging again. Revna ducked her head, but she couldn’t block out the sick thump, slurp of th
e hatchet burying and dislodging, nor his wet scream.
Two bodies hit the ground. It was finished. Footsteps crunched over the snow, then Linné crouched beside her. “We have to go.” Her voice was surprisingly gentle. “If anyone’s at the crash site, they heard the shot.” She took the gun from Revna and shoved it into her holster.
Revna sat up. Fire chased ice over her body. Her mouth flooded and she leaned over to spit in the snow. She concentrated on the ground, on her breath, on trying not to vomit. When she could finally speak again, she risked looking at Linné. “I’m sorry.”
“At least you fired. We can work on your aim back at the base.” There was a harsh sort of humor to Linné’s voice as she passed Revna the crutches. The edge of one sleeve was soaked and dark, and blood dotted her coat and flecked her skin. Her face was pale, making her freckles stand out. They wound across the bridge of her nose like stars. She stood and offered her hand.
Revna took it and cried out. Her hand slid from Linné’s, tearing the scabs away, and she came back down on the snow. Linné crouched. “What’s wrong?”
Revna tugged off her gloves and turned her palms up in the still-pink morning light.
“Holy shit.” Linné touched a blackened scab, wrinkling her nose when it cracked. “What happened?”
“Parting gift from the Serpent.” Revna tried to ignore Linné’s stricken look. “Will you help me up?”
Linné gripped Revna by the upper arm. “We have to get you home.”
Revna stumbled to her feet. Her whole body was a combination of aches, clamoring for attention. “What’s the difference? If we stay here, we get sent away and tortured. If we go home, we get sent away and tortured.”
Linné’s mouth drew down. The blows they’d traded yesterday were fresh bruises. She still had faith—that the Union would believe them, that they’d be called heroes instead of traitors. “We can treat the infection at Intelgard. And if the Elda have started the salvage, it’s even more important that we take the news back before the evidence disappears completely.”
They started walking. Revna waited for Linné to refute her, to spout off the virtues of the Union or promise that they cared about the truth. But Linné didn’t say anything, and she could feel the disquiet in her as clearly as if they were bonded in flight.
They walked in silence. The sounds of the morning had ceased at the shot, but slowly they returned, as riotous as before. Their racket wasn’t enough to drown out the other noises that Revna remembered. The thump, slurp of a man buckling around a sharp blade. The slushy gasps of the soldier Linné had killed first. The thud, like a cleaver on a prime cut. They caught in her brain, playing over and over.
“Don’t think about it,” Linné advised her after a while.
Revna’s laugh sounded like a rusty pipe. “That’s easy to say.” If she didn’t think about the dead men, she thought about her hands, or the fact that her phantom feet hurt more with every step. What if the Serpent had ruined her connection to the Weave? What if she returned to the Union without the one skill the Union valued in her? She stabbed with her crutch at a piece of icy ground.
“Fix your mind on something else. Talk to me.”
You talk, Revna thought, but she said, “About what?”
“Anything. Tell me about your prosthetics. What happened to your legs?”
Revna tightened her grip on the crutches. “What makes you think I want to talk about that?”
Linné made a strangled, guilty sound in the back of her throat. It was almost enough to make Revna laugh again.
“It was an accident. I don’t remember much about it.” She remembered the shadow of the cart, the enormous horse and its ropy mane eclipsing the sun. She remembered waking in Tammin’s hospital, next to the weeping form of her father. She remembered wanting to throw up the first time she saw where her legs ended too early. She remembered reaching for her toes in the middle of the night, crying at the needling sensation of her phantom limbs. She remembered the pain of her first prosthetics digging at her skin. And she remembered the other pain, the new and raging pain, when she realized no one would treat her the same ever again.
But she didn’t feel like sharing all that with Linné. So she said, “I got crushed by a cart.”
“Sounds pretty shit—I mean, terrible.” Linné moved ahead to clear some fallen branches out of the way.
“I started experimenting more with the Weave after that,” she said. “I might not be here if it wasn’t for the accident.”
“And who’d want to miss out on this?” Linné muttered.
The cold and the fear and the memories cracked Revna’s temper. “You don’t have to be here. You could run back to Intelgard and tell them all about the Serpent and be the big hero. Don’t act like you’re stuck.”
“Soldiers don’t abandon their brothers.” Linné kicked a branch, sending it skittering into a tree. Sunlight limned her profile, down to the snow that clumped in her eyelashes.
“Well, don’t act like it’s not your choice. For a general’s daughter you didn’t learn much about manners. Or did you get your conversational skills amputated?”
Linné went still. Revna watched emotions flip across her face, as if she was trying to choose one. Anger, guilt, hurt. When she spoke, she had a measured, almost conversational tone. “My father told me to be respectful, but everyone in the Union was always bowing and scraping to him, so he never set much of an example. And it frustrated my tutors to be rude, so it was extra fun.”
“Your mother didn’t have anything to say about it?” Revna asked.
Linné’s shoulders hunched and a flush brushed over her cheeks. “My mother didn’t stick around after I was born. She went back to the Doi Ungurin.”
“Oh.” Now Revna felt as though she’d asked an unwanted question. She’d never heard anything about General Zolonov’s wife, and she floundered for something to say as she started forward again. “You never visited her?”
Linné fell in line with her. “Bayabar Enluta is a designated enemy of the Union,” she said.
Revna snorted. “That’s your mother?” The Doi Ungurin had consented to be an affiliate member of the Union after decades of on-and-off warfare. Eltai Bayabar had negotiated peace, and his daughter Enluta had refused to abide by it. “I never heard that story.”
“It was part of the peace settlement, but she left before it became official and he didn’t want anyone to know. Failed marriage contracts aren’t really a part of my father’s image.” Linné paused, surveying the landscape. “He found some farmer willing to be his wife and everyone assumed she was my mother. I didn’t find out until she died.” Were her cheeks red from cold or something else?
Bayabar Enluta was the very image of insurgent in the Union’s eyes. Revna wondered how Linné must have felt, realizing her birth mother was the antithesis of everything she believed in. How she must have heard her father tell lies about their family. “I thought lies were the enemy of the Union. Aren’t you angry he didn’t tell you the truth?”
“Faith and loyalty are also important, and my mother had neither.” Linné blew out a cold breath, and they started up again. For a little while they walked in silence, and Revna thought the conversation was over. Then Linné said, “Maybe he worried I’d turn out like her.”
Revna forced a laugh at that. “You’re the most straightlaced person I know.” It’s what makes you so little fun.
Linné shrugged. “I left him, like she did. I ran off to fight, like she did. Nobody thinks I look like him. He wanted me to be a lady, the perfect Union girl.”
Revna had never expected that Linné might feel uncomfortable being a Union girl, too. “I’m sure he’s proud of you.”
“I don’t care whether he’s proud or not,” Linné replied, far too quickly for Revna to believe her.
They came to a tree that had begun decomposing over the path. “You have to laugh,” Revna said as Linné hopped across.
“I disagree.” Linné offered a hand to
steady her as she climbed over.
“I have to laugh. Your mother’s hiding a rebel army in the steppe, and my father’s the one serving a life sentence on Kolshek.” Not to mention that if they made it over the mountains, Linné would be let off because of her father, and Revna all but convicted because of hers.
The Karavels glowed in the sunset like the fire of the gods. Across the sky, clouds gathered on the horizon, striped gold and red and purple and orange. They made for a spectacular dusk, and they portended a killer storm. “Will we be on the mountain when it hits?” Revna asked.
“We’ll get over before that.” Linné stopped, glaring from the mountains to the path in front of them. “It’s going to be fine.” Revna didn’t know who she was trying to convince. Linné wore that expression that meant she’d never be the first to give in. But it didn’t matter what sort of demands she made on the world and the weather. Those were the two things she couldn’t intimidate into submission.
Even when both of Revna’s prosthetics had been securely attached, wilderness trails had challenged her. Now the pressure on her residual limbs made her want to give up before she even started on the path that cut back and forth across the mountain slope. Every movement she made was a balancing act, parts touching but not working together. Her hands felt as though tiny barbs pricked at her skin. And what was she even fighting to get home for? Her breath huffed in and out, a reminder. You’re cursed, you’re cursed.
She went first, stepping with care, relying on the living metal to give what she needed. She concentrated on her feet and tried to ignore the small surge of hope every time she came to another turn. Mud gave way to frozen ground, which gave way, in turn, to ice. When her crutch slipped, Linné had to lunge forward to keep her from toppling.
We Rule the Night Page 27