Burns’s frown grew deeper. “I always thought you were one of the bravest men I know.” He shook his head. “I’m not usually so wrong about people!”
Sincerity and manipulativeness were the flip sides of Burns’s character, and sometimes, as now, they coexisted: Crispin knew he was being manipulated, and yet he could not stand for Burns, his one remaining real friend, to think him a coward. “I’m no liver lily,” he heard himself say. “I’ll do it.”
“—Crispin?”
“I said I’ll do it! Just give me the word!”
Burns grinned disbelievingly and held out his hand. Not for him the embrace, which smacked of the patronizing squire! Numbly Crispin shook his hand, “Queen! I knew you’d come through!”
In the west lightning flared again, silhouetting Burns against the horizon, and it seemed to Crispin that the brightness did not die down: rather, the bolts of lightning multiplied and changed color, going from blue to yellow, and now they no longer came from the clouds but the ground, leaping up from the miserable ramparts of the far-off battle lines which themselves looked strangely different, black and heaped, towering; and huge tongues of orange shot into the sky, reddening half the heavens as if an all-consuming dawn were coming from the wrong side of the world.
And Crispin could not answer Burns’s questions about date and place and strategy, because it was dark, insufferably dark, and he had just seen Okimako for the third time.
Avril 1896 A.D.
The Raw: Salzeim Parallel: Cerelon’s Air Base XXI
In the middle of Avril, spring came. These tender yellow days were scandalously few. But while they lasted, the sunlight dripped with honey and the ephemeral scent of primroses and dog violets blowing on the breeze sweetened the moods of men. Victories were few, but no one seemed to care much. In summer, when the dust winds blew, skirling up the soil of the denuded Raw, aggravating hot-weather chills and fevers, the moment would catch hold of them again. It always did. But for these few days the QAF captains were hard put to knock a sense of urgency into their men—even though the army-air force initiative to prevent the Kirekunis from pushing forward to Cerelon had largely failed. The infantry retreat continued at an undignified pace. The troops were falling back so fast that the workforces scarcely had time to construct new ramparts before the soldiers were among them.
Among the supplies lost to the enemy were several hundred barrels of screamers. This security breach caused a flurry of panic at Army HQ. But even after sixty years of falling victim to screamers, the Kirekunis had no clear idea of how to use them, and in a series of fatal barrel-openings, they killed more of their own weapons experts than the Ferupians had all year. The real disaster was that they finally put two and two together in the matter of fire and daemons. Soon the SAF was no longer strafing Ferupian ammo dumps with fire-jennies, but bullets. Now it was up to the Ferupian soldiers to try to contain the destruction with flamethrowers—and to ferret through the ashes afterward in search of the precious nuggets of metal from the KEs’ guns.
The retreat continued apace, and, by the end of Avril, as summer drew its first burning breath, one could see the new ramparts from the rise behind Sarehole.
The QAF was affected only indirectly by the streak of setbacks that had transformed Army HQ into a forcing bed for nervous breakdowns. The nature of the pilots’ job did not change; succeeding merely became more important. And though the officers knew the missions they flew now could determine the war, it was difficult to make the regulars, whom experience had convinced that the fighting would never end, feel the same urgency. The only reason their hype continued to have any effect at all was because the death rate was so high, and climbing, that at any given moment, less than half the regulars in any squadron had served for more than a year, and so were unused to emergency as a way of life.
And this dreadful spring seemed to have induced fatalism in even the youngest hotbloods. Crispin fretted his days and nights away, wondering if 130 Squadron’s relapse into the Jimenez pattern of loss after loss was due not to the yellow season, but to him: namely, to his distraction. The anti-Vichuisse conspiracy consumed most of his physical and mental energy. Even when he, Burns, and Emthraze were not meeting in secret to discuss their plans, he was pondering the deed he had agreed to do, and wondering how on earth he was going to slip it past his crew. He would have to enlist one of them, at least, to back him up. But who? Or could he go it alone? The moment he had imagined countless times already (sight-lock, screamers, tailspin, pieces of Cerdres 500 all over the Raw) had got into his bones. He could no longer place it in context.
The date they had set was the thirtieth of Avril. On that day, he, Vichuisse, and Butch were scheduled to fly a mission into no-man’s-land.
On the twenty-seventh of Avril, a jeep drove up to Sarehole as Crispin was getting ready to take off on patrol. A groundsman came to Hangar One with the news that Flight Commandant Vichuisse had arrived to see the captain.
Crispin’s heart thudded sickeningly. He knows, he thought. He knows.
His own voice sounded strange in his ears as he told the groundsman to ask the commandant to wait in his office. He looked around the hangar, seeing it with different eyes. The riggers were making the final check over the crew’s kites, rushing here and there with silver nails, canvas glue, and last-minute tidbits for the daemons. In accordance with the bizarre superstitions of their trade (which Crispin did not condemn, having been immersed in them himself, and knowing they did the daemons no harm), they would not feed the daemons splinterons before a flight, instead pushing morsels of chocolate through the mesh hatches. The daemons loved chocolate, although they wouldn’t touch any other human food. The side door opened, and the rest of Crispin’s crew came in, suited up, carrying their helmets. Among them was Mickey, tail flicking. “Captain!” he shouted. “Do you know who’s here?”
“Change of plans, don’t worry!” Crispin called back. He grabbed a rigger. “Go fetch Lieutenant Jones! On the double! Give him my apologies and say due to unforeseen circumstances he’ll have to take my patrol this afternoon!”
Unforeseen circumstances—the men were sure to assume the worst. Few reasons existed for a commandant to pay a surprise call to one of his squadrons, even given the rate at which briefs were being chopped and changed in Cerelon. After Vichuisse left, Crispin would have to dissemble better than ever before.
Always assuming he was still there to do it!
He gritted his teeth. On the way to his office he stopped in the lieutenants’ quarters to make sure Jones had got the message and to change out of his flight suit into dress trousers and a jacket borrowed from Carnation, the tallest of the lieutenants. Carnation woke from a deathlike sleep to mumble, “Yeah, course, Captain, what’s mine’s yours, anytime... ” and then rolled over on his face again. Crispin dragged somebody’s comb over his scalp and tried on a welcoming smile in the tarnished mirror over the washpail. Damned if I’ll let him see he’s caught me off guard!
The day had started off sweet and fresh after a night rain, but it had rapidly turned blowzy. The sun was invisible behind a cloud haze, and the sky glowed as bright as an unshaded daemon glare. Horseflies buzzed around the slops outside the mess. Inside Crispin’s office, the blackout curtains were three-quarters drawn, though he was sure he’d opened them that morning. Woodsmoke thickened the dimness. Vichuisse had opened two bottles of Crispin’s Beaudonne lager and set out glasses on the overturned crate that served as a table; he was squatting by the hearth, trying inexpertly to start a fire. The day was so warm that it was unnecessary, but Crispin controlled his irritation. “Let me, sir.” He nudged Vichuisse respectfully aside, arranged the kindling into a pyramid, and lit it with the speed of twenty years on the road. Then he opened the window to let the smoke out and sat down on a half barrel across from Vichuisse.
All his mental and sartorial preparation had been in vain. Vichuisse was clearly not in any state to notice what Crispin was wearing, let alone the nuances of his manner. As
they exchanged pleasantries, Crispin wondered what state Vichuisse was in. The commandant had not shaved. Wrinkles marred his uniform. He smelled as if he had been drinking. A less definable scent—that metallic, nose-wrinkling whiff Crispin had associated with him since the earliest days of their acquaintance, which he had not since been able to identify with any brand of cologne—also hung about him. He tapped his foot with the incessant jerkiness of a drug addict. Yet his speech was as precise as ever. “It has been a long time since we talked, hasn’t it, Kateralbin? I do miss those chats we used to have.”
“Both of our posts are demanding, Commandant.”
“Demanding, yes, yes, indeed. It is a strain.” Vichuisse laced and unlaced his fingers. His mouth twitched.
Crispin eyed him dubiously. “Commandant—have you thought about taking some leave? You haven’t had any in years, to my knowledge.”
“You’re implying that I need a rest!” Vichuisse smiled. “But why should I fritter away what time I have left?”
He does know! Crispin thought, nauseated with horror. Somehow he managed to control his voice. “Why do you say that, sir? Are you ill?”
“Only as we all are.”
“Sir?”
“Is it unlucky to admit that one is going to die?” Vichuisse smiled pityingly. “I am going to die; you are going to die; so are all your fine young men, and their Shadow women. Every last one of us is sick with glory. This war is almost over, Kateralbin. We are making a heroic last stand, but had you heard what I have at HQ, you would know it is useless. The Kirekunis will be on us by the time the year is out, and they are without mercy.”
“It isn’t their intention to crush us, according to Mickey,” Crispin said before he could stop himself.
“Mickey... ? Oh, Ash, Eighty Squadron, our pet lizard, yes.” Vichuisse nodded. “He and I were once so close... I should like to see him. He’s on base, isn’t he?”
“I can have him sent when he gets back from patrol,” Crispin said, and whistled to summon the sentry he had placed outside the window. “Yes. Pilot Ash. The commandant wishes to see him... I know he’s out. Have someone tell him to come as soon as Lieutenant Jones debriefs the crew on their return.”
“Thank you, sir.” The door closed. As Crispin turned back to Vichuisse, he felt the irrational dislike and fear that the commandant always engendered in him. But now it was diluted with pity. What was Vichuisse, after all, but a withered little drunkard with food stains on the breast of his uniform? His eyes swam like yellow-dyed Queen’s Birthday eggs in their sunken sockets. He looked older than his thirty-odd years. Had he deteriorated in recent months? Or had he ever been more than this? Had his superiority and seeming omniscience merely been illusions produced by the hierarchy? He relaxed on the half barrel as easily as if it were his own leather armchair, leaning against the wall, knees apart, one hand beating a careless tattoo on his thigh. But his face wore a pinched, tense expression, like the face of a neophyte walking a high wire for the first time, and Crispin realized what had changed. Every time he and Vichuisse had met before, they had been in the commandant’s territory, or on neutral ground. This time they were in Crispin’s territory. Crispin’s very own office, in fact, the seat of the captain’s power, which, lacking possessions, he’d furnished with jerry-built furniture and a few selections from Jimenez’s leavings. He cherished it because it was the only space of his own he’d ever had; but it was the accidental simplicity of the decor he ended up defending to visitors who had grown up, one and all, in mansions full of chockablock rooms. Eventually he had decided he wouldn’t change a thing even if he could. Now, for the first time, he understood why he felt so much at home here. The office could not have been less like Vichuisse’s bourgeois sanctuary. Against the spartan backdrop, the commandant with his stylish neck scarf and shined shoes looked not just out of place, but flamboyant, superfluous.
Watching him drain his wineglass, Crispin said, “Sir, I’m busy. Was there a reason you wanted to speak with me? Something urgent?”
“No.” Vichuisse smiled. “I simply wanted company. The time hangs heavy on one’s hands, you know.”
Crispin did not know.
“When one has no one to talk to... You and Ash. You were the only two men I ever commanded whom I could be honest with. When the Queen sent me first him, and then you, in the space of less than a year, I thought I was being rewarded for my perseverance in the face of dislike and subverted mutiny. I used to wonder what I’d done to deserve my men’s disrespect! Now I know it was just that I was too passionate. Too passionate, at least, for these mercenary regulars and honor-obsessed lieutenants with whom we must contend.”
Crispin winced. “Commandant, haven’t you at least considered taking a couple of weeks off to fly home, see your family, take it easy—don’t you think it would do you good?”
“And leave six squadrons in Burns’s hands?” Vichuisse smiled. “No, the truth is, Kateralbin, that I could not abide to return to Ferupe without going home. And I cannot go home. Should you like to know why?”
Crispin shrugged.
“I was my parents’ second child.” Vichuisse paused, as if expecting Crispin to object at his starting from the beginning. After a moment he went on. “Shortly after I joined up, my older brother died of a fever—in no way akin to the fever that is consuming me now—but undoubtedly designed by the same evil. It was his unrequited love for a shepherdess on our estate. The physician called it pneumonia, but I knew better. I was the only one he confided in. After his death I had the option of being demobilized, but I stayed on the front.”
“Why?”
It seemed to Crispin that as he spoke that one word, the faint bad smell in the room got stronger. Vichuisse wrinkled his nose as if he, too, scented it.
“I could not face taking responsibility for our unfertile lands—this is northern Lynche of which I speak, on the edge of the snowlands—our ungrateful villagers, and our cumbersome flocks of sheep. All my life I had longed to escape, and I was not about to let my brother’s weakness cheat me out of my freedom. Besides, I was already in love with the air force.” He smiled as if remembering, “The affair has lasted ten years now, and my passion has not cooled—although I have seen evidence lately which tells me hers has. Love’s tragedy is that it must be unequal. Yet someone said that ‘if there must be a lover and a beloved, let me then be the one who loves too much,’ and I have lived by those words.”
He cracked a smile. Crispin took a gulp of ale. The Beaudonne flamed in his insides.
“So I left the estate in the hands of my aging mother. About five years ago, she was taken in by cult charlatans who offered to buy our mansion and lands for a magnificent sum of money. She accepted, but no contract was signed; and in the absence of a written agreement, and since possession is nine-tenths of the law, she cannot do anything to get the land back, despite the fact that she is a daughter of one of the oldest families in Ferupe, and the supposed buyers are nothing but gutter scum, half of them lizards to boot. I suspect the nobility ignored her appeal because she disgraced herself long ago by marrying my father and forcing her family, the Amithres of Lynche, to accept him. They have long memories, the Amithres, like all northern families. And they have great influence in Kingsburg.”
Was that how you got your promotion to Salzeim? Crispin wondered, pitying him. Your Amithres must have guessed, given your record, that any promotion would be a two-edged sword, as likely to destroy you as make you. They must have seen their chance to be rid of the blot on their name. Did you know that?
Vichuisse sighed. “Mother writes to me, from the house in southern Lynche of her even more aged sister and my repulsive cousins, that she has been back to see the estate and that it has fallen into an appalling state of decay. The lizards have let all the servants go and let all the house daemons out of their cells; they have let the lawn go wild and carved ciphers into the teak furniture. The roof repairmen were turned away last winter. In short, Kateralbin”—the self-deprecatin
g smile flashed again—“I’d rather die than go back to see it. I left once; and as an indirect result, the house—where I was born, and where, since I was not aware of the stratification in my family, I spent a happy childhood—as a result, that house has been destroyed. I cannot go back. Even though now that I sense my last days approaching, I have woken from dreams of the stone kitchen below stairs, and the taste of a new potato eaten out of one’s hand with butter dripping between one’s fingers—there is nothing like a new potato boiled straight out of the ground—and skating along the stream under the naked branches of the willows in winter, and the trout under the weir.”
The colors of Vichuisse’s uniform and decorations seemed to have faded as he told his little story. He seemed no more than a shade of his former self, a ghost lingering for a few moments before it fled to Lynche.
“I’m sorry,” Crispin said at last.
“I didn’t come here for your sympathy, Kateralbin, although it is touching in the extreme!” The commandant laughed, swung around, and lit a cigarette with a brand from the fire. “I merely came—one might say—to settle my affairs.”
“Sir?”
“In the past I have not conducted myself toward you as a commanding officer should. I have come to make my apologies.”
Crispin actually yelped in surprise.
“Yes!” Vichuisse’s eyes glinted. “I condescended toward you when I knew in my heart you would surpass me. Not wishing to see you ostracized, I concealed from my men the fact that you had spent time in Chressamo, when I should have let you account for your past yourself.”
Crispin hadn’t thought Vichuisse knew about Chressamo. If he had, he would never have gone anywhere near the captain. But of course Vichuisse had known! And as large as Crispin’s debt to him had been, now it was infinitely larger.
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