The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe)

by Walter Blaire

  ~You’re in,~ said the Voice. ~You can thank me later.~

  13

  Nana

  The sheets were incredibly clean. Clean and stiff, washed with something starchy and then given a crease with a hot iron. Sethlan’s pensioner would charge extra for that. She wondered at his extravagance, when he clearly spent money on nothing at all. It couldn’t be for comfort—his sheets weren’t as comfortable as the ratty, threadbare blanket on her own bed.

  She worked through it. The bed was about as far from a muddy, slushy shell hole as a person could reasonably get. There was no hint of the front, its smoke, soil, or smell, in Sethlan’s bed or in his antiseptic whitewashed apartment. Except for those damned cheroots of his. Those burned like toxic candles all through the night, because he smoked when he couldn’t sleep.

  Forgiven.

  She nestled against him, luxuriating in his heavy, sleepy warmth, which ran the length of her body. She tried to doze off again, but her eyes kept snapping open. She wavered between affection and concern.

  She had thought Sethlan was safe, and he wasn’t. Safe, to her, meant reliable and mapped out. She’d thought she had him: competent in his specific realm, the front, but diffident everywhere else. Controllable. Blood-fed were supposed to be controllable. Maybe he had sparked into a different kind of adult blood-fed. Maybe, when his brother died, he had somehow bolted past the regular, ponderous thoughtfulness.

  That charm of his, with the compliments mixing into his newfound humor, turning awkward to glib. That cleverness with getting her to open the jar. How could she not reward that kind of finesse? All she could be sure of, this morning, was that Sethlan was patently not safe or under her control.

  She had hoped he would be someone she couldn’t love. Dashtas shouldn’t love. And what about a Queen? As far as she knew, not being wildly experienced with romance, every girl needed to see the boy in the man for a tender feeling to abide. This implied a connection to mothering or nurturing which she didn’t quite believe but was willing to suspend judgment on. She didn’t want to be in love—did she? She probably did.

  Of course you do, she snapped. How can a girl lie to herself like that? Only a dashta could be so deceptive.

  Sethlan stirred under her cheek. “I seduced you.”

  That made her giggle, even though it wasn’t that funny.

  “You couldn’t resist me.” He squeezed her tight. “I was irresistible.”

  “If you say so.”

  Yawn. “I’m immovable on that point.”

  Still not funny, she knew, but she couldn’t help smiling into his shoulder. What’s wrong with me today?

  Her eyes slid over his chest. His torso was a map of old scars, woven so tightly across his skin it defied belief. If all the wounds reopened at once, he would be human confetti.

  He dropped quiet for so long she thought he’d fallen back asleep. She wanted his voice again, and asked, “What were those dreams last night?”

  “The front. I was in a gas attack. None of us could breathe. Tejj was shooting all my men in front of me, one at a time. They would crawl forward, coughing, and lean their foreheads against his gun. I could think of nothing to stop it.”

  She sat up and pushed back from him.

  “I know, vile Pollution in my mind.”

  “No, I was only surprised.”

  His eyes lingered on the blank ceiling. “It was such a futile feeling. It was so wasteful, all those boys leaving for nothing. No longer able to give service. It would have been less waste to have the Southies shoot them down. You see, Tejj was spending our own bullets.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m an idiot in my own dreams. Don’t listen to me. In the dream, it was utterly wasteful. I know it’s stupid.”

  “Men are wasted all the time from a woman’s view,” Nana murmured.

  “It’s not a relief to get rid of us?”

  “Not funny,” she said. “I brought up my brothers and taught them from the day they could sit up. It was like singing to rocks, and I’d hate them during the day, but then falling asleep I’d love them again. That would last until the next morning. I woke up once, and Gole had set fire to my bed.”

  Sethlan laughed, and she couldn’t help but grin.

  “But then one of my brothers would speak and say the most wonderfully odd things. Gole would chide the air when he spilled a bowl on the floor, as if I wouldn’t guess the truth.”

  “Don’t discount those things in the air,” Sethlan said. “I saw them too. I think.”

  “I’m sure you did, whenever you broke something. Anyway, all men start like that, growing up in herds with suffering mothers and sisters. Then they go to the front and stop a bullet and get taken into the ground. Waste and not-waste, like when trees drop their leaves every year and eat them again through their roots and then put out more leaves.”

  “Ah…”

  “Are you unwell, Sethlan?”

  He shook his head. “I just hadn’t thought of us as replenishing. There is a constant stream of us, and we’re feeding the eternal front, and it’s natural.”

  “I did not say natural,” Nana said. “But when the war is over, the front will be the most fertile and beautiful land on Grigory. Fallowed and tilled beyond imagining. Something beautiful will grow from all those fallen leaves.”

  “When the war is over.” His voice turned soft for a moment. Then he snapped back to the present. “There is all the unexploded ordnance in the dirt. It will be going off for years.”

  How could she explain it for him? “Think of it this way. The unexploded ordnance in the dirt will make a few pops here and there, a farmer gone. But what a joy to walk back and forth in the open, looking for his parts, gathering them together, bringing him home to his family.”

  The vision took him for a prolonged moment. “I can’t imagine the war not being somewhere.”

  “To be sure, it has stretched a hundred years in the trench,” she said. “But before that, there was no war. For millennia before the Haphans, there was no war, only our regular struggle. There is nothing eternal about the eternal front.”

  He looked at her, eyes wide and unguarded. “If you put it that way, the very stone walls of the house where I was born—they were put up before the war started. If the war is a habit, well, how easily we fall into habits.”

  “We can fall out of them, too,” Nana said. “And when the war stops, the waste will stop with it.”

  To his credit, he seemed to consider the idea. At least, he went quiet for several full minutes without falling back asleep.

  Just before she reached out to him, he pulled the sheets off and rolled out of bed. “The Haphans would never permit the war to end.”

  Should I tell him? Is it time? She had no idea. She never seemed to have any right idea. What will he do when I tell him?

  The dashta in her knew the soldier perfectly; she knew exactly how the captain would respond. The girl in bed, however, the one who laughed too quickly after last night, desperately hoped for something different from the man. She chided herself, You just want someone to talk to, someone you can be unguarded with. You want to be able to make an error now and then. But why now? You’ve never had that once in your life.

  “Sethlan,” she said slowly, “when the war ends, it will not be the Haphans’ choice.”

  His whole body jerked to a stop, pants half buttoned. Please just think it through, Sethlan! As the dashta, she knew his only purpose in the Observers, the only idea keeping him in the world, was service. It also worked backwards; service to the Haphans was the only idea that gave meaning to his sacrifices, or to the deaths of his men.

  He turned back to her, face hard. She shrank against the wall, letting her own expression go flat and blank.

  “It is only the Haphan’s choice,” he said hoarsely. “There is no other authority. To claim so would be sedition.”

  And there’s my answer.

  What had she claimed to want? Safe and predictable. She�
��d told herself she wanted someone she couldn’t love. Because then it wouldn’t sting so much to be the dashta again. She’d got what she wanted. She would always have to be the dashta, even with him.

  And so long, silly girl in the bed, she thought. Am-a truly as I am.

  With her voice firm, she said, “Vercetorix, thine eyes and ears open—”

  But he was already speaking. “Wait, wait, I understand. For a few blessed moments, I’d forgotten that the South is about to break through the line and destroy everything. Talk about habit! It’s not the same old war as always.” He rubbed his eyes, not looking at her. “Indeed, when the end comes, the Haphans will not have much choice at all. Forgive me, Nana, I’m still waking up. ”

  He padded out of sight to the bathroom.

  Nana flopped to the bed with relief. What the fuck was I thinking? She didn’t have time for this. This place, this bed, this man. The South was about to break through the front and raze Sessera. Forget what she told everybody else, she had not the slightest glimmer of hope at diverting that disaster. But the problem would fall into her lap because the multifarious underworld bosses of Ville Emsa were herding her toward the role she could never fill: Queen, manleader. Forget being queen, she couldn’t even manage as a dashta. Captain Cephas was feeding Observer secrets to the Haphans. Colonel Trappia expected to be snatched off the streets by Happie intelligence again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. No, she didn’t have time to giggle in bed.

  Why couldn’t Sethlan already just understand everything? He’d be someone she could finally trust to make good decisions, to not take shortcuts like Kinsur Keshmadron.

  Sethlan could be so useful to my plans.

  Her whirling thoughts slowed, and faded.

  “Well, that didn’t take long,” she said aloud. Thinking like a queen. He deserved better.

  Still, what if she decided he was crucial to her needs in the more encompassing sense of the word? Why, she’d have to get him in bed again, soon, and try again. A dumb smile crept onto her lips; she couldn’t keep it off.

  She’d have to try over and over, until she got it right. Nana, you’re ridiculous.

  Sethlan returned to the room, damp and smelling of soap. She was smiling and couldn’t stop, and before long, he smiled back.

  14

  Gawarty

  For a week, Gawarty had gone native. He drank at the club, ate in the street, and slept in a comfortless room on a hatefully stiff mattress, staring at unevenly whitewashed walls. For entertainment he expended twelve to eighteen hours a day at the front, crawling like an oar beetle through crevices in the earth. One week was not long enough to forget the finer things in life, but it was certainly long enough to forget what was so fine about them.

  So when he finally visited Ville Emsa’s Haphan Quarter it was a revelation. He knew rationally that the architecture and layout of the city didn’t change when he crossed the bridge. When Emsa was originally taken, the Haphans had simply co-opted the safest neighborhood for themselves and moved in, rather than building new. Despite this, the streets seemed wider and better lit. The buildings were decorated, not bulked up with defense in mind. Large windows faced the streets, which widened and brightened the sidewalks with views into restaurants, pubs, and festive store displays. The pedestrians passed each other with arms full with bags instead of weapons and shouted greetings instead of threats.

  For Gawarty, the Haphan Quarter had everything he had taken for granted up north. He had failed to notice when it was gone, but not when it returned. Smelling the wafting scents of the Haphan Quarter—no sewage in the streets here—he resolved to eat a good Haphan meal at least once a week before he turned completely Tachba. He felt almost like a golem returned from the clay and wandering among little dreams.

  His sister’s offices were unmarked. He referred to directions encoded in print Tagwa, the Haphan battle language, on a scrap of paper, and eventually found a building off a small square. He climbed stairs to the top floor, and the final flight opened onto a high-ceilinged great-room, a Haphan addition to the older original structure. Accustomed to the cave-like Sesseran interiors, the huge volume of the room made Gawarty momentarily think he was outside again. It was a shared space, where each office demarcated itself with unit flags strung from the ceiling and filing cabinets that separated clusters of desks. Jephia’s Native Enforcement was the only exception. Setting itself off with frosted glass walls, it greedily dominated half of the street-facing wall, appropriating the best views of the Quarter.

  He cracked the door, and found more frosted glass in a small waiting room. “Hello?”

  The far door opened to show the face of an orderly. “A bit after hours for business, sir.”

  “It’s a personal visit; I’m here to see the colonel. Lieutenant Gawarty Tawarna.”

  “A gentleman wouldn’t mind a moment’s pause.”

  The orderly presently returned and led him to Jephia’s office, where he found his sister slouched in a chaise surrounded by towering stacks of paper.

  “Warty!” she cried, jumping up. “Oops. I’ve started an avalanche, run for it!”

  She gave him a fierce, brief hug and examined him closely, even holding his hands and splaying his fingers.

  “Don’t be so suspicious,” she said when she saw his face. “I was terrified to hear you’d already gone to the front, after barely a day with the Observers. Blame Daddy—he said Semelon was the right pick. ‘A real grown-up, that one,’ he said. I didn’t know he was one of those active Observers.”

  “Well, sis, that answers one question. You were behind the secondary orders.”

  “Oh, maybe. I was able to whisper a name at the right time, but unfortunately I whispered the name Daddy gave me. He has some affection for that Semelon man. Owes him money, or something.”

  “I like him,” Gawarty said, glad to be able to say it out loud. “He’s very thoughtful, and quite different from…well. I couldn’t ask for a better guide. A better superior, I mean.”

  “He’s thoughtful? You get that thoughtfulness with the smart Sessies, the ones which started out blood-fed. That’s their word for the twin that is basically an imbecile until fifteen or sixteen. You don’t get a quick wit from them, not like with some Sessies.” She dimpled mysteriously at that, and went over to a decanter with, yes, a purple Haphan wine. “And do you recall ‘Sessie Lover?’ I think that’s what you called me when we were home.”

  “I remember saying something about not sticking out,” he waffled.

  “Most Haphans never live or work closely with the Sessies. Even in the Haphan Quarter, they only see Sessera from across the bridge, and it’s not altogether flattering, especially on the brick-throwing days. Most Haphans have simply no idea how earthy and...vivid? How vivid they can be.”

  Gawarty took a wine glass from her hand and strolled to a window. The Haphan Quarter was brilliantly lit, causing the night sky to glow, while beyond the reflecting ripples of the Granta rivers lay the almost complete darkness of greater Ville Emsa. The Sesserans had not yet mastered street lights.

  “How did you know I was at the front? Did you talk to Father? I can’t believe I would be mentioned in a dispatch.”

  “You can’t?” Jephia laughed. “On your first day on the line, you bring back the intelligence find of the decade, if not the century. New Southie writing, showing how the monsters are organizing. Of course that came to me, and your name was attached.”

  “The papers are being messengered to the capital.”

  “Oh, no. That is just what we told the Sessies. The whole packet is translated, and it’s being studied. Incredible stuff, you can’t find two pages with matching facts. It’s like scrawls from a lunatic asylum, but clearly it makes some kind of sense to them. We call it ‘southscript.’”

  “What about the papers Captain Semelon found?”

  She nodded. “We took those too. The officer carrying it got in one of those unfortunate Sessie duels and died. Even if they remem
ber in a week, they won’t know where to begin looking.”

  Gawarty found this more disturbing than he would have expected. “Given how vivid they are, I would think that there are obvious benefits to letting them have their papers.”

  “Don’t go stiff with me,” Jephia said. “Recall that I do this for a living. Better the Tacchie writing is in our hands than lost somewhere in the Sesseran bureaucracy. Lunatic-cracy. I hope you never experience it.”

  “They operate smoothly enough to run a war.”

  “Because they throw four clerks at every sheet of paper.” She paused, one eyebrow raised, and from this he knew she would change tacks. “Warty, I sometimes interrogate actual Southie captives. The ones who reach me are the ones who haven’t killed themselves yet. Usually, they’ve been tasked with checking in on Ville Emsa or learning a bit of information, and when they die, their spirits are supposed to ‘breathe it back to Gring’ through a fire. So I know a little bit of what the Moon Kingdoms are like. A hundred years of Haphan supervision have made Sessera a civilized paradise compared to what it once was.

  “For example, sometimes we have to placate one of those Southie prisoners. We provide a comfort, like a tasty meal. You would not believe the dishes we prepare on those nights. We have to swear the commissary to secrecy, and I’ve seen them throw out the pots and pans afterwards. At home, the Southies sleep on corpses piled three deep. Their beds are pummeled with special softening clubs, so there are no bones sticking out, and the corpses are luxuriously mushy.”

  Gawarty stared at her, unable to reply.

  “The southern Tachba capital has thirty million souls. You see how Ville Emsa is barely livable with half a million, and that’s with the cleaning days and the body carts and a Haphan hand in every civil effort. Can you imagine what a hellhole Gring must be? No, our Sessies are very different, even pleasing.” Again, her mysterious smile. “But we cannot let our Sessies entertain the idea that they have common ground with the South. Our Sessies cannot learn that the Southerners can communicate like non-animals, as these pages show. Or even that they have a sense of morality that our Sesserans might share. Our Sesserans are naturally credulous and must be protected from any hint that could mislead them. The papers cannot be shown to any of the primitives.”