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

by Walter Blaire

  She caught sight of Cephas ahead, edging along with an unsteady gait. Nana tried to follow as surreptitiously as she could, but soon trailed a growing string of admirers who called out directly to her breasts, legs, and hair. Luckily a thousand other soldiers on leave were screaming for other reasons and generally tying up the sidewalk with shouting matches and outright knife fights.

  Then she came upon a sizable blockage—three drunken Sesseran soldiers hacking with boot swords at an indignant but sober westerner in the uniform of an Ed-homse mountain skirmisher. They had him backed against a wall, but his spiked climbing gloves were cutting them to shreds.

  Almost as soon as she came upon the scene, it was removed. She didn’t even have to slow her stride. The soldiers around her flowed forward into the mix, bundled the fighters aside, and dispersed the crowd like a chemical reaction. Nana glanced around in surprise. She hadn’t dared to meet anyone’s eyes because being a dashta only went so far on an Emsa night, but she now saw that she was ringed by a deliberate, watchful group of soldiers. They were keeping the worst of the crowd away from her.

  The highest ranking of her bodyguards was a sergeant, and after she glanced at him frequently enough he turned his face to her and nodded.

  “Tonight I was called Culleyho,” she told him sweetly.

  He gave a single negative jerk of the head, caught halfway between shyness and outrage. “Fat Culleyho was a whore-la, tuckin’ her tail and taking the wall for the Happies. A fucking Caremsa.” His eyes swiveled towards her. “Begging your pardon, wife.”

  That was too precious. Nana almost laughed.

  “I grant it, husband,” she said, and found it charming how he reddened and turned away. “I know my history is weak, but didn’t Culleyho save her people’s children from a massacre?”

  “That is truth from a pretty thing. Certainly she stepped lively and took the wall. But someone spared you the rest of the tale. Her people, who trusted her, were then without a common voice. They fell on each other, given weapons on every side by the Haphans, and together they finished the depopulation of Ed-homse. The entire territory was brought under the Haphan foot in two months and nobody survived but the children.”

  “That is so far away, and so long ago,” Nana said.

  “Regarding time and distance, there are knock-on effects that shaped our own Sessera. With Ed-homse gone, the Haphans could then open an eastern front against Sessera, and our Queen Mib, she never had a strong grip on the chivalry—the chivalry were the useful men, the lower leaders. When we started giving up ground to the Haphan army, she was quickly done away with, and her daughter Wanton Baff had to take the reins too early. We liked Baff, but she wasn’t ready no matter how courageous she was. She lasted three weeks. Thus did Sessera fall, because Culleyho didn’t like to see children killed.”

  Nana wondered what she was being told. The sergeant scanned the crowd and used hand-sign to send his boots to clear the path. He seemed fully engaged, so perhaps he wasn’t trying to hint at anything.

  “Are you my permanent guard?” she hazarded. She had slowed her pace to keep Cephas a half a block ahead. Unlike her, he had no problem bulling through the crowds. His rank, size, and the Haphan sash of expectancy which he had pulled out of his pocket did the work of a whole unit of bodyguards.

  “We, a permanent guard?” the sergeant sounded surprised, and glanced around. “No, but I see some big Tacchies hovering in the shadows. I didn’t know you were already protected. I’m not political, but I believe when when an important person is guarded, it’s usually on the hush. Anything regular would be too obvious. The Haphans would have to take notice if a woman was surrounded by protection. So your regular guard are keeping back and letting my men be the heroes.”

  Nana could see no other bodyguards. The street looked like any other night in Emsa. “Then why you?”

  The sergeant looked embarrassed as he framed his reply. “I noticed the Affronts to the Exterior, and I thought you shouldn’t suffer them. Though I’m sure they were all meant as compliments to your charm, of course. Still, a boot might not remember that it is impolite to touch your hair and arms, and so we imposed ourselves and took the hands off you.”

  “They are just boys, after all, with cold hands that need warming,” Nana teased.

  The sergeant nodded stiffly. “Trying to be useful. I really should have offered you my coat, ma’am.”

  Nana saw a new, grim face in the crowd. “Not yet, husband. My errand is with that helpie.” She turned her eyes up to the sergeant. “Can I ask you to stay a moment and then walk me back?”

  “Of course you can! I’ll pretend you already asked it.”

  “Diggery!” she shouted.

  The ruffians behind her took up the call, “Digg-gg-ggery!”

  Diggery eventually turned to the noise, his hand on the butt of his pistol.

  “Oh, he hands his sidearm at us!”

  “That is worth a little blood.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Nana breathed.

  Cephas turned around and peered up the street. Nana tried to cross as casually as she could without seeming unduly hurried.

  Cephas was staring at her oddly. Rather, not at her, but at the swish of the short hem over her legs. His expression was perplexed, not interested in the expected male way. He saw her watching and she cursed herself for glancing his direction.

  “Come with me,” she said, with more anger than Diggery deserved. Diggery’s face glowed with perspiration. He had a fist-shaped bruise imprinted on his chin, and a developing black eye.

  “What has the helpie done now?” Diggery muttered.

  She led him into the open doors of a pub, and stepped out of view of the street. When she turned around she found him standing close, his breath on her chin. His eyes were down her unbuttoned front. I am forever surrounded by men, she thought, letting impatience well up inside her. Aren’t I just a woman, and do I have to be breathed on and coddled and fucking looked into?

  Her anger was met by Diggery’s angry glare. He said, “La, a woman wants me to do something for her. Who ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Colonel Cephas is just up the street and returning to the club. You will call him out and kill him.”

  Diggery’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

  She continued. “Kill him and leave his body untouched, he must be found as he is. Steal not a single thing. Do not be caught.”

  “So the dashta...” he faltered. “The dashta finally sees Diggery as a man, fit for men’s work, then?” But he was too off balance to properly bring off something so cavalier.

  “I am quite serious,” Nana said. “This is a matter of blood and honor. Cephas finally has a worthy use; it’s his last service. He’s going to die by your hand. Whether you’re a man remains to be seen.”

  She squeezed past him, but glanced back. These backward glances will be the death of me. Diggery stared blankly at the air where she had stood. A surge of compassion almost unsettled her conviction. After all, there was nothing in her telling her she was right.

  She put a hand to his cheek, and turned his head to her. “Ah, Digalon. I know you’re all boys inside. I know you only want to be peaceful, but I need you to kill, and so you will. The dashta spake.”

  “Manipulating bitch,” he said, but his eyes were watering.

  She turned on her heel and rejoined the sergeant. She glanced up the street—another damned glance—and saw Cephas turning away. Had that old sea turtle waited all this time?

  The sergeant turned out to be some kind of student of history, and as they navigated back to Sethlan’s rooms, he pried apart her dark mood with stories of the other manleaders. When they paused at the particular door in Sethlan’s building, she had begun to wonder if his expectations might be too high.

  “Talphon, these women who were manleaders...” she said. “Not one of them sounded happy, and not one of them ended well.”

  He shuffled his feet hesitantly. “Well, Nana, those wer
e the olden times, weren’t they? Not many expectations, taking joy when they could. Certainly no children for the queens, they would only ever have a careful half-lover in bed. Therefore they needed no husbands for their daughters, no wives for their sons. They had no family to make noise at night, even when the queen would throw for a daughter and strangle all her boys. There might have been some happiness in their lives, but it’s never written down.”

  “I have read a few histories,” she told him. “It is all about the duties, never about the joys.”

  He peered down at her. “In history, it is never about the results, it is always about the doing. Whenever it is written down, it is what was done. I’m not being clear. You must do the right thing, and the benefits are taken as read, because you get nothing else. Any soul with an unpolluted mind would wish she could have a chance to make the very same decisions.”

  Nana followed him not at all, but he sounded so certain it would feel odd to ask him to explain. “They can’t always be the same decisions. What if I already knew the outcome, and the outcome was failure?”

  “The same decisions. As sure as we are polluted savages, queen, we never do the wrong thing.” He gave her a wistful smile. “Though their hearts may ache, you will never find a queen in history who paused to second-guess herself.”

  “What about Culleyho, then?” she asked. “You said you hate Culleyho, but next you say she could ‘never do the wrong thing.’ So she did the right thing?”

  Talphon shrugged, wryly admitting to being caught out. “It remains to be seen.”

  As he took his coat back, she gave him an impulsive kiss. “And that is for your boots, too.”

  “I’ll share it out, Nana.”

  Up the stairs was her stiff, tradition-bound, Haphan-serving captain: but every night a little less stiff, and a little more urgent and sloppy. With her every visit, he turned a little more demanding and possessive of her, a little more comfortable with the strength in his arms as he held her. Step by step, he grew a little more certain of the quality of his reasoning, a little less troubled by her subversive dashta replies when they spoke.

  Nana’s mind flickered to Cephas and Diggery, and she remembered the young boy standing irresolute in the doorway of the noisy pub. She forced her mind away from the open question he posed, and then she had to divert the image of poisoned trains, entering Ville Emsa like sharp-tipped daggers and obliterating it with fire. At the end of the image—at the end of nearly every dire thought in her mind—there was Gole, running from the fire in her dream, endlessly mired, calling out with breath that left the air smelling of ash.

  When she opened Sethlan’s door, the room was dark and he still sat in bed, the sheet over his knees. Unfortunately, he had one of those vile cheroots that smelled like spent gunpowder clenched in his teeth. She paused in the doorway so the light from the hall could glow through her dress. It was an odd feeling, which took her off guard because it seemed bottomless: an abiding satisfaction that he was sitting up for her.

  His broad chest was bare, worth letting her eyes linger over. His shoulder was puckered with a line of bullet wounds, and his stomach was laced with scars. And though she knew every single way his scars would not let him bend, he was still eyeing her with a faint, superior smile. She felt, with a lash of wickedness, that she should make him pay for his prideful look. I would make a marvelous wife, she thought.

  A marvelous wife. She had even just ordered a man killed for his protection. Whether Diggery would follow through, or break and betray her, remained to be seen.

  7

  Diggery

  Diggery took a step. And then another step.

  Nana seemed a cold creature that night, clock-like, her eyes ticking through the pub, fifteen degrees, then another fifteen, then another, hardly meeting his. Her responses were inapt, off-time. If it hadn’t been for her precision, he would have thought she was drunk and hiding it; she had that kind of stiff, upright detachment. She wasn’t the flexible, boneless, accommodating young woman who would worm into tight crowds and break up fights, who could squeeze like clay through an impossible confusion of knees, hips and elbows to place herself in front of a knife with a soft, beseeching look.

  And then that sour croak: Sink Cephas. He could still hear the flat, metallic command of her voice.

  What was it with women and Diggery? Or women and Cephas, for that matter?

  He turned on his heel and re-entered the chaos of Sell Street. Nana and her retinue had already disappeared, swallowed by the throngs. With her went that truly vast collection of men who followed her only to ogle.

  Diggery turned toward the club, struggling at first to get his feet moving. When he walked, he found himself easing through the crowds with a magical, effortless inertia, as if everybody somehow understood that old Diggery had a special task. He eyed the distorted faces and the staggering forms that rose in his path; none of them seemed real. Diggery was the only real person in the world, and he wasn’t walking so much as his feet were rolling the sidewalk underneath him. He passed buildings and crossed intersections without a single conscious step.

  Presently the Sell Street through-way appeared. And there, appropriately enough in the Diggery-centered universe, was the heavy form of Cephas, just ambling into the darkness. Diggery hurried forward, still not knowing what he would do.

  Cephas was an old hand, constantly checking over his shoulder. Diggery hadn’t closed to fifteen feet before Cephas acquired him, grunted, and turned around with all the agility of a corpse cart. “Don’t I hear the tap-tap of the helpie’s uppity shoes? When will you get some honest boots?”

  “I’ve been visiting. I had an appointment and had to look presentable,” Diggery said. “Anyway, what is so honest about boots?”

  “Ah, Diggery Different-One.” A gleam entered Cephas’ eyes. “Indeed, why shouldn’t you be half Sessie, and half something else? What’s wrong with being your own self, after all? A little of this, a little of that.”

  “Captain, you had better be kind to me tonight.” Diggery edged closer.

  “Diggery is on a mission: hear his fast footlings. Diggery does not pass by Cephas with some snide remark…instead, he slows down. La, I am prepared-meh for a revelation.”

  “Do you know of any reason why you should be killed tonight?” Though he kept his face blank, Diggery could feel himself urging Cephas to say the right thing. To give him some reason to back away.

  “I know a few hundred reasons,” Cephas snapped. “All of my boots, lost because of a wrong turn between trenches. Lost in eight minutes, which might be a new record. You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “Any reason why a…a dashta, would want you dead?” Diggery hedged.

  Cephas pursed his lips, eyes not leaving Diggery. Two officers stumbled into the through-way from the door. They grunted something and staggered onto Sell Street. The captain waited until they were gone.

  “In fact, I have been turning it over in my mind,” said Cephas. “At the moment, there is a very good reason to have me killed. Were you told not to pilfer from my unhappy corpse? Because everybody knows you steal like a Haphan.”

  “‘Leave his body untouched,’ or words to that effect.”

  “Then it all slots into place,” Cephas nodded.

  Diggery waited for him to continue. And waited. “Well?”

  “I’m supposed to give it all out? I don’t think so, helpie. This is big business, this is serious Sesseran business…Yes, it’s another ratchet in the giant engine of serious Sesseran business. What does any of it mean to you, these weighty decisions made by Sessies? You don’t honestly believe you’re one of us. You’re better than us, aren’t you? You’re an anthropologist. You’re a voyeur.” Cephas paused, and then said in a different tone, “Do you know that aphorism which goes, ‘we Sesserans cannot make a wrong choice?’ It’s a silly idea; it’s supposed to spare us some of the regret that results from Pretty Polly. I don’t believe it, but then again I do. The world is so off toni
ght, that I sense a wrong choice is being made. What better tool to execute the mistake than a half-Haphan, half-Sesseran, all-nothing scrag like yourself?”

  If Cephas wanted to goad Diggery, it didn’t work. Mostly. “There’s more, Cephas. A different voice tonight told me to listen to your words and report them back.”

  “If I had my druthers, I’d say obey the second voice. That would be Lieutenant Gawarty, I presume?”

  Diggery shook his head. “Another female.”

  “I can’t fault your company, at least,” Cephas snorted. “You know I can’t beg or plead with you, Diggery. Let me only say, I am a servant of the imperium, and I have proven my worth a dozen times. On one hand, you are directed to listen to me. On the other, you are directed to kill me. You know nothing about what you are, so you can’t decide which to do. So what happens? You ask me what to do.” Cephas laughed tiredly and turned away. “I won’t be kept standing in the cold just to hear you waffle. If you were a real Sesseran you would have—”

  He ducked, and Diggery’s blade, which had been aimed to pith him through the back of the neck, slid uselessly through the air. Cephas felt Diggery’s lunging body against his back and threw his elbow, catching Diggery in the solar plexus. Air woofed out of him, and he fell to his knees just in time to catch Cephas’s knee on his chin.

  The world reeled as Diggery hit the cobblestones like a fallen tree. Only by concentrating on his hand did he retain his dagger. There was no air in his lungs, that old scrag hit hard, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to breathe again before this fight finished.

  Swinging wildly with the dagger, he kept Cephas’s boots away from his head, and then hooked the captain’s leg with his feet. One boot curled around Cephas’s ankle; the other smashed into his knee. The man’s leg buckled backward with an audible crunch. He fell heavily, cracking his head on the pavement, but flailed his arms just enough to keep Diggery hunting for an opening with his dagger. Cephas kicked himself away with one leg, sliding across the damp cobblestones.