Sperrin
Whitmount: Eleven years before the Loss
At the end of a successful fighting season, the captain-general sent Nemias and me on long leaves while he took on the logistics of staging supplies and reinforcements for the following spring when the offensive resumed. I think he was concerned that all the fighting I had done over the last seventeen years would eventually impact my effectiveness as a commander. He was more right than he knew, although before that winter, the possibility had never occurred to me. I enjoyed what I did—as someone who had become one of the Empress’s favorite officers, I had the freedom to plan and execute battles as I saw fit. I had the freedom to participate in those battles on a personal level as well. I killed a lot of enemy soldiers, directly and indirectly.
Not until that winter did it occur to me that just how much I had come to enjoy killing might become a problem.
I had never had any problem differentiating between the time I spent soldiering and the other parts of my life. Somehow, that winter, the barriers that separated the different parts of my identity began to break down.
At first, the leave went normally: visits to the families of fallen soldiers, a special party for my daughter to celebrate all the holidays I had missed spending with her, a formal dinner with my wife and her sister and several other prominent channelers. Our marriage hadn’t been especially close for a while—both of us had so immersed ourselves in our careers that we seldom exchanged messages while I was at the front, beyond a few lines I would enclose with the letters and packages I sent to our daughter. But it had been comfortable enough, like any Ananyan marriage. Now, however, I sensed a greater distance between us, and wondered if years of fighting had begun to change me. It felt as if my wife had been replaced by one of the fey from the Kelpie Aqueduct. As if my wife, the woman I loved with all my heart despite our differences, had been disconnected from my life and an alien creature left behind.
A day later, when the idea of killing her entered my mind as if from nowhere, I knew something had changed. Later, when I found out the secrets she kept from me, it would have been easy to blame Sefa for the urge to murder that I could barely restrain. But that wasn’t it. Her secrets may have increased the emotional distance between us, but the feelings that threatened to overwhelm me came from too many years on the battlefield, not from any choices my wife made. She hadn’t changed, I had. I could return home, but I could no longer leave the battlefield behind.
We were out walking in an indoor winter market, my daughter skipping beside me and holding my hand while Sefa walked ahead to browse stalls that didn’t interest Lynniene. Something felt off. I found myself looking at Sefa the way I looked at an enemy soldier I was stalking, my mind providing kill moves each time she took a step. The other people in the market felt like alien strangers, not targets but not potential friends either. Only Lynniene, skipping beside me, happy to finally have me home, seemed normal to me. I loved my daughter as much as ever.
So why did I suddenly feel the urge to kill her mother?
More horrifying: Was this an urge I might give in to in an unguarded moment? So far it felt abstract, something I could do, not something I had to do. But why was I feeling it at all?
That evening after I’d put Lynniene to bed, Sefa and I found ourselves alone together in our bedroom. The room looked like it had barely been slept in during the months I’d been gone; I knew Sefa often stayed with her sister or other friends during our long separations. Tonight she seemed friendlier, though, as if she sensed that the distance between us had grown too wide and we needed to find a way to come closer together.
We talked a little, mostly about shopping and about our daughter. Even when we had felt closer, the first days together after months of living separate lives felt disconnected. But tonight I found myself reluctant to ease the disconnectedness. Eventually, drowsiness began to catch up with us. We lay together in the center of the big bed, not quite asleep but not talking anymore. I couldn’t shut my mind off: Every time Sefa shifted I automatically thought of the easiest move to kill her, as if I slept next to an enemy rather than the person who loved me, and whom I loved. The person whom I couldn’t help loving, ever since my first, magical introduction to her.
Why did my mind want me to view her as an enemy?
Drowsily, Sefa snuggled back against me. “Make love to me,” she said.
Sperrin
Powder River Campaign: Eleven years before the Loss
I slipped into the headquarters tent so silently that nobody noticed me at first. Then Nemias looked up sharply.
“Sperrin! You’re hurt!”
“No, I’m fine. I needed a long walk.”
“You’re covered in blood,” he said.
I lifted the baldric over my shoulder and hung my blade from one of the pegs on a free-standing rack. Then I stripped off my sodden shirt and hung it from another hook, careful not to let the bloody cloth touch the blade.
An aide stepped forward with a towel and a bowl of warm water. I scrubbed off my chest and arms, soaking my face for a long moment in the warmth of the wet towel before looking up at Nemias.
“What happened out there tonight?” he asked me. The aide had vanished, to find me something to eat and give us some privacy.
I shrugged. “There are fourteen alliance troopers and their covering channeler in a forward ambush post who won’t be troubling us when we advance tomorrow. I left the post in possession of some troopers from the Silvercoast Sharks.”
Nemias looked concerned. “Again? This is the third time this week you’ve gone off like that.”
“And each time it’s made things a little easier for our troopers. What’s the problem?”
He seemed to pick his words carefully. “Sperrin, you know I love you like a brother. And we’ve fought together for years. I love nothing better than fighting beside you...” He trailed off.
“But?”
“But you’re the co-commander of this expedition, and our battle planner. what if you died out there? Then what would we do?”
“But I didn’t die.”
He sighed. “Sperrin, I think you’re a little out of control.”
I snorted. “This is how I find control.”
Nemias shook his head. “Most people go on leave to recover themselves from what we do in battle. But you just came back from leave.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll be fine. We have a campaign to win.”
“You can’t win it all by yourself, Sperrin.”
That sort of missed the point, although I couldn’t say so to Nemias. The almost-daily fighting along the Powder River was only part of the campaign I was fighting. I saw my wife in the face of every Alliance soldier I killed. Sometimes I had started to see friends and neighbors as well. But always my wife, the woman I loved more than anyone other than my daughter.
I could win the fights in the Powder River campaign. But sooner or later, we would win the last battle, and then I would be sent on leave again. And then what would I do?
* * * *
It took time for me to admit Nemias was right. I couldn’t sustain the path I was on, despite my efforts to burn the awful desire out of me by killing soldiers who really were enemies. Some days for a few hours I could lose myself in the joy of fighting and winning against a strong foe. But always my thoughts would circle back to the inevitable end of the campaign and where it would lead. To my wife and all the others I cared about, who I was becoming a danger to.
That didn’t mean I would do anything to slow our victory. I wouldn’t let myself or any of the soldiers under my command lose focus as we forced a retreat, beat back a counterattack, and now faced what most of the army saw as the climactic battle of the campaign. For me the climax had been months ago when the Alliance commander first fell into the trap Nemias and I had set up, a trap that would draw shut tomorrow. But if that had been apparent to anyone else, the Alliance would never have fallen into it. At the time, and for weeks afterward, they thoug
ht they had taken the initiative in the campaign.
I hoped I would still be able to savor the victory. In the meantime, I needed to find a solution to the problem tearing me apart.
Or I had to follow through on the solution I had already decided on, however painful it might prove.
I waited until every detail of tomorrow’s battle had been set into place. I wouldn’t be fighting hand-to-hand unless the trap failed—unless a lot of things failed, actually. In this battle, troops and terrain would be holding the Alliance army in place while our channelers hit them. Among other things, my activities since returning from leave had exacerbated a shortage of channelers in the Alliance army we faced: Unless all of the scouts I had sent misread the situation, it would be difficult for the Alliance to counter the trap that was about to close on them.
The last troops posted in position, I walked off the wall I’d marked as observation post for Nemias and me tomorrow and strode toward the channelers’ quarters to see Khemme.
* * * *
As senior channeler for my regiment, Khemme enjoyed private quarters, one of the few privileges of her position that she took advantage of. I had known her since I’d been a junior subcaptain in one of my first postings. Khemme’s husband commanded the regiment—such pairings were uncommon, but not unknown. As the newest subcaptain with the regiment, I commanded the detail assigned to protect the engineers and channelers, not a safe post exactly since every enemy attack targeted the channelers if at all possible, but a relatively easy one for an officer whose capabilities remained unknown to his overcaptain. Plus, I’d been assigned to the regiment because of the death of the previous subcaptain holding that job.
This was at the Battle of Perrilen Fields, just before the big Alliance counterattack. Our regiment broke through the enemy’s front in that first, mad assault and then the salient collapsed around us as the Alliance poured in reinforcements. We had to abandon the war-engines and fall back fast, with Khemme’s husband and what had been the vanguard of the regiment the only thing protecting our rear. In the end it came down to hand-to-hand fighting, with me and a handful of troopers holding a swarm of attackers off us—and Khemme protecting us from magical lightning bursts boiling down from the sky. We held until the Alliance attack lost its fury, and finally until we were relieved. Three days later, we received her husband’s body back in an exchange of prisoners and remains.
Khemme never remarried—sometimes people did, but it seemed to be less important to the Empress than arranging first marriages. And Khemme didn’t seem to be inclined to push the process.
She answered the door in trousers and an undertunic, comfortable clothes for around camp. “Good evening, ’Captain. I was just having dinner in my quarters. Would you care to join me?”
“Thank you, I would be happy to.” We shared meals sometimes. Her husband had saved us both, and we’d saved each other’s lives more than once, so we felt a certain connectedness even in the years we’d spent in separate regiments. I’d been glad to have her serving with me this campaign: There were more powerful channelers in the army—and my wife was a much more powerful channeler—but Khemme knew soldiers and engineers and how to work with them. She never created friction and with her as senior channeler, no one else did either.
After a few pleasantries we ate in silence while she waited for me to tell her what I’d come for. Khemme had a stocky, soldier’s frame, unlike most channelers, who tended to have a more willowy look. She wore her blond hair cropped short.
“I need to ask advice in confidence,” I finally said. She nodded, and I already trusted her. “After the battle tomorrow, I think I need to ask for a transfer away from the front. I think I need you to ask the Empress for me.”
That didn’t seem to be the question Khemme expected, but she didn’t look shocked, either. She asked a few questions, and I found myself describing what had happened, and my growing inability to separate loved ones from targets.
“It happens sometimes,” she said. “You have been at the front a long time. You may need a longer rest than a leave can give you.”
“That’s what I think,” I answered. “If I can take time away from it, my mind will stop playing these games. Things can be better with Sefa again.” I think that was more hopefulness than what I actually felt, but at the time it never occurred to me that Sefa and Lynniene and I wouldn’t be together if I could work out the problem. For all my battlefield tactical skill, it never occurred to me there might be deeper problems I couldn’t see.
I think it may have occurred to Khemme, but she didn’t say so, at least not directly. “The Empress values your service very much,” Khemme said instead. “I think she will be very reluctant to let you go.”
“I’m not sure how much my service will be worth if I can’t solve this. It’s hard to give my best when I’m afraid of what I’ll do when I go home.”
She nodded. “True.” Something seemed to occur to her. “Why not talk to Nolene? She has the Empress’s ear, much more than I do.”
“What would I tell her? ‘I want to kill your sister. Soon I may want to kill you, too’? How do you think that will go?”
“Also true. I will do what I can.”
I could tell she had something else she wanted to say, so I waited.
“I once felt the same way. When my husband died, after Perrilen Fields, I felt very angry for a long time.” She waved away my response. “I know I didn’t show it, but for a long time, I killed people for my husband’s sake. Like you, I saw his face instead of the people I killed. I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted to kill for him. And like you, I didn’t like what it did to me after a while.”
“What did you do?”
She shrugged. “It passed. Your problem is deeper than mine was, I think. Perhaps you should focus more on the people you kill—their names, their faces. Kill who you need to, but don’t give them your wife’s face.”
I nodded. “Will that help?”
“Not really. It will make it easier for you to keep going until the Empress responds to your request, though. These things don’t always happen quickly. I don’t have Nolene’s influence, but I will make the case for a transfer away from combat.”
“Just for a little while, until things settle down with Sefa.” If they settle down, I knew. But I couldn’t say that. Khemme knew, though.
“I will do my best,” she said again. “Try to be patient.”
“I’ve been trying,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get through it in other ways, but it’s not working. And now I feel like I’m out of time. We’re going to win this battle tomorrow, and if we win it well, the Alliance army we’re facing will be destroyed. And after that, in a few months at most they’re going to send me home on leave again. I’m just not sure I can handle it.”
“For a little while you can,” Khemme said, but her eyes were sad.
Ketya
Ialanye City: Ten years before the Loss
It wasn’t quite true that I didn’t see my father at all between the speech he made at my mother’s funeral and his ascension to chancellor of Ananya, but mostly I saw him at a distance. He had always worked intensely, and now he threw himself into his role as provincial governor even more intensely, as a poor consolation for the wife he had lost, and the daughter who had been unequal to the task of returning her to life.
I think it was too painful for him to even look at me sometimes. He would stay at work until long after my bedtime. In the morning he would already be at work when I breakfasted; the nurses would give me pitying looks and tell me that he had looked in on me while I slept, and that they could see in my father’s eyes how much he loved me.
By then the nurses and other servants felt almost like family to me. My parents had maintained a very formal household, but with my father gone most of the time things relaxed a lot. Many of the servants had kids around my age, and I was allowed to play with them as long as all my lessons and all their work was done. It also meant I got to run around town
with them, and meet some of their friends. I hadn’t really been out of the house much since my mother had gotten sick: not that anyone was trying to hide me away, but at the time I was too young to go out without someone supervising me, and no one was willing to suggest it with my mother sick. So it felt great to actually have a chance to play outside with other kids again, instead of spending all my time in the nursery with the same toys I’d had since I was eight, or in the library with my tutors.
My father did tell me about his promotion to chancellor firsthand, though. He had been summoned to the capitol immediately, but took the time to stop by the house and order lunch set for both of us. He even asked the cooks to serve my favorite foods. It was funny; we’d seen each other so little since my mother died that he didn’t know what I liked to eat anymore, but he knew that the cooks would. So we sat, just the two of us, at the huge dining table, and I nibbled on all of my favorite things—there was too much to do more than nibble—while he spun stories about how wonderful things in the capitol would be, and how much I could learn there and how I would be meeting the Empress herself.
“I can’t wait to tell my friends!” I said. Somehow it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t going to see them again.
“You will need to pack,” my father said, unusually patient. “The nurses will need help closing up the household and packing the things that will be going on to the city. I will be leaving tonight, and you will be following as soon as our things are packed. You will be traveling with our things. Someone from the palace will be coming to escort you.”
“Why do we need an escort? I’m sure the nurses can get me there. I’m not a baby anymore.”
“Of course not. That is why the nurses will not be coming with you. The household staff has been reassigned by the Empress, at my request. They will be leaving as soon as the house is packed. The new governor who replaces me will want his own staff, and we will have new servants at the palace in the Drowned City.”
The implications of all these changes were too big to take in. I ventured a question: “What about my friends? Will I see them again?”
The Lost Daughters Page 5