He frowned at Rolff who came into an attention stance so alert and erect that he was quivering. He snapped his fist up for a salute.
“Corporal, why is this woman standing outside in so little clothing?” the colonel asked. “It’s twenty degrees out.”
“It’s… she…”
Sardelle almost felt sorry for Rolff, no doubt groping for a way to explain her unexpected presence. Almost.
After a few more stutters, he settled on, “She’s a prisoner, sir!”
The humor that had warmed the colonel’s brown eyes earlier had evaporated. “How does that answer my question?” His frown shifted to the young officer at his side, who lifted his hands defensively.
“I’ve never seen her before, sir.”
“We found her in the mines,” Rolff said. “She wasn’t even supposed to be there. The women work up here.” Rolff flung a hand toward the laundry room—the door had opened, and the laundry lady stood there. She couldn’t have heard more than the last couple of sentences, but she caught the gist and waved her clipboard.
“I got two new girls yesterday and no word about a third.”
Sardelle thought about saying something, but she didn’t have a cover story worked out that could explain the confusion around her appearance. She was starting to worry that between everyone’s babbling, someone would figure out she hadn’t come off that supply ship yesterday, but the colonel had a distasteful look on his face at what, coming in new, he must judge as incompetence. Sardelle raised a single eyebrow—the winter she had come home to teach, that expression had made her students stammer with the certainty that they had done something wrong.
The colonel didn’t stammer, but he did look exasperated. He dropped his duffle bag, unbuttoned his parka, and handed it to her.
“Corporal, get this woman some appropriate clothing. Captain, I want her report on my desk within the hour.” He grabbed his duffle bag and hefted it over his shoulder again. “I’ll find my office on my own.”
“But, but, sir!” The captain took a step after him, then paused, turned toward Sardelle, and held out a beseeching hand. “I don’t know her number, sir!”
“Not my problem,” the colonel called back. He muttered something else that sounded like, “What’s a damned number?” but Sardelle couldn’t be sure of the words.
Grateful for the parka, she tugged it on. Her teeth were starting to chatter. It was still warm inside, with a clean, masculine scent permeating the lining. After standing out in the cold, it was all she could do not to start snuggling with the fur.
Corporal Rolff scratched his head. “Colonel Zirkander has a desk here?”
“He does now,” the captain said.
“Why?”
“He’s relieving General Bockenhaimer as fort commander.”
Rolff mouthed another why but didn’t voice it. Whatever Zirkander was known for, it apparently wasn’t commanding forts. At first, Sardelle found this new situation promising—unlike everyone else she had met here, the man seemed to have a conscience—but when the captain jogged off to look for a report that didn’t exist, reality batted her relief away. This new colonel already sounded like he was going to be more efficient than the old general. Before, she might have wriggled through a crack, but now? How was she going to explain her presence? And if she couldn’t, what then? Would they assume her some kind of spy? Even in her day, spies had been shot. She had better start talking to people and come up with a plausible story, because she had a feeling she would be called into that office before the day was out.
* * *
A dusty directory that hadn’t been updated since the last general was commander led Ridge to an administration building, where he headed to the second floor, searching for Bockenhaimer’s office. The roar of engines started up on the other side of the fort. The pilot must expect it wouldn’t take the general long to pack and catch his ride out of this place. Ridge paused at a window to gaze out, the lump that had been in his throat the whole ride out returning as he watched the man go through his safety check.
“It’s just a year,” he told himself. “A year in the deepest level of hell,” he added, his eyes drawn to the forbidding mountains fencing in the fortress on all sides.
He had only spoken to five people thus far, and he could already tell the place was a mess. Did he have it in him to fix that mess? Just because he had returned from enough successful missions to get promoted regularly didn’t mean he had the experience for this kind of job. He had already made an idiot of himself, gawking at that woman in the courtyard. He supposed women could be murderers the same as men, but he hadn’t expected to find any here, and certainly not one he would have ambled up to in a bar and bought a drink. Admittedly, she didn’t seem the bar type. Too calm. Too serene. Those pale blue eyes… they had been attractive, yes, especially in contrast to that raven hair, but they had seemed far too elegant for the dives he frequented. Not that that would have kept him from buying her that drink if she had shown up in one.
“Yeah, Ridge. Drool over the prisoners here. That’ll look good on your report.” He shook his head and resumed his climb.
A lieutenant carrying a stack of papers was coming out of a doorway, and judging by the quizzical expression on his face, he had heard Ridge talking to himself. Wonderful.
“The general’s office?” he asked.
“End of the hall, sir.” The lieutenant pointed, then glanced at a clock on the wall. “Though… I don’t know if he’ll be, uhm.”
“In?”
“Oh, he’s in.” The lieutenant looked like he wanted to say more, but shut his mouth and repeated, “End of the hall, sir.”
“Thanks.”
Ridge dropped his duffle bag by the door, knocked, and smoothed his uniform. He told himself he didn’t particularly care what some retiring general thought of him, but foresaw being reprimanded for the missing parka. At this time of year, it had to be part of the official uniform up here. The cold seemed to bite right through the wooden walls of the building and creep up from the floor. For the second time, he wondered what judge had convicted that woman and sent her up here in a summer dress.
A long moment had passed, so he knocked again. He shrugged and opened the door. The snores met his ears at the same time as the scent of alcohol and stale vomit met his nose. Well, that explained some things.
The white-haired man leaning back in his chair, his head on the rest, his boots up on his desk, didn’t look like he would have been awake—or sober—even if Ridge had arrived at dawn. A tipped over metal flask rested beside the boots, and several glass vodka bottles occupied the waste bin. A couple of suspicious stains in the corner implied the floor had been vomited on a few times—and poorly cleaned after the fact. In fact, a clean circle next to a potted tree made him think someone had simply pushed the stand over to cover up one such recent mess.
Ridge cleared his throat. “General?”
Only snores answered him.
Ridge walked around the desk, said, “General?” again, and gently shook the man’s shoulder.
Bockenhaimer lurched upright, eyes leaping open as he tore a pistol from his belt. Ridge caught his wrist before he could aim it anywhere vital.
“General Bockenhaimer? I’m your replacement.”
The general was scowling down at Ridge’s grip, looking like he was still contemplating shooting this intruder, if he could only figure out how, but his bloodshot eyes lurched toward Ridge when the words sank in. “Replacement?” he whispered.
“Colonel Zirkander, sir.” Ridge pulled out his orders and the general’s discharge papers, unfolded them with one hand—that pistol was loaded and cocked, so he wasn’t quite ready to release his grip on the general’s wrist—and laid them on the desk. “Your retirement went through a couple of months early. I’m your replacement.”
“Zirkander, the pilot?” The general’s grip finally relaxed. He moved to return the pistol to his holster, and Ridge let him.
“Yes, sir.” He wai
ted for Bockenhaimer to point out that neither pilots nor colonels had the experience necessary to command army installations, but the general merely leaned forward to squint at the papers. “Retirement?” He leaned closer, a delighted smile stretching his lips. “Retirement!”
Ridge resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He wondered if the general had been a drunk before they shipped him out here—could this place have been a punishment for him as well?—or if commanding a remote prison full of felons had driven him to drink.
“Yes, sir,” Ridge said. “If you could tell me about the S.O.P. here and give me a few—”
Bockenhaimer jumped to his feet, wobbled—Ridge caught him and held him upright despite being surprised—and lunged for the window. “Is that my flier? I can leave today?”
“Yes, sir. But I’d appreciate it if you—”
The general threw open the window and waved to the pilot. “Wait for me, son. I’m already packed!”
Oddly, the wobbling didn’t slow Bockenhaimer down much when he ran around the desk and out the door. Ridge’s mouth was still hanging open when the general appeared in the courtyard below, a bag tucked under his arm as he raced along the cleared sidewalks.
“That’s… not exactly how the change-of-command ceremonies I’ve seen usually go.” Ridge hadn’t been expecting a parade and a marching band, not in this remote hole, but a briefing would have been nice.
He removed his fur cap and pushed a hand through his hair, surveying his new office. He wondered how long it would take to get rid of the alcohol odor. He also wondered how long that poor potted plant in the corner had been dead. Hadn’t that young captain been the general’s aide? He couldn’t have had some private come in to make sure the place was cleaned? Maybe the staff was too busy guarding the prisoners, and the officers had to wield their own brooms here.
Ridge was looking for the fort’s operations manuals when a knock came at the door.
“Sir?” Captain Heriton, the officer who had met him at the flier, leaned in, an apprehensive look on his face. His pale hair and pimples made him look about fifteen instead of the twenty-five or more he must be.
“Yes?”
“It’s about that woman… she said she was dropped off yesterday—we got a big load of new convicts—and that she doesn’t remember the number she was issued.”
“The number?”
“Yes, sir. The prisoners are issued numbers instead of being called by name. Keeps down the in-fighting. Some of them are prisoners of war and pirates, and there are a few former soldiers, and some of those clansmen from up in the north hills. It’s easier if they start out with new identities here. The general didn’t brief you?” The captain glanced toward the window—the flier had already taken off. “I guess he did leave abruptly.”
“Abruptly, yes, that’s a word.” Not the word Ridge would have used, but he couldn’t bring himself to badmouth the general yet, not until he had spent a couple of weeks here and gotten a true feel for where he had landed. “You don’t happen to know where the operations manuals are, do you?”
“They should be in here somewhere, sir.” The captain started to lean back into the hall.
“The woman’s report, Captain,” Ridge said dryly. He knew the man hadn’t found it, but wasn’t ready to let some prisoner wander around without being sorted or collated or whatever it was that was supposed to happen here.
“Er, yes, sir. I’m not sure where to look.”
“How about under her name? I imagine she could supply you with that.”
“She did, sir. And I tried looking, but her folder wasn’t with the batch of files that came in yesterday.”
“Perhaps already placed alphabetically?” Ridge suggested. This kid never would have made it onto his squad. Even when he wasn’t speaking, his eyes darted around nervously. Waffly. Was that a word? He wasn’t sure. Maybe he would have the kid look it up after he found the missing report.
“Uhm, the archive rooms are not exactly alphabetically categorized. They’re more… well, the system was already in place when I arrived.”
Ridge stood up. “Show me.”
The captain’s eyebrows rose. Ridge had a feeling the general had never asked to see the archives. He also had a feeling prisoners with missing files weren’t all that common.
“Yes, sir. This way.”
Ridge followed the slender officer down two flights of stairs to an icy basement that had him wishing someone would have brought his parka back. Cobwebs draped old wooden filing cabinets along with newer metal ones. Dust-caked folders sat atop a lot of the cabinets, either left for later storage or taken out and not returned. A few tables in the middle held boxes with more files. If Ridge hadn’t known better, based on the dust collection and the number of cabinets, he would have guessed the prison camp to be hundreds of years old. If all of those storage units were full of records, this place had to be going through people at an alarming rate. There weren’t that many barracks buildings up there, and while rummaging for the manuals, Ridge had uncovered the most recent supply receipts. Food and gear was being brought in for seven hundred and ten prisoners and one hundred soldiers. There had to be thousands of files smothered in the dust before him.
“Captain.”
“Yes, sir?” The wariness in the young man’s voice wasn’t heartening, but Ridge pressed on anyway.
“My job is to get this fort running smoothly this winter and increase output.” Actually his orders said very little about his “job,” but as a pilot, he knew how crucial the crystals buried in this mountain were. He wouldn’t sit on his butt here for the next year and drink himself into a stupor while lackadaisical work went on—or didn’t—in the tunnels below. “Can you guess what your job is going to be this winter?”
“Sir?” More wariness.
Ridge smiled and thumped the man on the back to try and take some of the sting out of his next words. “Organizing this room. Alphabetically. With the people who are still here in those cabinets and the deceased or departed there.” Did any of them ever “depart,” he wondered? From what he had heard, this was an assignment of life without possibility of parole.
The captain’s narrow shoulders slumped. “Yes, sir.”
“You can recruit helpers.”
Those shoulders slumped further. “No, I can’t, sir. All the men are needed to guard the prisoners. That’s why this building is so lightly staffed. Most of those offices upstairs are empty. There are only a few of us running operations, and that’s why there’s never time for… projects.” He glanced at Ridge, then straightened. “But I’ll find time, sir.”
“Good. I’ll be looking into the mines and figuring out if something can be done to ease the burden there as well. Am I right in that most of the problem is the miners trying to kill our people and escape?”
“Yes, sir. Mostly in the spring and summer, since there’s no place to go in the winter, but some of them just lose their brains and go crazy and attack.”
“I’ll see what can be done,” Ridge repeated.
The captain gave him a curious, almost hopeful look, and saluted.
Maybe Ridge shouldn’t have promised anything. Who did he think he was that he could change such a system for the better? Well, surely he couldn’t do any worse than Bockenhaimer had done.
“Yes, sir,” the captain said. “I’ll get started on this today.”
“Send that woman to my office first. I’ll fill out a temporary report for her until you find the one that came in.”
“Oh, I can do that, sir. There’s no need for you to waste your time on a prisoner.”
“You are going to be busy in here.” Ridge smiled and spread a hand toward the basement.
“Er, yes, sir.” To his credit, the captain’s shoulders didn’t slump this time.
Ridge headed up the stairs, glad the captain hadn’t protested further, telling him that interviewing prisoners was too menial a task for the fort commander. It was, he admitted, the sort of thing some young lieutenant cou
ld and should do. So why was he volunteering for it?
“Just want to make sure I get my parka back,” he muttered.
Chapter 3
Sardelle walked up the stairs in the administration building, Corporal Rolff clomping behind her, his boots ringing on the wooden floors. She felt less uncomfortable walking in front of him now that she was wearing a heavy ankle-length wool dress, boots, cap, and scruffier version of the colonel’s parka—it seemed to be the official women’s uniform here. Even without the shield of less revealing clothing, Rolff hadn’t made any more mentions of his room number, not since the colonel’s appearance.
“That’s the general’s, er, colonel’s door.” Rolff pointed past her to the end of the hall.
Sardelle had already rehearsed her story, so all she could do was keep walking and take a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. Strange that reporting to some military commander could make her nervous after so many years of being outside of and, in a way, above such organizations.
Not here.
I know, Jaxi. I understand the situation thoroughly.
I’m just reminding you so you remember to act properly contrite and subdued in your meeting. Also, don’t give him a rash.
Sardelle kept her snort inward, not wanting Rolff to think her odd—or wonder if she was having conversations with herself in her head. That was probably considered an indicator of witchy ways here.
The Itchy Brothers are seeing the medic right now in another building, Jaxi informed her. I hope your name doesn’t come up.
It shouldn’t since they don’t know my name.
You’ve made enough of an impression that Woman in the Green Dress is all they’ll have to say.
It’ll be fine. Someone will diagnose it as a sexually transmitted disease. I’m surprised they even went to the medic. You’d think that would be embarrassing for them.
Sardelle supposed it would be immature of her to wish she were standing outside the door of that medic’s office, so she could listen to the two explaining how they had both come to have the same rash on their genitals.
Balanced on the Blade's Edge Page 4