I gathered she must mean my subconjunctival hemorrhage and damaged ear, and briefly narrated the events that had brought me here—all at an unnecessarily high volume, I was later informed.
“Well, you look awful,” she said candidly. She too had a green number “3” traced across her chest. I was about to ask how she had earned it when she added, “I bet we can get you cleaned up before Vinneas finishes whatever tremendously important thing he’s doing over at the Basilica.”
She was speaking too quickly, even for Kizabel, and I had trouble keeping up. “When did you talk to Vinneas?”
“Just now. A few minutes ago. He saw you were about to land and asked me to come find you, since I’m nonessential personnel at the moment, and he’s being tremendously important, as I believe I’ve already mentioned.”
A hazy warmth pulsed through me then, something excited and expectant, at the news that, from whatever high vantage Vinneas occupied, he had marked my return, picked me out amid all the whirling confusion, noted me specially. The feeling was brief because on its heels came the question of why he had sent Kizabel running down here for me. “Kiz, what’s wrong?” I asked, fear bubbling in my gut. “What happened?”
I think Kizabel saw the distress come into my face, and in an effort to head off my panic, she made what turned out to be a poorly calculated assurance. What she said was “Don’t worry. Naomi’s fine.”
A few moments passed while I sank into pure, cold dread. “Where is she?”
Kizabel seemed to realize her error and hurried to salvage the situation. “There’s no reason to worry. Really. Just stay calm. Everything’s OK.”
“Kizabel!” I screamed, feeling the wildness begin to take over. “Tell me where she is!”
Amid all the noise and commotion of the Stabulum, the urgent calls of medics, the oaths of injured equites, and the screeches of their equi, I was still loud enough that people turned and looked.
Cornered, Kizabel opted for a different tactic. “At the Academy’s infirmary. It’s only protocol, I promise,” she assured me. “Rae, listen to me. She’s perfectly fine. We can go see her right now.”
I did not wait around for further invitation but set off at a run in what I judged to be the direction of the Academy. Kizabel rushed after, keeping me on the correct general course and offering apologies for me whenever I bowled over some unsuspecting person. Fortunately, the city was full of legionaries dashing about on urgent errands, and my heedless and uncivil behavior fit nicely into the general traffic.
By the time I reached the Academy’s infirmary, I was just about out of my mind with terror. Had I simply stopped, taken a few breaths, and listened, as Kizabel kept hollering after me to do, that journey might have been a deal less desperate, but it would not have helped much. Nothing would satisfy me until I had seen Naomi.
And there she was, as Kizabel said she would be, with no outward appearance of harm, propped up in a small white bed and wearing a wide grin seldom seen on her somber face. I went to her, at first not even daring to touch her, then taking her little face in my hands, holding her chin and cupping her skull and running my fingers over her, searching for any sign of hurt.
Naomi responded to my concerns by struggling and swatting me away. “Rae!” she shouted. “Will you stop it! Let go of me and quit fretting, you old nag!” This protest, and others in a similar vein, finally set me at ease. I had detected some tenderness in Naomi’s arm that worried me, but if she was calling me names, there could not be much wrong.
Above her protestations, I heard laughter around us, and looking about discovered that Naomi occupied the middlemost in a long row of beds, all filled with convalescing legionaries overflowing with mirth at the scene I had made. Naomi, humiliated at being mothered over in front of her fellow soldiers, laid into me further, which only increased the general merriment. But I could tell, even if Naomi couldn’t, that this was laughter of fellowship, and when it subsided, I was given to learn just what sort of reputation I had soiled with my mollycoddling.
My sister was a hero. Naomi told part of the story herself, and soon Kizabel, who I had left behind in my final sprint through the ward, arrived to fill in the details she had intended to give me before I went running through the city like a lunatic. Kiz had some official intelligence courtesy of Vinneas but could narrate the important parts firsthand—as could every legionary in the ward, I discovered, when several piped up with their own versions of the story. It seemed they all remembered exactly where they were and what was happening when Naomi’s valor tipped the scales of battle. So did I, once I’d heard enough of the story to understand what had happened.
When IMEC-1 went dark, and the heavy guns fell silent, and our enemies threatened to overwhelm us, it was Naomi who fought her way in to give us another chance at victory. She had been one of several, true. It was thanks to the combined efforts of the Legion’s reserve that we were saved. But Naomi, and the little gentleman Jax, were the ones who made the final push to revive our fortress and its cannons.
Naomi suffered a broken arm in the fight, but thanks to the healing powers of fontani, the bones had already mended. She held up the disputed arm for me to see, wincing as she worked her fingers but determined to demonstrate her soldier’s grit. “Charles says I’ll be good as new in a day or so,” she said proudly. “If I work at it, I’ll be able to heal up faster pretty soon. I could maybe even fix your eye. Does it hurt very badly?”
My eyes had shut to allow me better focus on the multifarious work of gathering up my scattered wits. Seeing Naomi healthy and in the flesh helped immensely, but I still had to reassemble my understanding of the world and its present order. I had departed Earth believing my sister as safe from the Valentine hordes as any human alive. She was to be left behind the rest of the Legion, and I had it on good authority that even if the reserve was called to battle, she would be traveling in the opposite direction. Now I was faced with the business of reconciling my memories to the truth that, in the very worst moments, she had been in the thick of things.
“Naw, it doesn’t hurt,” I said. “Just looks bad is all.”
“Rae, I am all right,” Naomi replied sternly. “Truly. Don’t cry like that.”
A few tears had indeed gotten away from me and were plainly the source of much embarrassment to Naomi. I mopped the culprits up best as I could. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“We won, Rae,” Naomi said, slowly, as if this was a complicated matter demanding careful explanation. “I was afraid at first, but there was always someone to help. I wasn’t alone more than a minute before Charles swooped in and sent me to fight with Jax. And we did it. Jax and I beat a Zero together. The next one I’ll whip all on my own. You watch.”
At that, the room of laid-up soldiers loosed a hearty hurrah. I mustered what I thought a convincing smile. “I’m sure you will, S—” I began to say “Sunshine” but stopped myself just in time. “Sure you will. Everyone back home will be so proud of you.” I was proud of her, too, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to say so.
“They were here!” Naomi said excitedly. “Reaper and Apricot and the Simons, too! Simon Rumble had a little shriveled-up ear and said the magic they’d use to grow it back was going to turn it blue, and when the medics told him it wouldn’t, he asked if they could make a blue one for him anyway.”
She went on a few minutes longer before one of the attending doctors came to shoo me out. Naomi, still boasting, consented to have her hair smoothed back and her forehead kissed, after which I exited the ward to the shouts of soldiers who believed their recovery would also benefit from some kissing.
Kizabel was waiting for me outside. She had backed off to allow me some privacy with Naomi but now was eager that I not be angry with her. “Rae, I am so sorry! I had a whole plan for how I was going to tell you. I drew a flow chart and everything. And then I got there and I saw you and I completely blew it.”
“Oh, nothing catastrophic.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Just a little IED mostly. Nothing I can’t sleep off. Hey,” she said, new excitement in her voice, “let’s go see Vinn. I bet things are cooling down at the Basilica by now.”
Kizabel seemed to consider a visit to the Basilica one of her more brilliant ideas and was crestfallen when I begged off, claiming exhaustion as my excuse. Really, I was feeling very much out of sorts and unsure how I would stand up to further company. Sitting with Naomi had left me a deal more injured than the whole fight that came before, though I didn’t feel it properly until a while later, when something happened to prod that same hurt spot again.
The something was named Vinneas. He was a handsome man I thought I remembered from a long time ago, though when I finally saw him again, I had the notion we’d last met in another life, or at least another world. By then, the IMEC had returned to Earth so that repairs could benefit from the rapid pacing of time there, and I, along with the rest of the 126th Equites and every able-bodied soldier of the Legion, was laboring day and night to set our fortress back to rights. Vinneas, too, had been swallowed up by this monumental task, and while I had never entirely lost track of him, would often note the print of his mind in some plan we’d been assigned or recognize a familiar turn of phrase in orders coming down from Command, it nevertheless wobbled my sense of time and place when, at the end of a long shift, I spied his tall frame at the edge of the Stabulum.
He was engaged in animated conversation with Imway, but the two broke off as I walked up. In place of the cool enumeration of my disciplinary failings Imway usually offered by way of debriefing, he said only, “0600 tomorrow, Eques,” and departed. For Vinneas he had what appeared to be a consoling pat on the shoulder, albeit delivered with a sly, sideways smirk.
Vinneas, meanwhile, was grinning heartily. “Rae,” he said, in a voice from long ago, “walk with me?”
Silently, I counted up the days since we’d last spoken face-to-face: nearly a month. Naomi and Jax were not the only ones to emerge from the battle with a gleam of newly burnished heroism. Vinneas had won his share of renown as well, albeit for strategy rather than daring. While our ranks of commanders were planning how they would mow the enemy down, Vinneas had spied how the fight might go wrong and devised a scheme to win back our advantage. He laid a trap of magical ordnance, fired alongside the signal rockets that would summon the reserve, and when rescue came—in the form of young Jax—there was a sky of sleeping thunder waiting to clear his path to our fortress. It was all done so deftly—the enemy’s movements predicted so perfectly, its advantage so thoroughly undone—that you’d almost think nearly losing the battle was part of the plan all along. The success of his gambit made Vinneas quite a favorite at Command, but it seemed glory did not particularly agree with him. From a distance, he had seemed taller than I remembered, but I saw now he had grown inward instead of upward. I realized I had never properly thanked him for his attempts to ease my mind over Naomi, though I sensed mentioning this now would disappoint him, so I said, “Of course I will. Lead the way.”
The route he had in mind took us away from the Stabulum toward the outermost avenues of the School of Philosophy. Most of Ninth City’s Academy had been requisitioned as housing for the IMEC’s overpopulation of soldiers, but Philosophy was fully returned to its former function and consequently one of the city’s few quiet places in our present state of upheaval. Later, I decided Vinneas must have brought me there specifically because he expected I would lose my temper at him and hoped to limit the number of witnesses.
We talked idly over our activities of the past weeks. He asked after my health, and I was pleased to report a complete recovery, particularly of my subconjunctival hemorrhage, which, I had discovered, referred to a burst blood vessel in the eye, painless but grisly to look at. It was plain, however, we were simply passing time, and so it came as no surprise when Vinneas said, “I have something to tell you. Something important. It won’t be general knowledge for another day or two, but I wanted you to hear before they made the announcement.”
Whatever news he had, it seemed to cause him physical pain. “The Consulate has finished making its assignments for the MapleWhite Campaign,” he said. “They’ve decided to include the entire Ninth Legion.”
I was quiet for a minute, thinking this over. The MapleWhite Campaign was the official name for the Legion’s upcoming expedition against the Valentines. MapleWhite was the fifth Realm along the Corridor, the last we would have to seize in order to delay the invasion the necessary twenty years, and thusly both the objective of our mission and a natural title for the overall affair, though in informal moments I had also heard our voyage referred to as Operation Hairball and the Doorstop Maneuver, generally by toiling legionaries debating whether or not to join up. The Legion had put out a call for volunteers shortly after our return to Earth, but if what Vinneas said was true, it had not been entirely satisfied with the results.
“I suppose we’ll be going on a journey together, then,” I said. It was a notion I’d pondered in some detail, having signed up along with the rest of the 126th the same day recruitment for the expedition opened. I had no doubt Vinneas would as well, and could remember thinking there were worse fates than sharing an island with him.
“Yes, all of us,” Vinneas replied carefully. “All of Ninth Legion, including Naomi.”
Here was what had been weighing on him. I was glad I could at least answer calmly. “I know.”
“How?” he asked, his face startled and relieved in about equal measure. “It’s still classified information. Even the unit commanders won’t know until tomorrow.”
“Maybe some young officer went and blabbed to one of his friends. It’s been known to happen.” I let him work that over a bit before I said, “No one told me. I only knew Naomi had volunteered. She expects I’ll try and stop her, so she’s been avoiding me, getting ready for a fight.” I’d been halfway to a smile, but it soured the second I felt it coming.
“It’s still possible she’ll have to stay behind,” Vinneas said. “There’s a motion under consideration before the Consulate to make an exception for Naomi and Jax. A lot of people think twelve is too young for MapleWhite.”
“It won’t work. If Naomi’s set on going, she’ll be riding this island as sure as you or me.”
“There’s a chance she won’t,” he persisted. “A significant chance, in fact. Curator Ellmore made a hard push to set an age limit on MapleWhite, and even though the Consulate voted her down, it was obvious she got to them. No one wants to send children on a mission like this, Rae,” he added plaintively. “This really could go our way.”
His voice touched something off in me, and before I knew what was happening I’d bitten down on him, hard as a steel trap. “It won’t,” I said, all sharp and cold. “It won’t ever go our way. I don’t care if you have everything laid out fair and fine from here until Judgment Day. There’ll always be something waiting out there to cut you down. So don’t tell me about significant chances, and don’t come to me with your stories.”
It was not what I said as much as how I said it, though once I had time to think it over, it seemed to me the words carried a deeper meaning of their own. But just then neither of us could miss the violence in my voice. For one blood-blind moment, I was sure I hated him, and if anyone had asked me why, I would have hated them, too.
“Rae.” The inj
ured look that crossed his face in the second before he gathered himself up was enough to bring me back to my senses, or partly anyway. Vinneas only meant to help, to deliver a little good news with the bad. It was brave of him, especially considering how he must have thought I’d take the bad part. He couldn’t have guessed the good news would cause all the trouble.
I badly wanted to take it all back, but the very thought of touching him or saying a single kind thing set glowing the same pain that made me strike out to begin with. So I put on the calmest voice I could and a smile that wouldn’t have fooled anyone, and said, “It was good to see you, Vinneas. And don’t worry, I won’t say a word about anyone’s giving away secret military intelligence,” and left him there in the lonely alleys of Philosophy.
SIXTY-TWO
RAE
I was upset with myself for a long while afterward, doubly so because I couldn’t puzzle out where all that anger and hurt had been sitting, or why, days later, it wouldn’t seem to go away. All I had done was read Vinneas out, a feat I had accomplished often enough before without any serious regrets, but the ache now was nearly as bad as what I’d felt by Naomi’s bedside. It was this last notion that helped me locate the trouble. When I finally sat down, gritted my teeth, and set to probing those two wounds, I discovered both had landed in nearly the same place.
It started with the battle for Dis, as the skies cleared of magical fire and the swarms of enemies thinned to wisps. The thrum of combat began to fade, and all at once it hit that we had done it. We had won. For a few glorious minutes, out there among the stars, it seemed absolutely anything was possible. I allowed my imagination to run away with me, and it turned out to be a dangerous mistake.
For nearly half my life, and surely since I became a scout, I have known my future in all but a few particulars. I was Reaper Thom’s best student, and if I managed to outlive him, I planned to be his successor, his likeness in female form, a bullwhip maid with knives for hands and bullets for eyes. Protecting my coda was to be my sole purpose. I would have no family aside from Mama and what I watched Naomi and Adam build for themselves. The only true uncertainty was how long I could go before something put an end to me. Given my record to date, I allowed myself even odds of making it to twenty-five.
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