Du Serres eyed Dem carefully, then glanced at Gabe. Gabe gave him a slight nod, indicating Dem wasn’t lying. Satisfied, the general continued, going over everything Dem had already told him, reinforcing the points that had led to the Alarians overrunning Tejon Company. As they covered old ground Dem’s worry turned into anger. Du Serres noted the change but ignored it.
“Do you know where Prince Ramiero is at this moment?”
“No,” Dem spat.
Gabe felt Dem’s anger, but in that one word, he also felt the boy’s confused longing. He wanted Rafe back, even as he knew Rafe wouldn’t want him. Couldn’t want him, a coward, a traitor. Dem missed him, in the here and now. Missed the touch of him, the warm weight against him when they slept, the laughter, the conversations, the understanding. But he also missed him in the future, the things they would have done together, the places they could have gone, the promise that when Rafe was duke, he’d announce his love for Dem to the world. And Dem had betrayed it all.
All those feelings dug into Gabe and found companionship in the memories of Evellia. Just as Rafe’s confession of loving Dem had sparked Gabe’s sympathy, Dem’s confusion mirrored Gabe’s. He wanted Evellia back so much it hurt but he knew it could never happen. Neither of them were the same people they’d been when they’d met. He’d changed her for his own selfish needs and in the process, changed himself into something she didn’t like.
“Mage Castillo?”
The general’s pointed question drew Gabe out of his own thoughts. Du Serres looked at him with a bland expression. Gabe realised he had tears in his eyes and he blinked them away. Under his hand, Dem was quiet, exhausted by the questioning.
“I’m fine,” Gabe muttered. “My concentration slipped for a moment.” But instead of falling into Dem, he’d fallen deep inside himself, to a place he didn’t want to visit ever again. “Let’s continue.”
Du Serres shook his head. “I’m finished with Demetrio de Covadonga.” He called for the boy to be taken back to his hut.
Gabe took the break between interviews to shake free of Dem’s emotions, though the painful echo lingered. He hoped the next person was a soldier he’d never seen before, someone he had no ties to, no matter how tremulous.
His wish wasn’t granted. Carufel ushered Lieutenant Pena into the tent. She walked unaided, straight spined, chin up. When she sat, though, she was careful not to lean against the chair back. The pain of her punishment flooded into Gabe at first touch.
She ached terribly, with a few sharper pangs where the lash had bitten deep into the muscle. The wounds were clean, washed out daily with a pungent concoction made by the Alarian medics, though that was the only attention they received. Pena was left to suffer the unalleviated pain. Outwardly, she showed no sign but inside...
Gabe nearly collapsed with the tearing, dreadful agony. The way standing tall, walking steadily and sitting up tore at her ripped skin, pulled at her open muscles. Her strength in resisting the temptation to simply break down and cry and plead for relief staggered him. Simmering beneath that indomitable will was the fear it couldn’t last much longer, the thought that if he came to see her one more time, it would all be over and she would give him everything he wanted.
Who was he?
As if he’d asked aloud and she’d answered, Gabe saw.
Roulier. He came each morning and evening, eyes alight with a chilling desire. It wasn’t physical, though he liked to touch. It was a lust not to cause pain or shame, but see its effects; to teach and pain was his tool.
“Mage Castillo!” For the second time, du Serres snapped Gabe’s link to the person under his hand.
Taking his hand off Pena, Gabe shook it hard, the image of Roulier asking Pena if she’d finally worked out why she suffered lingering behind his eyes. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” A promise he wasn’t sure he could keep if today’s efforts were anything to go by.
Du Serres eyed him for a moment, then looked to Pena. “Tell me your full name and rank.”
In a clear voice that cost her, Pena said, “Marcia Fabiana Pena Soto de Ibarra, Under-Lieutenant, Tejon Company, Negron Battalion, Church of Ciro Military.”
Gabe swallowed the guilt that he’d never known her full name before this moment. All this time with Tejon Company and he had only ever seen her as a lieutenant, a minor noble and minor officer.
The interview progressed as the others had, revealing Pena’s innocence of any knowledge about Prince Ramiero. Gabe tried several times to siphon off the pain, but each time, Pena jerked away from his touch. She apologised to the general, claiming twinges in her damaged back, ignoring Gabe as she did so. By the time du Serres was winding down the questioning, Gabe had stopped trying, slowly coming to understand Pena wanted the pain for much the same reason he was using his magic to help the Alarians. If they didn’t suffer this way, the enemy would only find another, harsher punishment for them.
After Pena, the interviewees were more of the captured soldiers from the main encampment, safely anonymous to Gabe’s personal emotions. He felt with them their anger and defeat and suffered their silent and not so silent recriminations for his betrayal. Unlike Pena, though, those who came in with injuries allowed him to help them. The minor wounds, already healing, he finished off while they answered questions. The larger ones, the broken bones and gunshots, he took the pain and sped up the natural processes a touch. As much as he wanted to simply mend the bones and knit together torn tissues, he resisted. Anything overt would call attention to himself and the soldiers.
By the end of the day, he was weary but didn’t let du Serres see it. Instead he faced the general and asked a favour.
“Dean Rios would like to say final blessings over the executed soldiers. Will you allow it?”
Du Serres rose and straightened his uniform, meeting his gaze with that steely, cool expression Gabe was now familiar with. But it was different this time. Perhaps it was the fact his magic still simmered just under the surface or maybe it was he knew the general better. Either way, within the carefully bland expression, Gabe saw something more, something of the man behind the formal exterior, the heart under the badge of service.
Nicodeme du Serres would say yes. He would let Ismael fulfil his role as the spiritual guide for Tejon Company, for the remains of Negron Battalion by default. It was not in Nicodeme to deny a person their personal beliefs, even though he looked upon Delaluzians as misguided fools, led astray from the path of the One God by a madman and the power of demons. Lingering close to this notion was regret for the lives lost in the dirigible explosions. This was war, people were expected to die, but never had he thought they would use the wounded in such a cold, devious manner.
Du Serres broke eye contact. If he’d sensed anything he showed no sign of it. “I will give permission for the priest to perform his rites.”
Gabe let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.
“How much longer will the sleep on the mages last?” the general asked.
“If it were for healing purposes, I would wake them up tomorrow. As it is, they can safely remain under for another two days.”
With a curt nod, du Serres left and dinner was brought. Gabe picked at the food, aware he had to eat but unable to battle the queasiness. Had he really reached out to du Serres? Or had he just guessed the man would agree to his request? There had been that moment with David at the airfield, when it had felt like he’d touched the man with his left hand, felt the beat of his heart, the hum of his body, the shapes of his thoughts. And David had seemed to sense it. Yet du Serres hadn’t made any sort of indication of something unusual. Perhaps all of it, David included, had been imagination.
The rain had slowed to an irregular drizzle with occasions of no rain at all. Soldiers still squished through ankle-deep mud but the lack of soaking rain seemed to have cheered what chatter Gabe could hear. By the time the camp was settling down for the night, it had been clear for a couple of hours. The few comments made about the re
lief from the rain made Gabe smile. He had a sneaking suspicion this was the wet season Kimotak had predicted. If so, the rain wouldn’t stay away for long.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the interviews of the day. Dem and Pena had wrung him emotionally, the rest had worn on his conscience. He searched for something to distract him. It was a stock standard military tent, small, bare and boring. Being also Ismael’s tent, it was all that and more so.
His gaze landed on the chest at the foot of the bed. That chest had been open the night Gabe had wandered in seeking someone to talk to. The letters Ismael had been reading had come from that chest, as had the small black bag the man obsessed over.
Gabe bit his lip. He couldn’t. It would be wrong. It was Ismael’s private life. No matter the curiosity burning through him for Ismael’s past he couldn’t give in to it just because he wanted a distraction.
He went to bed instead.
He was still tossing and turning when it happened again. Horns, shouts, gunshots. If last night had been chaos, this was pandemonium. There was no cohesion to the disruptions, no localisation of the attack, or attacks, as it certainly seemed to be. Inside the earthworks, soldiers were being mobilised, as they had been the night before, but there was an added urgency about it tonight.
Somewhere in Gabe’s heart he hoped it was a rescuing force, but in his head he knew it wasn’t.
A confused silence descended after a quarter hour or so. There were still shouts, the rare gunshot but no horns, no frantic clattering of squads from here to there. It seemed like the camp held its breath. And just as it let it out, relieved the attack was over, something exploded.
Gabe jumped out of bed. It sounded—it felt—as if the explosion was just outside his tent. There were only two things within the camp that would cause such an explosion and the resultant gigantic, raging glow casting thick, dark shadows on the outside of his tent.
In two strides he was at the front of the tent and prying apart the opening as much as he could. His guards were, understandably, distracted and failed to shove his head back inside. Both of them, one usually stationed at either end of his tent, were standing several yards away, hands shielding their eyes from the merrily burning land-yacht across the yard.
Men raced through the suddenly bright night while officers shouted. They were forming bucket lines from the reservoirs, for once cursing the lack of rain. It was clear they had little knowledge of magic-fuelled fires, flabbergasted by the intensity of the flames, the reluctance to be damped by the water tossed on them. Thankfully someone thought to move the remaining dirigible away from the bonfire, though they didn’t have much luck wheeling the huge cradle and its heavy cargo across the muddy ground. A level-headed officer redirected some of the buckets to wet down the dirigible.
The huts close to the inferno were being evacuated, the native women and female Delaluzian solders herded back toward the huts holding the men. Even as Gabe watched, sparks flew from the fire and landed on the roof of one of the huts. It smouldered for a moment in the wet thatching then died.
“Hmm, hadn’t considered that.”
Gabe clamped down on the panicked yelp before it could become a scream. A hand snaked around his shoulders and pulled him away from the opening. Another slapped across his mouth.
“Quiet, it’s me,” David hissed into his ear.
Out of spite, Gabe tried to bite the hand over his mouth. David chuckled dryly and let him go. Before Gabe could turn around and kick him, the man was clear across the other side of the tent, the cot between them.
“You did that?” Gabe demanded in a harsh whisper.
“I needed a distraction so I could get in here.”
“Why? Come to my rescue have you?”
“You’re not the one I’m after. Is he here?”
All the life seeped out of David’s voice. He stared at Gabe intently, a hunting predator focusing on its prey. A shiver went down Gabe’s spine.
“If you’re talking about Prince Ramiero, no one seems to know where he is. I was starting to think you’d found him and were hiding him.”
David growled. “If I had him, I wouldn’t be hiding him. I would be taking him back to his father. That,” he ground out as if to say it caused him pain, “is why I’m here and I can’t do anything else until I’ve completed my task.”
“Well, I don’t know where he is. And if you find him, you can’t take him away. He needs to confront General du Serres, otherwise the rest of us here are going to die.”
The Immortal Soldier stared at him, face blank, uncomprehending. Just as Gabe was beginning to wonder if the man had even heard him, David shook his head and his body relaxed a fraction.
“If I could stop that, I would.”
Gabe waved in the general direction of everything not inside his tent. “You did a good enough job causing trouble tonight, and I assume it was you last night as well. Why can’t you help us?”
Another flash of that feral incomprehension. “It’s not my duty.”
“Excellent. A thousand years old and you still can’t think for yourself. I guess you really are the perfect soldier.”
“I’m not a soldier,” David spat, half turning toward Gabe, ready to pounce
Gabe flinched but David doubled over, growling low in his throat, a hand clawing at his right eye.
“Saint Sevastian preserve idiots and fools,” Gabe muttered and went to him. “You’re hurt. Let me see it.”
David lashed out, pushing him away. “I’m not hurt.”
“Right. I’ll just let you blind yourself, shall I? That’ll help you see the prince in his hiding hole.”
“I won’t go blind,” David snapped.
“Oh, that’s right, because you’re immortal. You’ll always be fine while the rest of us have to suffer and die.”
With an inarticulate noise, David straightened and revealed his face. “I won’t go blind, because I already am.”
In the flickering half-light, Gabe stared at the man’s face. His right eye was swollen but the puffy lid couldn’t shut because the eyeball bulged out of the socket so far it was close to falling out. The orb was blackening in places, jaundiced in others, the iris smoky and distended.
“Dear Luz, man,” Gabe muttered. “What happened?”
David did his best to scowl. “I don’t know. I think it was damaged in the rifle barrage. There’s been a growing pressure behind it ever since and it’s blind.”
“That’s because it’s almost dead. I’m surprised you didn’t get rid of it. You probably could have grown one back by now.”
David shrugged. “Probably, but I had hoped it would heal before it came to that.”
Gabe repressed the urge to call him several names. “Lie down. I’ll see what I can do.”
“I didn’t come here so you could do this,” David muttered.
“Of course you didn’t. Lie down.”
When David was on the cot, Gabe pulled over a chair and sat. He touched David’s temple, trying to get a sense of the injury without applying too much magic. He sank his perceptions into the tissue and immediately the sensation travelled back up his arm and into his own eye. The sight from his right eye darkened. He could feel the pressure there, starting as a mild nuisance and steadily growing, pushing against his eyeball and socket. And in the middle of it a blank space, solid but unable to be touched by his magic.
Gabe’s heart skipped a beat, recalling the blank space within Rayen. But this was different. There was a mass of tissue, soft and fluid, around the blankness; the body trying to fight this foreign object. The actual problem was smaller than the tip of his little finger.
Pulling away, Gabe said, “You have something lodged in there, behind the eye. Over the days since it got in there, your body has built up tissues around it, trying to get rid of it.”
“It’s not working,” David said.
“It is. Eventually, it will build up enough mass to force your eyeball out of the socket, the offending object will soon follow i
t and your body will recover. If you were normal, you would stay blind, though.”
“How much longer will that take?” He sounded impatient, not to have the pain over and done with but so he could get back to work.
“Depends. Not much longer I would say. Of course, it’s not just a matter of popping it back in once the object is out. The eye has been cut off from its blood supply and the nerves are crushed. Like I said, you will probably grow another, though I have no idea how long that will take.”
“Too long. Can you fix it now?”
“I could.”
A knife appeared in David’s hand. He spun it so the hilt faced Gabe. “Then do it.”
Gabe took the knife and eyed the keen point, wondering how many lives it had stolen. It was Alarian, the royal crest etched into the base of the blade. How many of the lives Gabe had saved had been endangered by this knife?
“What are you waiting for?” David asked. “I don’t have all night.”
Snorting, Gabe said, “Me neither. I was just considering the blade can be used to both save lives and take them.”
David didn’t say anything, just looking up at him with one good eye, one rotting eye.
And then, Gabe thought, some blades were made only to kill.
Taking off his glove, he laid his left hand on the side of David’s head. Before lowering the knife, he took away the pain, sensing as he did so several small wounds sustained in the night’s activities. Those he healed almost absently while he concentrated on the eye.
“I’m going to numb your face but don’t hesitate to tell me if you feel any pain.”
“I’m always in pain. You learn to live with it.”
“So I’m discovering.”
Then he got to work.
Despite looking ready to burst, the eye came out with some difficulty. Gabe ended up having to cut back the swollen lids so he could get purchase on the dying organ. It was hard and distorted, but eventually, the eyeball plopped out of the socket, dangling by thin, atrophied nerves. David shifted a fraction and Gabe touched him, realising the man could feel through the numbing. Stubborn fool. He reinforced the compulsion and continued.
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