by Rachel Aaron
Rosalie made a show of thinking it over, but she’d played this game before. Men like Woermann were always trying to worm their way into her father’s good graces, and offering favors to Rosalie was a popular tactic. So popular that Rosalie considered it lazy. Woermann wasn’t even trying to bribe her in a new or interesting way. He was just offering preferential treatment, which would have been insulting if it hadn’t been so easy to defuse.
“Thank you for your concern, Captain Woermann,” she said, giving him a flawless rendition of her mother’s “you’re a useful moron” smile. “But I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. I’ve had no problems at all with my sergeant.”
Woermann’s eyes widened. “I’m…I’m surprised to hear that,” he said, regaining his composure. “How fortunate. Though if you do find yourself in need of assistance, Lady Rosalie, I trust you’ll come to me.”
Unwilling to promise any such thing, Rosalie gave him a final smile, saluted, and escaped, walking toward the mess hall as fast as she could without breaking into a run.
Across the yard, unnoticed, Jax Cunningham slipped out of his hiding place behind a stack of supply crates and stalked silently in the other direction.
* * *
“I don’t like this,” Jax muttered.
“Really?” Cooper chuckled. “Because I’m loving it.”
Jax glowered at the lanky old wall guard. “Would you kindly shut up?”
They were on top of the gate, which, since titans didn’t move at night, was utterly empty now that the sun was down. Normally, the solitude made this Jax’s favorite place. At this specific moment, though, he would have paid money for someone to walk up and distract Cooper, who had a dangerously delighted gleam in his eyes.
“It’s about time you messed up,” the old soldier said, poking Jax in the shoulder. “You’ve only been up here for two and a half years, and already you’ve gotten yourself promoted to sergeant, beaten my record for titan kills, and collected enough dirt on every soldier in the Garrison to run this place better than Brigitte. Honestly, you were getting insufferable, but now your habit of spying on everyone has finally come back to bite you. You heard the rich girl refuse to rat you out to Woermann with your own ears! She could have strung you out to dry, but she didn’t. She covered for you. That means you’re in her debt, and that, my friend, is priceless.”
“It ain’t funny!” Jax snarled as Cooper began to cackle. “She’s not just some rich girl. She’s actual nobility, the king’s bloody cousin! They could hang me just for talking to her, let alone everything else I did.”
Cooper nodded enthusiastically. “I don’t think the law has a specific punishment for kicking members of the royal family off the wall, but I’m certain they’ll come up with something.” His scarred face brightened. “Maybe you’ll be drawn and quartered! I read about that once. They tie each of your limbs to a different horse, and then they send the animals running in different directions, ripping you—”
“I get the idea,” Jax groaned, rubbing his face. “I have to get her off the wall. Woermann’s been looking for a chance to boot me since I made sergeant, but with Lady Dumarque here, it’s only a matter of time before he finds an excuse to hang me. And you know he’ll do it.”
“Without batting an eye,” Cooper agreed. “But Woermann’s the least of your worries. Rumor is Daddy Dumarque’s a big name in the Military Police. If you get his daughter eaten, your end will be worse.”
“That’s not my fault!” Jax cried. “How was I supposed to know she’d be stupid enough to jump off the wall without testing her gear first?”
Cooper thought for a moment, turning to stare at the fields below where the silhouettes of a dozen titans stood motionless in the moonlight. “I don’t think it’s a matter of stupid. She’s just from a different world. One where, when someone hands you something, you expect it to work. It probably didn’t even occur to Lady Rosalie that the Garrison would assign her broken gear.” He smiled wistfully. “That’s the beauty of being noble. You have the luxury of expecting decency from others.”
“Well, that’s lovely for her,” Jax said. “But what am I supposed to do?”
“Get her reassigned,” Cooper suggested. “Privates beg to get out of your squad all the time. Let her go be someone else’s problem.”
Jax looked at him in horror. “Are you mental? A girl like that serving with the sort of trash that builds up here?” He shuddered. “She’d be safer with the titans.”
“Plenty say the same about you,” Cooper reminded him. “But you’re hardly the first man willing to shoot himself in the foot to keep a pretty girl close by.”
“That’s not what this is about!”
The old soldier shrugged. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. Just get her off the wall before she gets you hung and I have to find a new grump to spend my evenings with.”
Jax rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Cooper. That’s a big help.”
“What are friends for?” Cooper asked, standing up. “Join me for dinner? It’s cream soup night.”
“No thanks,” Jax said. “Cream soup lost its charm last year, and it ain’t exactly a friendly room for me down there.”
“It’s a lonely life for the Black Cat of Trost,” Cooper said, pressing a hand dramatically to his chest before turning toward the stairs. “I’ll save you some ham if there’s any left. And Jackson?”
Jax looked up.
“Get rid of her fast. Nobles are as delicate as the flowers they’re always naming themselves after. Sooner or later, something will take a bite out of her, and then Woermann will take it out on all of us.”
“Don’t worry,” Jax assured him. “I’ll have her running back to Sina by the end of the week.”
“That’s my Jax,” Cooper said with a smile. “See you tomorrow.”
Jax waved and turned away, listening to his friend’s footsteps as he descended the stairs. When the sound of boots vanished, Jax pulled a hand-sized, cloth-bound, extremely battered book out of his jacket pocket. After a furtive glance down the wall to make sure he was alone, he opened the book and began to read, moving his finger slowly along the page to track the words in the bright moonlight.
C
H
A
P
T
E
R
F
O
U
R
Her belly full of tasteless potato soup, Rosalie limped her way into the women’s barracks to find her trunks waiting. All five of them.
The largest two leather-bound cases sat on her bunk, almost too tall to fit beneath the mattress above. The other three were stacked in the aisle, blocking the way. A half dozen recruits were gathered around, and they did not look happy.
“I say we pop the locks and dump ’em,” growled one girl, who was nearly as tall as Jax, with even larger shoulders.
“Do they even got locks?” asked another, chewing on a piece of her own stringy black hair as she pondered. “I never seen boxes like these before.”
“I say we shove ’em out the window,” a third voice joined. “And when the idiot they belong to shows up, we’ll shove her out, too!”
The laughter that followed was not pleasant. Rosalie was wondering how best to approach when the tall girl noticed her.
“Oy,” she said, jerking her head at the trunks. “You know whose these are?”
“Somebody thinks she deserves three times as much space as everyone else,” the black-haired girl added. “Can you believe?”
Rosalie’s face began to warm. She looked around the barracks, but there were no cabinets or chests. This was nothing like the academy dorms. There was barely enough room for people to sleep, much less store belongings. The girls in front of her didn’t seem to have any possessions but the clothes on their backs.
“I’m sorry,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. “There’s been a mistake.”
“Oh, it’s a mistake, all right,” the tall girl said. “And we’re waiting to see whose stuff this is so we can correct it.” She took a menacing step. “Do you know whose junk this is?”
Rosalie wanted to back away, but more soldiers stood behind her now.
“You’re new, ain’t you?” the black-haired girl said. “What’s your name? Where’s your bunk?”
Rosalie swallowed. “I’m—”
“Oh, there they are!” cried a voice from across the room.
Everyone turned at the shout. Rosalie saw Willow jogging toward them through the packed grid of beds.
“Sorry ’bout that, girls,” she said as she elbowed her way into the circle, “those are the medical supplies I’ve been looking for all day. That idiot supply sergeant—you know, the one who would be kinda cute if it wasn’t for that missing ear?—he botched the paperwork.”
“These are medical supplies?” the tall girl asked, looking skeptically at the closest trunk, whose leather straps were tooled with a whimsical floral pattern. “You sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure,” Willow said, making a show of inspecting the trunks before turning back to Rosalie. “Can you believe they dumped them on your bunk, Rosalie? Idiots.” She rolled her eyes and placed her hands on the smallest trunk. “Come on, let’s get them moved. I need to see you in the infirmary anyway. Sometimes getting sprayed with titan blood has lingering effects.”
The crowd surrounding Rosalie jumped back. “Titan blood?!”
“Yup,” Willow said, tilting her head proudly toward Rosalie. “My squadmate here found one in sector nine today. Had her swords out and everything. Course the sergeant had to swing in and claim the kill. You know how officers are.”
“That was you?” the black-haired girl cried, practically pushing her face into Rosalie’s. “I heard about that. My name’s Henrietta, and—”
“Yeah yeah, you can suck up while you help us move these,” Willow said, tapping a trunk with her boot.
“Hold on,” the tall girl said, grabbing Henrietta, who’d already stepped forward to help. “Moving stuff ain’t our job. Why should we help you?”
“Because if you don’t, it’ll be here taking up space forever,” Willow said. “I’d move ’em myself, but as you can see, I’m obviously not capable.” She held her bony arm up to the bigger girl’s, which was easily twice the size. “But you’re built like an ox, so stop being a prig and give us a hand, ’cause if I don’t get these moved, Sergeant Cunningham is going to be hopping mad at all of us.” At the mention of Jax’s name, the air seemed to go out of the room. Then everyone was scrambling for the trunks, leveraging them on their shoulders and hauling them away as fast as they could go.
When everything was safely stowed in the supply room, Rosalie slumped onto her bunk. “Thank you,” she whispered to Willow, who sat beside her.
The smaller girl shrugged. “ ’S nothing. Squadmates gotta stick together, and I need you alive to help keep Jax off me.”
“Seems everyone wants to keep Jax away,” Rosalie said. “Why are they so scared of him?”
Willow leaned closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “I did some digging at dinner. The whole base is convinced our sergeant’s a murderer.”
“What?”
“They’re saying he’s killed ten squads and four officers,” Willow went on. “One of the cooks even claimed Jax fed his brother to the Gobbler.”
“That can’t be true,” Rosalie said authoritatively. “They’d hang him. And I don’t even know what a Gobbler is.”
“It’s the name of a local aberrant titan,” Willow said. “Really awful one, apparently. A lot of the squads from the Jax stories end up in his mouth.”
“Thank you again for coming to my rescue,” Rosalie said sincerely. “Those girls were ready to tear me apart because of those stupid trunks.”
“They’d be right to,” Willow said with a snort. “Who the hell brings that much stuff to a military barracks?”
“Just me,” Rosalie said, burying her face in her hands. “The same soldier who gets cornered by a titan in an open field and can barely draw her swords.”
“Now hold on,” Willow said, smacking Rosalie’s hands away from her face. “I’m happy to call you out for being a pampered rich idiot who packs for a job at the Garrison like she’s going on holiday, but what happened over the wall is nothing to be ashamed of. There’s soldiers who’ve been here for years who’ve never been that close to a titan. You stood your ground better with broken gear than Henrietta and her big-shouldered friend could have managed with brand-new sets.”
Rosalie couldn’t keep her voice calm anymore. “But I didn’t do anything!” she cried. “I let a fifteen-meter-tall giant sneak up on me, and then I froze like a cornered deer.” She looked down at her empty hands in disgust. “I’m supposed to be better than this. I’m a Dumarque! If my father found out I’d gotten all that training only to turn into a coward the one time it actually mattered, he’d disown me!”
“At least you’ve got a father left to care.”
The bitterness in Willow’s voice knocked Rosalie out of her self-loathing. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling worse than ever. “I didn’t think—”
“You never do,” Willow said, standing up. “Get some sleep, beanpole. Bell rings at sunup, and you’ve got a lot of unpacking to do.”
* * *
“Any idea why Sergeant Jerk got us up early?” Rosalie asked, digging through piles of sheathed blades for ones that weren’t dull as spoons.
“Real early,” Willow grumbled, glaring balefully at the dark sky through the armory door. “It’s not even false dawn yet.”
“No idea,” Emmett said, grabbing metal canisters for himself and Willow before walking to the compressors to fill them up with gas. “I saw Jax briefly in the barracks after practice last night, but he didn’t say anything.”
Rosalie looked up in surprise. “There was practice last night?”
“Just me and Willow,” Emmett said. “We practice on our own as much as we can since we’re not the best with maneuvering gear.”
“He means we suck,” Willow said sourly, walking over to grab some blades for herself.
“You can’t be that bad,” Rosalie said helpfully. “You got into the Garrison.”
“I don’t need your condensation,” the medic snapped, jamming blades angrily into her sheath.
She clearly meant “condescension,” but Rosalie didn’t feel the correction would be appreciated. “What’s she so prickly about?” she whispered to Emmett.
The scrawny engineer shrugged. “That’s just Willow. She’ll die before she says something nice, but she’s a good person.” He smiled. “She appreciated what you did for her yesterday, by the way.”
Rosalie blinked. “What I did?” Because from her recollection, Willow had been the one saving her skin.
“With the cannon,” Emmett explained. “When she was practically dying, you started an argument with the sergeant to let her catch her breath. Clever move.”
“I wish I’d been that clever,” Rosalie said. “Honestly, I was just angry.”
Emmett shrugged. “It still worked. Good thing, too. Willow can’t stand it when she can’t do something, but her arms have never been the same after the titans attacked our village.”
He said that so casually, Rosalie almost didn’t catch it. “Wait,” she said, freezing. “You and Willow, you’re from Maria?”
“Born and bred,” Emmett said proudly. “Our families’ farms were right next to each other, right up against the outer wall. You’d think that would have made us experts, but we didn’t even hear them coming.”
He laughed it off, but Rosalie’s eyes were the size of coins. “Did they…did they attack you?”
Emmett nodded slowly. “They took out Willow’s house first. One of them grabbed her out of her bed. He was going to rip he
r arms off, but she slipped out of his grip and ran to my place. We were just getting out of the house when more of them came.” He lowered his eyes. “Willow and I were the only ones who made it.”
Rosalie took a deep breath.
“Is that why she has trouble with maneuvering gear now?” she said quietly, watching Willow dig through piles of dull blades with ever louder curses. “Because the titan hurt her arms?”
“No,” Emmett said with a laugh. “We’re bad because we’ve always been small. The two of us were the village runts. Her arms still work, they’re just not as strong as they should be. Something to do with damage inside, but I’m not the medic, so I don’t rightly know what. You’d have to ask her for the details.”
Rosalie couldn’t see herself doing that. Ever. “Thank you, Emmett.”
“You’re welcome,” he said brightly. “I just want you two to get along. We all need to stick together if we’re going to survive the wall.”
“Or our officer,” Willow said, laughing as Rosalie jumped. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Willow’s words proved prophetic. After Jax mocked Rosalie mercilessly for the baroque ornamentation on her maneuver gear—she’d retrieved her old academy-issued set from her luggage, then bribed a guard to send back everything else except her hairbrush, books, and a spare set of warm underclothes—the sergeant was all too happy to inform them of a “special assignment.” They were going to be assisting the Supply Corps in their annual cleanup by scraping the summer’s layer of dried bird droppings off the wall.
The Maria side of the wall.
“I just don’t see why we have to scrape it into buckets,” Rosalie said angrily, clutching the bright silver cables of her new vertical maneuvering gear with one hand as she stabbed the sharp edge of her trowel into a particularly stubborn bit of dried muck with the other. “Cleaning is one thing, but why are we saving bird poop?”