“She sells them her children, you mean,” muttered Clement.
“She claims the officer is the baby’s father.”
“Of course she does. If she’s paid enough.”
Cadmar gave Clement a reprimanding push. The captain said with strained cheer, “This is the place. I’ll ring the bell and see if you can be accommodated.”
They had reached a modest townhouse, the only building on the street with lamps still lit. A stout, plainly dressed woman answered the door, and soon the escorting soldiers had been shooed down a narrow hall toward the kitchen. Meanwhile, the stout woman left Clement in a tasteful drawing room while she showed Cadmar up the stairs.
At least there had been no unseemly argument over who would go first. On the small room’s delicate side table, a sweating wedge of cheese and a dry loaf of bread reminded Clement that she had drunk her supper. She ate, which did not settle her rebellious stomach, and then began to be bored. She shuffled a deck of cards that lay on the table, trying to remember the solitary card games she had not played in years. But then she noticed that the backs of the cards were decorated with a variety of pornographic pictures, and she leafed through them. She had never seen such a subject portrayed both explicitly and artfully before.
Cadmar came down the stairs, looking composed and extraordinarily complacent. “Listen, Cadmar,” Clement began, planning to excuse herself from the trip upstairs.
But he clasped her hand jovially, saying, “That woman has talent! I’ve paid her for us both, so don’t pay her again.”
It was hopeless. While waiting to be summoned, Clement diverted him with the pornographic cards. She decided she would go upstairs, sit by the courtesan’s fire, and let herself be entertained for half an hour by empty-headed conversation. Cadmar would never know his money had been wasted. The servant came to fetch her, and at the top of the stairs Clement stepped through an open door that was quietly closed behind her.
She smelled flowers, very delicate and faint, and her eye sought out the source: violets, she saw, and daffodils—homely, early-blooming flowers tucked into crystal vases. The room was warm, lamplit, painted coral pink so that Clement felt intimately embraced though the woman who was to entertain her sat on the far side of the room beside a quiet fire, with a piece of needlework in her hand. The big bed lay demurely shadowed, though its covers were folded back to advertise the pristine whiteness of the sheets.
Clement could smell not even a hint of old sex. It was a neat trick, she thought, as though she were watching a magician at a fair. The courtesan, eyebrow raised, gazed at her with some amusement. “Lieutenant-General, I understand you’re here against your will. The general gave me some rather strict orders, however.”
“Fortunately, he is not your general.”
“Yes, it is fortunate.” The courtesan smiled, her hands busy making stitches that only a close observer might realize were haphazard. “Do come in and sit by the fire. I will not throw myself on you, I assure you.”
Clement walked across soft carpets and sat, and the chair embraced her. The courtesan served her a hot drink, sweet and milky, gently spiced. Clement sipped and felt her stomach settle, finally. This comfortable, intimate room was not what she had expected. That she hungered for this comfort, this quiet, she also had not expected. Oh, she was weary of being who she was! “Call me Clement,” she said desperately.
“Clement, I am Alrin.”
The courtesan was not young; nor was she intimidatingly beautiful. The loose silk robe she wore outlined in folds of light and darkness a heavy thigh, a lush breast, a body as comfortable as the chair in which she now curled, setting aside her fancywork and smiling as though she had a secret. She and Clement spoke of commonplace things: the town, the weather. Clement felt as if she had entered a different world, where all was mundane and not even a prickle of violence and politics could be felt. To leave the embrace of the soft green chair and enter the embrace of slippery silk and lightly perfumed skin was not so hard to do. It happened. Alrin made it happen by waiting and hinting and smiling that secret smile. Eventually, the pristine bed was put to use.
The homely flowers of spring bloomed in every crack where a bit of earth might be shoved atop a bulb. The barren garrison’s snowdrifts were replaced by drifts of flowers that the occasional Shaftali visitor had no little cause to wonder at. The soldiers could coax a flower to bloom anywhere, and would sooner risk injury than step on even the edge of a flowerbed. Clement supposed there was something contradictory about the Sainnite love of flowers; certainly, the Shaftali found it peculiar. Clement’s mother had filled her coat pockets with bulbs on the way to becoming a refugee. Clement went to the garden every day to watch her mother’s flowers bloom.
Now it was summer, and as the last of the spring blossoms shriveled in the warmth, Clement’s sudden romance with Alrin abruptly failed. “You’ve gotten gloomy again,” commented Gilly one warm day, as the two of them were making the final plans for Cadmar’s annual tour of the garrisons.
She grunted discouragingly, but the ugly man had set his pen aside. “Are we now strangers, you and I?”
“That’s an odd remark,” she said.
“It’s you who have gotten odd, friend.”
“Well.” She sighed. “I notice that Alrin’s belly has gotten round, and now I hear that half a dozen officers are bidding against each other to be named the baby’s father.”
Gilly raised his eyebrows. “You were pretending she’s not what she is?”
“Don’t make fun of me. I’ve seen your foolishness often enough.”
“I can’t deny it. So you’ll visit her no more?”
“It was a waste of money.”
“By your gods, I’d pay for it myself! A waste of money it was not!”
Clement muttered, “So all it takes to make me happy is an hour with a trull? I can hardly be proud of that.”
That night she went late to bed, not because she was up carousing, but because with warm weather came the war, and death, and the cursed duty roster. She lay awake, of course, uncomfortable on her lumpy mattress, which wanted re-stuffing. She had propped the windows open to the moonless night, and a little bat flew in on the trail of a moth, and flapped around the room a couple of times, practically soundless but for a dry rustle like leather in a breeze, and a squeak so shrill it was little more than a scratching in the ears. Perhaps she actually slept, for when she saw a dandelion pod of fire explode against the stars, she thought it was a dream.
She stared at it, bedazzled, mystified, too astonished to feel afraid. Surely it was a sign from the gods, perhaps a sign directed only to her, a promise that her life’s purpose soon would be revealed. The fire faded, leaving a glowing trail behind. And now she heard a sound: an animal whine that became a scream the like of which she had only ever heard on the battlefield. In a few wild steps, she stood naked at the window, watching a soldier below dance a madman’s dance as his arm and shoulder burned like fatwood.
Getting dressed took only a moment. To run down the stairs to Cadmar’s quarters took another. But Cadmar was already gone: while Clement sought enlightenment, he had already realized that the garrison was under attack, and he was ahead of her, out of the building already, where the fire falling from the sky could burn him alive. “Gilly!” she bellowed, running full tilt down the hall to pound on his door. “Wake up, damn you!” She heard the muffled murmur of his drugged voice, and left him to save himself. He was no soldier, but he knew how to keep out of harm’s way.
She ran out the door and found the burned soldier moaning, charred, scarcely conscious where he had been dragged into the shelter of the eaves. The sky exploded with fire. All across the garrison there were shouts: alarmed, astonished, and terrified. She shook the burned soldier brutally and shouted, “Was it the general who helped you? Which way did he go?”
The man said something, and perhaps he thought it was intelligible, but to Clement it meant nothing. She left him and ran down the nearest road, towa
rd the rising shouts and the glow of fire now burning the rooftops. As she ran, she heard a captain blow his horn in the distance, signaling his disordered company to follow him into battle. Cadmar would chase that sound like a hound chases a rabbit— and just as mindlessly, she thought grimly. She ran after him, her pistols unloaded and her saber banging on her leg, with the sky exploding overhead and the garrison erupting below, and as she ran she cursed Cadmar, and cursed even louder at the beauty of the deadly explosions that filled the sky.
She reached a chaotic knot of soldiers who seemed to be trying to fight the fire that threatened to burn their barracks down, though the flames were mostly out of reach of the water they tossed at it. She found their captain and shouted at him to give up and find the source of the explosives instead, but he gave her a dazed look as though he had lost his mind or thought she had lost hers. He shouted that he had not seen Cadmar, which meant nothing.
She heard the distant horn again, and ran, and above the rising sound of chaos she thought she heard gunshots. It was a satisfying sound: at least someone had found something to do besides gape disbelievingly at the fire that exploded all around.
Rockets, she thought suddenly. Rockets, like the ones that five years ago had burned down a garrison in South Hill, supposedly invented by a now-dead Paladin named Annis. “Annis’s Fire,” the people had called the deadly stuff that dripped out of the sky, igniting whatever it landed on with flames that could not be extinguished by water. Sand would work, but there was not enough sand in the entire city to save this garrison from burning.
Her lungs ached. Cadmar was not quick-footed, and she should have caught up with him by now. She slowed her pace; she had lost him.
She heard a horn close by. Ahead of her were flares of ignited gunpowder, pistol shots, the shouts and cries of battle. She had run almost onto the heels of an organized company of soldiers, and they in turn had run into an ambush. She ducked into a doorway as a pistol ball plunked into wood, and finally took the time to load her weapons. When she peered out, she saw little more than shadows, but then a flaring fire nearby lit up the street in garish light and she could see. Some people lay wounded, and they soon would burn to death if no one dragged them to safety. Beyond, blades flashed as soldiers and strangers endeavored to kill each other hand-to-hand. One soldier, sapling-thin and giddy with excitement, was briskly rescued from her foolishness by a big, laconic woman whose saber moved so quickly it scarcely seemed to move at all. Clement recognized both of them: the big woman was her frequent training partner, one of the best blade fighters in the garrison. The sapling was young Kelin.
“Get that child out of danger!” she cried. “She is too young for battle!”
Of course it was absurd: in the screams and shouts, the clash of blades and the explosion of gunfire, with the flames roaring in the nearby roof, Clement’s voice was like the squeak of that evening’s wayfarer bat. The sapling girl and the laconic soldier plunged side by side into the dark tangle of blade and ball. Clement ran after them.
A shout. She used her saber to cut her way through a man she presumed to be her enemy. A white face, she remembered later, garishly lit by flame, with black marks on his forehead. The flash of gunpowder, the whine of a projectile. She flung herself flat, and rolled, and saw gobbets of fire raining down, and got to her feet and ran. The sapling and the soldier had ducked into the shadows of the eaves to avoid the deadly rain. Clement coughed smoke and chased them, shouting hoarsely, but if they heard her they gave her cry no importance. Apparently, they thought they were heroes.
Perhaps these two had been following Captain Herme’s signals, but now they had left the company behind. The three women appeared to be alone in the strange night, the fighting left behind them now, the buildings here seeming empty and not yet burning. Ahead lay the garden, strangely lit with lamp flame and with—oh, Clement saw it now—the fiery rise of rockets. So this was where the rocketeers had set up their base. And did those two heroes think that it would be left unguarded? Or that they alone could end the attack? Apparently, they did.
Gasping now, for she had run across the entire garrison, Clement shouted weakly, “Beware sharpshooters!” Even as she cried out, there was a flash and the tall woman quietly folded herself up in the middle of the street, like a uniform on a shelf. Clement could already see her name, written in a company clerk’s bold handwriting. Another dead soldier with no one to replace her.
Kelin did not even seem to know what had happened. She would be eager, too drunk on excitement to be wise, imagining herself as the one who would save the garrison from certain ruin. The girl ran straight to the garden fence and climbed it. She seemed to hesitate only a moment as she looked back and realized she had lost her companion. Perhaps she was surprised to learn that death was possible after all. Perhaps she even remembered that Captain Herme had commanded her never to do anything alone. Perhaps it occurred to her that she should wait, for the rest of her company would soon break through the battle line. But there was no glory in waiting, was there?
She dropped down the other side of the fence. Clement reached through the bars to grab for the booted heel that had already begun to run across the grass, toward the garden’s fiery center where, with a shower of sparks, another rocket went arcing across the sky. Clement watched her go. She dared not shout after her, and could only watch, clenching the iron fence like a prisoner, as Kelin all but flew to the garish ritual. A half dozen giddy people seemed to dance and bow, with flaming lucifers in their hands, and then they all went dancing back. With a deep sound like a rushing wind or waterfall, the light flew fiercely up into the sky, trailing sparks and a gently glowing smoke. And then Kelin was on them, swift, blithe, oblivious. Perhaps she managed to injure one—it was hard to tell in the tricky light—and then she was cut down.
Clement groaned as though the swordcut had entered her own pounding heart. Her eyes ached with smoke and from peering into the shadows. The rocketeers’ dance went on: in and out, matter-of-fact. Another rocket burst into the sky.
Clement’s head began to clear. She had gotten a few good breaths of air, perhaps, or perhaps she was simply too inured to battle to weep for long. She had begun to plan the attack on the rocketeers before she even realized it, and when Herme’s company, now missing two members, came running down the street, she was ready to tell them what to do.
Hours later, Clement finally located Cadmar. Having himself never gone near the battle, he chastised her for her hotheadedness. She had commanded the company that eliminated the rocketeers, and had, after all that, emerged unscathed. Only Cadmar, whose temper came mostly from envy, could have failed to appreciate what a hollow victory it was.
When he had used up his anger, he sent her to locate Commander Ellid, a task that wasted what remained of the morning. Clement found the garrison commander at last, standing before the smoking ruin of a barracks, with her hair singed and her face black with soot. Clement would not have recognized her if not for the insignia on her hat and the messengers that circled her like bees around their hive. Ellid was a strong-willed, short-tempered old veteran who enjoyed good food and had never forgiven Cadmar for driving away her excellent cook. But today she seemed relieved to learn of the general’s safety.
“He was fighting fires all night,” said Clement. “Now he’s visiting injured soldiers in the infirmary. He’s no worse hurt than you are.”
The commander looked ruefully at her singed uniform. “A few burns.” Her voice was a hoarse rasp; like Clement she had been breathing smoke and screaming orders all night. “The general,” she added, “was supposed to go to safety should the garrison be attacked.”
“Surely you know that he will never be so prudent. But it was my duty to escort him to safety, if any safety could have been found last night, and I could not even find him, and ended up in danger myself. It’s been a stupid night.”
“That’s true enough. Well, it’s over, eh?” Ellid lifted her head and surveyed the smoking ruin of her garrison
with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “Though I can’t believe what I see,” she muttered.
“The refectory is still standing, anyway, though the kitchen is gone. The general requests that you meet him there. Surely the cooks will soon manage to produce something to eat.”
Ellid made a soldier’s gesture, simultaneously acknowledging, agreeing to, and delaying compliance with an order. One of her lieutenants was approaching, and she turned to see what he wanted.
Again, Clement limped slowly down cobbled streets turned black with ash, past smoking ruins of charred timbers. Soldiers sprawled here and there, the dead difficult to distinguish from the exhausted living, all dressed in ashes and masked with soot. At a well where the ground was still awash from the spilled water of a fire line, some soldiers took turns dunking their singed heads into a bucket of water. Clement joined them, took a turn with the cake of soap, and looked up from rinsing the grime away to find the gathered soldiers giving her demoralized salutes. One of them took her hat and polished the soot from her insignias. “Lieutenant-General, the Lucky Man says anyone who sees you is to tell you he’s in the general’s quarters.”
She went there. Gilly had taken over Cadmar’s table, since Commander Ellid’s quarters had burned to the ground. He and the garrison clerk had opened the log and rosters, which, being singed in places, apparently had been snatched out of the flames. Soldiers came and went, to tell the clerk and secretary the names of soldiers dead or wounded. Soon it would be Clement’s turn to deal with that dreadful paperwork. Perhaps this would be the disaster that finally forced Cadmar to close a garrison for lack of soldiers. And then the Paladins would realize the Sainnites’ secret weakness.
“Come with me,” she said desperately to Gilly.
She brought him his cane and helped him to his feet, and walked him past a newly arrived soldier, who was so tired he could scarcely tell the clerk the name of his fallen comrade.
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