The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (34 page)

A jolt went through Linciard.  He and Rallant had just begun their affair, and though he understood the captain's reasoning, he didn't want it to end like this.

“That's the control talking,” said Scryer Mako, evidently reading his thoughts.  “We can't allow it.”

He saw Rallant's hard eyes, covering some unknown damage like a scab.  Untrustworthy, but...

“No, look,” he said, trying to brush the Scryer's hand off.  She made a scolding sound but allowed it.  “You caught him out, and now you're suspicious of all the others.  What can they do that you won't notice?  He messed with my head, yes, and maybe he just did it for fun, but maybe there's an agenda.  Within the controllers, or within all the specialists, or...or I don't know.  But the inoculations worked, right?”

The captain looked to Scryer Mako, who nodded slowly.  “I monitored us during the cliff raids, and none of the men reacted to the controllers' emanations like the cultists did—not even you, Linciard.  They weren't being commanded, they were just calmer, more focused.  What happened this time seems like a targeted overdose to make you malleable.  I don't know how he does it, but it's plainly visible now that I know what to look for.  And I can block it.”

“So what you are saying,” Sarovy prompted, “is that we should simply watch him?”

Scryer Mako shrugged.  “I imagine any of the controllers could do this, but there are only five of them.  I'd like another mentalist or three as backup, of course, but I'm fairly sure I can keep a lid on it.  So if we suspect Rallant as a spy or a saboteur, isn't it more profitable to watch him than eliminate him?”

“Politics,” Sarovy spat.

“You're a part of the Empire, captain.  You can't escape politics.”

Sarovy's iron gaze shifted to Linciard, and he tried not to shrivel beneath it.  “This is what you want, then?  A counterintelligence position?  I must say I don't think you're suited to it.”

“I don't either, but...”  Linciard swallowed, trying to envision his life going forward.  Playing spy-games with a court-trained specialist who could take over his mind...  But there were indicators.  “He kept prompting me to tell you about us.  If he was against the Company, why would he do that?  Maybe he just doesn't know how to
not
do things that way.  Maybe he's sorry.  Maybe I can—“

Fix him.

“—turn him to our side, if he's against us.  And if he
is
, where's that coming from?  It'd have to be from in the Crimson Army, right?  Though maybe the Gold...”

The captain looked as headachey as Linciard had felt.  “You're quite an optimist, lieutenant.  I'm trying to remember why I commissioned you.”

That stung, because Linciard didn't know either.

“Still, those are valid points,” Sarovy continued.  “Perhaps the Scryer and I should have a chat with him.  But in the meantime...  Lieutenant, you have assaulted a fellow soldier.”

Linciard hung his head.

“Though it is perhaps not your fault, I still must act.  You are hereby demoted to Sergeant and suspended without pay until I choose to reinstate you.  Turn in your letter of commission and your rank badges, and pack your possessions to be moved down below.  Sergeant Benson will become Acting Lieutenant, though I don't think I'll be commissioning him.  And I will flog you for fighting once the medic has signed off on your recuperation.”

Linciard blanched, fingers curling beneath the bandages, but there was nothing for it.  The situation could be worse; he didn't have a family to support, and he couldn't run around with a sword like this anyway.

“And as long as you're suspended, you might as well nose around the other idiots and reprobates,” continued the captain.  “The foreigners, the mercenaries.  The Crimson may be the dregs of the Imperial Armies but I don't want us to be the dregs of the Crimson.  I want to know that my men are with me, whether Jernizen or Drixi, Riddish or Wynd, and if they're not...

“I don't trust this city.  I don't trust the cultists, I don't trust the militia and I certainly don't trust the council.  But I can't afford to not trust my men.  There are many influences on them here, sergeant—influences that hide when I walk by, because they know they cannot sway me.  You...  You've been stained now.  Take advantage of it.”

Linciard nodded slowly.  He'd been among nasty, rough, backbiting types before.  That was basically the entire Border Corps.  “What about the lancers, though, sir?  Benson—  Lieutenant Benson isn't much of a lancer.”

“There hasn't been much need for lancers since the end of the Jernizan campaign, so it's no hardship to have you stand down for a while.  I'll have Benson assign them to mounted patrol or with the infantry depending on need.  You were drilling them to fight on cobblestones?”

“Yes sir.”

“How did it go?”

“Well...no one died, sir.  Light forbid we need to do anything more than herd a crowd, though.”

Sarovy smiled faintly.  “Not exactly the top of the heap, are we.  But I suppose 'not dying' is fair for a platoon of Heartlanders who never saw a horse before the war.  And now the Jernizen recruits are our shining lights.”

“So they love to say, sir.”

“All right, enough of this.  I have a report to scrap and you have to clear your office.  However, since I do plan to reinstate you barring any further incidents, you and I will schedule some proper officer training when we have the time.”

“Proper...training?  Like how to yell at people better?”

“No.  Protocols.  Infractions.  And...”  He picked up a small book from the corner of the desk.  Bound in weathered blue leather, it had seen much use, its pages bristling with bookmarks and scraps of notes, and he slapped it down dead center as if displaying his favorite weapon.  “The
Imperial First Army 'Sapphire Eye' Officer's Rules and Regulations
.”

“But...we're not in the Sapphire, sir.”

“No, we're not.  We're in the capriciously-led, politically-staffed, backsliding, overreaching, underpaid and unreliable Crimson Claw.  But we don't have to act like it.”

Linciard looked from the book to the captain, so stern and sure, and nodded.  “Yes sir.”

*****

The next few days passed quietly in Bahlaer.  A routine was established: the morning shift would patrol the pre-Riftdawn streets before giving way to the day shift at noon and hitting a tavern; the day shift would pass the torch to the night shift at dusk then hit the brothel; and the night shift would collapse in bed at first light, not allowed to get drunk or laid before duty but with nowhere to go afterward.  Shifts were scheduled to rotate weekly, and Captain Sarovy stalked the halls of the garrison at all changeovers, enforcing curfew with vigor since it let him feel justified in leaving his office and stretching his legs.

His letter to Field Marshal Rackmar received a terse, noncommittal reply and scheduled the personnel transfer for the 27th of Cylanmont, four days post-fight.  This left Specialist Weshker at loose ends, rattling around the garrison like a pebble in a pot.  On the 26th, he burst into Sarovy's office during one of his officer-training sessions with Sergeant Linciard and, despite the sergeant's jaundiced glare, declared that he had changed his mind.  He did not want to go back to the Crimson camp with 'that thing that ate Horrum'.

“Too late,” Sarovy told him, though he sympathized.  He sometimes saw that monstrosity in his dreams, its faceless stub-head slowly gaining form and features.  “You are a freesoldier now, and it is some kind of a specialist.  It should not be permitted to harm you.”

Weshker whimpered but then nodded and darted off, just as consumed by nervous energy as Sarovy.  It was the quiet tension of the city, the sense that he paced in a cage while many eyes watched.  More tips had come in and more Shadow Cult storehouses had been raided without incident, but he was suspicious of such easy victories.

His prime confidante was Scryer Mako.  She still flirted with him, perhaps by habit; social-climbing was the Riddish way, and in his brief time as a higher officer he had weathered many propositions from unattached Riddishfolk, male and female.  He didn't think it serious.

Together, they tried to suss out the Shadow Cult's plans and manage the city council, while Sergeant Linciard studied the men.

Getting soldiers drunk was not difficult, but getting them to talk about their crimes would have been impossible for Sarovy, who could not contain his disapproval.  For Linciard, it came easy.  He had a good imagination and a glib tongue, and the stories he told the other reprobates about inter-family grudges and off-duty shenanigans in the Border Corps played well to the drinkers, particularly the infantry and the ex-mercenary lancers.

In return, that lot told him about their homelands—the Jernizen bitching about their woman-monopolizing lords, the Brother Islanders enthused about seeing the world beyond the ocean but disdainful of the food, the Kerrindrixi amazed at how easy life was in the lowlands—and about their own misdeeds.  Minor things, mostly.  Hazing, threats, fisticuffs, malingering, coercing the merchants, and pranks like swapping gear or sprinkling nettles in the bedsheets.  According to Linciard, there was more to be learned, so Sarovy had not called the perpetrators in, though he had delivered a general lecture on the importance of good relations with the citizens.

As for Linciard, he was mending swiftly thanks to Medic Shuralla's ministrations.  While Sarovy appreciated her work, he could not forget that she was a Trifold cultist, her red-and-white striped coat a signal to their enemies that she was on their side, so he had designated one scout per shift to tail her—not that she went anywhere, really.  Those scouts also kept an eye on the other non-Blaze personnel that passed through the garrison, from the Latchyard laundresses and janitors to the militiamen's wives.

When both Sarovy and Linciard were off-duty, they went over the Sapphire officer's manual—out loud, since Linciard was not much of a reader.  Sarovy had been given the manual upon his transition from the Trivestes Youth Corps into the formal Sapphire Army at age sixteen, and had studied it relentlessly ever since.  It was what had kept him focused in his exile, for he could easily have succumbed to the lure of the Crimson's negligence.

Unlike the Sapphire and Gold, the Crimson had no military press, no codified rulebook, no headquarters or real training, just whatever its Generals managed to hammer into the skulls of their subordinates.  Its penal code was left to the discretion of the officers, as was the differentiation between the criminal and the merely stupid.  Sarovy knew that General Kelturin had planned an overhaul after the havoc at Fellen, but the siege at Kanrodi and the Guardian fallout had evidently ruined that.

Linciard espoused the opinion that if he had to learn the Sapphire way, so should the other officers.  As much as Sarovy would have liked that, he had little enough time to teach one man, for the council still demanded his presence.

He spent too much of each day listening to them complain—though no longer about him.  In truth, he would have preferred being shouted-at to being suddenly included in all council sessions and thus forced to listen to them bicker about the economy, their neighboring city-states and every issue brought in by their constituents.  Worst was that they never seemed to decide on anything, just argued it endlessly.  It made him want to arrest them all just to shut them up.

His only solace was that his presence, though mandated, seemed to unnerve them.  Perhaps they had expected him to insert himself into their politics, to try to command or threaten them, but he preferred to stay silent and take notes of the discussion and his plans for the company.  That very silence kept them constantly glancing at him, constantly aware of his presence, and when he did speak, they often flinched.  It amused him.

Otherwise, the city remained quiet.  There had been no thaw toward the company from the populace, and his men reported a slight increase in out-of-town mercenaries guarding certain businesses, but no conflicts had broken out yet.  For his part, Sarovy declared a moratorium on Crimson conscription in the city—which the militia had still been carrying out, bringing in every unemployed man between fifteen and forty they happened to find.  He did not want to deal with that hassle.

In the basement cells, militiamen Rynher and Beltras still languished, uncommunicative.  Torn between releasing and executing them, Sarovy just let them stew.

Sergeant Rallant hadn't tried anything since the fight.  With Linciard consigned to the general bunkrooms, the two had little chance to be alone, and Linciard reported—and Scryer Mako verified—that what time they did catch was spent in public.  Linciard was trying to maneuver back into the relationship but Rallant had gone distant.

The last concern was Acting Lieutenant Benson.  He had taken to tracking down Linciard wherever he was and chastising him for his behavior, and while Sarovy did not want to alienate the man, he could not have him badgering Linciard in the midst of his mission.  Yet he could not tell him why.  Benson was no gossip but he was also no actor, and the reprobates would notice any change.

Finally, Sarovy had ordered Benson to leave Linciard to his self-destruction, which earned a scandalized look and a sullen, put-upon mood from the man thereafter.  Bad for morale.  He only hoped that this would be worth the work.

By the time the 27th dawned, Sarovy had compiled a list of questions and requests for Field Marshal Rackmar, though he did not expect the man to attend the personnel transfer.  That would have been too responsible, too involved in the business of his outposts.  But without proper leadership, Sarovy could only tread water, waiting for something to happen.