The Thousand Names (44 page)

Jen worked the point of the knife delicately under the wax, split the seal up one side, and peeled it off the top of the bottle. She’d produced a couple of glasses from somewhere, and Marcus watched as she expertly tipped two fingers of the liquid amber into each. She handed him one, held up her own, and met his eyes.

“To Count Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich Mieran,” she said. “God grant that he know what the hell he’s doing.”

“God grant,” Marcus said fervently. They both sipped. The bite on his tongue seemed to dissolve into smoke before it reached the back of his mouth. It was better even than he remembered. From the look in Jen’s eyes, she was similarly enraptured. She put the glass on the table slowly, and stared at it as though she thought it might move.

“Saints and martyrs,” she swore. “Now I
am
glad I didn’t get killed in the battle.”

“If only we had a bottle for every man in the regiment, they’d all come back alive,” Marcus said.

Jen laughed. “If we had that much, we could probably
buy
the throne of Khandar.”

“You’d be surprised. You remember those carts, the really heavy ones at the end of the train? The ones that were always getting stuck.”

“Vaguely.”

“Supposedly the prince packed them full of gold before he fled the city. All the treasures of the Exopterai Dynasty, or at least all the ones he could carry. Now he’s probably got them tucked away safe in his dungeons again.”

Not
every
treasure.
These “Thousand Names” weren’t in the prince’s hoard. But someone else must have had the same idea as Exopter did.
His mood darkened.
Whatever it is, it’s clearly more important than a few sacks full of coin. If only he’d
tell
me, I might be able to come up with something.

Jen, sipping from her glass, watched his face. “Something wrong?”

Marcus shrugged and looked down. “Not really.”

“No?” She leaned closer, until they were only inches apart. “You can tell me. I won’t even put it in a report. I promise.”

Her tone was still light, but there was an undercurrent of real concern. Marcus sighed.

“I was just wishing the colonel
would
take me a bit more into his confidence. Then I might be able to say something when people ask me what happens next.”

Jen nodded sympathetically. “It’s only natural that they’d want to know, I suppose.”

“Of course it is. It’s not just the officers, either. Val and Mor are lifers; they’re used to this sort of thing. But what about the recruits?” Marcus shook his head. “Most of us Old Colonials got sent to Khandar because we’d pissed off the wrong person, but the recruits just signed up on the wrong day and drew the short straw. How long are they going to stay here? Until we catch the Divine Hand and the Steel Ghost? That could be years—or never.”

“Have you asked him about it?”

“Asked who? The colonel?”

She nodded and raised the bottle toward him. He hesitated, then held up his glass, and she poured a generous portion for both of them.

“I’ve never had the chance,” Marcus said. “I barely see him anymore.”

“Why not?”

Marcus shrugged. “He spends his time in his room, or in with the prince.”

“Has he ordered you to stay away?”

“No,” Marcus said, uncomfortably. “But—”

He suddenly wanted to tell Jen about the underground room. The mysterious Names, so important that they warranted a royal command. She might know what Janus had meant. She might be able to help—

Don’t be a fool,
something whispered at the back of his mind.
She’s Concordat. They’re killers, spiders, eyes and ears and knives in the dark. She works for the Last Duke, not for the king, and certainly not for the colonel. Tell her anything and God alone knows what she’ll do with it.
But looking at her, her head tipped as she studied the glistening brandy through a thin fall of brown hair, he found it hard to picture her in the company of the sinister figures in leather greatcoats that haunted the sets of bad dramas.

He raised his glass abruptly. “To Adrecht.”

“Captain Roston, you mean?” she asked.

“He got me my first sniff of this stuff, way back at the dawn of time.”

Jen paused. “Is he still . . .”

“He stopped a saber for me at Weltae. It didn’t look awful at the time, but it went bad on him. The cutters took his arm off last night. As of this morning, he was looking a little better, but . . .” Marcus closed one hand into a fist and stared at it.

Jen nodded and raised her glass. “To Adrecht, then.”

They drank. After a moment’s respectful silence, Jen said, “I wanted to ask you about him, after the battle on the road, but . . .”

“But?”

“I figured you’d assume I was fishing for the Ministry and clam up.”

“Ah. You might have been right.”

“Do you mind if I ask now? I swear it isn’t for . . . official purposes. I’m just curious.”

Marcus looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“When the colonel wanted to arrest him, you threatened to resign.” It wasn’t a question. Marcus wondered if Janus had told her, or if camp rumor knew everything by now.

“I did,” he said.

“Why? The colonel could have had you shot.”

“He’s my friend,” Marcus said. “We were at the College together.”

“That was a hell of a thing to do for a friend.”

Marcus paused, staring into his empty glass.
What the hell?
he thought.
Even if she
does
put this in her report, I can’t see how it would matter
. He held out the tumbler, and Jen silently refilled it.

“He saved my life,” Marcus said, after a few moments’ contemplation.

“Ah. In a battle somewhere?”

Marcus shook his head. “Long before that. You’ve read my file, I suppose?”

“On the way over.”

“How much detail does it go into?”

She shrugged. “Not much. Even the Ministry can’t keep track of everything about everyone. It says you’re an orphan, top quarter of your class at the College, requested assignment to Khandar.”

“An orphan.” Marcus turned the glass on the tabletop, watching the colored light refracted through the liquor. “I suppose I am.”

Jen said nothing, sensing that she’d stumbled into dangerous territory. Marcus took a deep breath.

“When I was seventeen,” he said, “about a year after I left for my lieutenant’s course at the College, there was a fire at home. It had been a dry summer, apparently, and something touched off dry grass on the lawn. It spread to the house before anyone noticed. The whole place burned. Mother was always telling Father it was a rickety old firetrap, but he said it was historic and it would be a crime to renovate.” He tapped the brandy glass and watched the patterns of light ripple. “They were both killed. My sister, Ellie—she was four. Most of the servants, too, people I’d grown up with.”

Jen touched his arm, very lightly. “God. I’m so sorry.”

He nodded. “Adrecht was with me when I got the news. I . . . didn’t take it well. I started sneaking out, spending a lot of time in the foreigners’ bars, drinking too much, starting fights. I didn’t even realize he was keeping track of me, but one night he cornered me in a back garden by one of the passages we used to get past the sentries. He handed me a pistol, and he said . . .”

Marcus smiled slightly, remembering. “He told me that if I wanted to kill myself, I should do it here and now, because the way I was trying was taking too long and causing everyone a lot of trouble. I was furious with him, told him there was no way he could understand, but he kept at me, asked me if I was too scared. Eventually I put the pistol to my head, just to show him. I don’t remember if I meant to pull the trigger or if it was just my hands shaking. But I still remember the little click as the hammer came down.

“It wasn’t loaded, of course. When my heart started up again, I realized Adrecht was right.” Marcus picked up the glass in front of him and drained it. “I went back to class, did well, got my silver stripe. After my tour as lieutenant, Adrecht told me he was going for captain, so I did, too. Then he got himself sent to Khandar, and I told him I would come along. He tried to talk me out of it, but I said, ‘What the hell is there for me here?’” He set the glass down with a decisive click. “And here we are.”

There was a long silence. Jen took her own glass, refilled it, and held it up.

“To Adrecht,” she said.

WINTER

Winter laid her hands flat in front of her and took a deep breath. “All right. We need to talk.”

“I know,” Bobby said, almost inaudibly. She seemed drawn in on herself, shoulders hunched, staring at the lamp in the center of the table. “I think . . .”

There was a long pause. Then Bobby looked up, and Winter was surprised to see that there were tears in her eyes.

“I think I’m going mad,” she finished, all in a rush.

The girl’s face was drawn and haggard, and bags under her eyes hinted that she hadn’t been sleeping much. Feor sat beside her, resting her splinted arm on a stack of cushions.

They were in the upper room of a Khandarai tavern, the one breed of business that had weathered both the Redemption and the Vordanai reconquest with the equanimity of cockroaches. This one was typical, furnished with only a few threadbare pillows and a low wooden table, but Winter wanted privacy more than comfort. She’d tipped the hostess not to let anyone else up to the tiny second story.

Winter ventured a cautious smile. “Why do you say that?”

“Something happened to me in the battle,” Bobby said.

“Getting shot, you mean?”

“I thought so. It certainly felt like it at the time.” Bobby shook her head miserably. “I remember thinking, this is it. I’d always wondered what it would feel like, and it didn’t seem so bad. Like someone had kicked me. I fell on my ass and watched the rest of you march away, and I tried to get back up to follow you, and
then
it hurt.” Her lips quivered. “It hurt like . . . I don’t even know how to say it. So I lay back down and thought, ‘Oh, okay, I guess I’m dead, then.’ And I closed my eyes, and—”

She broke off as the hostess entered carrying a tray with three clay mugs, each half the size of a man’s head. Winter had to use both hands to lift her drink. Khandarai beer was thick and dark, and bitter enough to take the uninitiated by surprise. It wasn’t her favorite, but she’d gotten used to it. Both Bobby and Feor stared into their mugs as though they weren’t sure what to do with them, and Winter took a swallow to provide an example. Neither followed suit, and she gave an inward sigh.

“I don’t remember very much after that,” Bobby said. “Bits and pieces. I kept waking up and wondering if I was dead yet, and then I’d open my eyes and see the smoke still drifting up and think, ‘No, not yet,’ and then close them again. Once I remember the pain getting worse, so much worse, and I thought that
had
to be the end. Only I woke up afterward, and I felt . . . okay. Good, even.”

Winter, who was watching for it, saw the corporal’s hand stray to her side, where the wound had been.

“And ever since then,” Bobby went on, “I’ve been seeing things. Or hearing them. Or . . . something. It’s hard to explain.”

“Seeing things?” Winter said. That she had not expected.

“It’s not quite
seeing
,” Bobby said. “Feeling, maybe. Like there’s something out there, pressing on me, but I can’t quite—I don’t know.” She stared into the depths of her drink. “Like I said, I’m going mad.”

Winter glanced at Feor. The Khandarai girl was regarding Bobby intently.

“She says she’s seeing things,” Winter translated, and Feor nodded.

“She can sense others who possess power,” Feor said. “Me, for example. And perhaps some of Mother’s children remain in the city. All who are touched by magic can do this to one degree or another, but . . .” She sighed. “As I told you,
obv-scar-iot
should have been bound to someone who had trained from girlhood to accept its gifts. What it will do to someone so completely unprepared I do not know.”

Winter turned back to the corporal, cleared her throat, and realized she had absolutely no idea how to begin. She’d planned for this, but everything she’d practiced in the privacy of her room had flown out of her mind. She took a long swallow of beer to cover it, coughed a bit at the bitter flavor, and cleared her throat again.

Finally, she said, “All right. The thing is . . .” She trailed off again.

“The thing is?” Bobby prompted.

Winter sighed. “You’re not going crazy. But I suspect you’re going to think
I
am. Just listen, okay?”

The corporal nodded obediently. Winter drew a long breath.

“You got hit on the climb,” Winter said. “You know that much. We found you afterward, and it . . . looked bad.”

“You promised me,” Bobby said in a small voice.

“No cutters,” Winter agreed. “Folsom carried you back to my tent, and Graff did what he could.”

“Did he—” Bobby’s features screwed up as she tried to find a way of asking whether Graff had discovered her secret, without revealing that secret in the process. Winter took pity on her and nodded.