The Price of Valor (14 page)

“He knows . . . a little bit,” Bobby said. “I told him I was wounded, and that a Khandarai priestess saved me with her herb-lore, which left me like this. So far he hasn't pushed me about it.”

Winter had to laugh. Men who would swear to being rational and forward-thinking, and therefore dismissive of the supernatural, would also accept almost any claim as to the effectiveness of hidden wisdom or secret knowledge as long as it came from a sufficiently foreign source. She herself had fielded quite a few questions from otherwise modern young women in the Girls' Own who wanted to know if it was true that the Khandarai had discovered a fruit that granted eternal youth, or drank cobra venom to ward off the pox.

“Okay,” she said. “At that rate, it should be a while before it's difficult to hide. When we get back to the city, we'll talk to Feor and see if she's been able to figure anything out.” After surmounting her crisis of faith, Feor had volunteered to help Janus decode the Thousand Names. They'd left her in Vordan City, partly for security reasons and partly because the massive steel plates on which the archive was engraved were difficult to transport in secrecy. “I know it must be a little odd, but—”

“There's something else.” Bobby cast about and found an old tin cup, dinged and battered from years of hard use. She held it in the palm of her right hand, let out a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Then, without any visible sign of effort, she closed her fist, and the cup gave a metallic shriek as it was crushed within.

“Oh.” Winter stared. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” Bobby opened her hand and passed the remain of the cup to Winter. The outlines of Bobby's fingers were dimpled neatly into the metal, and it had bulged at the sides, as though she'd squeezed a handful of butter. “I have to concentrate to make it work, and I can't always do it. But when I can, I feel like I could lift a horse.”

“Let's . . . not try that just yet,” Winter said. Bobby was clearly relieved to share her secret with someone, and was bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet, which Winter found a bit distracting. “Put your shirt back on, first of all. I don't want to have to tackle the next person who tries to walk in here.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Bobby dressed, and Winter turned and stared out through the tiny gap between the hanging tent flaps. Troops of Royals and Girls' Own soldiers were going past, carrying rolled-up tents, boxes of crackers, and other supplies. The steady
tap-tap-tap
of wooden mallets forcing pegs into the earth sounded like a rain of stones on a cobbled street.

“Okay,” Winter said, turning back. “I'm going to need to think about this.” She turned the crushed cup over in her hands and shook her head. “In the meantime, don't do anything rash.”

Bobby nodded. “I'll be careful.”

“If Feor can't help us, maybe Janus can,” Winter said. “After dumping this whole regiment on my shoulders, he owes me. Between them we should be able to come up with
some
idea of what's happening, and whether we need to stop it.”

“Right.” Bobby finished buttoning her shirt and took an experimental breath. “Sorry. I didn't mean to spring that on you out of the blue, but—”

“It's fine. I needed to know.” Winter set the remains of the cup down on
her writing desk. “In the meantime, there are more mundane problems to deal with. Can you run over to Jane's tent and tell her I need to see her?”

Bobby frowned. “I can try. But you know—”

“Just try.”

The girl shrugged into her jacket and saluted. “Yes, sir! Just a moment.”

She ducked out through the flap and hurried away. Winter, feeling a good bit wearier than she had felt only moments before, sat down on the cushion behind her desk and stretched her back, trying to make it pop.

Since their confrontation over Winter's reorganization of the camp, Jane had been, for lack of a better word, sulking. The thought of it made Winter's jaw clench in frustration.
She knows she's wrong. She just can't bear to admit it.
She walked with her troops during the day, and stayed in her tent the rest of the time. If Winter managed to ambush her, she stood at stiff attention and responded in monosyllables.
God. Was she this frustrating back at the Prison?
Winter shook her head.
I was a different person then, and so was she.

It couldn't go on forever, though. The Girls' Own needed a captain, and if Jane kept refusing to do the job, eventually Winter would have to replace her. The thought made her feel ill.
It won't come to that. She'll get over it before it actually comes to fighting.
Temper or no, Winter couldn't believe that Jane would let her girls go into battle anything less than well organized.

There was a knock at the tent pole, and Winter straightened up, heart rising for a moment. “Come in.”

The flap rustled, and Winter was disappointed, though not really surprised, to see Abby Giforte, Jane's second in command. She wore the rough trousers and linen shirt that had become the makeshift uniform of the volunteers, along with a jacket hastily dyed Vordanai blue. Her curly brown hair was tied back in a frizzy knot, and her pale, freckled cheeks were red and cracking from a day in the sun.

“Sir!” Abby said, saluting. Winter waved for her to sit.

“Where's Jane?”

“She asked me to say that she's busy,” Abby said, “and that I should speak to you in her place.” She had the decency to blush.

Winter sighed. “She's going to have to come out sooner or later.”

“She will,” Abby said. “She's just . . . you know how she is. What her temper can be like.”

“I remember,” Winter said. “I just wish I knew what she was so angry about. It can't just be the mixed camp. That hasn't worked out so badly.”

Abby opened her mouth, as though to speak, but then thought better of it. Winter cocked her head.

“What is it?”

“I . . .” Abby frowned. “I'm not sure it's appropriate for me to talk about this.”

Winter studied her face, and felt a faint pang of jealousy. Abby had been with Jane through most of her Leatherback days, helping her forge a gang of scared young girls into a force that could protect itself and fight the tax farmers Orlanko had unleashed on the Docks. Somewhere during that time, Abby and Jane had become lovers. Jane had broken the relationship off when Winter returned, except for a single drunken mistake, and Winter didn't think Abby would be willing to pick it up again. Still, for all that Winter and Jane had been together as children, in a real way Abby knew this new, adult Jane better than Winter did.

“You can talk about whatever you like,” Winter said carefully. “I won't hold it against you.”

“It's not that, it's that I don't know. Not really. I just . . .” Abby sighed. “I think Jane is feeling . . . lost. Envious, maybe.”

“Envious?” Winter snorted. “Of who, me?”

Abby nodded.

“Why, because Janus promoted me?” Winter shook her head. “If she wants the colonel's job, tell her she can have it. It's just a load of worry and—”

“It's not that. You
fit
here. In the army. It looks . . . natural on you.” Abby touched the shoulders of her jacket, where a crude stripe had been sewn to mark her rank. “The rest of us sometimes feel like we're playing pretend, but not you.”

“You don't play pretend with live powder,” Winter said. “How can you feel like it isn't real when people are getting hurt?”

“It's not the fighting,” Abby said. “We're used to that, or at least the old Leatherbacks are. We fought the gangs, the tax farmers, whoever needed fighting. People got hurt. We know what that's like. It's all
this
that feels like playing dress-up.” She waved a hand vaguely. “The tents, the uniforms, the saluting. Taking orders. Sometimes I expect somebody to come along and tell us to stop being silly.”

“Nobody is going to do anything like that. Not if I have anything to say about it,” Winter said. “I'd put the Girls' Own against any other battalion in the army, royal or volunteer.”

“I know,” Abby said, raising her hands soothingly. “I'm just . . . trying to
explain. I think Jane feels out of place, and then she looks at you and you make it seem so effortless. You just
know
what to do, how to behave.”

Winter wanted to laugh.
Effortless?
She spent her days on a knife edge of exhaustion, worn ragged by the worry that something new would go wrong.
How do I tell her that I'm making it up as I go along?

“I think, also, she's a little jealous,” Abby said. “She sees you pulling away from her, into this world of flags and drums and cannon, and she doesn't think she can follow.”

“You think she's jealous of the
army
?” Winter said.

Abby nodded. Winter searched her face for a hint of malice, and found none. It would be understandable for Abby to be angry with her.
I would be, in her place.
But all Winter could see in her expression was a deep concern when she spoke of Jane.

Is that what love is supposed to look like? Wanting the best for another person, regardless of what it means for yourself?
Winter closed her eyes and shook her head.
Now is not the time, damn it.

“Okay. Thank you,” Winter said. “But enough about Jane. She'll come around eventually. What about the rest of the Girls' Own? How are they taking it?”

“Better than I might have expected,” Abby said, looking relieved at the change of topic. “They wouldn't say so if you asked them, but I think a lot of the rankers are happy to have some proper soldiers around, to show them how things are done. Especially the new girls, the ones who joined up after Midvale.”

Approximately half of the Girls' Own was made up of women from Jane's old building, or their friends and family from the Docks. The other half had been recruited afterward, from a steady trickle of female volunteers who'd heard the new government's call for soldiers and followed the Leatherbacks' example.

“It's the old Leatherbacks who do most of the complaining,” Abby went on. “The ones who've been with Jane from the beginning. They don't like working with the Royals.”

“Anyone in particular?” Winter asked.

Abby shifted uncomfortably, but after a moment she said, “Becca and Winn. Becca thinks all men are rapists and murderers, and that we'd be better off without them. Winn just worships the ground Jane walks on.”

“All right. I'll see what I can do to bring them around.” Winter sighed. “The fact is that we've got to work with the Royals, unless Janus changes his mind. We'd better get used it.”

“I know,” Abby said. “Like I said, the Leatherbacks aren't used to taking orders and not asking questions.”

“Any discipline problems on your side?”

“Not as such.” Abby paused again. “There's a little bit of . . . fraternization.”

“That's more or less the idea—”

“I mean fucking,” Abby interrupted. “It happens when you get a lot of men and women together. Not that it doesn't happen when it's only men, but—”

“I get the point,” Winter said hastily. “But the rankers sleep four to a tent. How do they—”

“They find ways,” Abby said. “Do you really want details?”

“I suppose not. But I don't want anyone sneaking out beyond the sentries. We're in enemy territory, even if they haven't been so unfriendly thus far.”

“I'll pass the word.”

Now it was Winter's turn to hesitate. “When the Leatherbacks were in Vordan, there seemed to be a fair amount of . . . that sort of thing. I assume the girls take appropriate measures to avert . . . potential consequences?”

Abby nodded. “We educate them quite thoroughly on that subject.”

“Make sure it gets passed along to all the new recruits, too. And please tell the officers to keep an eye out for anyone who looks like they might be getting pushed into something they're not happy about. I want to hear about anything like that, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Abby said. “We're used to looking out for one another.”

“I know.” Winter glanced at the tent flap, gauging the time by the lengthening shadows. “All right. I'd better get to dinner.”

“Of course, sir.” Abby stood up.

“Tell Jane . . .” Winter stopped, and stared at Abby for a moment, then shook her head. “Tell her I'm waiting for her.”

“I will, sir,” Abby said, lifting the tent flap. “But I think she knows.”

*   *   *

When Winter had first been made a sergeant, in what now seemed like another lifetime altogether, she'd spent her first few days in her tent, hiding from the men newly placed under her command. It had been Bobby who eventually coaxed her out, encouraging her to have dinner with the men and get to know them. It had worked on Winter then, so she had decided to try it again, on a larger scale.

As in Khandar, enterprising locals had taken to following the army around in carts, hoping to sell their wares to the foreign soldiers. The sentries were ruthless about keeping them off the roads during the day, but in the evenings they could be found at the edges of the camp, laundering fresh clothes and hawking food, wine, and other luxuries. Cyte had managed to pry a little bit of hard coin out of
the quartermasters—a bit of Winter's back pay, actually, that she didn't ever expect to be able to spend—and Winter had used it to bring in a better class of dinner than the rations the soldiers normally received. Every night, she brought in two companies, one from the Royals and one from the Girls' Own, in strict rotations, and they ate together around a roaring fire in the center of camp.

Tonight dinner was a whole roast chicken for every two men or women, purchased live from a local farmer for what was probably ten times the going rate, plus baskets of late berries sold by a pair of ambitious ten-year-olds. Winter's guests were Lieutenant sur Gothin and his company from the Royals, and a company of new recruits from the Girls' Own led by Lieutenant Virginia Malloy. Captain Sevran was also in attendance, with Lieutenant Novus from his staff.