By Fire Above_A Signal Airship Novel Page 20

  “You mean, promise him a woman?” Bernat asked.

  “Not that sort of passions. Back in the Halachia campaign, we caught this little lieutenant, just promoted from ensign, who’d stayed to fight after his captain was killed and the rest of the company ran.”

  “Commendable,” Bernat said.

  “Yeah, well, this commendable little shit told us exactly where his company was retreating to. Showed us on a map where they’d fortified some farm houses. And you know why? ’Cause some handsome, quick-thinking Brandheimian corporal told him we’d give his company a fair fight, a chance to redeem their honor, if only we knew where to find ’em.”

  “And you gave them a fair fight?”

  “Hell no. We barricaded the houses in the night and threw burning carcass shot on the roofs. The Vins all burned alive.”

  Bernat was about to make a delightfully witty comment about roast dumplings, but thought better of it when he saw Elise’s disapproving expression.

  “Another time, our captain got a Vin prisoner to tell us where an ambush was laid, by convincing him we had more men than they thought. As soon as he thought his friends were doomed to be killed by our counterattack, he told us where they were, thinking he was saving ’em.”

  “And this one?” Josette asked, looking at the infantryman in the corner. “What do you think he’ll respond to?”

  Jutes shrugged. “Gotta feel him out first. Might be best if Lord Hinkal does it, sir. The Vin ain’t gonna be so inclined to believe the sincerity of someone who beat him over the head, or who was about to go at him with pliers.” He looked at Bernat. “You’ll have to be real nice to him. Be his one friend down here, and you might just find his soft spots. Even the hardest man’s got ’em.”

  Judging by the disapproving look that Elise shot him, Bernat had not done a good job of hiding his disappointment at being called upon to treat the Vin so respectfully. Indeed, he’d been looking for some Vin bastard to paint his frustrations on for some time now—even before he saw what they’d done to the people of Durum—and what better canvas than a prisoner meant for interrogation? If he’d known he was going to have to make friends with the son of a bitch, Bernat wouldn’t have left the damn ship.

  Josette must have read his true feeling as well, for she said, “Be subtle.”

  Bernat did not resist for long. He nodded and said, “Subtlety is one of my favorite middle names.”

  She put a hand on his shoulder, and spoke as if consoling a dispirited little child, “Listen, once we get the location of the magazine, you can torture him to your heart’s content, with whatever time we have left over, okay?”

  He beamed a smile at her and said, “Yours is a generous soul.”

  He tried to give Elise’s shoulder a squeeze, but she shrugged his hand off and shot him a nasty look. As he walked away, toward the Vin fusilier, Elise said in a whisper, “This war’s twisted you, Josie. Into something unnatural.”

  At least she hadn’t said it to Bernat, but he would have to tread carefully if he wanted to stay in Elise’s good graces. After he finished getting information out of the Vin, and after he finished rearranging the man’s various organs into the most painful configurations possible, Bernat resolved to put all of his energy into his relationship.

  He stepped up to the table, where the Vin watched him warily. “Someone untie him, please,” he said to the room, generally. When that was seen to, he took a chair and carried it around to sit next to the fusilier. The pliers lay on the table in front of him, placed there by Corne. Bernat handed them back. “Take these away, please. And bring a cup of wine, or whatever is on hand. Oh, and bring whatever Heny uses to soothe extracted teeth.”

  “They just got the trapdoor closed,” Corne said, neither taking the pliers nor moving from his spot.

  “Then get it open again.”

  Corne still didn’t move, even as Jutes walked up and crossed his arms. “She can’t tell us what to do now,” Corne said to Bernat, “and you never could anyway.” Only then did Corne notice Sergeant Jutes looming over him.

  Bernat leaned toward Corne and said, in a smooth and genteel voice, “I will certainly remind the sergeant to take that into consideration when he decides what to do with you.”

  Corne hesitated a moment, then snatched up the pliers and left. What a wonderful thing leverage was. Bernat wished he’d appreciated it before now—though in fairness to himself, it was only quite recently that he’d ever had any.

  “I must apologize for my associate,” Bernat said in Vinzhalian. “It’s only that you fellows took his hands and killed a fair number of his friends, and he’s somewhat resentful of the fact.” The Vin stared back and said nothing. Fresh blood trickled from his swollen left eyelid, the wound having re-opened while he was being restrained. “Which is no excuse for his boorish behavior, of course, but I do offer it by way of an explanation.”

  Silence still. So Bernat only sat and shared in that silence, and kept an impassive face until Corne returned. The private slapped a mug on the table, spilling some of the cider inside. He then retrieved a small ointment pot, which he’d tucked against his side, and threw that down as well.

  “Thank you.” Bernat offered the ointment to the fusilier, and spoke again in Vinzhalian, “Do try it. I’m sure broken teeth must hurt quite a bit.”

  It took some convincing, but the Vin finally took the ointment and applied half the pot to three pulpy stumps which had once been his upper front teeth. When he was done, he swallowed the cider in one long gulp.

  “Would you like another cider?” Bernat asked, and then held up his hands with a smile. “I don’t want you to think I’m trying to get you drunk, though.”

  “I can hold my liquor,” the fusilier said. His words were reedy, coming through the gap in his teeth. Every head in the room turned toward him, for these were the first words the man had said.

  “Cider is not actually a…” Bernat checked himself. “But let us never mind that.” In Garnian, he said to Sergeant Jutes, “Would you mind fetching another?”

  “And I can hold my tongue, too,” the fusilier said.

  “I don’t doubt it.” Bernat made a sorrowful face, then flashed a conspiratorial grin at him. “You’re one of the hardest goddamn bastards in a regiment that’s nothing but hard goddamn bastards. These buffoons couldn’t break you if they had years.”

  The Vin’s face twitched momentarily, to show the slightest hint of pride.

  “Which makes what these animals wanted to do to you all the more unforgivable. You’ve been through so much already, and then to be treated like this? I can’t imagine how angry it would make me. Ah, here’s that cider.”

  *   *   *

  “WAR HAS TWISTED you, Josie, into something unnatural,” Josette’s mother said, when Bernat walked away.

  Josette ignored the comment and set to work laying the party’s three rifles on the carpet. She blew the priming out of their pans so they wouldn’t fire accidentally, then repeated the operation with her pistol. That finished, she began unpacking the bag she’d brought with her.

  Her mother was silent so long that Josette had to look up to confirm she was still there. Elise shook her head and said, “I’m glad your father didn’t live to see what you’ve turned into. He always worried you’d be … corrupted, things being what they are in Garnia, but he never could have imagined this.”

  “Good God,” Josette said, pulling signal flags and flares from the bag and arranging them in rows. “I wonder, in the time since Father died, how many times have you called up his ghost to testify against me? I ask only because I fear he must be growing very tired of it. Though, I suppose the round trip between Durum and hell isn’t so far as to be an inconvenience.”

  “You’re trying to make me cry,” her mother said, but her eyes were dry.

  “I have never tried to make you cry.” Josette took the cutlasses, all of them bundled in linen, and began unwrapping them. “I’m just naturally good at it, is all. Can
’t imagine where I got that from.”

  “When your ship picks you up … they are picking you up before the attack, aren’t they?”

  “Yes” was all she said. She had swords to unwrap.

  “Bernat’s going, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before the attack?”

  “Yes!” She looked up from one of the cutlasses, which had acquired a few nicks on the edge, and would need a good honing. “Mistral will pick us up prior to the attack. Where is the confusion?”

  “No confusion. Just making sure.” Her mother took a breath. “I’d like to go along with you.”

  Josette couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ll go because he’s going? Not because I’m going, but because he’s going?”

  “Because both of you are going.”

  “You’ll be pleased to learn that I was always planning to take you with us. The extra ballast will allow us to drop that many more muskets to Heny and her men. So you’ll actually be useful for something. Who says you can’t try new things, later in life?” She withdrew the last item from the bag. It was an infantry musket, brought along as an example piece, so that at least some members of the resistance could familiarize themselves with it and be taught the basic principles of combat musketry.

  But her mother’s eyes had fixed on another weapon. She knelt down and picked up Josette’s rifled pistol. “This is beautiful,” she said, smiling with admiration. “Whatever you may think of Bernat, you can’t deny his good taste in firearms.”

  Josette snorted. “That pistol’s mine, Mother. How the hell would it be Bernie’s?”

  Her mother stared at her, confused.

  Suddenly, Josette struck upon the reason. “Good God, you think he’s rich, don’t you?”

  Her mother’s cheeks turned red, but she offered no reply.

  “He’s the second son, Mother. Which means—yes, I did look into it—he’s really only a commoner with a fancy name. He’s a ‘lord’ in the same way that I’m a ‘captain.’ It’s an empty title given to the younger sons of a marquis, as nothing more than a courtesy. When his father dies, it’s the oldest son who will get the real title, the real land, and all the real money, unless you can manage to poison the poor bastard first.”

  Only at that moment did she remember that she was talking about Roland. For the first time, it occurred to her that his coming inheritance and succession was a point in favor of sending him the more propitious letter. Or, now that she thought on it further, was it a point against? She wasn’t sure, and realizing that she was contemplating her affection for him in those terms made her feel a little sick.

  “So, is the wedding off?” she asked her mother. And after another nasty look, corrected herself. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. Is the fling off?”

  “No,” her mother said, but she had to think about it first. “It was just a surprise, is all. I suppose I let myself get used to the idea of a more comfortable life.”

  Josette thought of advising her to get used to diplomatic visits from limber Sotrian officials, but that might be a cut too many, and she wasn’t sure her mother would care in any event.

  Her mother looked across the room, to Bernat flashing his slick smile at the Vin fusilier, and laying into him with specious charm. She said, “And used to the idea of a more compassionate man. Which he was before you got at him. You let the war break him.”

  “Let’s not get melodramatic.” Josette carefully removed the rocket flares from the pack, but left them in their oilcloth covers, lest too much manipulation generate a static spark that could set them off.

  Her mother shook her head. “Minimize it all you like, but he wasn’t like this before he fell in with your crowd. He was good-hearted.”

  Josette unpacked the cartridge boxes and began going through them one by one, lifting the lids and standing the paper cartridges upright wherever they’d slipped. “Before he fell in with my crowd, he was conspiring to wreck my career and have me shipped to the Utarman fever swamps. Do you know what happens to people in the fever swamps, Mother? If you think carefully, you’ll find there’s a hint in the name.”

  “Yet you seem fond of him now.”

  Josette laughed. “Yes, well, perhaps such a venomous person reminds me of home.”

  13

  THOUGH HER EYES were open and pointed across Heny’s lovely basement room, Josette saw none of it. She looked instead across the roof of a goat shed, as her rifle’s frizzen sprang back, the flint sparking across it. The wind picked up the exposed priming in the pan, sending stinging grains of gunpowder into her eyes and nostrils. She held them open despite the pain, and kept the wolf in her sights.

  Someone coughed, and in the next moment she saw her locale for what it was. A single lantern burned in the corner nearest the Vin fusilier, who had been separated from the rest of the room by a paper screen. Apart from her, only Kiffer was awake, taking his turn at guard duty.

  Josette brushed the wrinkles out of her uniform and went to sit next to him, waving him back into his chair when he attempted to rise on his one remaining leg.

  “How’s life in Durum?” she asked Kiffer.

  “Haven’t seen any of it past this ceiling,” the private replied. “But what I hear ain’t good, sir. Vins have been cracking down real hard, hanging rabble-rousers by the score.” He grinned. “But for every one the Vins hang, another three rise up. Seems to be a certain … ornery streak to people from Durum, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.”

  “Not at all.” She looked over the men sleeping on the floor. One of her former crewmen, though offloaded in Durum, was not among them. “Is Private Hermant still alive?”

  Kiffer looked at his foot. “No, sir.” He took a deep breath. “Resistance made use of him, seeing how his wound wasn’t too bad and he was good with a gun. Vins caught him and a dozen others, when the resistance was trying to ambush a party of fusiliers cutting firewood. After that first big success with the poison, it seemed like the Vins were reading our minds. We never did pull off a big operation after that—not without costing a lot of blood on our side. Lost the signal-base lieutenant and half his men, across three or four foiled ambushes. So now they stick to the smaller stuff. Like nabbin’ that piece a’ trash.” When he hooked a thumb to indicate the Vinzhalian, Kiffer finally seemed to realize that he was rambling, and quieted down. “Sorry, sir.”

  She waved the matter away. “I’m sure it must be difficult, to be stuck down here.”

  “I’m not saying it takes the same kind a’ fortitude as going out to ambush Vins, sir, but it takes some kind of fortitude.” He shifted in his chair. “It takes some kind of fortitude.”

  A most uncomfortable silence followed, which Josette broke with, “Heny took good care of your leg, though?”

  “Wonderful care, wonderful care,” Kiffer said. He thumped his thigh, just above the fold in his pant leg. “Hardly even hurts anymore. The shoulder, either, though the ball’s still in there.”

  “Heny does good work.”

  “Better than the town surgeon, and that’s a damn certainty, sir. You know the Vins hanged him, after two of them died when he operated on them? Townsfolk all said he didn’t kill them on purpose, he was just a lousy surgeon. Bloody-minded Vins never listened. Hanged his wife, too, on account of there was two of them dead, and so there ought to be at least two of us. Pardon me, sir. I meant two folk from Durum.”

  “I think you’ve lived here long enough to claim that dubious honor, Private, if you want it.”

  Kiffer grinned and said, “Thank you, sir. And I would want that honor, sir, knowing the tenacity of these folk. No disrespect intended, sir, but I’m surprised you’re so disparaging of it, considering the exploits of your own mother.”

  Josette arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  Kiffer seemed to realize that he was sailing into dangerous waters. “Though of course, sir, not sure it’s proper for me to recount them, if she didn’t already.”

  Josette still said nothin
g, but only stared at the man.

  “Then again, mayhap she’s just too modest, and would prefer it this way.” He swallowed hard, leaning out to see if any of the slumbering bodies nearby were secretly awake and eavesdropping. Elise, at least, was not in the room, having left early in the night to run messages for Heny. “She joined up just after the poisoning. She had a natural use, you see, sir, ’cause she’d been kicked out of her house and was sleeping wherever she could beg a bed for the night. So it didn’t raise any suspicions to have her carry messages from house to house. She went along on an ambush, too. Heny said she was too valuable as a messenger, but your mother wouldn’t take no. Good thing, ’cause the Vins smelled the trap and turned it around on us. If your mother hadn’t been there, the whole ambush party would’ve been killed, but she got nearly half of them out alive, on account of her knowing the forest so well. That’s the time Private Hermant died, now that I think of it. But there’s another four men from that party that owe her their lives.”

  Josette was about to make a snide remark, but thought better of it and said, “Let’s be thankful the Durum resistance has people like her in it.”

  “Fewer and fewer. But…” Kiffer paused to kick the Vin in the side, but the man only wobbled on his chair, and didn’t even look up. “Soon we’ll pay the bastards back tenfold.”

  A line of bright light appeared on the ceiling, as someone above removed a plank from the false floor over the stairs. Josette tensed.

  “Only Pesha checking in, sir,” Kiffer said. “Must be morning, up above.”

  “I’ll just go and see how things stand on the surface.”

  Things stood rather well, by Pesha’s reporting. News of the coming uprising was being spread to select, trustworthy citizens, who stood ready to recruit their neighbors when the moment arrived. Scenting their coming liberation, no Durumite had argued against an uprising.