The Skarov yelled, digging his fingers into her arm. Living. She was definitely living. The threads of the Weave slipped through her hand, and the world rushed up to meet them.
She hit first, landing hard on a pile of rubble and rolling onto her back. Dust puffed up as the Skarov came down beside her.
Loose pieces of brick and mortar bit into her spine. Pain shot through her calves and the bottom of her residual limbs. Her torso was agony. Her phantom feet burned. She blinked through her tears. Pain was good; pain meant her back hadn’t broken in the fall. She tried to push herself off the rubble, but her hands only scraped on gravel and brick dust.
Her prosthetics. Had they broken? She fumbled for the straps.
A shape disturbed the smoke around her. The Skarov officer had gotten to his feet and was dusting off his coat. But his strange eyes never left her face.
She should have known she couldn’t hide forever. Weave magicians were evil. How could she think that she was special, that she was different? What right did she have to ruin the world?
It’s already ruined, she thought. Then she thought, I never meant for it to go this far. I don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to die. But there was no God to beg. So said the laws of the Union.
The Skarov stepped forward, bracing his back foot on the ground and leaning in to grab her by her prosthetics. She groaned as they twisted and scraped on her residual limbs. He’d break them if he wasn’t careful. “Stop,” she pleaded, coughing ash.
His hands moved up, gripping her waist just under her rib cage. And then she stopped worrying that he might break her legs, and started worrying that he might break her.
I saved you, she tried to say. Please. But the words wouldn’t come.
He pulled her to her feet. “Walk,” he said with iron in his voice. He gripped her shoulders, steering her.
She could do nothing but obey.
2
I GIVE MY SON GLADLY
Linné stood at attention outside her colonel’s office, cursing herself. Colonel Koslen’s voice cut through the thin walls, and she caught words such as honor, disgrace, and stupidity as he blasted the unlucky Lieutenant Tannov with the full force of his wrath. Linné’s blood sang. She’d be trembling if she let herself relax. But that was her secret to being in the army: Never let your guard down.
That had been her secret to being in the army. Then she’d been stupid and allowed her guard to slip. Now she was here.
The few men who walked by shot her curious glances. She ignored them all, as she’d ignored the catcalls from those who thought the humiliating discovery of her sex was somehow hilarious. When she realized the game was up, she’d swiped some brandy from under Tannov’s bed, hoping to fortify herself. She’d taken only a swig or two, but now she couldn’t decide whether it was the brandy or the fear that turned her thoughts upside down.
The slate sky gave way to a bleed of color with twilight, and the temperature was fast dropping toward night. Clouds piled on the horizon, as they always did in early autumn, becoming darker and colder until they finally rushed in to unleash the first howling storms.
The shouting ceased. Linné wished she’d had time for a rascidine cigarette. Maybe she should’ve taken the rest of Tannov’s bottle.
The door creaked. Tannov’s voice came from over her shoulder. “The colonel wants to see you, Private—” He stopped. “Um, miss.”
Miss. He said it like he didn’t even know her. They’d served together for three years. Tannov had screamed at her, sworn at her, threatened her, punished her. She’d gotten him drunk the night before his promotion, and she’d shot the Elda by steadying her rifle on his shoulder. When she roared at a charging Elda soldier, he’d laughed and called her “little lion,” and everyone in the regiment followed suit. Once, they’d sworn they’d get their Hero of the Union medals together. Now he averted his eyes and stepped smartly to the side, leaving the door open for her.
March, soldier, she told her feet. She could do that, at least, even with the cocktail of rage, nerves, and brandy inside her.
Colonel Koslen’s office smelled of sweat, earth, and oil. Papers lay scattered across his desk, the aftermath of a bureaucratic war. Koslen stood behind the desk, clenching and unclenching his ham hands as Linné came in. The colonel cut an impressive figure, tall and broad and with biceps the size of Linné’s head. Tannov and their friend Dostorov had joked that before the war, Koslen was a goatherd who liked the smell of goats better than the smell of women. Linné preferred to mock his glorious mustache, waxed to a curl. It twitched whenever he spoke, whenever he sighed, whenever he lost his temper, or whenever it seemed a particularly difficult thought was pushing itself through the sludge of his brain. After any ordinary disciplinary action, Linné would return to the barracks with her finger over her upper lip, wiggling it back and forth as she described Koslen’s temper.
No one would laugh at the joke now. They’d laugh at her.
Koslen studied her round face, her dark hair, her thin body, searching out the little touches that branded her as female. Linné pushed her shoulders back, daring him to say something.
They stood that way for several long moments. Then he sighed. “Please, take a seat.” He gestured toward his chair, the nice chair. “Would you like some tea?”
Linné’s palms began to burn. For three years he’d treated her like a soldier. And suddenly she was a girl. A miss. She fought to keep her face neutral. If she took his offer, she’d be relegated to the status of a woman, an outsider, unfit to serve. If she refused, he could claim that she was incapable of following orders.
Koslen went over to a silver samovar, squeezed onto a side table next to the company’s hulking radio. Wasting precious metal had become a serious offense around two years ago, when the heads of the Union had realized just how bad the war was about to get. But officers always managed to squirrel something nice away.
Linné slid into the hard chair reserved for the colonel’s subordinates, sitting rigid with her wrists propped on the desk. “Thank you, sir.”
Koslen stopped midstep toward the chair she’d taken for herself. Then he turned and went to his own as though he’d meant to all along. He placed one cup of pale golden tea in front of her and took a sip from the other.
“You’ve turned our little regiment quite upside down, miss.” His tone was all exaggerated courtesy. A gentleman could never shout at a lady.
“Have I, sir?”
Koslen frowned. The mustache twitched as he inhaled, slowly and deliberately. He could smell the brandy on her. She should’ve left it alone.
He was silent for a moment, and behind his eyes she saw some sort of argument raging. Then he seemed to make up his mind. “I’m not going to waste time. If you have no shame for your actions, perhaps you should consider how you have endangered the men of your company.”
Linné pressed her lips together. Arguing got a soldier latrine duty, or graveside duty, or watches for the witching hours.
Perhaps he mistook her silence for contrition. “War is simply not women’s work, miss,” he said.
Though apparently it is goatherds’ work, Linné thought. She couldn’t help herself. She imagined her next words running along an iron beam, strong and steady. If her voice shook, Koslen might think she was close to tears instead of holding back her rage. “I have served faithfully, sir. I have been loyal to the Union and the regiment.”