“You have distracted the men,” Koslen replied. “They cannot spend their time at the front worrying for your safety. Don’t you understand? You don’t just endanger their lives by coming out here. You endanger their minds, their ability to think.”
Cowards. She recognized the lie, even if Koslen didn’t. The men were afraid that she could no longer do her job. They were afraid that she’d never been able to do her job. That every mistake she’d ever made was because she was a girl, and not because she was human.
“I admire your heart. And your courage. And the Union appreciates the… enthusiasm with which you have risen to serve.”
“Then why not keep me?” she burst out. Damn it, she had to stay calm. She wouldn’t let Koslen’s last memory of her be some hysterical thing who confirmed his suspicions. “We’ve just lowered the draft age. Again. I can fight better than the new recruits.”
Koslen’s jaw clenched. “Everyone has a place in this war, miss. And I’m certain we can find a role for you. A role that suits you, that helps the men focus and provides stability and strength to the armed forces. Won’t that be best for the Union?”
A role. He was bullshitting to get her to agree to be some administrator in the city while her friends went to the front. No one won a Hero of the Union medal by sitting behind a desk. Heat pricked at her eyes, and for the first time Linné worried she might cry in front of the colonel.
She had to say something before her fate was sealed. But she didn’t know what.
Koslen pulled out her file. He examined the photograph, then her. Then the photo. Her bronze skin was washed out by the flash, which only made the freckles across her nose more prominent. The photo made her look defiant. It dared anyone who saw her to underestimate her. “It is me,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The photograph. I didn’t fake it or anything.”
“I see. But I presume Alexei Nabiev is not your real name.” Koslen dipped a smooth, glass-tipped pen into an inkwell and drew a line over Linné’s alternate identity. Three years of her life, three years of faith and loyalty, erased from record. “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Linné Alexei Zolonov,” she said. She deliberately left the feminine a off the end of her name.
His pen jumped across the page, trailing a streak of thick black ink. Koslen cursed and blotted at the paper. Linné turned her snort into a cough, though her amusement stalled as he scrawled her real name in a free, unblemished space. He focused on her photo again, but this time he was looking for someone else. He was trying to see her tall, pale father in the lines of her face and figure. He wouldn’t find the resemblance. She took after her mother in far too many ways, including her looks. “Your father’s name?”
“Alexei Ilya Zolonov,” she confirmed. General. Hero of the Union. Second commander of all land units in the armed forces. He’d been called the fourth-most-powerful man in the nation. At home he’d once joked that it was lucky he had such influence over the first three.
His voice rose to a squeak. “Does… your father know that you are here?”
Linné took a moment to savor the sheer panic on his face. “Of course not.” Her father was powerful, but even he had rules.
Koslen’s eyes rested on the scrawl he’d made. She could see the battle raging behind them—or perhaps, more important, behind his mustache. “Would you wait outside for a few minutes, miss?”
“Yes. Sir,” she added. Koslen ignored the jab. As she left she heard the whir of the radio starting up.
The air outside was crisp and thin compared with the stuffy interior of the colonel’s office. Linné took a deep breath. Maybe if she thought of a convincing enough argument, Koslen would reconsider. She could tally her confirmed kills, her sharpshooter skills, her last score on a spark exam. She could remind him of the time she’d saved his life by caving in the skull of an Elda soldier. Not that she particularly wanted to remember that herself.
Her thoughts evaporated. Tannov still stood outside the office, with the patient expression of a soldier who might, at any moment, be called back in for another verbal beating. Dostorov stood next to him, his stoic look marred by the dead end of a cigarette clamped between his lips. He’d once said he joined the army to save money on rascidine, and Linné was only three-quarters certain that was a lie. The sour smoke drifted in a perpetual cloud around his head. The fiery hues of sunset had turned to deeper colors behind them, and no doubt they had better places to be. What were they doing here? Don’t let your guard down.
“So,” Tannov said at last.
So what? she wanted to ask. But that would invariably lead to So, you’re a girl, which would be a stupid way to start a conversation after he’d been the one to walk in on her with her shirt off. And enough bureaucratic garbage had spewed from Koslen’s maw to fill her with rage for months.
Dostorov spat his cigarette butt into the dirt. The barracks were quiet around them as the men went in for dinner on the other side of the base. The few living metal constructions that passed were little messengers, scuttling like brainless spiders as they ferried notes and small supplies. Linné forced herself to ignore the boys next to her rather than to wonder at their strange, silent vigil.
They stayed that way for some minutes. Then Tannov said, “How’d you do it?”
“What?”
Light crackled over Tannov’s fingers, tiny pops of spark magic that flashed as they disappeared into the Weave. He’d always been the worst of them with his spark. But he wasn’t paying any mind to the way it flickered. He gazed at her with earnest, too-bright eyes. Maybe he’d been at the brandy himself. “Three years. I never thought—I never suspected—” He turned to Dostorov. “Did you know?”
“Course not,” said Dostorov, looking up at a break in the cloud cover, where the first bright stars of night peered through.
What little hope Linné had shriveled away. Maybe they didn’t catcall, but she wasn’t good old Alexei anymore.
“I’ve never even seen you piss. I mean, um, urinate,” Tannov said. Dostorov punched his shoulder. “I mean—”
“Just stop,” she snapped.
Tannov stiffened. He looked hurt in a way he’d never looked when she’d lost her temper, or hit him, or stolen his cigarettes or beaten him at cards. And she knew why. And all the things she needed to say bottled up in her throat, refusing to come out as anything but righteous fury.
Linné’s palms itched. She was as good a soldier as Tannov. Better, even, in some ways. She could hit a bull’s-eye every time she tried. She could shoot that ridiculous mustache off Colonel Koslen’s face without drawing blood. And she could let out a blast of spark that would knock an Elda soldier back ten feet. Yet Tannov and Dostorov and their fumbling magic would be at the front again in a few days’ time, and she would be headed north to an office and the displeasure of her father.
The itch in her hands became a burn. She knew she shouldn’t, but she brought them forward, letting her spark form into a hot glowing orb in front of her. Women weren’t forbidden from doing spark magic. Perhaps she could set Tannov’s shoelaces on fire. He’d be sloshing around in unlaced boots for weeks until he could requisition new ones. Or she could blow up the new cigarette that Dostorov was failing to light with a flicker of his own spark.