“Yes, sir!” Jess barked, in unison with the rest. He wanted to finish this bloody training in first position as much as Glain did, but having attracted the attention of Captain Feng was a mixed blessing at best.
Feng walked slowly up and down the row, but he looked into the blank middle distance as he said, “Your assignment today is a confiscation. Your job will be to enter and search a home for contraband books, and, if found, tag and recover them for the Library. You may meet resistance. Be ready.”
That sounded deceptively easy. Glain and Jess had been on real book-confiscation missions as postulants competing for their current positions; every person in the squad had qualified on situations much harder than this. In fact, it sounded so remedial that it was utterly out of place, given where they were in their training.
Jess shot a look to his right, where a Scandinavian girl named Helva stood at rigid attention. Helva’s glancing look told him his unease was shared. Not right at all. If Glain thought the same, she gave no indication of it, but, then, she’d always had the best face for secrets that Jess had ever seen.
Glain swiveled to face her squad. “In the carrier,” she said. “Move!”
They scrambled in. It was a tight fit, but the carrier was designed for a full squad and gear. Jess found his seat as the steam engine hissed and gears engaged to rattle the carrier forward. It picked up speed on the flat ground. No windows, so Jess couldn’t tell where they were going except far and fast. The parade ground itself was enormous, and held close to twenty different environments and set pieces around the edges. He’d been in most of them during training, including one that doubled as a set for an Alexandrian street. He assumed that was where they were being driven.
He was wrong.
When the carrier jolted to a stop and the squad jumped out, Jess found they were at the farthest western edge of the High Garda compound: a restricted area near the edge of the field where trainees were not allowed to venture. Jess’s misgivings twinged again as the squad lined up behind Glain’s rod-straight form. Not right, he thought. The entire area was surrounded by a high stone wall with just one visible gate.
Behind them, the carrier’s bubbling hiss rose to a gusting sigh as gears engaged again and it raced away. The tracks spat a long plume of sand over the squad. As Jess blinked grit away, a solid man in High Garda uniform with two Horus eyes on his collars—a full centurion in rank—looked them over with a bleak, unforgiving gaze. “All right,” he said. “Gear to your right. Get it on. You have sixty seconds.”
Jess joined the rush to the equipment piles off to the side. A High Garda flexible armored coat emblazoned on the back with the Library symbol, and a heavy black weapon. No reloads for it. Jess was all too familiar with the gun; he’d carried one in Oxford, when he was still a postulant. Even after all the practice he’d had with it over the past few months, it felt like a hot alien creature in his hands, unfamiliar and hostile.
It brought back such bad memories.
“Live rounds?” someone behind him asked as Jess checked his weapon.
“You have live stunning rounds and half-strength regular rounds,” the centurion said. His accent had the lilt of southern Africa, Jess thought, and it matched with the burnished darkness of his skin. “They’re still dangerous, so pick your targets and try not to kill each other.”
Jess shook his head; they weren’t beginners. They were a tight, trained squad now, and they’d all gotten to know how the others moved. He could pick up cues from body language through peripheral vision. They hadn’t had a targeting mistake since the first week together. Well, except for that incident with Tariq, but that had been orders, not accident.
Half-strength rounds were not normal. These would leave real, lasting damage, and if they hit in the right places outside of armor, could even break bones, damage organs. Why use them today? Another piece that didn’t fit in place. The assigned job was too easy, the location too remote, the ammunition too odd. There was something not right about this, and though Glain had an excellent, impassive mask of a face, he could see the tension in the sharp way she moved. She knew something she wasn’t sharing. He was tempted to confront her, but he knew better; here, in front of the rest of the squad, she’d just slap him down.
He silently checked his weapon and nodded readiness, and once the others signaled, the squad moved to the door. The centurion creaked it open, and a puff of sand blew out in a smothering wave. It’s not real, he told himself. Just a mock-up of a street, some actors thrown in for color and sound. It’s safe enough. But he’d never been in this particular standing-exercise set before. He didn’t know what it would be like, and it made him itch all over to have it as a final challenge.
“You have thirty minutes to complete the assignment,” the centurion said. “This is your only exit, so remember where it is. Heads on a swivel, and good luck.”
He seems a good enough sort, Jess thought. More than that, he seemed competent. He had another, more silent and nondescript comrade standing in the shadows. A skeleton crew, Jess thought, and wondered what resources they had in case something went wrong. Not many, he thought.
Another wrong piece to an unreadable puzzle.
He didn’t have time to try to put it together, because his squad was moving into danger.
“All right, it’s simple enough,” Glain told them as the door creaked shut behind them. “I want perfection. Watch yourselves. Assume nothing is safe. Understood?”
Jess always assumed the world was dangerous, however it appeared, because . . . well, it was. He knew that very well, had from the time he was old enough to be sent running across London with a contraband book strapped to his chest. Why would she bother to remind any of them? They weren’t careless. When the instructors had taken away points, it had been for small things—form, speed—never lack of awareness. She must be as nervous as he was.
If I were any more paranoid, I’d never function, he thought. The amusement tasted bitter and strange on his tongue, like metal, and he swallowed hard and followed Glain into the barren, twisting streets.
The exercise set wasn’t at all what he’d expected. These were not Alexandrian streets—which were wide, clean, and beautifully planned—but architecture that spoke more, to Jess, of England. Weathered, cramped buildings. Shadows and rubble. Shopwindows filmed with grime, and what he glimpsed behind them seemed chaotic and cheap. A rail-thin dog with ribs showing under fur stood like an automaton in the shade of a narrow alley, and Jess felt a pang of pity for the poor creature. Was it supposed to be here? If this hadn’t been a serious test, he’d have stopped to toss it a bit of food, but even as he thought of it, the dog flinched and silently turned to run into darkness.
He didn’t see any actors playing parts here. He didn’t see anyone at all.
Glain, on point, was methodically checking the stops and doorways, while Jess and the young woman on his right, Helva, watched the dark windows that overlooked the street. There was no need to assign the jobs; each of their squad understood their roles in this action. They proceeded smoothly and quietly down the street, and at the end of it, Jess saw a lone figure standing at the corner. The man wore a sand-colored Library Scholar’s robe that floated on the harsh wind, and beneath, practical clothing showed black. Shoulder-length hair blew in a tangled mix of black and gray, and even before they got close enough to make out features, Jess knew who was waiting for them.