2nd of Arestre

I stared through the window as we rounded the bend above the shale slip, and the trees opened up, revealing the valley bottom.

A flying ship sailed low across the width of the valley, a sleek silhouette pitch-black against the glow of the clouds. A bright pinpoint of searchlight swung to and fro, scanning the ground beneath it.

My breath snagged.

The medical sector building was gone, burned away as if it had never been there at all. In its place stood an odd, unnaturally perfect dome that glowed orange and umber, like cooling glass. I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing from that distance. It didn't look like a blast crater from a rail gun round. Maybe Rushidi was right, and it wasn't an attack. Whatever it was, it had the Coventry stirred up like a kicked wasp nest. We passed four platoons of soldiers with dogs, their searchlight lanterns flashing in the dark.

Beside me, Ayago kept his eyes glued resolutely on the road, his young face tight, his hands gripping the steering yoke so hard his knuckles stood out pale against his tan.

"Do you know what happened?" I asked quietly, breaking the relative silence inside the two-man.

Ayago's jaw flexed.

Normally he would have answered, eager to practice his Low Altyran so he could find his 'nice Tettian girl' upon the Coventry's illustrious reclamation of the Homeland. His gaze flicked to my knees, then back to the road, and his jaw flexed again, his upper lip rising in disgust.

I glanced down. I was wearing my jumpsuit. It took another few seconds for my exhausted brain to realize he had never seen my in my jumpsuit before. He had always picked me up at the Agriculture Sector Office after I had already changed into the required staff uniform.

His reaction sent a fresh wave of panic sluicing between my shoulder blades as another realization dawned: it was too late to stop to change. We had already passed the gate to the Agriculture Sector Office, and from the breakneck speed Ayago was driving, there was urgency behind the command to bring me back to the headquarters building.

That prim skirt and hat provided scant protection, but at least it was something. I had never been in the same room with the High General while wearing a slave's jumpsuit.

I took a deep breath and tried to push the panic back down, but it only receded to my stomach, where it roiled and churned and threatened to send up my meager dinner. The urge to wrench the door open and jump free of the two-man was nearly overwhelming. This whole day had been one nightmare after another, and I couldn't keep up. I was so tired I could barely feel my face, and my bones ached to lie down. My slender thread of control was quickly coming apart, and when it snapped there would be absolutely nothing left.

I swallowed hard and closed my eyes, fear lodging in a hot lump in my throat. A tear trickled down my cheek.

Calm down, kid. Right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot... just keep moving. Focus on the task in front of you, not on how far it is to the ground...

I was probably going mad, but I clung to that deep brogue that whispered in my head, holding onto it like a lifeline. Somehow, I had to dredge up the strength to face whatever waited in the headquarters. One more time.

~~~

The communications room was in a state of well-oiled uproar. The staff had been called in, many of them from their beds, and the whole building echoed with quick footsteps, hushed conversations, and the frantic clicking of rollopress machines.

I barely had a chance to register any of that before I was whisked through the main communication floor and on into the translation office.

The young soldier who had conducted me in from the underground parking yard didn't have anything to say. He simply escorted me to my station, turned, and marched back out, leaving the door open in his wake.

At first I hunched in my chair, staring dully at the chaos in the communications room.

Two girls hurried past, clutching sheaves of papers, their faces tense.

"You mean it wasn't an attack from outside?" One of them was asking.

The other was shaking her head. "No! You know Karrul from the Green Sector? He said it was a malfunction."

"What kind of malfunction kills so many people?" The first one hissed just before they were out of earshot.

Another strain of conversation caught my attention, then, mostly because it was coming from the High General's office.

The High General was speaking, his words short and sharp.

"Karronido needs supervision. I've said it before, I'll say it again, the man is coming unhinged. He is —"

The second voice was very calm, almost fatherly. Cajoling. "Brilliant? Necessary? Irreplaceable? He is the reason we have made so many advances. His work is invaluable. Without his research, we would never reach the Homeland in our lifetime. You should not speak ill of him, Erkhaldt."

"His research just wiped out an infantry division, melted an entire building, and is even now running amok in the rail tunnels."

There was a pause. Something muttered, perhaps, that I couldn't hear. Then the High General said, his tone cold, "Would that reality could be waved away so easily."

"Oh, my boy, that is why we have you. I am the dreamer, Karronido the philosopher, you the hands and feet. I have no doubt that you will overcome this challenge just as you have overcome so many others."

"Call it what it is, Ovar. It's a fully sentient weapon that can run faster and farther than a normal man, and according to Karronido's files, the test subject was a forward ranger in the Ronyran army during the wars. This is no mere challenge. This is a nightmare."

"Nightmare. Daydream. It is only a matter of perception! Karronido's first monster escaped, yes, but he has been perfecting his process. The rest have proven far easier to control. I am not concerned with a single monster, only in how to frame this setback in the best light. Our Paradazh will need to see us standing united. I will give an address in the morning. Karronido has readied a demonstration that will lift everyone's spirits. Out of the ashes we will rise!"

It was High General Erkhaldt's turn to mutter something.

The High Councilor's voice was soft. Soothing. "Leave that to me, Brannen. Leave that to me."

A door opened and closed — the High Councilor exiting Erkhaldt's office through the main entrance. A moment later, the door to the listening room flew open, and the High General came striding through, his brows set in a fierce glower. He turned that glower on me and came to a halt.

Belatedly, I got to my feet and snapped forward into a bow.

The High General grunted under his breath, tsking his tongue against his teeth. Then he said in gruff Low Tettian, "I can't be hunting the sectors for you. You will be reassigned to my private staff from now on. Is that understood?"

I bobbed my head. "Yes, your grace."

"Good. Well, come on then. Get in here. I haven't got all night."

I bowed lower, then shuffled after him, following him into his office.

~~~

The High General was in a foul mood. More foul than usual. He strode past my seat and swore under his breath, then wheeled around to glare at me. "Anything?"

I swallowed hard, my hands shaking as I held out the latest string of nonsense I had scribbled on the report paper. It was not what I had overheard. But even so, I hadn't heard anything that made me think the Illyrians knew about whatever Karronido was or wasn't doing in the Medical Sector. They were chattering away in their code, but not any more than usual. There had only been a handful of transmissions in the hour I had been sitting at the listening station the General had set up adjacent to his own desk.

Which was still something I hadn't quite wrapped my mind around. I wasn't entirely sure I was awake. Everything after walking up to hut 56 seemed disjointed and unreal.

General Erkhaldt snatched the paper from me, glanced at it, then swore again and strode over to the stratagem table in the middle of his office, surveying the figurines on it through a dissatisfied squint.

As far as I could tell, the grey things were the Coventry divisions, with different shapes and sizes to denote type and number. The simple yellow ones were the Illyrian forces. I wasn't sure what the red 'X's were, but they were scattered liberally over the map of the valley, most of them located on rail lines and on mountain slopes outside the Paradazh walls.

There were piles of documents along the periphery of the map, too, and I was itching to get a look at them. So far, the chance hadn't presented itself, what with the General right there, but from what I was seeing, the General wasn't nearly as in control as he liked to think. He began thumbing almost idly through one of those piles of documents, found a sylvo that seemed particularly irritating, stared at it for a moment before shoving it angrily aside, and then began muttering to himself as though thinking out loud, "No... No, see... this is all too convenient... the traitor won't be sitting idly on his hands. He's out there, watching... planning..." he tapped one of those red Xs with a long, slender forefinger. "Well, I have tolerated him long enough. I want him found. I want him found, and I want him dead before he can turn this... setback ... to his advantage."

Suddenly, he turned toward the main entrance to his office and bellowed, "Cobe!"

A short man in a disheveled page's uniform opened the door and sidled in.

"Cobe. Take a message to Major General Leinslaught and Colonel Pellan. I want them here in my office. Now!"

Cobe stuttered something that sounded like a "Yes sir," and bowed back out of the room.

Then I was alone with the general again.

He didn't seem to care that I was there, or even really think about me at all except when he wanted me to tell him I had heard something on the sonulator earpiece. He stalked around the stratagem table like a caged animal, rearranging figurines this way and that, his agitation growing. When two men in officer's uniforms came through the main doors, he stood up straight and announced in High Altyran, "I want him gone."

The man wearing the aspen-leaf epaulets of a major general was the first to dare a response. "Yes, your grace. Who, your grace?"

"The phantom. The ghost. The Icewolf, whatever you want to call him. I want him gone. Air Admiral Geilos has given visual verification that the Icewolf is hiding in the caves in the Lakstrom pass. So I want all of your men up there, with a full complement of heavy artillery, and I want those caves blasted into oblivion by tomorrow night." He held up one of the grey bitrack figurines, slammed it down on one of the mountain crags to the southeast of the Paradazh, and then pointed at the colonel. "I want your best aerial sharpshooting units to go in overhead before the big guns get there, and if he sticks so much as a toe out of those caves, I want you to shoot it off. Now. I expect you to come back with his head on a pike. If you fail, feel free to mount your own heads in his place because I am growing weary of excuses! Do I make myself clear?"

He was shouting by the time he was done, his usually slick hair falling across his face in lank strands, his face a mottled red.

Colonel Pellan and the major general both saluted and bowed deeply. "Yes, High General!" Then they about-faced and marched out of the office.

I was about to get caught eavesdropping. I ducked my head and made a show of scribbling the words, "Chickens are waiting for the inchworm to sing."

I needn't have bothered. The High General looked at me, tilted his head, and heaved a weary sigh. "Miss Anderfield, you look like you're about to fall over. Go on. Report to the Quartermaster on duty. She'll get you sorted out."

With a hasty nod, I got to my feet.

Having dismissed me, the High General turned to make his way to a long couch by the wall.

As he did, his back was to me for all of ten seconds. Just long enough for me to get a look at the sylvos on the stratagem table.

I wished I hadn't. There were several, but the one that caught my eye nearly made me stumble to a halt. It was among the pile the High General had shoved aside earlier, and it showed a view of a cargo ship deck. A very familiar cargo ship deck. I had watched fourteen bodies disappear over the railing in the background, tossed into the sea by the Piglet and Ugly Face. There were bodies in the image, but they were arranged in a circle, and they had obviously been burned. And decapitated. There was a separate pile in the middle of the circle, three rounded, blackened lumps, one of which looked distinctly like a scorched skull.

There were words painted across the wall of the nearest cargo bin, black in the shades of grey that made up the sylvopress exposure. "Run, if you can."

~~~

I felt like I was sleepwalking. I could barely keep my eyes open even while my feet carried me down a long, grey hallway toward a room with a bed I was told would be mine to sleep in.

Everything was far away, like a distant storm.

The Coventry had created some sort of weapon that could melt buildings. He knew where the Icewolf was, and he was sending an army to crush him.

Even the knowledge that I had failed in multiple ways since I last lay my bones down wasn't enough to poke through the fog of exhaustion dragging at my brain. Dimly, I kept trying to figure out how to get a message to the Illyrians, but it was no use. I didn't even have enough energy to think past that need, much less do something about it. It would have to wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow I would find a way to tell them I was able to listen to everything they said, and that I had told the high general things they had said, and that the high general was coming for the Icewolf. And I couldn't forget about the malfunction in the Medical Sector. They would need to know about that too.

Tomorrow.

It had been a very long day. Or two. Or ten. I crawled onto the bed in the room I had been given, and fell almost instantly into a dull, bottomless sleep, spinning crazily through one nightmare and into another, chased by headless Coventry soldiers. 

AN: So I rewrote this twice before I posted it. Then I rewrote parts of it and posted it again. Yay! Surprise edits!

Thanks as always for reading!

Anna