‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Him.’
A second trooper drops twitching.
I can’t work out if the SIG is simply enjoying itself, or doing something more useful, and now seems the wrong time to ask.
‘Let’s leave them to it,’ I say.
Chapter 51
‘Aptitude refuses?’ General Luc glares from the far side of his desk. ‘That’s her answer? She refuses?’ Nodding, I keep my eyes on his.
I don’t want there to be any doubt about this.
‘You offered her Colonel Vijay’s life?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And she turned it down?’
‘She turned you down, sir. Some prices are too high.’
He bites his lip and glares some more. Yellow teeth glisten like old bone. Then he turns his fury to the window, although I doubt he sees anything much through the glass. General Luc is shaking with rage, and his fingers clench into fists as the heel of his boot grinds against the tiles. He’s squashing something imaginary underfoot.
Me, probably.
‘What?’ he demands, when a buzz from his desk makes him jump.
An officer apologizes for disturbing him.
I don’t hear this. But it’s obvious from the way the Wolf jerks his head in irritation. Indigo Jaxx would never show anger like this. The general could be furious, he could be cold, ruthless and unforgiving. But he would regard shaking with rage as beneath him.
‘No,’ General Luc snarls. ‘I don’t care how you do it. Just pick up that fucking gun and get it inside.’
The Wolf’s ADC passes me to a captain, who hands me to a lieutenant, who summons a sergeant I’ve never seen. None of which improves my temper. By the time I reach my destination I’m looking for an excuse to hurt someone.
Usually, I wouldn’t need one.
But there’s that stupid oath our colonel gave.
‘In there,’ the sergeant says.
‘It’s sir.’
He looks at me.
‘Enjoy your stay, sir,’ he says.
When Colonel Vijay looks up from his mattress I’m shocked at the change. His face, always thin, has hollows. Dark rings circle his eyes. His skin is so pale it matches the blond wisps of his beard.
‘Sir,’ Neen says.
The colonel is forcing himself to his feet. ‘What did she say?’
Grabbing my jacket, he tries to stop shaking. But he’s as useless as a cheap gun spring and only his grip keeps him upright.
‘She turned him down, sir.’
‘That’s the truth?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Colonel Vijay gives a huge sigh of relief.
His fingers let go my lapels, and Neen catches him before he cracks his skull on the floor. Taking the flak jacket Shil offers, Iona makes a pillow for the colonel’s head and crouches at his side, wiping his forehead.
Catching my gaze, Rachel returns her stare to a tiny slit window, and resumes her sniper’s exercises, muttering angles and distances to herself.
‘Tell me they didn’t torture him . . .’
‘We’re on bread and water,’ Neen says. ‘The colonel’s been sharing his with us.’
‘Sharing?’
‘Giving,’ he says.
‘And you ate it?’
‘Orders, Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘Orders.’
He’s right, of course. If he says eat his food and the Aux refuse they’re disobeying a direct order and that’s a capital offence. We both know that.
‘No point wasting it,’ he says.
‘Sir,’ Rachel says. ‘You might want to see this.’
A second after she says it, I hear the clang as something metal drops in the courtyard.
‘Sergeant . . .’
Walking Neen to Rachel’s window, I move her aside.
Sappers drag lengths of scaffolding to pile in one corner. A second squad unload planks from a forklift. Sergeant Toro oversees both. As we watch, he nods to a man with a chainsaw, who starts cutting wood to length.
‘I’m gone two days. Want to tell me what happened?’
Glancing over his shoulder, Neen says, ‘Wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t even drink his share of our water. All he did was wait for your return.’
Little idiot.
The bars separating us from the landing are old, but sound. The hinges are hidden, and the lock looks new. Nothing shakes free when I slam my steel arm against the lock. A second blow brings dust, and a captain, a sergeant and a corporal.
They’ve been talking something over between them.
‘Stop that,’ the captain says.
He’s curly-haired, smug and good-looking enough to make me want to rearrange his features. A wolf pelt drapes from his shoulder and a row of medal ribbons decorate his chest. Three of them are probably for being able to wear the wolf skin elegantly.
‘Or what?’ I demand.
A third slam of my arm rattles the door in its frame.
‘Lieutenant,’ he says, ‘I’m warning you . . .’
‘I want food,’ I tell him. ‘Proper food. Meat, bread, beer.’ Glancing over my shoulder I meet Shil’s gaze. ‘And fruit . . .’
She’s always eating fruit.
‘And I want it now.’
‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘Yes it is.’
The captain makes the mistake of stepping closer.
Think he’s planning to do something stupid like jab his finger at me, while telling me to behave. He doesn’t get beyond the first word. My hand slicks through the bars, and I grasp him by the throat. After that, he can’t say anything anyway.
‘Release him.’
‘Not a chance.’
When the sergeant reaches for his side arm, I introduce the captain to the bars as a warning, hard and fast. I do it twice for luck and the NCO decides to leave his gun where it is. The blood on his CO’s face probably helps. Or maybe it’s the metal sheen of my fingers gripping his throat.
‘Sven . . .’ That’s Vijay, obviously.
‘What, sir?’
‘I gave my parole.’
‘Which means what, sir?’
He’s going to say I know what it means. Then it occurs to him that I don’t. We didn’t have things like parole in the Legion, and I haven’t been Death’s Head long enough to understand the ins and outs of it.
‘We don’t try to escape.’
‘In return, sir?’
‘They treat us with respect.’
‘See?’ I say, bouncing the captain off the bars. ‘Respect. That means you feed us properly . . .’
‘Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg?’
The officer who asks introduces himself as Major Whipple. He’s followed by an ADC and a handful of staff from the castle canteen. He knocks on our door, which has me grinning.
‘Please . . .’ Colonel Vijay invites him in and our food is delivered. It seems Captain Fowler took his smashed jaw to General Luc, and the Wolf decided to feed us after all. The captain is on a charge for being generally useless.
Major Whipple salutes Colonel Vijay.
On his way out, he stops. ‘Hekati,’ he says. ‘Is it true you talked to her?’
The man’s face is impassive but there is something in those eyes. Something turns on my answer. But it turns for him and not for me.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Right at the end.’
‘She killed herself?’
‘And took an Uplifted mother ship with her. It was like watching one of the gods clap her hands.’
The major fingers a medallion around his neck.
‘And they say . . .’ he hesitates, ‘you once ate human flesh. A woman . . .’
I’m grateful for the food, but this isn’t a conversation I’m interested in having. ‘Oh you know what they say. I like women as much as the next man, but I couldn’t eat a whole one . . .’
He raises his eyebrows.
‘But if I was going to, I know where I’d start.’
The major snorts, despite himself.
‘An orderly will come by to collect your trays,’ he tells me. Then he’s gone, in an abrupt turn and a clatter of boot heels on stone stairs. His ADC has left our door unlocked. I wonder if that is intentional and decide it is.
‘A trap?’ I ask Colonel Vijay.
‘Maybe a sign of trust.’
Fucked up, the lot of them.
Only I’m coming to realize something else.
That major in the Wolf Brigade has more in common with Colonel Vijay than either one has with a civilian. Doesn’t matter we hate them, or our troopers beat the shit out of theirs in every available bar, and the other way round. Makes me wonder if a Silver Fist has more in common with us than our own civilians.