Chapter 3

That night I dreamed of drowning in the wadi. I started out in a corner booth of the bar Freesia and I prowled in Randgriz. It was a nice place. A bit pricy, but the atmosphere was second to none. The lights were dimmed, and a haze of smoke lingered in the air before settling over the tables between me and the bar across the room. The place was empty.

A crowd walked in sometime around eleven. They were angels. As they stepped through the door, each of them took off their wings and hung them on the coatracks. One of them walked over to the jukebox and played some music. The songs were lively. Upbeat. They all gathered in an open space at the far end of the bar and started dancing. None of them spoke.

The music slowed as the hours rolled past. The songs didn't change—only the tempo. The rhythms crawled along at half speed until they finally stopped at closing time. Then the angels stopped dancing and walked towards the door, each pausing only a moment to don their wings before stepping outside. I followed.

They gathered in the street, and I watched them pair up. One by one the groups nodded to each other before disappearing into the sky. The last set held hands before taking off. They didn't even look my way.

When they were gone I noticed that I wasn't alone. There was a woman standing on the corner down the street. She looked like Freesia. When I walked closer I saw it wasn't her. It was the woman from the village—the wounded man's nurse. She was wearing a blue jacket, even though it was summer, and she was carrying an umbrella. She didn't notice me either. I tried walking towards her, but after a few steps I felt a drop of rain strike my nose. All of a sudden it was pouring. She didn't open the umbrella.

I heard a roar behind me, and when I turned to look there was a wall of water tearing down the street. It swept me off my feet. I hit the façade of one of the buildings and found it had turned into the bank of the wadi. The bodies of the men we'd killed earlier swam next to me. They were already rotting. One of them grabbed my leg and pulled me under. He was too strong to fight. When we hit the bottom, he pulled me close and hugged me. I thought I saw feathers in the current. Then I blacked out.

I woke up to the rain pattering against the window of our makeshift barracks, and in my only half awake stupor wished it would pour through and wash me away. It would be alright if I drowned. As long as the current swept me out of Barious.

It didn't, and after listening to the storm hammer against the glass for a long minute I sat up. The room was dark, but in the dim of what little light came in from the hallway I could see it looked the same as I'd left it when I fell asleep. Edy had finally settled down, and it looked like she laid herself down a little closer to where I was than she really needed to. I wasn't the only one who wanted to be anywhere else. Sometimes being nowhere can be tolerable if you've got somebody within arm's reach. Doesn't matter who. Could be anyone. I was glad it was Edy.

She'd left her notebook open. Probably fell asleep still writing. I scuttled her way and lifted it as gently as I could from where it had fallen over her chest. There were at least three new pages written in, but it was too dark to read. It looked like an hour's work at least. Maybe more. Enough to tell me she wasn't sleeping any better than I was.

After that dream I knew there wasn't any hope of drifting back off, so I tossed my blanket aside and threw it over Edy. Hers was too small, and her bare leg had stuck itself out into the open. She mumbled as I covered it, but I couldn't make it out. Edy talked in her sleep. Things she wouldn't say when she was awake. Sometimes about family. Sometimes about friends. Never about herself, and never anything bad. She only had beautiful things to say when she was dreaming, and I couldn't stand to listen to it. There shouldn't have been anything worth saying about me. She always found a way anyhow.

I needed to get outside and clear my head, but I stopped to look through Nils's ruck before leaving and pulled out one of the cigarette packs he'd won from me. I didn't care if he found out in the morning. I hoped he did.

It was pouring harder than I'd ever seen outside, but I wasn't any more likely to be swept away out there than I had been in the room. The cigarette was a bitch to light. Everything was a bitch in the rain. Patrolling, fighting, smoking. Add water, and anything that makes you miserable turns devastating.

The streets were empty. What looked like Nancy and Hector passed by on patrol, but after they were gone I was alone. I kept looking for people. Anybody I could recognize. I told myself it didn't matter who. But when Marina came around the corner, trying to light a smoke of her own, and cursing her entire way down the street when she couldn't, I knew she wasn't enough. I wasn't looking for just anybody. I was looking for that girl. The one I thought was Freesia, but wasn't.

And I couldn't even say why. I'd only ever seen her that first day when I kicked her door in. Then again in that dream. Or nightmare. Whatever the fuck it was. Her and that Goddamn umbrella. It didn't mean anything.

That was the scariest part about it.


I was supposed to be a sniper. All through that mandatory military training, marksmanship was the only thing I was really good at. I couldn't arc a lance round into a window, or find my way out of the woods after being thrown in with a canteen and a compass, but with a rifle I was God, and in a town where you either grew up to be a miner or a wife, that made me hot shit.

When I went to boot they rolled me into their marksman program. Pass through that and you're off to sniper school. It was a breeze. Everybody there already knew how to shoot, so they covered the mental bases. The philosophy, if you could call it that. We spent the mornings in a classroom, where the drill instructors told us all about how marksmen saved lives in the field. How one shot could clear an entire platoon to move forward. How that platoon could go on to save an entire company. That company could save a battalion, and it went all the way up the line. The way they talked, one bullet could win a war.

Every night, just before sunset, they lined us up on the range for target shooting. The targets were set up about three hundred meters out—big, black circles with scoring zones ringing a red center. I could hit within the inner three zones every time. Best in the class. By the end of boot, the instructors told me they already had my papers ready. Sniper school. Finishing the rest of the marksmen course was just a formality.

On the last day, they had what they called a final exam. All through boot they told us not to worry about it. It wasn't any different than what we'd already been doing. The only thing you had to do was score a shot on the target. It didn't even matter what zone.

The drill instructor who pulled me out for my final was named Dale. He looked more like a clerk than a soldier. The uniform he wore was a size too small, and he wore his bifocals pressed too close to his face. When we got to the range, he shook my hand before handing me my rifle. Told me he was glad boot was finishing, because his son was just learning to walk, and he didn't want to miss it. Then he handed me a magazine, and asked if I had a son. I told him I didn't. "That's alright," he said. "You'll have plenty of time for that later."

He set me up in firing lane four. It didn't seem to matter—they brought all the trainees to the range one at a time, so the place was deserted other than the two of us. "It's just like all the other times," he told me, kneeling next to where I'd laid down on my stomach. "Target is set at the same distance. All you need to do is score one hit. You've got the entire magazine to do it. Confirm the target with me, and then I'll give you the go ahead. Do not fire until I tell you."

I laughed him off. Then I looked through the scope. The target was the same distance. In fact, it was bigger. But it wasn't a circle. It was a pinup of a man. Dale asked me if I saw it. Then he asked me what color his eyes were, and they were blue. He told me to describe him. The man on the target had an Imperial uniform drawn onto him, but he wasn't wearing the helmet. Light brown hair. It was a bit shaggy. Looked like he hadn't shaved in a few days. His rank insignia said private. Infantry.

When I told Dale everything I could, he told me to aim ten meters to the right. There was a sign posted, with print large enough to read through the lens. "You see it?" Dale asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What does it say?"

It said everything. The target's name. His age. Lukas Keller, twenty-five years old. He had a younger sister, and lived at home with his mother. Her name was Hannah. Lukas worked doing hard labor. He hated it, but his family needed to eat, and he was their only income. That was why he joined the Army. He didn't care about the war. Barely had a high school education. He'd never even been to the capital. So on and so on.

When I finished reading, Dale clapped me on the shoulder. "Good," he said. "Now tell me about his first girlfriend."

There wasn't anything about that on the sign. "I'm sorry?"

"His first girlfriend. What was she like?"

I ran through the print again. There was his hometown. His mother. His sister. There was no mention of a girlfriend. No mention of a father. "I don't understand."

"Guy's twenty-five. He's had to have had something, right?"

"I don't know anything about any girlfriends."

Dale lifted his hand from my shoulder. "Why, is he a faggot?"

I could imagine his glasses pushed so far into his face they brushed his eye lashes. The drill instructors could get mean, and angry. That was their job. But they never did it on the firing line. It was the unspoken safe zone. With a gun in hand, everyone was equal. "No. It's just, there's no girlfriend."

"Alright," Dale said. "Not a relationship kind of guy. I can respect that. Then tell me about the first time he got fucked."

"What? How would I know?"

He slapped me in the back of my head hard enough that my eye banged against the scope. "Christ, Milton, are you retarded? Make it up."

"It was—" Awkward. There was too much pressure to make up a story, so I fell back on what I knew. "He was fourteen." Thirteen. "Just after his father died. She was a girl lived down the street. Maggie. A few years older."

"There we go. Where did it go down?"

"Her house, while her parents were out." They weren't. Her mother was passed out drunk on the couch. Her father died with mine.

Dale's hand was back on my shoulder. Squeezing. "Was it good?"

It wasn't. "Best he ever had."

"That's the spirit, Milton. You got this. Now tell me about the day his dad didn't come home."

I told him, and then he asked about when his sister was born. About what kind of clothes his mother wore. Gifts he got for them. The first birthday he could remember. His last birthday.

After twenty minutes of storytelling, Dale was still clutching my shoulder. "Think you know this guy?"

We'd gone through his life story. How could I not? "Yeah."

"Good." He lifted his hand. "Kill him."

I aimed back at the pinup. Put his center of mass in my crosshairs. "Shoot the target?"

"No." Dale's voice hadn't changed. Even when he'd been putting pressure on me to make up a story, he still sounded like he belonged behind a store counter. Working a register instead of a rifle. "I want you to shoot Lukas. Kill him."

I let out my breath and put my finger on the trigger, but jerked it. The rifle went off before I was ready. Dale looked through his binoculars and said, "Miss."

The shot wasn't even close. Soared high. It hadn't even hit the board Lukas was posted on. It was my first major miss in all of boot. "I failed."

"Weren't you listening? You have the rest of the magazine to hit. Shoot again. I want to watch him die."

I'd never seen anything so clearly through my scope. There was so much detail on the pinup that I could see his pupils were dilated. Big enough to take everything in. Even a bullet. I fired, and the shot went left.

"Miss."

I fired, and the bullet went high. "Miss."

Before I could aim again, Dale told me to stop. "Look at me." I did. I had to look up to him from where I was on my stomach, but he still managed to peer at me from over his glasses. "Fuck his mother," he said. "Fuck his sister. Fuck that slut he drilled from down the street, and fuck him. Take your rifle and blow his fucking teeth out the back of his head."

There weren't a pair of eyes in the world as blue as Lukas's. My hands were shaking, and I wasn't breathing. I tried to calm down. Take in some air. My finger wasn't anywhere near the trigger.

Dale grabbed me by my collar and pulled me to my knees. Then he started walking down range. Dragged me forward until we were about fifteen feet from where Lukas was posted. He grabbed my rifle and handed me a Mags. "Chamber a round."

I did, and he said, "Clear the safety."

I did.

He said, "Close your eyes and spray."

With my lids shut, every recoil felt like the world ending. It was earsplitting. Then it was done.

When I opened my eyes, Dale told me to clear the chamber and reengage the safety. With the weapon safe, he walked forward to check the target. Out of the magazine, five of my shots hit the board. Only two of them hit Lukas. One went into his left shoulder, and the other grazed his opposite hip. Neither of them were kill shots, and neither would have taken him out of combat.

Dale pushed his finger into the bullet holes as if he needed to feel them in order for it to be real. He studied them, then pulled out a pen and marked some things on his clipboard. When he walked back, he shook my hand. "You're cleared for duty," he said. "Congratulations."


I never got my rifle back. When they assigned me to Squad 7 they gave me a Mags. I carried it from Vassel all the way to Barious. Every so often I did get my hands on a rifle, though, and I was holding Emile's the afternoon after my nightmare. We were holed up in the second floor of a building overlooking the desert outside of town. Wendy, Cherry, and Ramona were there too, the first pair manning their .30 caliber machinegun that they set up in the window, and Ramona looking through her binoculars at the same thing I was watching through Emile's scope—a man with a gun.

"What is he doing?" I asked.

I lowered Emile's rifle, and Ramona lowered her binoculars. The dark rings around her eyes that should have been makeup were lack of sleep. "Hunting," she said.

"Bullshit he's hunting. There's nothing out there."

She shrugged. Wendy drummed her fingers on the .30, and Emile stepped next to me to peer out of the window himself. "Depends on what you're looking for."

Even before I'd asked, I knew what the man was doing. Reconnaissance. When I watched him through the scope, he made sure he never made direct eye contact with our position, but I could tell he was checking us out in glances. He was checking to see where we were setting up outposts. What kind of weapons we had. He'd report it back, and by the end of the day their town watch would know every bunker and fighting hole we put up. "We should shoot him."

Ramona started scratching caked mud from her nails. "Probably."

"No, seriously," Wendy said. "He's got a gun. We know why he's out there. We don't shoot him, they'll know exactly where to put that lance round if they ever decide to roll through here and kick us out of town."

"Yep."

Cherry stepped closer to the window to look out herself, and made sure her hip hit Emile's on the way. The girl was an artist. It was no more than a light press, and no less than a graze. She held it. Emile and I were probably the only two who noticed. "It'd be an easy shot," she said. "Emi could make it no problem, even through the storm."

He blushed, but didn't say anything, and looked everywhere but at Cherry.

When her nails were as clean as they were going to get, Ramona looked at me. "You want to shoot him?"

Of course not. But Wendy was right. The Lancaar was still missing. If they had it, and knew where to use it, we were going to lose people we didn't have to. "You clearing me to fire?"

She nodded. "I'll green light it," she said, "but if you do the shooting, you have to do the write ups for it."

"Isn't that your duty?"

"Yeah." She wiped her nose with her sleeve, then started brushing her hair with her fingers. "I'll do all that with the Imps, no problem. But if you shoot one of these guys, and he didn't shoot first, some politician's going to get real pissed off and he'll bitch out a General. Then the General will take it out on a Colonel, and it'll go all the way down the line until it hits the Captain, and the Captain will come down on Welkin. And then that whole chain goes down on me." She tried to look for her reflection in the window pane, but sat back when she couldn't find it. "Shooting him is the right call. But it'll make one big pile of shit, and I'm going to be on the bottom. It's only fair you take care of the formalities."

Lifting Emile's rifle, I watched the man through the lens. "What kind of formalities?"

"You'll have to write an action report," she said. "Then since he's Gallian some kind of thing justifying the shooting, along with whatever things they'll have you fill out for whatever investigation they run. Then the Captain will probably have you write out a bunch of letters for the village. To friends and family and such. Probably one for each. Town like this, could be the whole village."

Even through the scope I couldn't see the man clearly enough to see his eyes, but I could imagine them. Dark brown. Just like Freesia's. "That sounds like a lot of paperwork."

She sighed. "It's a lot of paperwork."

I handed Emile his rifle, but he seemed more focused on where Cherry was pressed up against him than he was on shooting anybody. The guy was going to get away without a scratch. "Fuck this."

Nobody said anything until Wendy pushed the .30 aside, folded her arms over the windowsill, and rested her chin. "This would all be a whole lot easier if we stopped being such huge dicks and just let them be their own country."

Emile finally shifted, and I could have sworn I watched Cherry's heart shatter as he stepped away. "That would make this another war," he said. "How would that be easier?"

Rain pouring through the open window and onto her face, Wendy shrugged. "Then we could just shoot them."

Nobody talked for a long while. The man outside pretended to kneel down to look for tracks, moving his head left and right and glancing up to our window when he thought it was safe to look. I watched him hunting for ghosts, but I all could think about was trying to figure how much I was worth in a world where a person's life could be valued with how much paperwork needed filing if he got killed. My father got an insurance claim and a letter of condolences. I probably wouldn't get much more.

About ten minutes later Wavy knocked on the door of our outpost. "Quiet?" he asked, after we let him in.

"Mostly," Ramona said. "We got a guy out there making like he's hunting."

"Scouting our outposts?"

"Yep."

His hair had been soaked so thoroughly that I could see drops beading at their ends, and his glasses were starting to fog. It didn't seem worth wiping them, and he didn't try looking into the desert. "We saw two others checking the east and west ends of the village. Just keep an eye out. The Lieutenant doesn't want any of them shot." He nodded to Emile, Cherry, and Wendy, then stopped on me. Then he did a double take on Ramona. "How are you doing?"

"Good for eighty five over fifty eight," she said. "You here for a checkup?"

He shook his head. "Are you hungry, Milton?"

Starving. We had our rations, but Alicia decided it would be a good idea to start sharing with the locals. It made them happy. Happy people were easier to deal with. "You relieving me?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Welkin has a special assignment for you. Said you should go into it hungry. He wants you to grab Nelson and meet him in the town square in half an hour."

"I'll get to it."

"Good." Wavy didn't stay long. He worked out some section formations with Ramona, then walked out.

"Go in hungry?" Wendy asked. "Sounds promising."

"Gotta be better than this," Emile said.

Better than sitting on that floor looking out into the wastes all day, sure. But I'd still be in town. One shithole room was as good as the next, and in the village, all of the rooms were shitholes. Whether you were eating or watching some guy out in the wilds trying to figure out how to kill you, you'd rather be anywhere else. "I better head out then," I said. "Know where Edy went?"

Nobody did. "I could go for a steak," Emile said.

Wendy nodded. "Steak and vodka."

Cherry pouted, but not before making sure Emile was watching. "I told you we should have brought that fifth."

Ramona hit her on the shoulder, and that was my cue to leave. I said goodbye, but it went unanswered. "You guys have a fifth?" Emile asked.

The door closed behind me, and a muffled, "Goddammit, Cherry," was the only sense of farewell I got.

Go in hungry. That wouldn't be a problem. The issue would be focusing. No matter how much food they put in front of me, I knew I wouldn't be able to keep that man in the desert out of my head. Imagining the color of his eyes. Watching him check us out as he pretended to look down his iron sights. Trying to breathe against the feel of my finger resting against the rifle's trigger guard as I put him in Emile's scope.

And maybe it was the adrenaline, or the shock of seeing what looked like a man sitting in my crosshairs, but on that last day of boot, when they wanted me to shoot that pinup with the sign posted next to him—it wasn't until much later that I realized the sign was describing me.


Anywhere else, my special assignment would have been a winning lottery ticket. When Edy and I linked up with Welkin in the square, he told us we were going to dinner. It was at the mayor's house. Or village elder's. Maybe Tribal leader's. I didn't know what they called him, and it didn't matter. Edy and I weren't invited for what we knew, we were invited for what we carried. Guns.

Between the two of us, Edy and I could have killed everyone living within two blocks of his home with magazines to spare. That wasn't our job. We were there less for protection than we were for show. Turned out the mayor lived the house we cleared when we first came into town. The one they put their wounded man in. Welkin wanted us there as familiar faces. A reminder that we were truly, honestly there to help, but if they didn't want that, we'd kick their doors in. At least we were getting a meal out of it.

The dining room looked like any corner diner in the run down parts of Fouzen or Randgriz, but it was the closest thing they had to a five star restaurant. The fabric of the tablecloth was stretched, and it was full of holes and tears near the few edges that weren't frayed. My chair looked like it hadn't been refurbished since before I was born. Scuff marks covered the wood floor. After days in the rain, if it had been anywhere else it could have been Heaven.

The mayor met us at the door with his wife, and after a formal greeting sat us down at the table. Welkin wanted to make an impression, but he kept the group small. We were the only people he brought besides Freesia. She translated everything. With her having to repeat everything four times to get a message back and forth, we were looking at a long dinner. I didn't have much patience for that sort of thing. Edy had less.

They started slow, too. Small talk. Welkin complimented his home, then asked him how he was doing. The mayor said something in gibberish that meant he was doing well. Welkin said he was glad. He never spoke to the man's wife. She may as well have been a placemat.

I could smell the food cooking in the kitchen. It smelled good. Some kind of meat. After weeks of rations it was even more mind consuming than the guy I'd seen earlier. Impossible to ignore—at least until the girl with the umbrella brought it out to us.

I really shouldn't have been surprised. We were sitting down the hall from where I'd last seen her. Probably lived there. Maybe the mayor's servant or daughter. The way he and Welkin involved his wife in the conversation the two were probably synonyms in their language.

She was smiling when she stepped into the dining room. A perfect smile. Real. She dropped it when she saw Edy and me sitting at the table. The mayor saw her freeze, too. No wonder Welkin brought us.

It took her a moment, but she smiled again and started serving. She didn't look at me when she put my plate down. Same with Edy. Freesia said something to her when she got her dish, and the girl said something back. They laughed. After everybody had their food, the girl moved to leave, but Welkin stopped her. "Why don't we set another table spot?" he asked. "This food looks delicious. We should all share it together."

His smile was wide and innocent. Welkin was a good guy, and he acted like his offer was generous, but he knew exactly what he was doing. Putting pressure on them. The mayor motioned for the girl to sit, but I could see in his eyes that he knew it wasn't his table anymore. The moment we all sat down, Welkin owned his home. "Alright," he said. "It's not every day we get a hot meal. With our host's blessing, let's enjoy it."

The food didn't look half as good as it smelled. I couldn't even tell what it was. It was hot, though. That alone made it worth eating. I reached down for my fork, but Edy stopped me. "Wait," she said. "Use the other one."

The two forks didn't look much different. One had longer prongs, but otherwise I couldn't tell them apart. I grabbed the one Edy told me to use anyway, and took a bite. The meat was gamy, and tough. The greens tasted old. That girl still wouldn't look at me.

Welkin started asking real questions as soon as we started eating. What they did with the weapons they got. Where the town watch went. Who was in it. Edy and I listened and ate. If the mayor's wife was his servant, we were his. The food sat in my stomach as soon as I swallowed. Nobody was comfortable. Everybody tried to pretend we weren't there. Fifteen minutes into the meal, Freesia stopped and turned our way. "You guys need to start talking."

"We don't exactly speak the language," I said. "What are we supposed to ask him?"

"No, to each other." She pointed to Edy. "Start talking. Doesn't matter what you talk about, just say something. You're sitting here brooding like hired muscle. It's scaring them."

I locked eyes with Edy. She shrugged in a way that told me she didn't understand either. "Isn't that why you brought us?"

Freesia bit her lip. It wasn't cute. It was her trying to keep herself from screaming. "Humor me."

Looking around the table, I saw she was right. Our hosts where hunched over. Trying to protect themselves. They were all smiling, but they weren't happy smiles. They were appeasing. I didn't need to bring my Mags. If Edy was the gun barrel, I was the rifling. We were the heaviest weapons Welkin could have brought. "I guess we should talk."

"Yeah," Edy said.

Welkin began the interrogation again. He asked the mayor what he knew about the convoy shooting. I asked Edy, "What's the most obscene word you can think of to describe a—"

"Cunt," she said.

Welkin dropped his fork. What sounded like rain pounding against the roof was Freesia seething next to him.


The rest of dinner didn't go so well. Freesia and Welkin carried on like nothing had happened, but it didn't take a body language expert to tell they were pissed. Nobody in the room could have missed it. The table seated seven smiling people, and not one of us meant it. We all pretended anyway.

I got my chance to escape near the end of what I assumed was the main course. The girl from my dream had left midway through the serving, and with Edy and I in the middle of a debate over the definition of feltching, Welkin was more than happy to let me excuse myself to run a sweep of the grounds. I never ran the sweep. Instead, I stepped outside for a smoke.

The mayor's house had an awning hanging over the entryway. The rain had seeped through the ground and turned the dirt under it to mud, but the bench next to the door was dry. My cigarette was already lit before I noticed the girl was sitting on it.

My first thought was that it was Freesia. I knew I'd just left her inside, but the two looked so similar I had to think about it to make sure. Her hair was the only quick giveaway—cut at the shoulders instead of tied back. I couldn't tell while she was sitting, but I was pretty sure she was shorter, too. Not by much. "I take it you weren't a fan of dinner either," I said.

She jumped in her seat, and after she saw it was me she sat straight. Her legs tensed. She said something, but it came out so fast that I doubted I would have caught it even if I could understand.

"It's alright," I said. "I won't hurt you." I pointed to my chest. "My name is Salinas."

Her eyes darted toward the door. If she'd been uncomfortable inside, I was only making it worse by talking to her under the awning. I didn't blame her for being scared. The last time we met, she'd been thrown to the ground and held at gunpoint.

She didn't say anything. I could see her holding something, and when I stepped closer and looked it was one of those flowers we'd found in the irrigation ditch out near the wadi. "That flower," I said, pointing to hers, then to the one in my lapel. "I have one too." I gave it a gentle tap. "Desert lily."

Her legs were still straining, but after she saw my flower, she met my eyes for the first time. She pointed to her own flower. "Corthu," she said.

She smiled, and while it was only slight, it was the first genuine smile I'd seen since she'd walked in to serve dinner. I tapped my chest. "Salinas."

"Salinas," she repeated, and her legs relaxed a bit. Her shoulders were still hunched, but she tapped her own chest and said, "Ves'tacha."

"Ves'tacha. That's a pretty name."

She didn't understand my words, but my tone must have said enough to get the point across, because she eased back into the bench and took a deep, even breath.

"I'm sorry for kicking your door in," I said. "It was just our job, you know? I didn't mean to scare you."

She said something in her language, and it was soothing under the din of the rain.

"I'm sorry we have to be here, too. I don't want to be here any more than you want us around."

When she spoke again, I didn't bother trying to separate the sounds. I stopped trying to find the breaks between words. Letting it all flow together, it was beautiful.

"I'm sorry I hate you, too," I said. Then I shook my head. "I don't mean you personally. I mean the whole village. I don't think I really hate you. I think I'm just frustrated."

It was easy to apologize when the woman listening couldn't judge. I could tell her anything, and she'd just smile and nod. I said, "I'm sorry I shot Lukas."

She reached, and pulled the flower out of my lapel. Cradling it next to hers, she stroked its petals. Then, talking the entire time, she replaced it with the one she'd been carrying.

"Thank you," I said, looking down at the flower she'd given me. "I'll take good care of it."

She grinned and put her finger up to her lips.

"Yeah, I won't tell anyone," I said, laughing.

We sat under the awning for another ten minutes. Sometimes we spoke. Other times we just watched the rain. She spun my flower between her fingers the entire time.

When we heard voices from inside, she left. It wasn't more than a wave, but her goodbye made me feel more welcome in that village than I'd felt anywhere since I left home. Edy, Freesia, and Welkin walked out a few seconds later. Welkin didn't look at me when he walked past. Edy did, and her eyes told me we were in a lot of trouble. Freesia was the only one who stopped. Her arms were folded across her chest, and she was gritting her teeth. "Did you enjoy yourself?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, and I was honest.

"At least one of us did." She sighed, leaning into the building. "What the Hell were you thinking?"

"It's not like they could understand us."

"No, they couldn't." I couldn't tell whether she was just exhausted or about to cry. "I could."

The wind picked up, and the rain swept in with it. A mist washed over my face before receding. I'd known what I said at dinner would hurt Freesia when I said it. I loved her, but somehow I just didn't care. It was like nothing that happened after our argument by the wadi mattered. None of it felt real. For some reason I thought I'd get a clean slate the moment we left town. Seeing Freesia under the awning, I knew I wouldn't. "I'm sorry about—"

"Fuck off with your apologies," she said. She stepped out into the rain. "You're always sorry for this or that, and then you just go make a jackass of yourself again. I really don't want to hear it this time."

It was always so much harder when they understood. "Come on," she said. "Let's get out of here." I followed her. We were walking away from the building I'd set bunk in, but I didn't have anywhere to be. I doubted I'd be able to fall asleep even if I went back for the night. "I see you were getting cozy with Ves'tacha."

"She seems really nice."

"She is, but don't bother."

"What?"

"She's getting married."

I stopped in my tracks, but caught myself before Freesia had taken more than two steps ahead of me. "It's not like that."

Her head was tilted down. She was probably pretending to watch her footing on the road. The mud made the ground soft, and it was cratered with boot-prints and tread marks. It gave her a convenient excuse not to make eye contact. "Then what is it?"

I thought it was stupid myself. It sounded even stupider when I said it out loud. "She reminds me of my sister."

"Really?" Freesia asked, but she still wouldn't look. When a woman would rather focus on tracks in the mud than on me, I knew I was in a bad place. I'd take Welkin's lecture over hers any day.

"Not the way she looks," I said. "When Edy and I found her, she was helping that guy who got shot. She didn't seem to know what happened to him, and I don't think she really cared. Just wanted to help him. My sister would do that."

"She's a nurse, right?"

"She is now. She was starting med school when the war started. She'll finish there when the war ends."

All Freesia said was, "Good for her."

It was. My sister was born with all of the potential our family had to spare. Nobody else in town had anything going for them. I'd resigned myself to a life in the mines. I was alright with that, as long as she could get something more. She deserved it. "Good for Ves'tacha, too," I said. "Getting married. That's a big thing."

Freesia scoffed. Her boot kicked a wave of mud out in front of her, and the drops of grime falling into the puddles mixed in with the drops from the rain. "Don't tell me you're getting on the pro marriage boat."

I shrugged. "What's wrong with that?"

She stopped, and turned to face me. Her hair was matted. Strands of it stuck to her forehead. Her eyes were baggy and swollen—a deep shade of red around the iris—and the rain dripping down her cheeks carried streaks of dirt. Her uniform was caked with mud, and every inch of it was soaked through as if she'd taken it through a river, and she was beautiful. "You want to get married?"

"Someday," I said. Before the war, I'd planned out my entire life. Enlisting changed most of the details, but the framework stayed the same. Originally my plan had been to be married by thirty. After Vassel, that jumped to forty. "I'm not ready for that yet, but give it another decade or so, yeah. I'd like to get married."

She studied my face. Looked me up and down. I wondered what she saw under the uniform and the mud. With the gun set aside. Then she turned away and continued walking. "You'd make a shitty husband," she said.

I let her go for a few steps before I hustled to catch up. "How can you know that?"

In a flash of lightning, I could she her thrust her hands into her pockets. Her head was dropped so low I was convinced she was watching her own feet splashing into the road. Watching her fresh prints trail off behind her. "I'd make a shitty wife."

There wasn't anything I wanted more than to grab her by the shoulder. Spin her around and look her in the eyes. Tell her she was wrong. I couldn't. She was right about both of us. "So how's this fantasy go?" she continued. "Grab a wife sometime down the line? Close to ten years younger, I'm guessing. Still young and pretty. Spend the rest of your days wasting away in some house outside the city, just the two of you?"

"Sounds about right," I said. "Plus a kid."

She laughed, and I could tell she was laughing at me. "You want kids?"

"A kid. No more than one."

"Let me guess. You want a son so you can raise him to bed women, break hearts, and be just like you."

I couldn't. Thank God for that. Looking back, it wasn't my father's influence that made me who I was, but his absence. I decided that when I had a kid, I'd be there. I didn't care how. That it might not be my choice. "A daughter," I said. "I want a little girl. Someone I can spoil the shit out of."

She looked at me again, eyes wider than usual. Softer. "Really?"

"Yeah."

She nodded, but not before looking away. At the mud. At the cracks lining the plaster of the buildings beside us. Storm clouds between the lightning flashes. Anything but me. "You'd make a good father."

It wasn't long before we found ourselves standing outside another makeshift barracks. It was one of second platoon's. Freesia decided it was as good a place to lose me as any. "I've still got a lot of work to take care of tonight," she said. "That dinner's making me feel sick enough as it is. You need to go."

The food we ate tasted awful, but I felt fine. It took longer than it should have for me to realize what she was really saying was she didn't want to see me. "I'll go," I said. "Can we talk first?"

"No."

"Why not?"

She put her and on my shoulder, and leaned in close enough that she had to bend her elbow nearly ninety degrees. She didn't look angry. Just tired. Defeated. "We talk now, I'm going to say a lot of things I don't want to say about you. I can't look at you without thinking them. And I don't want that."

What I wanted to say was whatever would end this. I couldn't find the words. What was I supposed to say to somebody like Freesia? Someone closer to me than marriage, but not quite family. "Try to stay dry."

"Yeah," she said. "You too."

I stood beside the door of the building and watched her walk off. In the rain, silhouettes fade in and out, and I thought she disappeared twice before she finally rounded a corner. I wanted a minute alone. Some time away from the rest of the Squad, or the villagers. A minute to breathe and figure out exactly how deep I'd fucked up. Marina's voice cut that minute short. "Looks like someone's not getting laid tonight," she said.

She walked out of the entryway. She'd probably been standing just inside the whole time. Freesia still looked beautiful soaked in rain and covered with mud. Marina wasn't exactly pretty just out of the shower. "And what would you know about that?" I asked.

"More than enough to know you're shit out of luck." She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and stepped next to me. "You got a full load?"

Six magazines, a Mags, and a hand grenade. "Yeah."

"Good." She fumbled with her lighter, but couldn't get a spark. "You're on patrol."

"I pulled outpost duty earlier, and just got through an assignment with Welkin." I pulled out my own lighter and, covering it with my hand, held the flame up for her. "I'm off for the rest of the night."

She didn't thank me for the light. I'd seen it before. A private gets some rank and suddenly starts going on power trips. Could have been the nicest person before, but once they got a title they were a bastard overnight. Marina was different. She was a bitch even before she was a lance corporal. "Well that sucks." She cleared her throat, and leaned against the side of the building. "Alicia wants an extra patrol out. That means someone's pulling double duty. Since it doesn't look like you're getting your dick wet tonight, I'm making it you."

I opened my mouth to argue, but stopped myself before starting a shouting match. It wasn't one I was going to win. "I can't go alone," I said instead. "Who am I going with?"

Her shrug told me she didn't care. She pointed to the door. "Pick somebody. Just get it done."

I was glad to leave her behind when I walked inside. Rule of thumb was the less time spent with her the better. It was dry in the entryway, but muddy boot prints trailed deeper into the house. I followed them, and they led me to a small living area that looked to have been converted to a rec-room by our Squad. Emile and Nancy were sitting on the couch, chatting. Cherry was pretending to flip through a magazine, but I could see her heart wasn't in it. She was eyeing the two whenever she got the chance. Homer and Elysse were playing a card game at the table. Looked like blackjack. Wendy was taking a nap on the floor.

I thought about waking her up. She was more my age. I figured it better to let the kids rest and have their fun. When I took a second glance around the room, though, I saw Cherry was miserable. The kind of miserable you can only pick up on if you feel it yourself. "Hey Cherry," I said, "you want to go take a walk?"

She looked up from her magazine—or away from Emile and Nancy, I couldn't tell which she was watching at the moment—and nodded. I briefed her while she grabbed her rifle and some ammunition. Then we left, and she didn't glance back to the couch when we walked through the door.

The rain was starting to die down outside, but the wind was picking up, and it worked its way through the streets between the buildings like a wind tunnel. It was frigid cutting through our wet uniforms. I was shivering by the time we turned our first corner. I wondered whether it had been a mistake to bring Cherry along. If maybe she would have been more comfortable back in the room. I looked her over, and she still looked miserable. But it looked like a better suffering. A distracting one.

Cherry was a short girl. Before Barious, I would have guessed her to be a hundred pounds soaking wet. Actually seeing it, I changed that guess to one-twenty. She didn't have her hair in her usual ponytail. Sopping wet, hair tied up like that would turn into a whip. It fell straight down below her shoulders, wet strands sticking to whatever they touched. There was no such thing as makeup in the rain.

She was smiling, though. A thin smile, but pleasant. I didn't think I could match it. She carried a certain grace about her, even through the storm. Back straight. Shoulders broad. Chin up.

"It sucks being third wheel," I said.

Cherry laughed. It was barely a snicker, but it was something. The wind blew at her sleeve, and I could see the bracelets she wore around her wrist—pink pearls and hematite. "Hard."

"I'm sorry."

The road we were on looked clear. We saw Yoko and Coby walk into the intersection ahead, and waved as they passed through. "Don't be," Cherry said. "I like Nancy a lot. She's a sweet girl. If I were him, I'd choose her too."

"That just makes it suck more."

Cherry laughed again; longer this time, and fuller. "You have experience with something like that?"

"Something like that," I said. It wasn't an exact match. Freesia and I didn't have the same love for each other that Cherry was looking for in Emile. We both knew that would be a dead end for us. But there was something there, and Cherry and I were facing the same walls. Trying to cling to someone who only wanted distance. "It doesn't get any easier."

I heard her sigh over the wind. Maybe it was only the rain dripping down her face, but it looked like she was crying. "Did you know she prays every night before she goes to sleep?"

"Nancy?"

Cherry nodded.

"No," I said. "I didn't know that."

"Every night, just before lights out," Cherry continued. "Like clockwork. Sometimes I join her, but I feel bad."

We turned another corner into another empty street. "How come?"

Cherry scanned the windows of the buildings on her side of the road as she spoke. Stroked the grip of her rifle with her thumb. A nervous tick. "We sit down and hold hands, you know? And she's all like, praying for the war to end and shit. And she asks God to watch over all of us. Keep us safe. She even asks Him to watch over the Imperials, because, you know, they're people, too, and they got every right to go home same as we do. Then she asks God to protect me." She sighed again. "Just me." She spit. "All I ever ask God for is Emile."

I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything.

"You know what she'd do if she knew?" she asked.

"What?" I already knew.

"Forgive me," Cherry said. "I think that's the worst part."

We came to another corner, but I stopped her before we turned. "I take it you didn't drink that fifth you were talking about earlier."

"No," she said, showing me every tooth with her smile. "I was just talking. I'm not an idiot. We don't get drunk in a combat zone."

Calling the village a combat zone was a stretch, but it wasn't exactly wrong. I got what she meant. "Who's carrying it? You or Ramona?"

She shook her shoulders, and her pack bounced against her back. "It's in my ruck."

I grabbed her arm and pulled her closer. She needed a friendly hug. So did I. "When we get back, what do you say we pull it out? Just one shot. Not enough to mess us up, but enough."

"Just one shot?"

"Just one."

She nodded. For once, she looked happy. "I could use a drink."

"Yeah," I said. "Me too."

I let her go, and she stepped to the corner, but when she looked around it, she didn't turn. Instead she dropped to her knee and lifted her rifle. "Oh shit," she said.

My Mags was at my shoulder before she finished the sentence. I had my thumb resting on the safety. "What is it?"

"Take a look," she said, waving me forward. "Isn't that the guy we saw this afternoon?"

I poked my head around the corner, and it was. The man we'd seen hunting earlier. He had the same surplus rifle from the first war he'd been carrying when we saw him out in the desert, but he had another slung over his shoulder. It looked newer. "Yeah, that's him."

"He's got our gun, too."

The man was hunched over as he ran. He was trying to keep himself in the shadows. It was dark enough that he had plenty of places to hide. We watched until he stopped, and walked into a building on the left side of the street. "That's what we've been waiting for," I said. "You want to go check it out?"

"Just the two of us?"

If it came down to it, I knew Cherry could kill. I'd watched her do it in Kloden. She shot a man's gut out, and he writhed and moaned between the lines during a cease fire. Took him forty minutes to bleed out. Some people in the Squad still looked on her with glowing eyes—deluded themselves into seeing a mess of youthful innocence that, deep down, everybody secretly knew couldn't exist here. I knew better. She'd kill if she had to. I wasn't as confident about myself. "No. I don't think that's a good idea."

She nodded. "Let's report it in and get a platoon out here."

I stepped away from the corner, and she followed. "We'll call a rain check on that drink."

Cherry looked disappointed. I was disappointed, too. All I wanted was to drink the night away. Drink everything about this mission gone. I glanced over at Cherry as we ran, and wondered how she kept herself from pulling the booze out every night. How much self-control it took to keep her from drinking herself to death. More than I had. From the way she was grimacing, it didn't look like she had it in her anymore, either.

I watched her pack bounce against her hips as she straddled forward, and thought about the fifth inside. About that man we'd seen carrying our weapons. Somehow I knew that before the night was over, one shot just wouldn't be enough.