Schrödinger's Vampire: Chapter 4
After two more days of this, Polly suspected Mal was slowly letting go of her impostor theory, but it worried her that Mal didn't seem the slightest bit relieved about this. And she had found a new angle at which she could be insufferable.
"I won't drink this coffee, and you will untie me now. This isn't funny, Pol. I'm fine."
"That from someone who sleeps eighteen hours a day," said Polly. "Look, if it was just you and me on an island somewhere -"
"You and me and a pair of chains?" said Mal. "Kinky."
Polly rolled her eyes, which coincided with a sigh of long suffering from Mal. "All right," said Mal. "I will drink this coffee but you will untie me first."
Igor had told Polly to look out for manipulative behaviour. But Polly had found she honestly couldn't tell, since she figured everyone would get a little manipulative if they were denied such an ordinary thing. The question had hung around during the last few days: give in or not, take her chances with a potentially unhinged vampire or play it safe - and quite suddenly, she decided there was probably a finite amount of perceived safety in this world, and she didn't need to keep the vampire dependent on her care by continuously raising the bar until a saint couldn't prove they were fit for human company.
"Half now, half later," she said. At least, she thought, she was being pragmatic about it. It wasn't about winning this stupid little game at all.
Mal's tense shoulders fell a little. "I guess," she said.
There was a second in which Polly seriously debated whether she could keep her promise. Well. Better try now when she could still overpower the exhausted vampire, than later, when she'd gained strength. And after Mal had obediently drunk one half of the offered coffee, she leant over her to open the straps that kept her arms down, convinced that Mal, in her state of heightened awareness, could feel every inch of the distrust directed at her.
Mal sat up, carefully, for the first time after she'd been rescued. The first thing she did was bringing up her hands to her face, feeling gingerly for the bandage that was still firmly placed over her eyes. It didn't give.
"Don't ever play that shit on me again, Pol," she said.
"Well excuse me, I just -"
"I won't discuss this. Hell." With that, she reached over and took the coffee cup out of Polly's hands. Her aim was curiously impeccable, but her grip was unsteady since her hands were clearly shaking under the weight. Polly thought to offer her help, but felt too offended to actually do so. Besides, Mal might have tried to rip her head off. So far, she had failed to do so despite her hands being freed, though, so that was one good thing.
Mal drained the cup down to the last drop of coffee with no sign of enjoyment, then gave it back to Polly. Maybe she was sensing a question that Polly had wanted to ask ever since - well, all the time, really, because she answered it.
"They gave me coffee," she said. This was good, Polly thought, but the way she said it -
"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.
Mal hesitated on an answer, apparently weighing different ways of phrasing something. "You never asked," she said, eventually. "I - never thought it was possible that there could ever be too much. ... the fuck am I telling you this?"
"But you are - you were deprived," said Polly, not really knowing why she was trying to drive this point home. "I'm not blind, Mal. You bit yourself. You didn't even do that back in Nedevya."
Tentatively, Mal felt for the skin on her arms and hands, clearly a little surprised when her fingers found neat bandages instead of raw skin. "Yeah, well," she said, "things changed, towards the end, and - in Nedevya, we had smokes," she changed the topic, brightly.
"Yeah," said Polly, definitely not reminiscing. "The moths had eaten everything else," and we ate the moths. "That reminds me, you want one?"
"A moth? No."
"A cigarette," said Polly.
"Yes, please." It sounded almost joyful. Polly was glad to hear some things had remained the same, even though she expected Igor was going to kill her for this.
She dug a mostly empty pack of cigarettes out of her coat pocket, lit up one cigarette for Mal, another for herself. She was halfway through the first rush of lightheadedness and nausea when Mal asked, between two rounds of inhaling deeper than one should be able to when one was an inch away from being clinically dead, "Since when do you smoke, sarge?"
Since day six, she thought. "I've picked it up a couple of weeks ago," she said. "Bad habit."
"I know," said Mal. "I guess I just blew my chance at quitting."
Polly couldn't help herself. She laughed. Only a little, though, and then she bit her lip and tried to be a little more solemn - the more she thought about it, she found that it hadn't even been that funny, but a glance over at Mal told her that the vampire's lips curled upwards at the edges. It looked appropriately smile-like. She was, at that moment, so happy to see it, she thought she wouldn't ever be able to express it in words.
Mal turned the cigarette in her fingers. "Are these mine?" she asked.
"No," said Polly. She hadn't been able to touch the pack of cigarettes that Mal had left behind. "I won them off Smith fair and square. I did haul your stuff across half of Uberwald, though; you can have yours back if you want."
"That's - sweet of you," said Mal. "Thanks."
Uncommented for now by them both, Mal's hand crept over, her fingers bumped against Polly's forearm and slid down to take her right hand. When Mal's fingers found and felt over the very noticeable scabs, remains from when she had dug her nails into Polly's hand to draw blood, Polly froze.
No, she thought. Not now, please -
"Was that me?" Mal asked, who apparently - hopefully - hadn't noticed how Polly's other hand had silently closed around the stake she was carrying, the cigarette uncomfortably clenched between two fingers. She nodded, and then, recalling her companion's current eyesight situation, said "yes," in a very small voice.
"I'm sorry I did that," said Mal. "I thought you were -"
Polly exhaled slowly, a little relieved that Mal had let go of her hand immediately upon noticing her discomfort, but also surprised to learn that Mal had actually been conscious during that little moment. "Don't worry," she said, to herself as much as to Mal.
I missed you terribly and I'm happy to have you back, was what Polly wanted to express, but didn't know if it would be at all appreciated. Mal was retreating already, and Polly wondered if she was, in the face of this distrust, she was reconsidering everything she had said in this short exchange. Mal smoked the cigarette down to its end. There must be something Polly could do, not to make the things that had happened better, but maybe to not make them stand out so much.
Maybe some classical approach. "You know, you can talk to me, if you want," she said gingerly.
Before Mal got a chance to answer in the negative, they were both saved by a knock on the door over in Polly's office. She figured it would be either Clogston or Igor, and in either case she dedicated a moment to feeling slightly guilty about the cigarette smoke in the tiny room - but she could conceivably blame it on Mal! - then she went over to the other room to open the door to the corridor.
"Long meeting tonight, eh?" she said to the ledger and the Major attached to it.
"New personal record," said Clogston. "Fourteen hours, not counting the tea break. Vimes really means it; he won't leave without setting up a document for war conduct, and the Uberwaldeans aren't having with it."
"Really," said Polly. She thought it was high time to somewhat ratify the unwritten rules of not kicking prisoners in the head. The Uberwaldeans, apparently, didn't.
Which reminded her that she should probably have told Mal there were Uberwaldeans in the castle.
"Oh, and we're not at war with Uberwald," said Clogston. "Remember that when talking to them. There's a lady down there who's quite adamant of the fact that Borogravia is at war with an extremist Uberwaldean splinter group that doesn't represent Uberwald as a whole."
"The whole of Uberwald consists of extremist Uberwaldean splinter groups," said Polly, "that don't represent Uberwald as a whole. That's what Uberwald is. What's her point?"
"She's mostly on our side, so I wasn't going to argue," said Clogston. "Now, where's your vampire? I need to see him."
From Clogston's mouth, Polly thought bitterly, this could only mean more bureaucracy or more mortal danger. Or both! Still, she knocked on the door to the side room and called, softly - the vampire's ears would pick it up -, "Oy, Mal! Contact with the outside world!"
There was a noncommittal sound from the inside, and when they entered the room, it was to the sight of Mal who had just lit a second cigarette, and was blowing grey smoke in the general direction of her visitors.
Polly couldn't really say what she had expected from this encounter. What she hadn't expected was this cold, dark thing that passed for conversation among these two.
[Reasons that a certain overly adventurous corporal should really learn how to pick people with whom to get overly adventurous. Exhibit A:]
Mal: Christine. (A lazy, cigarette-holding salute is produced.)
Clogston: (Pause) I am glad to see you are recovering, corporal.
Mal: Meetings going successfully?
Clogston: I find them rather dragging.
Mal: That is terrible. Wish there was anything I could do.
Clogston: I need a report from you. (A sergeant considers banging her head against the doorframe, but decides to watch on in fascination as the communication train wreck continues.)
Mal: (says nothing at first, takes a deep drag and attempts to fix Clogston in a glare which fails due to - or is emphasized by - the opaque nature of bandages.)
Clogston: Ankh-Morpork is investigating possible counts of war crimes.
Mal (patiently): I can't write a report, Christine. I'm blind.
Clogston: Eyes growing back okay?
Mal: Something is growing. I dearly hope it's eyes. Could be tentacles! Or teeth. (For inexplicable reasons, the vampire seems cheered up by this tangent in the conversation.)
Clogston: We'll need the circumstances of capture, account of living conditions while in capture, that sort of thing. I can send up my adjutant if you need any help.
(A sergeant is noticing the subtle signs of a vampire being dissatisfied with that suggestion, namely, the attempt to crush the cigarette between her shaking fingers while pointedly saying nothing for a moment.)
Mal: Or hair.
Polly: I can do it. Really. No problem.
Mal: I have lost all recollection. Too bad.
Clogston: I'm sure you two will figure something out. If in doubt, confabulate. I need that report by Friday, if at all possible. And Polly, I may drop in tomorrow after the meeting.
Mal: A good day to you, too, Christine.
[Exit of Major Clogston, and end of exhibit A]
There was a lengthy pause. That second cigarette met the end of its crumbly life. Then Polly said, "... Confabulate?"
"Fill in the gaps," said Mal.
"Sounds dirty," said Polly.
Mal snorted. "And thanks for your offer, but I don't exactly want to tell you, either."
"About what?" said Polly. "This recollection you're lacking? Gotcha."
"I find your use of facts against me offensive," said Mal. "Also, this recollection that I'm lacking is not up to army report standards, sarge. Especially not your reports; as I recall they're always very consistent - "
"I don't really think you have to", said Polly, "if you really don't want to."
"This is the army, though," said Mal. "I know it's hard for us free spirits to adjust. I myself have an allergy to orders, but sometimes you find they're just there." It sounded miserable.
"I meant, in a moral sense, like," said Polly.
Mal evidently decided not to further expand on the subject of insubordination and said, instead, "she really is assertive. Huh."
Polly checked her pocket watch whether it was time for coffee again, hoping Mal wouldn't follow up on that specific route to madness.
"I mean," said Mal, "I will obviously never try to... canoodle... with ruperts again, they're much too -"
Polly, who may possibly have been thinking about her possibly impending rupertification, said, "she isn't bad for a rupert."
"How do you know?" There was that sauciest of grins. Polly had almost forgotten it even existed. But it did, and it still made her blush. Since Polly had long ago learned that the best way to avoid constant blushing with a vampire was to hurtle forward until everyone couldn't look anyone in the eye anymore, she said, "so, was there ever any canoodling?"
"Nah," said Mal, as she felt for the ashtray and, having found it, stumped out the cigarette end in it. "The whole thing wasn't one of my finest hours. Days. Weeks. Help." She lay back and pulled up her blanket, and only the cautiousness of her movements told Polly that she may still be in a lot of pain that she wasn't admitting to.
"You need anything else?" said Polly.
Mal's voice was already rather slurred. "If you are implying coffee," she said, "no. I want to sleep."
Well, that never kept you, thought Polly and then she ruminated over the question of what quantities of coffee could possibly be perceived as "too much" by her corporal, and decided not to press the point.
"Don't you have a report or five to write?" asked Mal, clearly drifting off.
"Admittedly, but I think I'll take the privates out for a bit," said Polly, "before they forget which end of a sword is the business end."
There was an uncomfortable pause. "How much do they know of this?" asked Mal. For some reason, this seemed to be important to her.
"Only the wounded hero bit," said Polly, "no details. Wait, that's probably 'cause you haven't actually shared any."
"Good," said Mal, in the general direction of the wall.
Polly, who did know some of the details already, or had deduced them, at least, had to admit Mal probably had a point there. "Some of them saw you in the cellar," she said, but there turned out to be no answer. Quietly, she left the room.
The next afternoon (sergeants procrastinated with the best of them) Polly refilled her inkwell at the supply office, brewed a cup of tea because she feared she may need it, and sat down on the floor with a ledger on her knees. As usual, a certain vampire wasn't cooperating.
"C'mon, Mal," she said. "We'll start at the beginning, eh? You wandered off into the night. What happened then?"
"Do you know the feeling," said Mal, slowly, "when your memory has grown holes, and they keep getting bigger?"
"It's been a long time since I was that drunk," said Polly. "I'll just write down whatever you tell me. Chronologically. C'mon, you can do this."
The vampire seemed to consider this for a moment, then apparently decided to give it a shot. "I wandered off into the night, right," she said. "Think I wandered for a while. Don't recall finding any headquarters or somesuch. They got me two days later, in a deserted Borogravian village about thirty miles into Uberwald, north-north-west of our camp then."
"Er," said Polly. "How?" It seemed inconceivable to her that her sneaky vampire had simply got herself caught like that when she could sense other people from miles away. Also, she thought, the account so far was rather detailed for someone who claimed systemic memory loss.
"'Cos I was trying to be a hero," said Mal. "Very brave, very gullible, didn't know what I was thinking; don't recommend."
Polly listened to the story, which was unexpectedly complete. There had been a young boy of about eight, lost in the woods, who said he'd been left behind in the chaos when the villagers had been driven away, and now he couldn't find their trail.
"Must have been there for weeks," said Polly, not quite believing it. After all, there were said to be vampires - the unreformed kind - in the woods.
"Yes," said Mal. "Astonishing feat for a human child, huh? Should have given that some thought."
After a short introduction to the concept of reform, Mal had promised to accompany him as long as it was still dark, to the next village which was sort of on her way and where the child said he had relatives he could stay with. Mal had thought maybe the relatives, Borogravian by heritage if not by passport, were knowledgable regarding the location of the Uberwaldean army.
The village, though, had turned out to be abandoned as well; merely a broken water mill at the river was making a constant, low-level noise, masking lesser sounds like footsteps or heartbeats to any awesome ninja vampire who hadn't slept for two and a half days.
"I stayed there until dawn," said Mal, "which would be when I noticed the sentries. There were a tad more than I could handle on my own. Twelve! No, make that fifteen."
"A trap," said Polly.
"Thank you, Captain Obvious," said Mal. "After that, I did find their headquarters. And a most glorious victory it was."
Polly paused. Maybe some reassurement was needed. "I wouldn't have left the child there either," she said.
"I wish I had," said Mal coolly. "I could handle myself outside at night when I was that age."
"You," said Polly, "were under the protection of the meanest vampire around, if I recall correctly?"
"Builds character, is all I'm saying," said Mal, who was probably being sarcastic.
"Reminds me," said Polly, who'd been harbouring the thought for a few minutes now and thought it was time to present it. "I thought it was vampires who used children as bait."
Mal shrugged. "Don't recall any vampires. And it really isn't terribly innovative a concept; let's not ask why I fell for it." She listened to Polly scribbling down a few notes. "Do you mind confabulating a little?" she added. "Make me look less stupid?"
"The Uberwaldeans will be in the room and argue about it," Polly reminded her. "Best stick to the truth."
"Yeah," said Mal. "They're not going to argue the truth at all. Whatever it may be."
"Huh?" said Polly, finishing a sentence fragment. "I think we made a remarkably coherent start, didn't we?" Mal didn't reply to that. Polly looked over her notes and thought they were worth about three lines of report. She supposed they could be glad ruperts were suckers for heroism.
"You were captured," she said. "What happened after that?"
Mal's face remained perfectly blank. "It is a bit of a blur," she said.
"Do try," said Polly. "Else I'll just put down 'interrogations' and leave it to the ruperts to figure it out."
"Chris did want war crimes," said Mal. "So I guess you can write down I was smacked around a bit at first, seems plausible enough, doesn't it. Wait, that was after I - again heroically - resisted a pretty insulting attempt at bribery. I think that bit came first."
"Oh dear," said Polly. "How unexpectedly - "
"- Kind?" suggested Mal. "They tried to offer me the money they took from me in the first place," she said. "There are limits."
"Well-done," said Polly absent-mindedly. She scanned the list Clogston had provided for prompts. "General circumstances of captivity, it says here on the form," she said. "Quality of food, drink, medical care, special requests met? This is dumb."
Looking at her corporal, Polly thought she could probably cross out the issue of food altogether. And it seemed the only bit of medical care that had taken place in that cell had been a by then nearly unidentifiable length of semi-elastic cloth wrapped tightly around Mal's knee, probably by herself. Polly thought she'd recognised it by way of tiny metal hooks as a pretty unique piece of underwear. Mal was the only soldier she knew who'd had it custom-made.
"There was a cat in the cellar," said Mal, who apparently agreed that Clogston's list was overly optimistic. "It liked me a lot."
"All cats love you, Mal," said Polly, "but that's not really the -"
"It was the only being in the universe that ever truly loved me," said Mal. "It came over for a few nights and tried to sit on my face when I was sleeping. I think it had fleas. Suckers agree cats are awesome."
"Mal," said Polly, "are you sure you're all there? Do you need another coffee?"
"Polly," said Mal, quite suddenly changing from almost playful to intense. "Did you ever vomit from too much to drink?"
"Yeah, well," said Polly. "I suppose. But it may have been a stomach bug." She thought she knew where this was heading.
"Try it with coffee sometimes," said Mal. "Oh, and vowing not to drink ever again wasn't an option. I was awake for five days. Will you please get it into your head that I do not want any more coffee than absolutely necessary?"
Polly didn't quite know how to respond, so she busied herself writing that bit down. All the while, Mal lit up a cigarette. "About the cat -" she said.
"What about the cat?" said Polly.
"Leave the coffee bit out," said Mal, "the ruperts will think I'm not properly stabilised." Polly obediently struck that bit out; she thought Mal had a point there.
"I think you should know that the cat -," Mal began. "Oh, never mind. Can we be done for today?"
"So far I've got the capture on account of being a hero, a bit of interrogation with some light smacking around, and an invasive yet oddly charming cat," said Polly.
"Yeah," said Mal, "sounds about right."
"Corporal," said Polly, "I do not actually believe you when you say you can't remember anything." On the contrary, she thought Mal was being quite clear about the things she chose to tell her.
Mal evidently decided to avoid the issue by a wide detour. "What happened on your side?" she said.
"I can fill you in later," said Polly. "But right now, we've got to concentrate on -"
"It's just that you may help me contextualise a few bits and pieces that have been floating around," said Mal. "For clarity's sake."
Polly got out her notebook, in order to appear busy. "March on the Koebe Plains, settled there for a few weeks," she said, "captured an Uberwaldean spy after three days, captured an Uberwaldean spy after five days, no more spies after that. Whole lot of nothing, surprise attack of the Uberwaldean army after three weeks."
"Three weeks, eh? Tell me more," said Mal, apparently counting something on her fingers. Probably not days; Polly remembered that the cell didn't even have a window.
"We won."
"Thank you, I deduced that much. How?"
"It was - ," Polly thought for a moment, " - strange," she concluded. "They seemed to expect a completely different army, in terms of size and armour and strategy and reinforcements. It gave us enough of a surprise element to win, even though they were the surprise attackers. But I'm not sure if the ruperts bought my clever interpretation."
"And now I think I'm getting at something," said Mal. "How very strange indeed. The nerve!" She sounded like someone who had just now discovered a new and very rich source of anger.
"You gave them false information, didn't you?" said Polly. "You may have saved us all, you complete idiot."
Mal gave a nonchalant shrug. "I may have fibbed around a little at first, but I don't remember outright lying in the end, which if you think about it sure makes me the idiot here," she said. "Funny, I thought I gave them information that I believed to be perfectly correct." She sensed Polly's surprise, and added, "yeah, well, I'm not a hero all of the time. I trusted in you to be able to save your own collective arse while I did my own individual one."
There was a knock on the door, the sound of someone stepping into Polly's office after a polite pause of about five seconds in which none of them said anything.
"I," said Polly. "How? I know I never shared the plans with you, for the exact purpose of avoiding needless heroism. How did that happen?" A dark idea formed in her mind. Oh no, she thought.
"I don't know," said Mal, "but why don't you ask Christine."
Mal had apparently recognised the Major by the sound she mostly wasn't making. Else it was a lucky guess. Polly cursed herself for leaving the door slightly ajar, but then, with all the cigarette smoke, they'd needed the fresh air.
Still. What was this, a conference room?
"At ease," said Clogston, coming in after a cursory knock. "I believe that an explanation is in order. Sergeant, can you leave us alone for a while?"
"Why?" asked Mal. "You ashamed of something?"
"Corporal," said Clogston, "I understand that you have been through a bit of an ordeal, but lashing out against a superior officer will not go unnoticed."
Whoa, thought Polly. Clogston, you utter lightweight. Mal has disrespected my authority for over three years!
"You can stay then, Perks, since it seems to be all right with the corporal" said Clogston. "Maladict, I didn't plan on your getting caught. You must believe me."
"But it worked out so beautifully for you, didn't it?" said Mal.
"I must admit that it did," Clogston conceded after a moment. "But that is beside the point."
"You did give me wrong information on purpose," said Mal. "It worked. What is this, if not the point?"
"The purpose of spying," said Clogston, "and I can't believe I'm telling you this, is to create an imbalance of information. Tipped in our favour." These words were straight from Egglayer's Conventions for the unconventional: tactics against static warfare, Polly knew.
"It was a backup plan," Clogston continued. "Nothing more."
Mal commenced smoking as offensively as possible. "You could have trusted me with this," she said, finally. "You could have just told me. I spent weeks trying to lie to them and it never worked in the end, and to think it could have gone so much more efficiently than -" Mid-sentence she opted for a more light-hearted approach. "I mean, we could have wrapped it all up before Hogswatch!"
"Maladict," said Clogston, almost gently, at least by her standards, "that wouldn't have worked. You needed to be convinced it was the truth."
"Who was in on the plan?" said Mal. Polly had been dreading that bit, even though she felt she was almost completely innocent.
"On the final version? The entire high command," said Clogston. "I did talk it through on general terms with a few hopefuls, and even your sergeant here agreed that a decoy may be our best bet."
Clogston, apparently, was a bit of an arsehole, Polly thought.
"I don't believe it, Polly," said Mal, and another cigarette found a high-pressure end between her fingers. "You were in on this fuckery?"
"I said," said Polly, "that I agreed, in general, that a plan like this may work." Forget the hopeful, she thought, it was really time to desert the army and go raise some goats somewhere.
Mal shook her head. "I can't be the only one here who's ever heard of common bloody decency. And look where that gets you."
"I also said," said Polly, who felt she was getting defensive even though Mal's anger sounded pretty reasonable to her, "I also said, specifically, that I wouldn't feel comfortable sending anyone in there with false information, because one, there wasn't a guarantee it'd even work, and two, responsibility for the lads and all that." She thought it was a bit of a necessity that no-one got the impression their superiors may betray them to the enemy, not even for the greater good.
"And that is, ultimately," said Clogston, "why I gave that order and took the responsibility. We are in a war."
"Ah, so that's the big picture stuff that Blouse mentioned all the time. And did you ever consider," said Mal, "what may happen to the pawns in your big picture when the enemy found out they lost thousands of men due to being led on? Do you think I lost my eyes in a hilarious cutlery accident?" Polly supposed she should be glad that Mal's righteous anger wasn't directed at her anymore.
"The plan managed to save thousands of our own soldiers," said Clogston. Her voice was hard. "While the outcome is regrettable, yes, I do consider this a trade-off. How is the report coming?"
Mal opened her mouth, and closed it. Polly had never seen her so thoroughly shut up. "Fine," Polly lied for her.
"Good," said Clogston. "You have a little more time; Vimes' war crimes charter has been bumped to the end. It's borders at the moment." She turned to leave.
"Why me?" said Mal. "Not that I'm whining to have been trusted with such an honourable task, but, you know, for the sake of complete transparency. Something personal, perhaps?"
Considering the evidence, Polly probably shouldn't have been as surprised as she was that Mal had indeed gone there.
"Because," said Clogston, "and I told Perks this, you know; you were the only one who had a shot at surviving." With that, she left.
"Yeah," said Mal, to nobody in particular. "I did. Right up until the end."
Polly put away the ledger. She'd added a bit about eyes, but didn't find the rest of the information she'd gained would help their case on war crimes. "Oh, Mal," she said, and paused, and felt helpless, and added, "I swear I didn't know any of this."
There was a lot of uncomfortable silence in the room, not only in length, but in depth, too. "I must have tried to flee at least once," said Mal so suddenly Polly actually winced. "I didn't just sit around pouring my heart out to them. Please believe me."
"Mal," said Polly. "You don't have to tell me any of this." Also, she was puzzled. "Why so doubtful?"
For a moment, Mal gave off the impression of someone catching mental fish with their bare hands, in an ocean where their feet didn't reach the ground. "These memories turn up and they begin and end perfectly randomly," she said, finally. "I wish they wouldn't turn up at all, but as long as they do I may choose to share them, isn't this what you want? This one starts with me barely out of the main gates and the dogs catching up with me and ends with me explaining to the guards exactly how to work the amazing Borogravian handgun."
Well, thought Polly numbly, that one certainly explained the close-range gunshot wound. Igor had spent ages puzzling together Mal's left kneecap.
She noted that memory down as well. Isn't this what you want? What a strange question, she thought. Her dreams protested that it was clearly not, that all she had ever asked for was her vampire back on day five, gleeful and boasting. Did that mean she was asking for a Mal who'd leave a child helpless in the woods? Polly's dreams, though long-winded, were usually coherent from beginning to end; the dissonance was jarring.
"Mal," she said, "I don't think this report thing is at all a good idea right now. Or ever. Don't worry about this, I'll confabulate something together."
Mal exhaled, apparently somewhat relieved. "Fine by me," she said.
Polly busied herself by tidying away the ledger and pen. It was useless, her desk was a great big mess already, and the motions she went through didn't actually keep her from thinking about that night after they'd found Mal in the cell. She supposed she could only be glad that Mal was apparently as incapable of remembering some of the details as Polly was of forgetting them. At least, she hoped so.
Much too soon, after the two items had been inarguably put away for good, Polly found herself standing in the doorframe to Mal's room. Might as well ask, she thought.
"Anything else you want in the report?" she said.
"Strange," said Mal, "how the cat stands out so much, isn't it? When it, for once, didn't leave any evidence." Polly thought she understood: Mal's bandaged eyes, her disgust at coffee, her knee, they demanded a story be told that fit them. A cat could safely be forgotten.
"It was the most important thing in the world," Mal added. "Well, right after somehow saving myself because no-one else seemed inclined, but that didn't work out so well. Even then I could damn well pet a cat." There was a pause, and then: "It purred."
Maybe she felt she hadn't actually answered Polly's question. "That's pretty much it," she said. "I'm not so sure about the order, or some of the details, or even if it's memories or deduction from obvious evidence, but there you go, typical army report." There was a thin, unhappy smile. "I'd love to watch Chris present it at their damn conference, though."
Maybe it was memory loss, Polly thought wildly, maybe it was an elaborate revenge scheme. "I shall remember to include the cat, then," she said.
There may have been laughter. Maybe it was both.
"Are you going to be okay?" asked Polly.
"Er," said Mal. "What? Now, later, next week, or what? And what do you mean be okay?" The concept clearly took her by surprise. Probably not a good sign.
"Just now for, uh, now," said Polly. "I'll be off to grab dinner before I finish that report. You want some?"
"No," said Mal. "But since you're going anyway, I could do with a drink. Just don't tell Igor."
Polly said something in the affirmative, added something about how she'd bring up a sandwich anyway for certain scrawny vampires in the vicinity, and then was already half out of the door when she heard Mal calling after her.
"What is it?" she called back.
"How did we treat the Uberwaldean spies? By we I mean you, of course, and by you, I mean - who do I mean, anyway?"
"I don't know the answer to any of that," said Polly. "I wasn't involved."
There wasn't a reply to this, and Polly softly closed the door.