“I know this is unrelated to what just happened with Jackson,” Sperry began. “And Lorenzo. At least it seems to be on the surface. Those deaths are obviously the most urgent thing right now. But I wanted to update you on my suspicions from earlier.”

  “Your… suspicions?” Commander Volusia asked. He had evidently forgotten their conversation of the previous evening.

  “I thought that Tybalt and Baldwin switched their shirts, because they were wearing mismatched sizes. Since then, I’ve spoken with both of them, and I still think I was correct. Plus, they both behaved suspiciously when asked about it…”

  Sperry explained as best she could the conversations she’d had with both Baldwin and Tybalt, without going into Tybalt’s accusations toward Volusia himself. He and Baldwin had shared the same story, but Tybalt had been dodgy about it.

  Even without mentioning how the Specialist had pointed fingers at the Commander in response to questions leveled at him, Sperry still thought Tybalt sounded defensive and evasive enough to merit further questions. He had changed the subject repeatedly, used banter and flirtation, brought up the Tarquin incident, and asked her irrelevant questions about herself. Distraction after distraction.

  She didn’t need to bring up what he had said about the squad’s activities of that morning—The ruins of the village are still smoking… It was slaughter, not just a few people who didn’t escape your flames. Those accusations were serious enough that she did not want to repeat them carelessly in Tybalt’s language.

  “All right, I suppose you may be correct that Tybalt and—eh, I suppose Baldwin, too—could be up to something,” Volusia said. “There are too many strange events happening, including these deaths. This is the most casualties we’ve seen on a single mission in a year or more, and without ever meeting a real enemy face to face. I will consider how best to investigate whether we can account for their whereabouts at the time of the murders. Until then—I don’t believe in coincidence. You should keep an eye on Tybalt, and report anything he does that appears to be out of line with the squad’s interests, any kind of violation of the letter of the King’s Code.”

  “What about Baldwin?”

  “You let me worry about Baldwin. I’ll keep him close to me and watch for anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Thank you for taking my suspicions seriously, sir.”

  He nodded. “There’s been a pair of deaths at this point,” Volusia said. “I can’t believe that Baldwin would be involved in the death of Corporal Jackson, but I have to take everything seriously just now. There will be some annoying paperwork when we return, and it looks bad to lose men without explanation. But remember that we have to keep a close circle on this.”

  “I know you don’t believe in officers fraternizing with the enlisted men, Commander, but don’t you think we need more eyes than just us?”

  “I don’t think you should fraternize with enlisted, Lieutenant—just remember what happened with Tarquin.” Volusia placed a hand on her upper arm as he spoke, seemingly not noticing her slight recoil at the touch and the sound of Tarquin’s name. “But it’s not fraternizing I’m worried about. It’s these men’s service reputations. Well, not Tybalt’s. I hope that little shit gets drummed out of the Army even if he’s innocent. Baldwin has a long record with us, though. Your suspicions are within bounds, but realistically, there’s probably going to be some explanation that’s more reasonable for this. Like the beastfolk having a leader with a class who’s finally taking the fight to us. Everything that’s happening is just that one beastfolk fucking with us. Filling the others with courage, or even just fighting on his own. An individual with a class can do a lot of damage that might seem almost inexplicable, until you know what kind of enemy you’re dealing with.”

  Sperry nodded, deferring as usual and trying not to lean away too noticeably from the hand that had lingered on her arm for a second or two too long. She found her mind jumping back to the conversation with Tybalt earlier.

  Would the man in front of her order the massacre of a village that hadn’t put up a fight at all, when the mission was to scatter them and move them on? On paper, their task was like the work of the police in Enh, breaking up homeless encampments, beating the residents with truncheons so that they didn’t return. Brutal methods, but usually nonlethal.

  It just seemed cruel, to escalate to murder if it wasn’t necessary. Was that Volusia’s way, though? Sperry didn’t know.

  “Will that be all, Sperry?” the Commander asked.

  “I did want to ask you about a rumor I heard,” Sperry said slowly. She really didn’t want to talk about this. She felt compelled to.

  “Go on, then,” Volusia said.

  “I wanted to know whether there was any truth to this thing a few of the men were saying—that we deliberately killed off some of the beastfolk from that last village.”

  “I told you how the men are before we came here. Full of bluster. It’s possible that they shed a little more blood than necessary, who’s to say—but we don’t punish men for overzealous execution of duty. You’d ruin their initiative. This is thankless work they’re doing. No one back home will call them heroes for clearing beastfolk from our outlying regions. Never mind that they’re nipping future threats in the bud… Anyway, what if it was true? There are aspects to the standard operating procedures the men follow out here that an officer like you doesn’t need to know about.”

  A part of Sperry was shocked—she felt that this response was tantamount to a confession that Volusia had at least turned a blind eye to atrocities. He had simply dodged the issue of his own knowledge or degree of complicity. But she was also slightly confused by the last thing he’d said.

  “An officer like me?” Sperry asked, raising an eyebrow. “You and I are both officers.”

  “You know what I mean,” Volusia replied, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. “Baldwin and I are really two of the same kind. Both spending our careers on this kind of work. You’re different from us, and you know it. I’ve seen the way you hold yourself separate from the men—as you largely did even before I warned you against fraternization. Out of our squad of thirty-seven—well, thirty-five now—how many of their names do you know?”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Lieutenant Sperry swallowed. “That’s not—I haven’t been in the squad that long, but—”

  “I’m not reprimanding you. You probably should hold yourself separate. Noble born. Real nobility, not like some people who wish they were wanted as part of a noble family.”

  She knew she looked surprised as he spoke the two words, “Noble born.”

  “Yes, I know who your people are,” Volusia added. “Both your parents, though it was clever of you to join up under your mother’s surname. And I know you’re probably destined for bigger things than this.”

  If you know who my father is, you ought to know I am not his heir, she thought. That I am an afterthought. An afterthought viewed indulgently, perhaps, but an afterthought nonetheless. I’m not important to my family, except as a tool. You’ve miscalculated if you expect some sort of favor from them in the future.

  She didn’t point that out, though. She felt slightly more shielded from consequences now that she knew Volusia was aware of her family.

  “Are you just ignoring a few isolated killings, or is this something more systematic?” She spoke bluntly now, and he finally removed his hand from her arm.

  Did the squad send the surviving beastfolk on their way with some rations and instructions not to come back, or did they just send them straight to the afterlife? Sperry wondered. What’s the scale of this crime?

  “Don’t ask unless you’re willing to answer for your knowledge later,” he said coldly. “Ultimately, Lieutenant, this is just a brief stopping point in your career. For the men out here who do this every day, it’s a bit insulting to have a young girl looking over their shoulders, trying to enforce every letter of the King’s Code of Military Ethics. I have tried to shield you from information that could only harm your experience here—”

  “Is that why you’ve had me at the rear of each of these enforcement actions?” Sperry asked, interrupting him for the first time in the conversation—perhaps the first time in their entire acquaintanceship. “To shield me from information that might ‘harm my experience’ with the squad? Not because you believed officers belong at the rear, or because you needed me to burn the structures on one end to funnel the enemy toward the other side?”

  “Those were perfectly legitimate strategic and tactical reasons as well,” Volusia replied.

  ‘As well.’ Gods…

  “Do others in the field, from different squads, share your views on the way to deal with these nomads? What do people in Enh know?” she asked.

  “Those soft pricks back in the capital know what they want to know. They know that when you want results, you trust the field commanders to achieve them—and to know where to draw the line. Do you distrust my sense of justice, Lieutenant? My judgment?”

  Sperry began to sense something more pervasive than he had suggested previously. Perhaps not limited to this squad. Perhaps even known by higher ups back in Enh.

  For the first time, she forced herself to lie to the Commander. She made herself respond without hesitating, without showing doubt—hopefully without giving off obvious signs of deception.

  “No.” She shook her head slowly. “I know you look out for… those who fall under your authority.”

  I just don’t know if you recognize these foreign civilians trespassing into the Kingdom are under your authority too…

  “Good, good. If you trust me, then don’t ask me further about this. There are some questions you don’t want answered, but the truth isn’t as terrible as you seem to think. After all, we’re human beings here, not beasts on two legs like these fucking demihumans.”

  Sperry didn’t nod or give any gesture of assent this time. She felt ill.

  Beastfolk are essentially human. They just have a few animal parts in addition to their human ones.

  “One last question, sir,” she forced herself to say.

  “What is it?” Volusia asked, obviously annoyed.

  “That bit about my family. Did you ever speak with my father personally?”

  “No, Lieutenant, I have not. I’m an experienced man, though, and I know how these things work. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. It’s nothing you need to worry about, though I could teach you—more about the way of the world, that is—if you wish.” He spoke the words softly—suggestively?—no, she was probably just reading into it, because his very presence disgusted her just then. Either way, Sperry had to fight to keep her expression neutral and consider only the words themselves. Separate them from her feelings. He had never spoken to her this way before. It was a little disconcerting. But he probably didn’t intend anything inappropriate.

  Sperry nodded slowly. “Thank you, sir,” she said, trying to hide how her skin crawled at his continued presence. “That might be helpful.” She was lying now—she didn’t want Commander Volusia’s advice about anything at this point. But there was a part of her that wondered, if she told the truth about how she felt, what might happen to her. She could kill anyone in the squad with her flames, but there might be many ways a man like the Commander could get at someone he didn’t like. Poisoning the chain of command against her with rumors or reports of supposed incompetence. Literal poison in her evening meal.

  Or finding some way of letting the beastfolk kill her in battle, by not providing support during an engagement.

  The Commander had apparently allowed atrocities against beastfolk civilians until now, and those civilians had been helpless to prevent it, but the recent deaths in the squad seemed to show they weren’t all so helpless. The beastfolk who were more entrenched here had some form of small defense force, and there would be an engagement against real resistance before this expedition came to its conclusion. It would not be at all strange for the squad to suffer unavoidable casualties… or further deaths that could simply be framed as unavoidable.

  Whose word would contradict Volusia’s? Tybalt? An enlisted man who had only a couple of years more of experience than Sperry herself? Ridiculous. And he might be killed too, for much the same reason that she felt herself in danger.

  You’re being paranoid, Mariella, she told herself. Thinking about the Commander having members of the King’s Army killed… that’s ridiculous! You don’t even know anything for certain here. It’s all implications and innuendo. Did you just swallow everything Tybalt told you whole? But she did not feel that there was much room for doubt anymore. Not after everything the Commander had said—and everything he had failed to deny.

  “We’ll talk again, then,” he said. “Later.” He clasped her firmly on the shoulder for a moment, then walked off. Over the next several minutes, she heard him begin to verbally prepare the squad to move out.

  Sperry did not follow him, though. She was going through the conversation in her head, playing over each word again. There hadn’t been many actual admissions. Just refusals to confirm or deny. Slimy answers to questions that should have been straightforward denials. Whatever his crimes, Volusia must not be terribly ashamed of them.

  Maybe Tybalt was telling the truth about the squad. Even if I don’t want to believe any of it, I have to know. I need to go back to the village from yesterday morning.

  Her stomach did a queasy backflip at the thought, but she was resolved.

  Tonight. I’ll do it tonight.

  Now reading book 2...