Brian McClellan: The Face in the Window

He put a few finishing touches on the sketch of Bertreau he’d been working on, brushing softly with the stub of charcoal to shade the rope scar on her neck.

Three weeks of stealing glances when she wasn’t looking, and he was sure of it: sometime, probably not more than a few months ago, someone had tried to hang Bertreau. Her neck hadn’t snapped when she hit the end of the rope, and they had cut her down.

Why had they cut her down, he wondered.

She sat across the common room, nursing a mug of local ale and bobbing her head to the song but otherwise keeping herself aloof from her men. A bit of black powder still in Taniel’s system gave him just enough of a powder trance to see the details of her face clearly.

A squat, wide-shouldered barrel of a man slid onto the bench across from Taniel and dug a stubby finger into his ear, wiggling it about. Sergeant Mapel had told Taniel that his parents had originally been from Brudania, but his mother had been a dark skinned Deliv, and he favored her ebony complexion.

He grinned, dimples forming at the corners of his black cheeks. “If the major catches you drawing her…”

“She won’t,” Taniel said, taking his eyes off his battered, leather-bound sketchbook just long enough to look down his nose at Mapel. “Any word from the savages?”

A worried scowl crossed Mapel’s face. Their savage liaison should be here, ready to lead them into the swamp in the morning. In exchange for Hrusch rifles, ammunition, and powder, the savages were going to give the company succor from the Kez and help them raid Kez-held towns along the Tristan Basin.

A good prospect for the war, if the savages showed up before the Kez.

“We did hear from the coast,” Mapel said.

“And?”

“The Kez burned Little Starland to the ground.”

Taniel let his hand fall away from his sketchbook. He’d sailed into Little Starland less than two months ago. It had been his first experience in this new land-a trade city of some eighty thousand souls and growing by the day. Little Starland had financed the university in Fatrasta. A university not all that different from the one Taniel attended in Adro.

“To the ground?” Taniel heard himself echo.

“Nothing left.”

Taniel felt anger burning in his chest. His finger itched to pull the trigger of his rifle, a Kez Privileged in his sights. A shot of fear followed it, and a small voice asked: What if I miss ?

“The Kez,” Mapel said, “win wars through shear force and brutality. They use fear to keep…”

“I know all about the Kez,” Taniel snapped. He closed his sketchbook and stowed it in its seal-skin pouch, fearful that he might tear it apart in a rage. “I know the Kez are a vindictive, cruel people who seek to master everything in their sight.” He fell silent, his hand resting on the butt of the pistol tucked in his belt. He’d bought it in Little Starland.

“Taniel,” a soft voice said.

“What!” Taniel rounded on Dina, the word coming out far louder than he’d meant. He took a deep breath. “What?” he asked again, quieter this time but unable to force the impatience from his voice.

“Bad time for it, priestess,” Mapel said to Dina. “I just worked the captain here into a lather.” Mapel had pushed back his bench as if ready to run. “Seems he has a particular hatred for the Kez.”

Taniel shot Dina a warning glance. Don’t you say a damn word…

“The Kez executed his mother,” Dina said, dropping onto the bench beside Taniel.

Mapel made an “oh” expression with his mouth.

“You have no right.”

Dina met his anger with her head cocked to one side in a challenge. “She was my cousin,” she said. “I have every right.”

“And so you avenge her by trying to convince me to turn back every night? To sail back to Adro, where I’ll have to look my father in the eye and tell him I had the chance to kill Kez and I didn’t take it?” Taniel knew he shouldn’t yell at her. She was just trying to do what she saw as right. Besides, she was almost old enough to be his grandmother.

Dina hesitated, and Taniel knew that’s exactly what she had come over here to do.

“I’m a priestess, not a warrior. War is a young man’s folly, and I have children, and my children have children. I’m only here now because your father asked me to chaperone you, and I’m a woman of my word.”

“Don’t you want to protect your children from the Kez?” Taniel glanced toward Mapel for an agreeing nod, only to find that the sergeant had slipped off. He cursed the man silently.

Dina raised an eyebrow. “I am Kez,” she said.

“But you’re…”

“With you? Here, now? I know. I told you, I’m a woman of my word.”

Taniel blinked in confusion. “But the Kez will execute you if they find you with the…” Taniel trailed off, suddenly realizing what a risk she had taken coming out here with him. All the while hoping to convince him to leave the war.

Taniel said, “If the Kez catch me trying to slip out of the country, they’ll execute me on the spot. You know how they feel about powder mages.” He refused to associate Dina with the Kez as a whole. She was family, after all.

“Do you think they’d risk your father’s wrath a second time?”

Dina had no idea how little Taniel’s father cared for him. “I think they’d jump on the opportunity to bring him to his knees.”

“I have a friend who’s been smuggling tobacco for years, to get around Kez tariffs. He could get you back to Adro safely.”

“I…” Taniel broke off.

He was going to get his first chance at Kez blood. He’d sworn to himself that he’d not return to Adro without at least a dozen notches on his rifle. If Dina got herself killed by the Kez, he wasn’t going to let that weigh on his conscience.

“I’m going outside,” Taniel said.

He snatched his rifle and knapsack and headed out onto the front porch of the common house.

Outside, the rain had managed to clear the air of the swamp smell. Half a dozen militiamen lounged under the awning, smoking pipes or cigarettes and staring sullenly out into the deluge. They knew they had to go out into the swamp in the morning, and none of them were relishing the idea.

Only one bothered to acknowledge Taniel.

Damned sloppy discipline.

Taniel stared into the night for a few moments. The rain managed to conceal most everything that the dark did not, and nothing but rough shapes stood out-the town buildings, most of their lanterns doused for the night.

His eyes caught a shadow in the middle of the road. He frowned and focused on that shadow. A person, maybe? Why would they be standing there in the rain?

Taniel kept his eyes on that shadow, afraid it might disappear if he looked away, and tapped a line of black powder out on the back of his hand.

He snorted it.

The shapes of the town buildings sprang into sharp relief as the powder trance washed over him, the rain brightening as if he’d shone a lantern on it, and the shadow became a girl.

She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, her shoulder-length hair soaked through, a satchel slung over one shoulder. Her skin was pale and covered with small grey freckles like tiny flecks of ash, and Taniel guessed that in the light of the day her hair would be red.

A savage girl, nothing more.

Then why was his heart racing? An instinct deeper than any of his senses screamed danger at him, and without realizing he was doing it, he found himself poised to run.

The girl met his eyes across the space, through the rain, and Taniel began to lift his rifle, not quite sure what he was going to do with it. Shoot a little savage girl? He didn’t kill children, and it would surely turn their guides against them, ruining this entire expedition.