Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

“Come in,” said Fitz. “The captain is expecting you.”

Winter followed him inside. The captain’s “office” had more than likely been someone’s bedroom back when Fort Valor was an actual functioning fortress. Like every other part of the place, they’d found it stripped to the bare rock when they arrived. Captain d’Ivoire had made a kind of low desk out of half the bed of a broken cart propped on a pair of heavy trunks, and he sat on a spare bedroll.

This desk was strewn with paper of two distinct sorts. Most of it was the yellow-brown Khandarai rag paper the Colonials had used for years, recycled endlessly by enterprising vendors who rescued scraps from trash heaps and scraped the ink off, over and over, until the sheet was as thin as tissue. Amidst these, like bits of polished marble in a sand heap, were several pages of honest-to-Karis Vordanai stationery, crisp as though they had just come off the mills, bleached blindingly white with creases like razors. They were obviously orders from the fleet. Winter itched to know what they contained, but they were all carefully folded to shield them from prying eyes.

The captain himself was working on another sheet, a list of names, wearing an irritable expression. He was a broad-shouldered man in his middle thirties, face browned and prematurely wrinkled like that of anyone else who spent too much time in the unforgiving Khandarai sun. He kept his dark hair short and his beard, just starting to show slashes of gray, trimmed close to his jaw. Winter liked him as well as she liked any officer, which wasn’t much.

He looked up at her, grunted, and made a mark on his list. “Sit down, Ranker.”

Winter sat cross-legged on the floor across the desk from him. She felt Fitz hovering over her shoulder. Her instincts were screaming that this was a trap, and she had to remind herself firmly that making a break for it was not an option.

It felt as though the captain wanted her to open the conversation, but she knew better than to try. Finally he grunted again and fumbled around under the desk, coming up with a little linen bag. He tossed it on the desk in front of her, where it clanked.

“For you,” he said. When she hesitated, he gestured impatiently. “Go on.”

Winter worked her finger through the drawstring and tipped out the contents. They were two copper pins, each bearing three brass pips. They were intended for the shoulders of her uniform; the insignia of a senior sergeant.

There was a long silence.

“This has to be a joke,” Winter blurted, and then hastily added, “sir.”

“I wish it was,” the captain said, either oblivious to or intending the implied insult. “Put them on.”

Winter regarded the copper pins as though they were poisonous insects. “Sir, I must respectfully decline this offer.”

“Too bad it isn’t an offer, or even a request,” the captain snapped. “It’s an order . Put the damn things on.”

She slammed her hand on the desk, just missing the dangerously upturned point of one of the pins, and shook her head violently. “I-”

Her throat rebelled, closing so tight she had to fight for breath. The captain watched her, not angry but with a sort of bemused curiosity. After a few moments, he coughed.

“Technically,” he said, “I could have you thrown in the stockade for that. Only we haven’t got a stockade, and then I’d just have to find another damned sergeant. So let me explain.” He sorted through the papers and came up with one of the crisp sheets. “Aboard those transports are enough soldiers to bring this regiment up to book strength. That’s nearly three thousand men. As soon as they dock, I get this instruction ”-he gave the word a nasty spin-“from the new colonel, telling me that he hasn’t brought any junior officers and he wants me to provide people who are ‘familiar with the natives and the terrain.’ Never mind that I haven’t got enough for my own companies. So I’ve got to come up with thirty-six sergeants, without stripping the other companies completely bare, and that means field promotions.”

Winter nodded, her chest still tight. The captain made a vague gesture in the air.

“So I ask around for men who might be able to do the job. Your Sergeant Davis picked you. Your record is”-his lip quirked-“a bit odd, but good. And here we are.”

The sergeant would be apoplectic if he knew she was being promoted, rather than sent on a dangerous foray into enemy territory. For a moment Winter reconsidered her objection. It would be worth it, almost, just to watch his face turn tomato red. To make Buck and Tuft salute her . But-

“Sir,” she protested, “with all due respect to yourself and Sergeant Davis, I don’t think this is a good decision. I don’t know how to be a sergeant.”

“It can’t be difficult,” the captain said, “or else sergeants couldn’t do it.” He sat back a little, as though waiting for a smile, but Winter kept her face rigid. He sighed. “Would it reassure you if I said that all the new companies have their own lieutenants? I doubt that your duties will involve as much. . initiative as Sergeant Davis’ do.”

Shortage of lieutenants was a perennial problem in the Colonials. The primary purpose of the regiment, it sometimes seemed, was as a dumping ground for those who had irretrievably fucked up their Royal Army careers but hadn’t quite gone far enough to be cashiered or worse. Lieutenants-who, by and large, came from good families and were young enough to still make a life outside the service-would usually resign rather than accept the posting. Most companies were run by their sergeants, of which the regiment always had a sufficiency.

It was reassuring, slightly, but it did little to address her primary objection. She’d spent three years doing all she could to avoid contact with her fellow soldiers, most of whom were vicious brutes in any event. To now get up in front of a hundred and twenty of them and tell them what to do -the thought made her want to curl into a ball and never emerge.

“Sir,” she said, her voice a little thick, “I still think-”

Captain d’Ivoire’s patience ran out. “Your objections are noted, Sergeant,” he snapped. “Now put the damn pins on.”

With a shaking hand, Winter took the pins and fumbled with her coat. Being nonregulation, it lacked the usual shoulder straps, and after watching for a moment the captain sighed.

“All right,” he said. “Just take them and go. You have the evening to say your good-byes. We’re breaking the new men out into companies tomorrow morning, so be on the field when you hear the call.” He cast about on the table, found a bit of rag paper, and scribbled something on it. “Take this to Rhodes and tell him you need a new jacket. And try to look as respectable as possible. God knows this regiment looks shabby enough.”

“Yes, sir.” Pocketing the pins, Winter got to her feet. The captain made a shooing gesture, and Fitz appeared at her side to escort her to the door.

When they were in the corridor, he favored her with another smile.

“Congratulations, Sergeant.”

Winter nodded silently and wandered back out into the sun.

MARCUS

Senior Captain Marcus d’Ivoire sat at his makeshift wooden desk and contemplated damnation.

The Church said-or Elleusis Ligamenti said, but since he was a saint it amounted to the same thing-that if, after death, the tally of your sins outweighed your piety, you were condemned to a personal hell. There you suffered a punishment that matched both your worst fears and the nature of your iniquities, as devised by a deity with a particularly vicious sense of irony. In his own case, Marcus didn’t imagine the Almighty would have to think very hard. He had a strong suspicion that he would find his hell unpleasantly familiar.