Elizabeth Moon - Once a Hero

She had lost track of direction; she had forgotten, for the moment, which way she was supposed to go. She had followed the woman and baby . . . and they had been following others . . . and then her legs were too tired, and she stopped.

“There was a little village the locals called Greer’s Crossing,” Coron went on. “Not even one klick from the train track, where the shipping canal turned. You must’ve gone there with others from the train wreck.”

“And that’s when the rebels came through,” Esmay said.

“That’s when the war came through.” Coron paused; she heard the faint slurp as he sipped his tea. She glanced up to meet a gaze that no longer twinkled. “It wasn’t just the rebels, as you know only too well.”

I do? she thought.

“It was right about there the rebels realized that they were being herded into a trap. Say what you like about Chia Valantos, he had a tactical brain between his ears.”

Esmay made a noise intended to indicate agreement.

“And maybe he had good scouts—I don’t know. Anyway, the rebels had been on the old road, because they had some heavy vehicles, and so they had to go through the village, to get across on the bridge. They were making a mess of the village, because the people around there had never been supporters. I suppose they thought the people from the train had something to do with the loyalists . . .”

The old memories forced themselves up, lumping under her calm surface; she could feel her face changing and struggled to keep the muscles still. Her legs had begun to hurt, after the hours on the train, the crash, the fall . . . the woman, even with a baby, had longer legs and took longer steps. She had fallen behind, and by the time she got to the village it was gone. Already the roofs had collapsed; what walls remained were broken and cantways. Smoke blew across streets littered with stones and trash and tree limbs and piles of old clothes. It was noisy; she could not classify the noises except that they scared her. They were too loud; they sounded angry, and tangled in her mind with her father’s voice scolding her. She wasn’t supposed to be so close to whatever made those noises.

Blinded by stinging smoke, she had stumbled over one of the heaps of old clothes, and only then recognized it as a person. A corpse, her adult mind corrected. The child she had been had thought it a silly place for someone to go to sleep, a grown woman, and she had shaken the slack heavy arm, trying to wake an adult to help her find her way. She had not seen death before, not human death—she had not been allowed to see her mother, because of the fever—and it took her a long time to realize that the woman with no face would never pick her up and soothe her and promise that everything would be all right soon.

She had looked around, blinking against the stinging in her eyes that was not all smoke, and saw the other piles of clothes, the other people, the dead . . . and the dying, whose cries she could now recognize. Even across the years, she remembered that the first thought she could recognize was an apology: I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to . . . Even now, she knew this was both necessary and futile. It had not been her fault—she had not caused the war—but she was there, and so far untouched, and for that, if nothing else, she must apologize.

That day, she had stumbled along the broken lane, falling again and again, crying without realizing it, until her legs gave out and she huddled into the corner of a wall, where someone’s garden had once held bright flowers. The noise rose and fell, shadowy figures moving through the smoke, some wearing one color and some another. Most, she knew later, must have been the terrified passengers on the train; some were rebels. Later—later they all wore the same uniform, the uniform she knew, the one her father and uncles wore.

But she didn’t remember. She couldn’t remember, not all of it. She had remembered, and they’d said it was dreams.

“It’d have been better, I always thought, if they’d told you,” Sebastian said. “At least when you got old enough. Bein’ as the man was dead, and couldn’t hurt anyone again, least of all you.”

She did not want to hear this. She did not want to remember this . . . no, she could not. Fever dreams, she thought. Only fever dreams.

“Bad enough for it to happen at all, no matter who did it. The rape of a child—sickening. But to have it one of ours—”

She fixed on the one thing she could stand to know. “I . . . didn’t know he was dead.”

“Well, your father couldn’t tell you that without bringing up the rest of it, could he? He hoped you’d forget the whole thing . . . or think it was just a fever dream.”

He’d said it was a fever dream; he’d said it was over now, that she’d always be safe . . . he’d said he wasn’t angry at her. Yet his anger had hovered around her, a vast cloud, dangerous, blinding her mind as the smoke had blinded her eyes.

“You’re . . . sure?”

“That the bastard died? Oh yes . . . I have no doubt at all.”

The invisible mechanisms whirled, paused, slid into place with a final inaudible crunch. “You killed him?”

“It was that or your father’s career. Officers can’t just kill their men, even animals who rape children. And to wait, to charge him—that’d have brought you into it, and none of us wanted that. Better for me to do it, and take my lumps . . . not that there was anything worse than a stiff chewing out, at the end of it. Mitigating circumstances.”

Or extenuating . . . her mind dove eagerly into that momentary tangle, reminding her that extenuation and mitigation were, although similar, applied to different ends of the judicial process, as it were.

“I’m glad to know that,” Esmay said, for something to say.

“I always said you should be told,” he said. Then he looked embarrassed. “Not that I talked about it, you understand. I said it to myself, I mean. It was no use arguing with your father. And after all, you were his daughter.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Esmay said. She was finding it hard to pay attention; she felt the room drifting slowly away, on a slow spiral to the left.

“And you’re sure you got it all sorted out, all but him being dead, I mean? They helped you in the R.S.S.?”

Esmay tried to drag her mind back to the topic, from which it wanted to shy away. “I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No . . . I was real surprised, you know, when you wanted to go off-planet and join them. Figured you’d had enough combat for any one life . . . but I guess it’s your blood coming out, eh?”

How was she going to get rid of him, politely and discreetly? She could hardly tell him to go away, she had a headache. Suizas did not treat guests that way. But she needed—how she needed—some hours alone.

“Esmaya?” Esmay looked up. Her half-brother Germond grinned shyly at her. “Father said would you come to the conservatory, please?” He turned to Coron. “If you can excuse her, sir?”

“Of course. It’s your family’s turn now—Esmaya, thank you for your time.” He bowed, very formal again at the end, and withdrew.

Esmay turned to Germond, now fifteen, all ears and nose and big feet. “What—did Father want?”

“He’s in the conservatory with Uncle Berthol . . . he said you’d be getting tired of listening to old soldiers’ tales, for one thing, and for another he wanted to ask you more about Fleet.”

Her mouth was dry; she could not think. “Tell him . . . tell him Seb’s gone, and I’ll be out in a few minutes. I’ve gone upstairs to . . . to freshen up.” For once, the impenetrable assumptions of Altiplano society worked in her favor. No male would question her need to be alone for a few minutes with an array of plumbing fixtures. Nor would they rush her.