Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Twenty-Two

Staging Area 3

Kolakolvia

Illarion Glazkov

The rain continued to fall for weeks. The nearby river overflowed its banks and flooding became a real problem in the staging area. The hospital tents were full of infantrymen with rotting toes. Illarion knew that this much moisture this far into the season would really mess up the local farmers’ planting schedule, which would make for a poor harvest later. But he was no longer a farmer, he was a soldier. So in a way he was thankful for the miserable drizzle because as long as it fell neither side showed any interest in resuming the fight.

The days were spent maintaining or training in their Objects, but Spartok was a good leader, and since the Wall could be called back to the trenches at a moment’s notice, he made them do just enough work to keep sharp, but not so much that it wore them down. Spartok liked to say that a bored soldier was a disaster waiting to happen. Unlike some of the other officers he heard about, where the soldiers had to pretend to be busy to avoid getting pointless orders like digging holes just to fill them back up, Spartok didn’t give his men pointless tasks. Spartok despised what he called busy work.

Illarion enjoyed his crew. Ivan Dostoy was a terrible, yet enthusiastic, singer. Sebastian Wallen actually wanted to be a painter when the war was over, not that he knew how, but his amateur charcoal drawings—both tasteful landscapes and lewd figure art—on the barrack’s walls were easily better than the propaganda posters in Cobetsnya. Lourens Pavlovich volunteered to teach wrestling to any of the Wall who were interested. Which of course turned into a nonstop line of challengers wanting to see who was the toughest, and then Lourens using his superior technical knowledge to calmly tie them into knots. Which of course made a great entertainment for the rest of the platoon.

Every day was the same, except for Sundays, when a chaplain from the Tsarist Communion would come by to give them a sermon about how God had blessed them to be born into the greatest empire in history and given them a wise and benevolent Tsar—who only wanted the best for his people—to lead them. Afterwards Commissar Bosko would give a speech that was basically the same thing, only with less religious trappings.

The Sisters were rarely mentioned during the priest’s sermon, even though everyone knew the Witch protected Kolakolvia from the dark things that had lived here before. Illarion didn’t question this absence aloud, because she’d ordered him to be a soldier, not a prophet.

Illarion mostly spent his evenings with Natalya, learning to read from the Kommandant’s book. The nights Spartok gave them a pass to go into the staging area were spent in Rolf’s bar, which the Wall had claimed as their favorite along this section of the front. Chankov liked to drag Illarion with him, and they were often joined by Lourens, Svetlana, and Igor, his old crew from their training days. Lourens and Svetlana had become virtually inseparable since then.

There were very strict rules against soldiers having relations, but since there were some women in the army, it happened all the time. They just had to keep it hidden from the commissars. When every family or village was required to provide a certain number of conscripts, it was inevitable many women would get drafted too. Svetlana was here filling in for her sickly brother. But young women of childbearing years like her were rare, because the Tsar needed them home, raising children for the next generation of war. More common were older women like Patches, who had already raised her sons, only to have them all drafted and then killed at the front, or Marya of Crew 141, who had never been able to have children of her own, but who had volunteered seeking vengeance after her husband had been burned alive by Almacian saboteurs.

Regardless, Illarion was just glad Lourens and Svetlana seemed happy together. Happiness was a rare thing here.

Natalya was a woman, but she was different than the others. She wasn’t a Kolakolvian. This wasn’t her peoples’ war. Her situation made her more prisoner than soldier. She was here because the Tsar had need of her gifts, and though Illarion had never seen her work, and Natalya didn’t like to talk about it, he had heard enough tales of the Rolmani scouts hunting Almacians through the dark to believe those stories were real.

The Wall received far more passes to distribute than the poor infantry who rarely got to leave their holes. Spartok had granted leave to a few crews for the afternoon, so they had walked to Rolf’s bar. Illarion had already apologized and paid for the furniture he had broken and been welcomed back. Natalya had found him there, and immediately snagged him by the elbow and dragged him to a table in the back corner, while his crewmates had snickered and made crass jokes about his secret Rolmani love affair. Natalya had just given them a rude gesture which had made them laugh.

Once they had some privacy, Natalya pulled out a leather bag and emptied the contents onto the table between them. There were at least a dozen pairs of spectacles.

“There’s so many.”

“Those other ones I gave you make your eyes hurt, and that won’t do. Luckily, I’m not the only scavenger around. We’ve all got a stash hidden. I just had to do some trading with the others to get all these.”

Illarion was appreciative of the effort. This was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him. Yet Natalya was so immersed in the lore of her people, that she seemed to enjoy the idea of scavenging shiny things on a raven’s behalf.

“Are you ready for this? If you like the glass but the frames are broken, that’s fine, because I know a gunsmith who owes me for bringing him one of the new Almacian rifles. He can fix anything.”

He looked down at the pile. “Where do we start?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just put one on. If it’s worse make a pile on the left. If it’s better, pile it to the right. Then we’ll narrow it down. Go ahead.”

Illarion picked them each up one by one and tried them on. Most made things even worse, especially close up. From across the room Wallen saw what they were doing, and nudged Dostoy, so his crewmates could laugh at him.

“You look like the commissar, Glazkov!”

“This is so I can finally truly see the faces of my comrades.” He made a big show of looking their way through the glasses, then he quickly snatched them off. “Ugh. Hideous. Better to be blind!”

His crew laughed and went back to their drinks. As much as he’d come to love the men he fought and bled with, they couldn’t understand how much being able to see well meant to him, and he eagerly went back to trying out the spectacles. When Illarion had finished testing them all, he was left with four worthy of reconsideration.

“That’s it.”

“Good. Give me moment.” She stood and went to the bar to speak with Rolf, and then she came back with a scrap of paper and a piece of charcoal. She drew on the paper, then went to the opposite side of the bar and held it up. “Tell me which of them most clearly helps you see what I wrote here.”

He put on the first pair but couldn’t quite make out the squiggles. When he got to the last, the lines came into focus clearly. It was his name. Everything was clear. The letters, the paper. Natalya.

And for the first time he realized just how truly beautiful she was.

“Perfect.”

Natalya smiled and came back. She set the paper down in front of him. “You remember what this says, right?”

“It’s my name.” He reached out, took the piece of charcoal from her, and wrote his name under the one she had written. It didn’t look nearly as nice, but he understood what it meant.

“You should keep that,” she said. “It’s not every day you learn to write your own name and can see better than ever before. That’s a good day.”

“I think I will.” Illarion folded the scrap of paper and put it in his pocket.

Natalya collected all the other pairs of spectacles, returning them to the leather bag. “I’m not sure how you’re going to wear those inside your Object, though. Won’t the metal wire burn your skin?”

“I won’ t need them in there. I’ll just get a little bag to keep them safe while I’m inside.”

“Why wouldn’t you need them in the suit? Wouldn’t being able to see be even more important in there? I mean, you’re shooting a giant cannon.”

Normally he didn’t like to talk about the things that he could see and hear, that nobody else seemed to be able to, but this was Natalya. “Through the Object’s eyes, I can see just fine. It’s even better than I can with these.” He gently tapped the strange new thing riding on his nose. “It makes me wonder, if I’d had these back on my first day of being a recruit, if I could have read what they showed all of us on that scroll.”

“What scroll?”

“It was one of the tests while they were sorting the recruits and figuring where to send us. There was something written on this scroll that glowed, and our trainer asked if we could read it, but I couldn’t make out what it was so I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until I got around the Objects that I saw that kind of light again.”

“Oh . . . ” Natalya suddenly got a worried look on her face, and her eyes darted side to side taking in the room. “It makes sense.”

“What’s wrong?”

“How about we head back to my camp?” Her voice was far louder than usual. Illarion didn’t understand what was going on, but he nodded his agreement and stood up from the table when she did.

“Way to go, Glazkov,” Dostoy shouted. Illarion gave them an embarrassed wave as Natalya dragged him out the door. “You’ll make an honest Kolak woman out of that wild Rolmani yet.”

“Or do we want the wild Rolmani to make our Glazkov less uptight?” Wallen asked, then joined in the chorus of good-natured laughter that followed Illarion and Natalya outside.

The rain outside was coming down harder than ever. Illarion quickly learned that the downside of spectacles was that water droplets collected on them and made a mess of things. Natalya led him away from the bar into a nearby alley. She stepped in close.

“Illarion, listen carefully. Don’t talk about the weird things you can see and hear anymore. At least not where others could be listening.”

He could barely hear her over the pounding of the rain. “I just—”

“That scroll was a test, but not the kind of test you’re thinking. That was a Prajan rune. They show one to all the conscripts, looking for wizards. People who can do real magic are incredibly rare. Most fail because that realm is invisible to them. You only failed because you couldn’t see anything well, this world or the other.”

“What? That’s impossible.”

“By the Tsar’s decree, any magi they find is taken directly to the Directorate to be judged. The Chancellor is the only full-fledged magi in the whole empire. Every single conscript I’ve ever heard about who got picked out like that ended up being put to death as a threat to state security. They’re too dangerous to let live otherwise.”

“But I’m no magi.”

“You need to understand. I think they already suspect it. The Oprichniks, Directorate S is interested in you. They want to know everything about you, and what you’ve seen and heard. At least Kristoph Vals does.”

Illarion swore. He’d met the secret policeman Natalya worked for. “I knew he was being too friendly.”

“And he knows we’re close.”

“How would he . . . ” He looked down into Natalya’s eyes and understood. “He ordered you to stay close to me.”

She nodded. “Yes, but everything we’ve done—the drinks, the reading, all our talks—I would have done it without any interference from Vals. The bones said our fates are tied together, Illarion. You . . . you are one of the only people I trust. Anywhere.”

It was a lot to take in so suddenly. “Have you been reporting to Vals about me this whole time? What have you said?”

“Nothing of importance. Just enough to keep him off my back. I left out anything that seemed different, like that monsters attacked your village, or you claiming to have met the Witch. That you can see the shield around your Object. I didn’t pass any of that on. I don’t know what Vals would do with that. To him, information is power, and by not giving it to him, I keep him from having more power over us than he already has. If he knew what you really are—”

“I’m just a cowardly draft dodger from a village the empire forgot.” It was only after he’d come to Cobetsnya that he’d heard stories about powerful magi and their incredible feats, most of which were about the evil Prajans and their mighty golems, and the lone Kolakolvian magi, the fearsome Chancellor Firsch, who had brought their Objects to life. Most of it had sounded like propaganda.

“Just off what you’ve said yourself, if this was the old days the Oprichniks would tie you to a stake and burn you. If I were to ask any other soldier, whether trencher, Wall, or scout, if they can hear and see what you do, none of them would. It’s only Illarion Glazkov who sees light that stops bullets and whose armor whispers to him. I thought that was maybe because your run-in with the Baba Yaga had given you some kind of sight, but you talking about the scroll test puts it all together. You are, or at least could be, a magi. Vals will figure it out too eventually, if he hasn’t already. He has his fingers everywhere. Spies everywhere.”

“Like you,” he said, with more emotion than he intended.

“Exactly!” she snapped back.

Illarion took a deep breath to calm himself. What she was saying made sense. Why else would the Baba Yaga have wasted time saving his miserable life? “What do I do then?”

“Don’t draw attention to yourself. That’s never a good thing in the Tsar’s army anyway. And don’t tell anyone about what you see. If you need to know if something is normal or not, come to me. I’ll figure it out.”

“I don’t even know if I can trust you anymore, and now you want me to trust only you? You roll your bones and read your cards and that’s supposed to mean your gods want you to help me, but if it meant freedom for you and your family, why wouldn’t you betray me to Vals?”

“I’d never!”

“Why not?” he shouted back.

“Because I think I’m in love with you!” And Natalya must have surprised herself, because she clapped her hand over her mouth, but the words had already escaped.

Illarion stood there, wet, cold, in the miserable downpour, too surprised to respond.

For the first time in days, the rain stopped. The sudden silence was disconcerting. It felt like anyone could be listening. He half expected to see Kristoph Vals and the cursed monstrosity that followed him around appear at the mouth of the alley, to put him in chains and drag him off to the Chancellor’s dungeons.

Natalya suddenly looked up at the sky, her expression growing more concerned. She walked back out into the street, leaving Illarion by himself. He followed after her, wiping his new spectacles on his damp shirt, before putting them back on. Holes appeared in the clouds, and through them, for the first time, he saw the stars with clarity. They were incredible.

“Illarion . . . I . . . ”

He looked toward her, heart aching. Not knowing what to say, as the ghost of his dead fiancée judged him weak.

A siren began to wail. It was coming from the front. That sound meant the Almacians were on the move. Then came the thunder of artillery.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Wait.”

“There’s no time to talk about—”

“Not that,” Natalya said. “The guns. The Almacians have a new weapon deliverable by cannon shell. A gas. Deadly, like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It peels your skin off.”

“Why didn’t you say—never mind.” The noise was continuing. His crew needed him. “Be careful.”

Illarion could almost hear the Baba Yaga laughing as he ran back to his camp.



Back | Next
Framed