Lieutenant Sperry moved on to speak to Baldwin, despite the Commander’s slightly discouraging response to her theory.

  She found Baldwin lazing about, sitting on his bag of gear and smoking a pipe.

  “Hello Baldwin,” she said. “Congratulations on your heroism earlier.”

  “Oh, well, it’s all in a day’s work in the life of a soldier,” he said with false modesty.

  “Be that as it may, I’m certain Tybalt is grateful,” she said.

  “As he should be,” Baldwin agreed heartily. “As he should be. It was a near thing for the poor lad—this close to death.” He held his thumb and forefinger close together as he spoke.

  “Hm. I had noticed that Tybalt was in a slightly larger shirt than usual,” Sperry said. Then she waited. Baldwin was a talkative type, so she hoped he might volunteer information.

  There was silence for a moment.

  Then Baldwin said, “Oh, was he?”

  “Your shirt looks a little tighter than usual, too,” she observed. Up close, she could see Baldwin’s small beer belly more clearly than she recalled previously.

  “Are you trying to imply that we switched shirts at some point?” Baldwin asked indignantly. “Why? Why would we do that?”

  She shrugged. That’s the part I’ve been trying to figure out.

  “Well, we didn’t,” Baldwin said in an irritable tone. “And thank you for making me feel fat.”

  “Oh, I know you don’t have any feelings to injure, Baldwin,” Sperry replied instantly.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “Well, confirm with Soldier Tybalt if you want, and stop trying to grill me, Investigator Sperry. Get that sweet ass out of here.”

  He looked as if he wanted to ogle her as she walked away, so Sperry made certain not to turn her back on him as she moved off. She didn’t show her disgust until her face was out of his field of view, too. That middle-aged man had a wife and child somewhere back in the Kingdom proper. Even if he hadn’t, he was something like twice her age—and she thought Commander Volusia had made it clear to everyone in the squad that those sorts of remarks were unacceptable.

  Just as Baldwin had suggested, she went to find Tybalt next.

  —

  Tybalt stared at the hut where the cook was preparing dinner, his eyes cold and hard.

  He was considering the best moment to contaminate the evening meal with his pathogen and begin weakening the squad. Then he received a telepathic missive from Baldwin.

  Master, Lieutenant Sperry is coming your way, I think, Baldwin sent in an uncertain tone. She noticed the switch in our gambesons. I denied it, so you know—wait, um, can you hear this?

  Well done in figuring out how to push on our link from the other side, Baldwin! Tybalt sent back instantly. Thank you for the warning. Make sure you keep it up with anything else I should know.

  He walked away from his position across from the meal preparation hut, trying to distance himself so that Lieutenant Sperry—who was apparently already suspicious of him and Baldwin—would not connect him with the upcoming bout of illness in the camp.

  She’s the only person in this squad besides me with a class, he thought. If she suspects me, she’s the biggest threat possible… But if I can manipulate her, I’m much safer than I thought I was.

  When Sperry finally approached, he was lying on his back between two of the other huts, reading a book in the dying light—not one of his class-related books, of course, but a collection of myths called The Fish and the Fiddler that he had picked up in the last town they stopped at before the Salt Waste. Tybalt didn’t normally read in camp, because it tended to get him negative attention from the other soldiers, who were mostly illiterate.

  Now that he saw them as a bunch of dead men walking, however, it was a fine way to occupy himself and make it appear as if he wasn’t waiting for an opportunity to contaminate the food supply.

  Sperry stepped in to block Tybalt’s light, and he obligingly lowered his book and shaded his eyes to get a good look at her, as if he did not know who it was that stood over him.

  “Lieutenant,” he said after a moment.

  “Specialist Tybalt,” she replied, nodding. They hadn’t interacted much since she joined the squad. He didn’t have a strong opinion about her—other than the fact that he knew that as a class-holding mage, she was theoretically more powerful than anyone else in the squad, and that she must have pissed off a superior officer to be transferred to their dead-end group.

  “Is there something I can do for you?” he asked, sitting up and setting his book down on the sand beside him.

  Technically he should have called her “ma’am,” but as with Volusia, he wasn’t going to bother unless she insisted on it. It was a strange formality with a woman the same age as him, anyway.

  “I came to check your wounds,” she said, avoiding eye contact.

  She must not lie often, Tybalt thought. She’s not very good at it yet.

  “Oh?” Tybalt asked, adding a flirtatious note to his voice. “You know the medic already looked at me.”

  “Still,” she said, continuing to look away. “It’s my job to… take an interest.”

  Wordlessly, he took his gambeson off and dropped it on the sand beside him and sat upright, letting his posture emphasize muscle and the long, firm lines of his body. He hadn’t had the opportunity to examine himself in a mirror or pool of water recently, but he thought his musculature was still decent-looking. He had never been prone to fat.

  “Well, do you see anything interesting, Lieutenant?” he asked, voice low. There was a smile in his tone, but it wasn’t kind.

  To his amusement, Lieutenant Sperry reddened and looked away for a moment before shaking her head and crouching down beside him with a stern expression.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  He chuckled.

  She actually blushed. How innocent…

  “You’re one of the only men here who hasn’t tried to proposition me before, Specialist,” she said, trying to make her voice gruffer than it naturally was. “If I didn’t know better, from the way you’re communicating now, I would think you were trying to hide something.”

  The Lieutenant would apparently not be dissuaded in her task by a little embarrassment.

  Tybalt watched her eyes as they quickly, efficiently, traced the freshly healed stab wounds on his abdomen. To make the story he and Baldwin presented seem authentic, Tybalt had stabbed himself very shallowly with his dagger where the arrowheads would have struck him, attempting to emulate the appearance of an arrow entrance wound. The wounds had healed naturally while he and Baldwin walked back.

  As Sperry examined him, her mouth was tight, her jaw locked. Her expression was determined, calculating, and just a little curious. Her knee brushed his for a couple of seconds before she pulled slightly back.

  He thought that her gaze was lingering just a bit too long on his bare chest.

  But maybe Tybalt was seeing what he wanted to see.

  He broke the silence.

  “You know, until you ordered me out of my shirt, I thought that you preferred the company of women,” he said. “Guess I was wrong.”

  Her mouth opened in a look of outraged shock for a moment, before Tybalt laughed.

  “I’m only kidding,” he added. “Why so shocked, though?”

  “Besides the fact that it’s not true, what you described is also forbidden by law,” Sperry said tightly. “Just like what the Commander… accused you and Baldwin of doing.”

  “Well, I knew he was joking, too,” Tybalt said. “And there are many forbidden things that are worth trying once. You should visit the Canal City of Verma. Everything that’s forbidden without good reason is permitted there. You’d see many things that are shocking—and beautiful.”

  Sperry didn’t respond to that for a few seconds, and Tybalt watched her carefully. Her eyes were on his discarded gambeson now, apparently trying to figure out by sight whether it was larger than the one he normally wore.

  “Do you want to know the real reason?” he asked.

  “What?” she said.

  “The real reason I’ve never propositioned you,” he said. “Did you want to know why?”

  “I assumed it was just a slightly higher standard of decency in someone who was apparently raised with noble manners,” she said.

  “Oh, no, that’s not it,” Tybalt said, almost laughing. “I’m just as indecent as anyone in this squad.” He leaned in closer, enough that she could feel the heat of his chest. “No, it’s because you’re one of us, not some camp follower.”

  Her lips parted, just for a second. She had stopped herself just as she started to smile.

  If he had fully processed that in the moment, he might not have said what he did next.

  “And I heard what happened to Tarquin when he tried that,” Tybalt added.

  The Lieutenant’s face froze for a moment, then soured, and Tybalt could almost see the mood of the conversation change.

  I probably shouldn’t have said that, he thought. I meant to rattle her a little, and I think I alienated her completely. Why do I do that? Especially when she might be someone I could have won over, with time and effort? And she’s the strongest in the squad, thanks to her class…

  “Specialist Tybalt, I actually came over to ask you if you switched shirts with Soldier Baldwin,” she said curtly.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” he asked sweetly. “You already mentioned this idea of yours to the Commander, didn’t you?”

  Sperry looked surprised for a moment before she recovered herself.

  “He told you?” she asked.

  “No, you told me—and I guessed. You’re thick as thieves. That—guy—you really trust him.” He was unable to keep the contempt from his voice as he spoke of Commander Volusia.

  “He’s not so bad,” she protested, seemingly confused by this turn in the conversation.

  “Name one good quality of Volusia’s.”

  She shrugged. “He’s been decent to me. I don’t know what your issue with each other is. That’s not really what I wanted to—”

  “None of us are decent here,” Tybalt said incredulously. “You know you got assigned to the worst squad in the Army, right? This isn’t palace bodyguard duty or something honorable like defending the Southern Reach. They give us every dirty job.”

  “I wanted to get real experience in the field,” Sperry said carefully, “not mediated experience managed by a handler.”

  So that’s it.

  “You’re not trying to make a career in the military, are you?” he asked in a slightly mocking tone.

  Her jaw tightened, and she began to look at Tybalt as if she wanted to choke him.

  “Really?” Tybalt continued. “Gods, why? Is your family in such a poor condition they couldn’t find something better for you? Unless you just enjoy killing…”

  There were many plush government positions that someone with Lieutenant Sperry’s class and probable social rank might occupy. Since classes tended to run in families, it was likely she was either nobility or the daughter of some well off merchant or military family.

  “You’re crossing a line, Specialist,” she said, her tone one of warning. And despite the formal power she held over him, she could not keep a touch of hurt out of her voice. “Casting aspersions on my character.”

  “Do you not know what this squad does? I’m genuinely confused.”

  “Border patrol right now,” Sperry replied. “Extermination of monsters like ogres. Work that needs doing, dirty though it may be.”

  She can’t actually be this naive. Or is it possible she was very sheltered with her family—guessing now she’s noble, not just a wealthy merchant’s daughter or something—and somehow the Commander has managed to completely shield her from things since she joined?

  As he thought about it, Tybalt recalled that Sperry had never been at the front alongside the men when they were performing atrocities. Today, she had been at the other side of the carnage, lighting the village on fire. It was usually like that. Tybalt had only seen her kill actual monsters, never sapient beings. He had thought of it as her sparing herself from getting her hands dirty, but her positioning wasn’t entirely up to her. Perhaps he should reframe it as, Volusia always found somewhere away for her to be when it was time for a massacre.

  Why would Volusia even bother to keep her away from the reality of what the squad does? Part of an effort to control her somehow? To help him seduce her in the future? Or does he feel guilty over what we’ve done? Ashamed? Does he think she’s meant to report on us later? Wait, is she? The Grand Duke’s people wouldn’t use someone as young and inexperienced as her for that… or maybe they would. Volusia isn’t actually an idiot. He’s more experienced than me. Maybe he’s on guard for that kind of monitoring.

  Whatever the reasons behind it, this state of affairs created a potential rift that Tybalt might exploit. He would have noticed it before, but Sperry did not talk to the enlisted much. She was one of the only squad members more socially isolated than Tybalt.

  “What do you think happened this morning?” he asked. “In terms of casualties?”

  “We didn’t have any…?”

  “Not us,” Tybalt said bluntly. “The village.”

  To his continued wonder, the Lieutenant actually looked a bit guilty as she spoke her response. “I guess… my flames probably killed a few people. I did get a level from burning the village, so… But we were evacuating them, weren’t we? That’s what the rest of the squad was doing. The whole point was to clear it, avoid unnecessary casualties. Most of them will have survived and become nomads again. I assume you saw them leave. You were on the side of the village the flames reached last, right?”

  Tybalt filed away the fact that Sperry had gained a level from the village—hopefully meaning that she wasn’t very high level in her class yet.

  “Wrong.” He didn’t raise his voice. He leaned in, words rolling out slowly, even a bit cruelly. “It wasn’t a forced evacuation. That’s just the official policy. We massacred the whole village. Deliberately. Not clean, not fast. Not from a distance. Some of the men got into some rape or trophy taking—I’m at least above that, I think—but killing was the main order of the day. Burning the village is done, I assume, so that no other wanderers can take up residence later.”