Chương 136: Names for the Ones Who Didn't Make It Home

The rain had stopped sometime before dawn without anyone noticing it go. Ant noticed the mud instead, thick and sucking at every boot on the field, the kind that didn't dry so much as set, and under it the smell of turned earth and old blood gone thick in the wet, heavier than a normal battlefield's. He was ankle-deep in it beside a body he hadn't gotten a name for yet when Rowan's people started laying out the dead in rows. Not stacked. Rowan wouldn't have allowed stacked, not even here, not even with this many.

Each one got a strip of cloth over the face and enough space on either side that nobody had to touch a stranger to reach the next.

"Nessa," Raven said, low, when they reached her. She crouched, straightened the girl's arm where it had fallen wrong, and didn't say anything else for a while. Mahkir stood a few feet off, tail low, watching without moving closer, and Ant let him have the distance. Some things a person needed to look at without company.

"Corrin. Fane." Raven kept going down the row, naming them out loud the way Ant understood some units did, so the names existed somewhere other than a report.

"Both Hollis brothers. The other two I never learned before today, and I'm not putting that on their families in a letter. I'll find out their names before I write a single word home."

"I can help with that," Ant said.

"You can help by not making this about you needing to." Raven didn't say it unkindly. She said it plainly, once, and didn't repeat it.

"I'll get the names. Let me have this one." He let her have it. The rest of the field didn't work that way. He'd worn Grant's colors and taken Grant's orders to get inside this, and everything that happened once he'd dropped the disguise had happened because he'd chosen the moment to do it. Whatever came next here was his to answer for, not hers to hand back to him. He looked past her at the wider field: Marigolds dead in a separate row, further off, fewer hands working over them.

Eleven of Grant's people lay there. No one was left standing to bind or guard.

"One got clear," Andy said, arriving at his shoulder, Hexa's absence beside him still strange after a full day of the two of them fighting as one.

"Ran the second the numbers turned. Nobody chased him down."

"And the rest of them? The reinforcements, the Rares?"

"The heavier one's trainer didn't make it. I'd wager one of the Rares went down near the same time, though nobody's put a name to that one yet." Andy's eyes stayed on the tree line, watching it the way he watched most things, longer than the moment called for.

"The rest broke and ran once the numbers stopped favoring them. Sunclaw got its handler off this field alive, whatever else we can say about today." Grant's body lay apart from both rows, nobody quite willing to put him with his own people and nobody willing to put him with the enemy either. Ant looked at him for a moment, the sword still loose in one hand where it had fallen, the face gone slack in a way that made him look younger than he had standing, and found he had nothing to say to it. Not anger.

Not satisfaction. Just the flat fact of a man who'd chosen the sword over the offer and gotten exactly what that choice led to.

"Bury him separate," Ant said.

"Not the field. Somewhere that isn't unmarked, either. I don't know what he was to the people who sent him, but he was somebody's before he was ours to kill." Andy looked at him a moment without answering right away, then nodded once.

"I'll see it done." Priya, Marcus, and Ben stood together near what was left of the staging crates, close enough to each other that none of them wanted to be the one standing alone when the rest of the camp finally looked their way. Priya stood chin up, weight rocked back on her heels, the posture of someone braced for a fight rather than actually starting one. Marcus watched the ground. Ben watched everything, the way he always did, expression giving away exactly as little as it ever had.

"They're going to look at us like we're still wearing the wrong colours," Priya said, not quite to Ant, not quite to anyone.

"Even though we're not. Even though we haven't been since about the time you stopped being Ethan."

"I can stop what matters," Ant said.

"I lead this clan. Whatever anyone else thinks about how you got here, nobody's laying a hand on either of you without going through me first."

"Generous," Ben said, dry, not looking at him.

"It's what I've got." Marcus finally raised his head.

"We're not asking for more than that." Rebekah appeared at Ant's shoulder before he had to decide how to answer, bow slung, a smear of someone else's blood dried along her jaw that she hadn't noticed yet or hadn't bothered with.

"Column's forming up," she said.

"Wounded first, then the dead, then everyone left standing. You three—" she nodded at Priya, Marcus, Ben in turn, "—walk with us. Not behind. With us. It matters which one people see." Priya looked at her for a second too long, mouth open, still working out where to start.

"You're the one who was Beth."

"I'm the one who's Rebekah, same as he's Ant instead of Ethan. Took me weeks longer than it took you to work out you'd been fighting the wrong war." She said it without any particular weight in it, already turning to check the ties on her quiver, and Priya let out a short breath that was almost a laugh.

"Right. Okay. Column, wrong war, walking with instead of behind. I can hold that many facts at once." They moved out with the sun still low and weak behind grey cloud, the column longer and slower than the one that had marched out to this field the night before. Ant walked near the front, Mahkir close against his leg, and it took the better part of an hour before Mahkir spoke at all. She used to feed me dried meat, he said, quiet, not looking at anything in particular.

Pretended I hadn't noticed her doing it, every time. Never once admitted that was the point of it.

"I know." I didn't get there fast enough.

"I know that too." Ant kept his eyes on the road ahead, boots landing in ruts other feet had already worn into the mud.

"You want me to tell you it wasn't your fault?" No. A pause, longer than usual. I want you to walk next to me and not make me say anything else about it right now. He did that instead. Further back in the column, Ant could hear Raven's voice occasionally, flat and businesslike, giving Ray something to do with his hands, checking wraps, redistributing weight off Willa's litter, anything that kept motion in his fingers.

Ray answered in the same clipped register he used when he'd run out of numbers to shout, none of his usual noise left in him. HQ's gate came into view as the light was starting to go gold and long, the air outside the wall carrying woodsmoke from the evening cookfires already lit inside.

Thomas stood at the gatepost with a work crew already clearing space in the yard for the wounded, and behind him Ant caught sight of Rowan crossing at a near-run toward the litters, calling instructions to two of his apprentices before he'd even reached the first one. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Maren met the column just inside the gate, moving before it had fully stopped, and her eyes went to Priya, Marcus, and Ben before they went to Ant.

"You three, with me." Not unkind. Not a request either.

"Quarters near the east wall, someone posted outside. Not because anyone's decided you're guilty of anything, but because half this clan buried people this morning and the rest hasn't finished counting what it lost, and I'm not handing either of them a reason to do something we'll all regret before the dust settles. That's not punishment. That's the only fair version of tonight I can give you."

"That's fair," Priya said, and meant it.

"Good." Maren's eyes moved to Ant last, something in them he recognized and didn't have the energy to examine right now.

"You're about to fall over. Go sit down before you do it in front of everyone." The room off the entrance hall was fuller than Ant had seen it in months, the fireplace still cold, a faint char smell of a lamp wick trimmed too short hanging over everything. Kalsar, Maren, Raven, Thomas, Rowan pulled in for a few minutes between patients, Andy leaning against the far wall, Hexa's absence still present in how he stood.

Rebekah sat close enough to Ant that their shoulders nearly touched, and for once nobody in the room seemed inclined to comment on it.

"Tell it," Kalsar said, once the door was shut.

"Start to finish. We've had pieces for weeks. Tonight we hear the rest." Ant told them about the warehouse first, because Rebekah had found it before he'd found anything at all: the routing mark with no name attached, the building emptied out days before she'd gotten a look inside it, the drag marks toward the loading door.

"There was a second door," Rebekah said, picking it up when he paused.

"Rear of the building, half hidden behind a stack of pallets. I ran out of time before I could check it. I've thought about that door more than I've thought about almost anything else since."

"Could still be there," Raven said.

"Could be anything by now," Rebekah said.

"That's the problem with holding onto a lead for weeks instead of acting on it. I don't know what's behind it. I know somebody wanted badly enough that nobody would find out that they emptied the building rather than risk it." Ant took over from there: the staging yard, the crates of uniforms, Oath of Defiance's own colours folded flat and pressed, never worn, the same rough unmarked wood Rebekah had already described from the warehouse.

"Grant handed them to us himself," he said.

"Told us not to ask where they came from. I didn't get the sense he knew, not really. He took orders same as anyone else in that yard."

"From who?" Thomas asked.

"Someone Grant called 'above him.' We never got a name. Corlan recruited us, ran the intake, vouched for us up the chain, and even he didn't seem to be the one making the real decisions. Whatever this is, whoever's actually running it, neither of us got anywhere near them. Most of the people we fought alongside for weeks had no idea any of this was happening. Corlan didn't. The patrol partners didn't. Priya and Marcus didn't, not until this morning." Ant looked around the room, made sure that part landed.

"This wasn't Marigolds. This was a handful of people inside Marigolds, using the clan's name and our colours both, and keeping everyone else in the dark about it on purpose."

"That's worse, in a way," Maren said, quiet.

"If it were every one of them doing this, you'd at least know what you're fighting. A handful of people hiding inside one, using everyone else as cover, that's harder to find and easier to lose."

"The crates came from somewhere," Kalsar said.

"Wood like that, delivered on a schedule regular enough that somebody set up an empty warehouse just to receive it. That's not a handful of people improvising. That's supply lines. Money."

"We don't have a name for who's funding it," Ant said.

"Not yet. We have a warehouse we never finished searching, a door we never got through, and a pattern that goes back further than either of us first thought." He looked at Rebekah, then back at the room.

"Whoever's behind this isn't done. The crates were still coming when we left. Somebody's still sending them." The room went quiet for a moment, nobody resting in it, everyone still working through what they'd just heard.

"So we go back," Raven said.

"Finish what she started. Find the door."

"Not tonight," Rowan said, from the doorway, his voice quiet and tired after a full day of other people's wounds.

"Not for a few days, probably. We buried people this morning. We've got three new faces the clan doesn't trust yet and a leg Willa might still lose if the swelling doesn't turn the right way by morning. Whatever's behind that door has waited this long. It can wait until we've had proper rest and proper food." Nobody argued with him.

Ant looked around the room instead: Kalsar's arms crossed tight over his chest, Maren already reaching for a blank page, needing something in her hands to think properly, Raven's eyes gone distant, already mapping a route back to a warehouse two streets past an armory neither of them had ever actually walked together.

"Whoever they are," Ant said, "they think we don't know they exist yet. That's the only advantage we've got left. I'd rather not use it up before we know what it's worth." You're assuming they don't already know exactly how much you know, Mahkir said, quiet, only for him. After today, I don't think that assumption will hold much longer. Ant didn't have an answer for that one either. Kalsar was already on his feet, reaching for the door, and the set of his shoulders stopped Ant from letting him just walk out.

"I'll do it," Ant said. Kalsar looked back at him. He didn't ask what.

"Duncan," Ant said.

"He deserves to hear this from me, not secondhand from whoever's still awake enough to gossip about it." He found Duncan outside the infirmary, sitting on an overturned bucket with his elbows on his knees, staring at nothing in the dark. He didn't look up when Ant's shadow fell across him.

"Tell me," Duncan said.

"Whatever it is the rest of you were in there deciding without me." So Ant told him. Not the door Rebekah still hadn't gotten through, not the funder they had no name for yet — but the warehouse, the crates, the uniforms, and the three from Marigolds who'd walked home with the column because they'd chosen to stop fighting for the man who'd handed those uniforms out. Duncan didn't say anything for a long moment. Then he stood, slow, and started walking toward the east wall.

"Duncan."

"I'm not going to hurt them." His voice was steady, which was somehow worse than if it hadn't been.

"I just want to hear it from them. Not from you standing between us."

"You'll get that. Tonight, if that's what you need." Ant fell into step beside him rather than in front.

"I'm not stopping you. I'm coming with you." Duncan didn't answer, but he didn't tell him not to either. They found the three of them outside the east-wall quarters, the guard posted there stepping back half a pace when she saw who was walking up. Priya was on her feet before Duncan reached her, chin already up. She'd clearly been waiting for exactly this since the gate.

"You fought for Grant this morning," Duncan said. No shouting this time, just the words laid out flat.

"Wore the uniform. Took the orders. I know that now. What I don't know is why you stopped."

"Because I watched Ant take that uniform off a man he'd just killed and put his own gear on instead, and about four seconds later I understood exactly what side I'd actually been fighting for." Priya didn't flinch from it.

"I'm not going to tell you it was a hard decision once I had the truth in front of me. It wasn't. It should have been faster."

"My brother's dead because people wearing that same lie killed him under a patrol that wasn't real." Duncan's voice cracked once, and he pushed through it.

"You're telling me you didn't know that's what the uniform was for."

"I'm telling you I didn't know anything past what Grant told us, which was nothing." Marcus stepped up beside her, steady despite how rattled he'd looked on the field hours earlier.

"This was my first mission like this. Priya's too. Neither of us had anything to measure it against, nothing telling us something was wrong before it was already happening in front of us. I switched because I owed Ant a debt, not because I worked it out on my own. I'm not going to dress that up as something better than it was." Ben said nothing, holding Duncan's stare without flinching, until Duncan's attention finally reached him and stayed there, waiting.

"I don't have a debt or a good excuse," Ben said.

"I knew what this was from the moment Grant laid it out in the yard. Hated it from the start. I just didn't have the nerve to do anything about it on my own, not until I could see which way the fight was actually going. You're welcome to hate me for that. I'd have a hard time arguing you shouldn't."

Duncan looked at each of them in turn, and Ant stayed where he was, close enough to step in and not stepping in, because for the first time all day, this looked like a conversation that might go somewhere instead of a fight waiting to happen.

"Sam would've asked the same question I just did," Duncan said, finally.

"And he would've believed you. That's the part I can't get past yet."

"These three aren't who did this to him," Ant said.

"Grant isn't either, not really. He gave the orders, but I don't think even he understood who he was really taking them from, or why. Whoever's actually behind this kept him in the dark same as everyone under him. The people who built this, who sent men out dressed as us to kill our own, are still out there, and I intend to find every one of them." He held Duncan's eyes.

"That's where this goes next. Not here, not at three people who switched sides the moment they understood what they were part of. Get some rest. When we go after the ones who actually did this, I want you standing next to me for it." Duncan looked at him for a long moment, then nodded once and turned back toward the infirmary without another word. Ant let out a breath he hadn't noticed holding. Whoever had been filling that warehouse hadn't stopped just because Grant had.

Whatever came next, tonight wasn't the end of it, not for the warehouse and not for Duncan either.