The Heretic

know if you would call it an innovation, but I want it nonetheless, and I’ll have it.

And what is that? Did he detect a trace of worry in Center’s normal utter neutrality of speech?

Mahaut, he said. I want her. I want the woman. If she’ll have me.

Center’s silence and Raj’s good-hearted, throaty laughter accompanied him all the way to the distant watering hole.

7

It was when they were a day out from the Valley’s edge that Center reported his conclusion: an invasion of Treville would come on the night of the next new three-moon evening.

The expedition has been a success. I have factored observed numbers, states of preparedness, known Blaskoye tactics, and psychodynamic modeling using our encounter with the clan leadership. They are coming at what they will view as the first opportunity. This will be the first night when all three moons are below the horizon. There are only three nights a year when this is the case in Duisberg’s northern hemisphere.

So you won’t have to kill me and start all over because I went for the child, Abel thought. It was not a question, but a factual statement. Meeting Rostov face-to-face was essential to your calculations.

That proved to be correct, Center replied, a little too quickly and coldly for Abel’s liking. Your gamble was effective.

Don’t fight it, lad, laughed Raj. It’s good to be careful, but if you can’t be careful, it’s even better to be lucky.

The next day they encountered the first outlying Scout picket. They had been stationed in position for two eight-days, and apart from operational wigwag had no news to report. For the past days, it had slowly dawned on Abel that they were no longer being pursued. Kruso and a half squad had doubled back to check, and this had proved true. Nevertheless, he ordered the outpost corporal to send out long pickets with good mirrors and be watchful.

Abel and the Scouts rode on.

Another day, and they were at the Escarpment’s edge. Another half day and they rode into Hestinga. It was midday.

He’d thought about bringing the girl to her relatives, delivering her in triumph on a washed and festooned dont, but he’d known at the time it was merely a fantasy. Lilleheim was too far out of the way. Who would take the Remlap boy was more problematic, and Abel was on the verge of ordering a man to feed and clothe him, and to give him a bunk among the cadets, when Weldletter stepped up and volunteered to take the boy in at his officer’s billet. The mapmaker had taken a liking to the child, and, using Kruso for a translator, had spoken gently in his dry, exacting voice to the Remlap boy about the time he’d spent with the boy’s father. These talks seemed to calm the boy on nights when he could be heard crying softly in his meager bedroll-an extra saddle blanket they had converted for the purpose-or at least got the crying to stop.

So it was the girl who proved more of an immediate problem after all.

She did not want to physically let go of Abel, much less leave him, when they arrived in the headquarters yard.

“You have to let me go to the commander,” he told her. “It’s my duty. It’s why I was sent. To bring back a report.”

She looked up at him wordlessly-she had probably spoken no more than five or six words in the six days they had travelled together-and held tightly to his tunic lapel.

As if to say: “I am the report,” he thought to himself.

“I cannot bring you inside,” he said. He looked around, but his men were busy taking care of their donts. He’d handed his own over to Maday to feed, water, and groom.

In the end, he simply let her tag along close at his heels. The others made not to notice her. Even Lieutenant Courtemanche, his father’s adjunct and the keeper of the outer office gate, only glanced down at the girl, said nothing, and saluted Abel.

“The commander will see you now, Captain,” he said.

Captain? Abel thought. But he was too tired to correct the man, and too tired to wonder why someone who was normally an extremely meticulous sort when it came to military matters would slip up on his rank.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. When he stepped into the office, his father looked up from his table full of scrolls and said, “Sharplett is dead. You are now Captain and Regimental Commander of Scouts.”

Abel stiffened to attention. Sharplett.

Stern taskmaster, ass-kicker, and finally a kindly, if grumpy, uncle to me, Abel thought. “Yes, sir,” Abel said. “How, if I may ask?”

“A raid ten days ago,” said Joab. “An undermanned patrol, near to the Escarpment. All massacred. He seems to have been targeted. They hung him by his own-”

Joab glanced down, seemed to see the girl for the first time.

“He was killed,” he finished.

“You should give it to Colefax,” Abel said. “He has seniority.”

“No,” Joab said. “You.”

Then Joab stood up and smiled at the little girl. “You are Loreilei Jacobson, I presume?” he said. He came around the desk and bent down on his haunches so he was eye to eye with the girl. Abel saw a frown flicker across his face when he noticed the slave scar, but it did not displace his smile, which was genuine. “It is Lorielei, isn’t it?”

The girl stared back at him, blinked twice, then replied, as if she were just discovering the fact for herself in the speaking of it, “My name is Lorielei. Yes.”

Then Joab looked up and shook his head at Abel. “I made it worse, didn’t I? Trying to get you away from that woman?”

“I didn’t do it for that,” Abel said.

“I’m sure you believe you did not,” said Joab. He turned back to Loreilei. “Your mother has missed you. She will be very glad to see you. Very, very glad. Do you want to see her?”

The girl nodded.

“Ah!” A cry from the door. Abel turned. A woman in a diaphanous green robe was standing there. The kohl around her eyes was running in black traces down her cheeks. “My baby, my baby,” Adele Jacobson whispered. She hesitated for a moment, as if to be sure she was stepping into a room and not into a beguiling and empty dream, but then she ran the three paces from the door to the girl and took the child in her arms. “Loreilei.”

The girl said nothing, but after a moment, she too was crying, letting her mother hold her, envelop her.

“How did you-”

“Wigwag from the outpost,” said Joab. “I sent for her immediately. We couldn’t have her around here, of course, so she was waiting in the officer’s mess. I imagine Courtemanche sent for her as soon as you came in.”

“Thank you, Father,” Abel said.

“Yes,” he said. He watched the mother and daughter reunion a bit longer. “Lilleheim will have some good news. They sorely need it. As will the Jacobsons.”

The woman, Adele Jacobson-she was Edgar’s sister, and Loreilei was his niece-was already ushering the child toward the door. “You will have a bath, and your room, I told them not to, never to change it…oh, it’s just like it was. And we’ll see to your cut.” She looked at the slavery scar. “I think we can, yes, it should be possible with a little powder to…oh, never mind, darling, that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that you’re back. Let’s go to the