«That is the one, Sergeant,» Sorry said, beside him.
«Are you sure?»
«Yes, I'm sure.»
Whiskeyjack watched the man winding through the crowd. «What's so important about him?» he asked.
«I admit,» Sorry replied, «to some uncertainty as to his significance. But he is vital, Sergeant.»
Whiskeyjack chewed his lip, then turned to the wagon bed where a city map had been laid flat, its corners anchored down by chunks of rock. «Who lives in that estate?»
«A man named Baruk,» Sorry answered. «An alchemist.»
He scowled. How did she know that? «Are you saying that fat little man is this Baruk?»
«No. He works for the alchemist. Not a servant. A spy, perhaps. His skills involve thievery, and he possesses: talent.»
Whiskeyjack looked up. «A Seer?»
For some reason Sorry winced. The sergeant watched, bemused, as Sorry's face paled. Damn, he wondered, what on earth is going on with this girl?
«I believe so,» she said her voice trembling.
Whiskeyjack straightened. «All right. Follow him.
She nodded shakily, then slipped into the crowd.
The sergeant rested his back against the wagon's side-wall. His expression soured as he studied his squad. Trotts was swinging his pick as if on a battlefield. Stones flew everywhere. Passers-by ducked, and cursed when ducking failed. Hedge and Fiddler crouched behind a wheelbarrow, flinching each time the Barghast's pick struck the street. Mallet stood a short distance away, directing pedestrians to the other pavement.
He no longer bellowed at the people, having lost his voice arguing with an old man with a donkey wobbling under an enormous basket of firewood. The bundles now lay scattered across the street-the old man and the donkey nowhere to be seen-providing an effective barrier to wheeled vehicles.
All in all, WhiskeyJack concluded, everyone with him had assumed the role of heat-crazed street worker with a facility he found oddly disturbing.
Hedge and Fiddler had acquired the wagon, loaded down with cobbles, less than an hour after their midnight landing at a public dock on the Lakefront. Exactly how this had been accomplished, Whiskeyjack was afraid to ask. But it suited their plans perfectly. Something nagged at the back of Whiskeyjack's mind but he dismissed it. He was a soldier and a soldier followed orders. When the time came, there would be chaos at every major intersection of streets in the city.
«Planting mines ain't gonna be easy,» Fiddler had pointed out, «so we do it right in front of everyone's nose. Road repair.»
Whiskeyjack shook his head. True to Fiddler's prediction, no one had yet questioned them. They continued ripping up streets and replacing the old cobbles with Moranth munitions encased in fire-hardened clay. Was everything going to be so easy?
His thoughts returned to Sorry. Not likely. Quick Ben and Kalam had at last convinced him that their half of the mission was better off without her. She'd tagged along with his crew, eyes never still, but otherwise offering little in the way of assistance. He admitted to feeling some relief that he'd sent her off on that fat man's trail.
But what had pulled a seventeen-year-old girl into the world of war?
He couldn't understand it-he couldn't get past her youthfulness, couldn't see beyond to the cold, murderous killer behind those dead eyes.
As much as he told his squad that she was as human as any of them, the doubts grew with every question about her that he could not answer. He knew almost nothing about her. The revelation that she could manage a fishing boat had come from seemingly nowhere. And here in Darujhistan she'd hardly acted like a girl raised in a fishing village. There was a natural poise about her, a measure of assurance more common to the higher, educated classes. No matter where she was, she carried herself as if she belonged there.
Did that sound like a seventeen-year-old girl? No, but it seemed to match Quick Ben's assertions, and that galled him. How else to match her with that icy-cold woman torturing prisoners outside Nathilog? He could look at her and part of him would say: «Young, not displeasing to the eye, a confidence that makes her magnetic.»
«While another part of his mind snapped shut. Young? He'd hear his own harsh, pained laugh. Oh, no, not this lass. She's old. She walked under a blood-red moon in the dawn of time, did this one. Her face is the face of all that cannot be fathomed, and she's looking you in the eye, Whiskeyjack, and you'll never know what she's thinking.
He could feel sweat drain down his face and neck. Nonsense. That part of his mind lost itself to its own terror. It took the unknown and fashioned, in blind desperation, a visage it could recognize. Despair, he told himself, always demands a direction, a focus. Find the direction and the despair goes away.
Of course, it wasn't that easy. The despair he felt had no shape. It was not just Sorry, not just this endless war, not even the treachery from within the Empire. He had nowhere to look for answers, and he was tired of asking questions.
When he had looked upon Sorry at Greydog, the source of his horror lay in the unveiling of what he was becoming: a killer stripped of remorse, armoured in the cold iron of inhumanity, freed from the necessity to ask questions, to seek answers, to fashion a reasonable life like an island in a sea of slaughter.
In the empty eyes of this child, he'd seen the withering of his own soul.
The reflection had been unblemished, with no imperfections to challenge the truth of what he saw.
The sweat running down his back beneath the jerkin felt hot against the chill that gripped him. Whiskeyjack lifted a trembling hand to his forehead. In the days and nights ahead, people would die by his command. He'd been thinking of that as the fruition of his careful, precise planning-success measured by the ratio of the enemy's dead to his own losses. The city-its busy, jostling multitudes unceasing in their lives small and large, cowardly and brave-no more than a gameboard, and the game played solely for the benefit of others. He'd made his plans ~$ it nqd~mS Qf himself was at stake. And yet his friends might die-there, he'd finally called them what they were-and the friends of others might die, and sons, daughters, parents. The roll-call of shattered lives seemed unending.
Whiskeyjack pressed his back against the side-wall in an effort to steady his reeling mind. Desperately, he lifted his gaze from the street. He saw a man at a window on the second floor of the estate. The man was watching them, and his hands were bright red.
Shaken, the sergeant looked away. He bit into the side of his mouth until he felt a sharp stab of pain, then tasted blood. Concentrate, he told himself. Step back from that chasm. Concentrate, or you'll die. And not just you, but also your squad. They trust you to get them out of this.
You've got to keep earning that trust. He drew a deep breath through his nostrils, then turned to one side and spat a mouthful of blood. He stared down at the red-slicked cobble. «There,» he hissed. «It's easy to look at it, isn't it?»
He heard footsteps and looked up to see Hedge and Fiddler arrive.
Both men wore troubled expressions.
«You all right, Sarge?» Fiddler asked quietly. Behind the two saboteurs, Mallet approached, his gaze calculating and fixed on Whiskeyjack's white, sweat-soaked face.
The sergeant grimaced. «We're behind schedule. How much longer?»
Their faces smeared with white dust and sweat, the two men looked at each other, then Hedge answered, «Three hours.»
«We decided on seven mines,» Fiddler said. «Four Sparkers, two Flamers and one Cusser.»
«Will that bring down some of these buildings?» Whiskeyjack asked, avoiding Mallet's eyes.
«Sure. No better way to block an intersection.» Fiddler grinned at his companion.
«You got one in particular you want dropped?» Hedge inquired.