Elodie joined the queue. The regiment’s medicaes were administering inoculations to all members of the retinue. The shots were a mix of anti-virals and counterbiotics, and emperythetical electrolytes, intended to protect them from foreign infection and cushion some of the traumas of shift travel. If you didn’t have a certificate from the medicaes proving you’d had your shots, you couldn’t embark. This time around, Elodie had been told, you also needed a bond.
They were all talking about it in the queue around her. An accompany bond was a document of disclaimer issued by the Munitorum that showed the bearer understood that he or she was transiting into a warzone. Regimental retinues usually followed their units to reserve line camps or waystations adjacent to the battlefield. For a bond to be necessary this time, it indicated that, for whatever reason, the retinue would be following the Tanith First directly into the line of danger. They would be at risk. Their safety could not be guaranteed. They had to sign a bond to say they understood and accepted this jeopardy, or they could elect to remain behind. The Munitorum hadn’t required the Tanith retinue to be bonded since Ouranberg in 771.
It was a hard choice, because remaining behind was a tricky option. For a spouse or a child, or for a tradesman whose livelihood had come to depend on a regiment, remaining behind meant risking never being able to reconnect with the unit. If you missed the shift, you might never get passage to wherever the regiment got posted next. You could spend months or even years trying to catch up with a unit on the move, like that ridiculous band had, so she understood.
For Elodie, it was no choice at all.
‘Are you quite well, Mamzel Dutana?’ the old doctor, Dorden, asked her when her turn came. He swabbed the crook of her elbow with rubbing alcohol while his orderly prepared a syringe.
‘I am, doctor. But there are things on my mind.’
‘You are anxious, no doubt, about what awaits us. War wounds us with anxiety from beyond the range of any weapon.’
She nodded.
‘You seem untroubled, if I may say so,’ she said to the old man. He seemed very frail, but his hands were rock steady, and she felt only a tiny pinch as the needle went in. ‘I can only suppose it is because you have done this before?’
‘You’re not my first patient, Mamzel Dutana.’
‘I meant war, doctor.’
‘Ah. No, you never get used to that. But you’re right, I can’t for the life of me recall where I’ve left my trepidation.’
Elodie went back along the shore, through the revel crowds, a small wad of cotton pressed to her needle mark. She went to the hab shelters that stood in a row behind the laundry tents. It seemed actually to be getting dark, as though true evening was extending through the murky smog.
‘Juniper?’ she called. ‘Juniper?’
The tents smelled strongly of carbolic soap and damp rockcrete.
‘Juniper? Are you here?’
She ducked into Juniper’s hab and came up short. The woman fuelling the small stove inside wasn’t Juniper.
She was a soldier, a sergeant, lean and powerful with cropped white-blonde hair.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Elodie.
‘You looking for Juniper?’ asked Tona Criid.
‘Yes.’
‘She just stepped away to get bonded,’ said Criid. ‘I’d come to see Yoncy, so I said I’d stay while she got sorted.’
The little girl that Elodie had seen in the crowd earlier was in the corner of the hab, eating beans from a bowl. She had the medal of the Saint on its ribbon around her neck. Elodie could see that Yoncy wasn’t going to be a child for much longer. She was small for her age, and appeared no older than a seven- or eight-year old, but she had to be eleven or twelve at least. Perhaps a life of slab and Guard rations had stunted her growth a bit. Perhaps she was one of those children who would suddenly become a young woman in one adolescent explosion. There was something quite knowing about her, Elodie felt. She still wore her hair in bunches, and swung her feet when she sat on an adult chair to emphasise her size. But it was as though she was slightly playing up the childlike effect, as if she knew it got her treats and favours. Everyone was her uncle or her aunt.
‘I wanted to ask her something,’ said Elodie. ‘I’ll come back.’
Criid shrugged as if that was good enough. There was a slight awkwardness, as if they didn’t know what to say to each other.
‘Actually,’ said Elodie, ‘can I ask you something?’
Criid closed the stove door, took a look at Yoncy to make sure she was tucking into her food, and then walked over to Elodie.
‘For what reason would a soldier take a wife?’
‘Apart from the obvious, you mean?’ asked Criid.
‘Yes, apart from that.’
‘There’s no better reason than that,’ said Criid. ‘None of my business, I’m sure, but how you feel is the only important reason.’
Elodie nodded.
‘Has Ban asked you a question?’ Criid asked.
Elodie shook her head.
Criid shrugged.
‘Like I said, not any of my business.’
Elodie took the small fold of papers out of her dress pocket.
‘Look at this,’ she said quietly.
‘Petition for allowance,’ said Criid, reading.
‘He hasn’t said anything. Nothing. But he’s got the paperwork. He’s filled it in.’
‘So what’s the problem?’ asked Criid, handing the papers back. ‘Too fast? You going to say no?’
‘No.’
‘Good. It’d be bad in all sorts of ways if we go into this with a senior captain nursing a broken heart. Wait, is this about the accompany bond? You don’t want to be bonded? Are you staying here?’
‘No, no. That’s fine. I’ve got mine.’
‘So?’ Criid asked.
‘I don’t know why he hasn’t told me.’
‘We’re moving out in a hurry. It’s not romantic, but he wants to get it squared away before we dig in.’
‘It just feels like there’s another reason,’ said Elodie. ‘Another reason why he wants to.’
‘Is it because he might die?’ said the little girl from the other side of the room. They both looked at her. Yoncy had lowered her spoon and was staring at them, half a smile on her face.
‘Is it because he might die?’ Yoncy repeated. ‘He wants to get married in case he dies.’
‘Go wash your face,’ said Criid. ‘You’ve got gravy all round your mouth.’
Yoncy laughed, and slid down off her chair. She ran into the washroom at the back of the little hab.
‘Sorry about that,’ said Criid.
‘No, I’m sorry. I should have thought about what I was saying. It was insensitive.’
Criid frowned.
‘Insensitive? What? Oh, you mean because of Caffran?’
She shrugged as if it was nothing.
‘It hurts me he died, not that I didn’t get to marry him first. It wouldn’t have made a difference to us, a piece of paper. Though it does to some. Some marry, you know, to provide.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Elodie.
‘If you’re not actually married, with a piece of paper to show for it,’ said Criid, ‘then the Munitorum doesn’t recognise you as a widow. So some lasmen marry just to qualify for the viduity benefit. It’s not much. Just a few crowns a year, I think, a widow’s pension. But it matters to some people.’
‘Not to me,’ said Elodie. ‘Do you think that’s why he wants to do this?’
‘I don’t know. It might matter to him to know that you’d be provided for. A captain’s widow probably gets a better allowance.’