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“: but it'll have to do,” Whiskeyjack finished. “You've got tomorrow. If we draw a blank,” he looked over to Fiddler and Hedge and found their eyes on him, “we detonate the intersections. Do damage, hurt them.”

The two saboteurs grinned their anticipation.Advertisement

Quick Ben's loud hiss of frustration brought everyone round. The wizard's eyes had opened. He tossed the torn cloth contemptuously on to the floor. “No good, Sergeant,” he said. “Can't find Sorry anywhere.”

Kalam rumbled a curse and thrust his weapons into their scabbards.

“So, what does that mean?” Whiskeyjack asked the wizard.

“Most likely,” Quick Ben said, “she's dead.” He gestured at the cloth. “With that, there's no way the Rope could hide from me. Not while still possessing Sorry.”

“Maybe once you told him you'd figured him out,” Fiddler said, “he tossed in his coins and quit the game.”

Quick Ben made a face. “The Rope isn't scared of us, Fiddler. Come back to earth. If anything, he'd be coming down on us. Shadowthrone must've told him by now who I am or, rather, who I once was. It's not the Rope's business, but Shadowthrone might insist. Gods don't like being cheated. Especially being cheated twice.” He climbed to his feet and stretched the kinks from his back. He met Whiskeyjack's gaze. “I don't understand this, Sergeant. I'm stumped.”

“Do we abandon her?” Whiskeyjack asked.

Quick Ben nodded. “Might as well.” He paused, then stepped forward. “We were all wishing we were wrong about her,” he said, “but what Sorry did had nothing to do with being human. And, as far as I'm concerned, I'm glad of that.”

“I'd hate to think,” Kalam said, from the bed, “that evil was real, that it existed with a face as plain as the next man's. I know, Whiskeyjack, you've got your reasons for wanting it that way.”

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Quick Ben moved closer to the sergeant, his gaze softening. “Keeps you sane every time you order somebody to die,” he said. “We all know about that, Sergeant. And we'd be the last to suggest there's some other way that maybe you haven't thought of yet.”

“Well, I'm glad to hear it,” Whiskeyjack growled. He surveyed everyone in the room, seeing that Mallet was awake and watching him.

“Anybody else got something to say?”

“I have,” Fiddler said, then ducked at the sergeant's glower. “Well, you asked, didn't you?”

“Out with it, then.”

Fiddler straightened in his chair and cleared his throat. Hedge poked him in the ribs as he was about to begin. After a menacing scowl, he tried again. “It's like this, Sergeant. We've seen a hell of a lot of our friends die, right? And maybe we didn't have to give the orders, so maybe you think it's easier for us. But I don't think so. You see, to us those people were living, breathing. They were friends. When they die, it hurts. But you go around telling yourself that the only way to keep from going mad is to take all that away from them, so you don't have to think about it, so you don't have to feel anything when they die. But, damn, when you take away everybody else's humanity, you take away your own. And that'll drive you mad as sure as anything. It's that hurt we feel that makes us keep going, Sergeant. And maybe we're not getting anywhere, but at least we're not running away from anything.”

There was silence in the room. Then Hedge punched Fiddler in the arm. “I'll be damned! You got a brain in there, after all. I guess I been wrong about you all these years.”

“Yeah, right,” Fiddler said, rolling his eyes at Mallet, “and who is it who's burned his hair off so many times he's gotta wear some ugly leather cap all the time, hey?”

Mallet laughed, but the tension remained and everyone's gaze swung back to fix on their sergeant. Slowly, Whiskeyjack studied each man in his squad. He saw the caring in their eyes, the open offer to the friendship he'd spent years suppressing. All that time pushing them away, pushing everyone away, and the stubborn bastards just kept on coming back.

So Sorry hadn't been human. His conviction that all she'd done was within the possibilities of humanity now seemed to rest on uncertain ground. But it did not collapse. He'd seen too much in his life. There'd be no sudden faith in his view of human history, no burgeoning optimism to chase away all the demonic memories of the hells he'd lived through.

Nil Still, there came a time when some denials lost their function, when the world's relentless battering at him made his foolishness obvious even to himself. He was, finally, and after all these years, among friends. That was a hard admission and he realized he was already impatient with it. pqdm.com