Glain’s expression never flickered. “In the real world, you’d better watch your friends as much as your enemies. Allies can turn on you when you least expect it. I hope the bruises remind you.”
He hardly needed the tip and she knew it. He wasn’t a fool; he’d grown up never trusting people. Trust, for him, was a recently acquired skill that had developed in the company of his friends and fellow postulants. Like Glain. Who was trying to remind him not to rely on it.
Jess swallowed a bitter mouthful of anger and said, “No excuses, sir. Tariq always struck me as shifty, anyway.”
“Then why’d you let your guard down, you bright spark?” Tariq said. “I admit, I like playing the heinous villain, sir.”
“Playing?” someone else in the squad muttered, and Tariq mimed a finger shot in her direction as he swigged from his canteen. Jess would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much, but Glain’s lesson had been pointed . . . and on point. I can’t afford to relax, he thought. I knew as much from the beginning. Glain’s just trying to remind me. With, unfortunately, Glain’s typical subtlety.
“Settle,” Glain said flatly, and the squad did. Instantly. Nobody questioned her—not for long. Jess certainly didn’t. “We’re nearly at the end of training,” she told them, and paced back and forth in front of them with a lithe, restless energy that never seemed to go away, no matter how long the day. “We will finish in the lead. Screw that up, any of you, and I’ll slap you out of service hard enough to brand my palm print on your grandmother’s face. Clear?”
“Clear, sir!” they all responded, instantly and in perfect chorus. They’d learned how to move and speak in concert long, painful months ago. That was Glain’s doing. She’d end up High Garda commander one day . . . or dead. But she’d never settle for less than perfection.
“I’m tempted to make you run it again,” Glain was saying, and there was a barely perceptible moan that ran through the group she didn’t acknowledge, “but you’ve bled enough for one day. You weren’t terrible, and next time had better be an improvement. Shower, drink, eat, rest. Dismissed.”
That, Jess thought, is why she’s good at this. She’d pushed them all very hard, to the point of breaking, but she knew when to give just a touch of encouragement. And, most of all, she knew when to stop. None of them, not even him, were being carried to the Medica tents, which couldn’t be said for a lot of other squads who weren’t as highly ranked as Glain’s.
Around them, this section of the High Garda training ground was almost deserted; it was reserved for trainee testing. Everyone else had called it a day long ago, since the mess bells had pealed half an hour back, and now that Jess had the chance to think about it, his stomach growled fiercely. He’d burned off the light breakfast hours ago.
He fell into step with Shi Zheng and Tariq, but stopped when Glain said, “Brightwell. A word.”
Others gave him sympathetic looks but didn’t pause; they walked around him as he halted and turned back. Glain was still pacing, and doing it in full sun; she never minded the scorching Alexandrian heat. The sun loved her just as much, and her skin had darkened to a warm, woody brown over the months of exposure. Jess, who’d been in the climate precisely the same amount of time, had managed to achieve only a light coating of translucent tan over layers of memorable burns. “Sir?”
She fixed a stare somewhere over his shoulder, toward the horizon. “Message came in earlier to me from Captain Santi. He says to tell you . . . no.” She suddenly shifted to fix her gaze right on his. “No to what, Jess?”
“Glain—”
“That’s Squad Leader Wathen to you, and no to what?”
“I asked to talk to Wolfe. Sir.”
“Why?”
It was the coward’s way out, but he gave her the second reason he wanted a meeting with their old Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who’d pushed them through a memorable period of hell as postulants. “I wanted to know if he knew anything of the Black Archives.”
She blinked, and her look shifted—still suspicious and dark, but a good deal more concerned. “You told me you thought they were a myth just this morning. You must have asked days ago.”
“I did. For the same reasons you gave. Seemed to me that if the Black Archives existed—and I never said I thought they did—then it might be a place to look into Thomas’s death.” He looked down. “I got a letter from his father, thanking me for being his friend. He asked if I knew exactly how his son died.”
Glain said nothing to that, but after a moment, she nodded. “You didn’t want me looking into the subject because you already were.”
“And they watch us, Glain,” he said. “All of us.” It was burning his tongue to tell her the truth, but he knew, knew how she’d take it. And he was too tired. He wanted to tell her in better circumstances, when the clock wasn’t ticking down. If there was an exercise, she needed her focus more than he did . . . or, at least, that was what he told himself.