Frays In The Weave 68 Battlefield: 3

Mairild walked in a landscape of destruction. One of selection. Public buildings and palaces were all unblemished, but the poor quarters were a maze of rubble and gutted ruins. She had an escort to protect her from her own citizens. Where she put her steps today few could feel elation. Keen had claimed victory in her first major battle in a hundred years, but to the survivors here it mattered little. Their lives as well as their homes lay in ruins. Most had lost family.

She sighed. For her it had been a choice to enter a lonely home after a long day, but the thought of having that closeness stolen from her like this built a painful lump in her stomach.

Arriving here in spotless clothes, surrounded by imperial guards in equally faultless uniforms made her just another intruder. She didn't need the accusing looks from the sullen faces she pa.s.sed to know she was gloating. A perverted fascination, a need to see the destruction with her own eyes was as much reason as her responsibilities for coming here. More, she regretfully admitted.

Makarin or Tenanrild, even Garkain had more reason to be here. She traded in information, and those she saw had little to give. They needed food, clothes and homes and she had nothing but words to give them. So why was she here? If not to gloat.

Around yet another ruined corner they walked into a group of outworlders surrounded by children and what Mairild hoped were parents. She stared into tired faces, tired but determined.

It took her a few moments to recognize the New Sweden envoy among them. The others were unknown, but their clothes told a story of different origins. A few from Anita's kingdom but most tourists who had been unable to return home after the enemy general landed with his soldiers.

A stretcher served as a table, and on it a boy, barely out of his first eightyear lay covered in blankets. Somehow Anita must have managed to organize an outdoors hospital of a kind. Machinery of a kind Mairild had never seen buzzed and hummed, and the boy's face visibly caught more colour as she watched.

Anita looked up when she was finished working whatever miracle she had done.

"Left quarters. Give him water and a blanket," she said to a tall woman with an unnatural green haircut and more gold dangling around her wrists than Mairild thought safe to carry in these quarters even with an escort.

Rich or not, she obeyed without question and carried the child away with the help of another female, her daughter possibly, inside the ruins of what had once been a tavern.

"You here to stare or to help?" Anita asked.

"I didn't expect you here," Mairild answered.

Anita smiled. "It's my job."

Behind her a few guards made as if to force a protective circle, but Mairild waved them back before they started pus.h.i.+ng people around. She didn't want to create more hostility than she had already earned just for being here.

"I'm safe. These are our own," she said more for the benefit of their audience than to explain anything to her guards. They were paid to obey her orders without her explaining anything. "Your job is to represent your kingdom," Mairild stated flatly. This was a conflict she had to take here and now. "Saving a few lives makes you a hero of the people, but not taking your real responsibility will kill hundreds more."

Anita's face reddened and for a moment Mairild feared the outworlder woman would flare out in rage. Then the anger sunk back and left only a hollow sh.e.l.l. "This is what I do best, but you're right."

That was the reason she had been chosen by her kingdom. Admitting a hard truth in the face of her accuser. That took a lot of strength, and Mairild wasn't sure that doctoring was indeed where Anita's true calling lay.

"First of all I have to give you my condolences," Mairild offered to break the sudden silence.

The words must have worked a spell, because around her m.u.f.fled voices came alive, and it took her a while to understand that people were wondering about the conversation. They didn't understand English.

Maybe the foreign language seemed more natural when outworlder spoke with outworlder, but Mairild's was a known face, even among the poor. She knew the older recognized her from her days as a celebrated actress. Not all plays had been staged indoors.

Then the lack of an answer finally registered on her. "Won't you mourn your own?" she asked before her shock would show.

"Mourn? Of course, but we've already put our dead to rest."

Mairild stared at Anita. "You call leaving your dead in those metal wrecks putting them to rest?"

"I don't..."

"Why didn't anyone survive?" Mairild interrupted, suddenly suspicious. There was something s.h.i.+fty in Anita's expression she hadn't noticed until now.

"Enemy artillery hit all shuttles."

Now Mairild knew for certain that the other woman was withholding something. "Someone should have survived, and you should at least be busy extracting bodies by now. What have you done?" She voiced the question as a direct order.

"I haven't..."

"Hold them!" That was directed at her escort when the crowd grew restless and started pus.h.i.+ng to see what the commotion was all about. The guards lined up and pushed back even before Mairild had given her command.

She turned to Anita again. Now was the time to add ice and steel to her voice. She needed the truth. "How many did you send down. People, not machines?"

Anita's resistance broke as Mairild knew it would unless she represented a direct threat to Keen. "None," she said. "We sent no one."

"You landed empty sky s.h.i.+ps and started this war just to make a political statement?"

"No! My friends died the first day!"

That was also true. Mairild forced herself to admit that. Anita's kingdom had taken very real losses earlier. "But why this charade?"

The outworlder paled. "I don't really know," she said. "Counting missiles to know if we can land safely I was told."

Mairild brought the memories of the previous day to her mind. Then she compared them with those from when Anita had arrived. There was a difference. One apart from the destruction of a large part of Verd.

"I saw no s.h.i.+p killers. Your s.h.i.+ps all landed before they were destroyed. Am I right?"

"I think so. We will drop a field hospital. Just not where we said. We needed to know it was safe."

"And to that end you had thousands upon thousands of my people killed?"

Anita paled again, but then colour immediately returned to her cheeks. "What difference would it have made if we sacrificed several hundred of our medical staff to show we can die as well?"

None. It would have made no difference, at least none for the good. Mairild bowed an apology. "When?" she asked. The answer to that question meant the world to her.

"You hammered the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to the ground. We saw that. Before noon."

"Before noon!" That was fantastic news. "At noon outworlder doctors will arrive here with help," she announced loudly in De Vhatic. Her part in the council was to trade information, and if she could gain a measure of grat.i.tude for it in return it was only fair.

The crowd silenced, and then the cheering begun.