Earth Awakened, page 23
“You got taken down by a Dark Mage?”
“Yes. Professor Tachun. Nice fellow. Checked up on me last night and gave me a card for a good therapist to deal with all my fucked-up shit.”
He paused.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
She waved him off. “I didn’t tell you.” She shook her head. “It’s not a big deal.”
A small silence slid between them. He stood to her left, tall and broad. So close she could feel the heat of his body. She closed her eyes and dug the nail of her thumb into the side of her head, using the touch of pain to buy her a few more minutes of wakefulness.
Finally, he moved, and his backpack dropped to the floor.
“Stay here. I’ll search the house.”
Search the house for what?
She didn’t voice the question. She was past the point of caring.
A few minutes later, she jerked awake at the sound of something thumping down the stairs. For a split-second, she was back in the war, wearing her fatigues, responding to a sudden enemy incursion, and then a mattress flopped to the floor at the base of the stairs and slumped awkwardly against the railing, having obviously been kicked there.
As she watched, it picked itself up and floated into the living room like some kind of fucked up, rectangular alien, its internal springs groaning.
Gobardon followed it. The light had dimmed more since she’d last seen him, but it was enough to see the grimace he gave the entire situation.
“Power’s out. I suppose that’s a blessing—I won’t be able to see precisely how much grime is on the couch I’m about to sleep on.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “I packed a flashlight. We can find every speck.”
This time, his grimace was definitely aimed at her. “Are you some kind of masochist?”
She shrugged. “Pretty sure I’ve slept on worse. This place looks like someone’s country home. Much better than the blown-up crack dens we holed up in during the war. You could feel the STDs on those sheets.”
Even in the dark, Gobardon’s shudder was visible. “That is disgusting.”
“Yes. It was. But I grew up on mattresses on the floor.” She pointed it to the space in front of an old box television. “Put it here. I’m not worried about the windows. If anyone’s found us out this far, I don’t think an extra screen will make a difference.”
He let the mattress fall with a controlled thump. “I have no idea what you just said. Do I want to know?”
“Swarzgardian snipers used to use thermal sensors to find us. You can block them with certain substances.” She pointed at the blatant set of windows in front of them. “Glass isn’t one of them, and those cotton blinds won’t do shit, either.”
“Ah. And something that would do something is referred to as a ‘screen’?”
“Yes. It came from ‘image screen’ originally. R&D was testing these image curtains once, something that was supposed to fuck with enemy snipers. They didn’t really work, but the slang stuck.”
“How interesting,” Gobardon said. By the dryness of his tone, it sounded like he meant it to have the opposite meaning.
Perhaps he’d already known about the military shit.
Whatever. She didn’t care. He’d just hauled her ass across town and made sure she didn’t get stuck behind. He could think whatever the fuck he wanted.
All she wanted was sleep.
She squinted her heavy eyes around. “Right. Since you made such scathing comments about the couch, am I to assume that the mattress is for me?”
“Yes.”
That was nice. She wasn’t going to question it. She lurched partway to her feet and shuffled down onto it. When she twisted and aimed her butt for its middle, she almost overbalanced and went over—it was a close thing—but she didn’t. Automatically, she hunched over and began to untie her bootlaces. She’d keep the ankle holster on for now, despite its weight. She was back in a war-zone. She needed at least one firearm she knew to reach for.
Gobardon was staring at her. “You’re going to use it without bedding?”
She looked up. “There’s bedding?”
“Yes. I was going to return upstairs and retrieve it.”
She glanced around, surveying the small area. In the dimness, the light tone of the mattress seemed to glow against the dark. The entire space had taken on a blue tinge with the deepening twilight. They were in a mountain trench, far away from any tint of the sunset, and the temperature was dropping rapidly.
She remembered this cold. She hated it.
“Just a blanket. I don’t imagine anyone’s going to be coming back here and using this stuff again.” No, no one would be returning to this house. Most likely, it would be taken over by Swarzgardian officials—it was a nice place, in a prime location. They could deal with her leftovers.
Hell, it would be a privilege for them to deal with her leftovers.
“Actually, three blankets if you can get them. It’s going to be cold tonight.”
A house like this would have a stock somewhere. Unless they’d taken them with them in the evacuation. But, if they hadn’t grabbed their computer or TV, she doubted they’d remembered to grab the blankets.
Gobardon didn’t reply. When she looked back up, she realized he’d disappeared. A creak sounded upstairs.
Had she lost time again? Or had he just walked away while she’d been talking?
Actually, she was betting on the former. She was pretty fucked up right now.
When he came back, there was a stack of blankets in his arms.
Good man.
He tossed four of them at her. Then, she was treated to a fascinating show as he took the remaining two and very carefully shook them off. Earth magic tinged, illuminating his face in a flash of green, and he did something with the blankets. Then he turned to the couch and did the same thing to its cushions, except in greater detail and with a more concentrated frown on his face as the Earth magic glowed.
“You sure you don’t want my flashlight? I packed it on purpose, you know?”
“I’m sure. It’s probably better I don’t know what I am about to lay my body on.”
She ignored the image that the words ‘lay my body’ conjured in her brain—she’d spent far too much time in the wrong sorts of company, because half of her brain snickered at the naked fantasy of him cuddled up on the couch, and the other half decided to picture him rolling a cadaver in the sheets.
A grin formed on her mouth as she watched him continue.
He was cleaning it. He was using his Earth magic to clean a couch.
“Are you a germaphobe?”
“No. I simply—”
“Really,” She sat up, her grin broadening. “Gobardon Seif, the badass Earth Mage, squeegy about spending the night on a random stranger’s couch?” She dropped her eyes. “It’s not even that bad. This place hasn’t been exposed to rain or wind. Fuck, I don’t even think the occupants of this place did more than finish crossword puzzles on it, by the looks of it.”
“I’m sorry.” Gobardon said. “If you’d prefer, I’ll find a crack den for you to spend the night in next time. The familiarity might be a comfort to you.”
She chuckled. “I’m afraid I can’t return the favor—the five-star chalets in these parts probably have the same amount of dust and mildew as that couch you’re about to sit on. Come on, Gobardon, it’s fine. The most you’re going to get from that thing is a need to visit a chiropractor in the morning because your germaphobic tendency couldn’t quite find a position to accommodate the huge stick up your ass.”
“I’m not a germaphobe,” he said. “It’s just—”
“You’re squeegy,” she said, lifting a finger to jab and wave in his general direction. “It’s the official technical term.”
“Ilia,” he muttered. “What did I do to get a second Kitty in my life?”
She snorted. “Hey, you’re the one that killed that dude and pissed her off. I’m just filling the void. Someone’s gotta annoy you.”
God, why couldn’t she just shut up? She was so fucking tired. She should not be bantering with Gobardon.
And since when had they gotten to the point where they could banter? The man had attacked her yesterday.
Then again, he had also just saved her.
Yeah, but I’m useful to him now. If he didn’t need the cat to find the spirit, he’d have tossed me to the wayside the second he couldn’t get the crystal.
She mentally cringed and corrected herself.
No, not ‘the cat.’ Greneinta. She had a name, and names were important.
“Sorry,” she said after a few seconds. “I guess I’m just used to this kind of situation, and a little bitter. It’s not just the army. I grew up with this.” She surveyed the mattress. In the steadily darkening room, it was a simple white block with minimal contours, and it felt soft and cushy under her butt. “It’s like I’m eight again.”
“You grew up on floor mattresses?” Gobardon said. “Your parents wouldn’t spring for a bed frame?”
“Nope. I was a waste of air, food, and space. Noisy, too.” Her mouth tightened into a sardonic smile. “Half the time, my dad was too drunk to notice I was around. I got away with so much shit, so long as I was quiet. I became really good at sneaking. As for my mom…” She grimaced as a memory surfaced, quickly pushing it back. “Hell, let’s just say that her mother was the only good thing that came from her. Nan was wonderful. Stood up for me a lot.”
Fuck. Her mother was a whole psychological chapter in herself. Better to leave that buried six feet down and with a layer of salt, preferably.
She gave herself a shake and refocused her attention on the mattress, giving it an experimental pat. “Man, you found a nice one. Premium quality. Definitely better than the mattresses of my childhood.”
And it wouldn’t have bedbugs. Not in a place like this. What would they even do in a mattress that hadn’t been used in a few years? Eat the dust?
Gobardon watched her, a silent silhouette against the patterns and contours of the house.
She couldn’t decide if he was judging her or not. Probably.
“Is that why you joined the military? To get away from your parents?”
She winced. “Partially. There was also a war going on. What else was I going to do? Run away with all the rest of them? Someone had to stay behind and fight. Might as well be me. I had less to lose. Plus, all the jobs had dried up, and I was broke.”
The signing bonus had been an incentive. She’d had to sell her bike to pay rent a couple months before. By the time she’d walked into the recruitment office, she’d been completely out of options.
And what had that changed? She was still broke. Without Finnevar’s monthly stipend, she’d have been fucked long ago.
“You didn’t want to join the National Guard?”
“Not originally, no. It’s not something my grandmother would have approved of. Turns out I was exceedingly good at it.” She sniffed. “And I joined the Army, thank you very much. The National Guard is for know-nothing chumps.”
Gobardon chuckled. “Is that so?”
“Yes. It is a well-known, peer-reviewed fact.” She reached for her pack, and foil wrapping crinkled as she pulled one of the survival bars out and opened it. “Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I met Jo there.”
A small silence passed between them. Gobardon shifted. She saw his face move in profile and realized that he’d been watching her the entire time. He stooped to re-investigate the couch, patting it gingerly with his long fingers.
God, it had grown so dark, she could barely see it.
“You sure you don’t want my flashlight?” she asked.
“I’m sure.” He hesitated, a small breath hitching as he took another half-step forward. “I can feel it with my Earth magic. You are correct—it is not all that dirty.”
The couch springs creaked, and he finally settled his lanky frame down on it. His long legs hesitated a moment, then stretched out to the side, sprawling away from her. He pulled out his phone, and she squinted as the glare of its screen lit up the other side of the room. His face looked tired, weathered.
The light from his phone suddenly intensified as he turned on its flashlight. His legs swung back toward the floor again in a motion so fluid that she wouldn’t have been surprised if his toes had pointed. He retrieved his backpack from the floor, unfastened the clips, and began to rummage through its contents.
A few seconds later, he produced a washcloth and a bottle of water. He took a hearty swig, then tipped the bottle over to let the water soak the cloth.
As he dabbed the rag over the blood that had caked his face, she expected to hear some sort of comment from him—not only had she reopened the wound, she had put it there in the first place.
Then again, it had happened during his attack on her.
His movements were quick and deliberate, yet they slowed when he reached the wound itself, using one of the corners to clean around it. The clotted blood would act as a natural bandage.
Task complete, he looked from the soiled rag in his hand to his backpack. She watched with some amusement as a mental battle between proper social decorum and basic hygiene played across his face.
In the end, he chucked the cloth into the far corner of the room.
She wondered how often he went into the field like this. When they’d originally met, she’d assumed it was quite often—he’d been running with Aiden and Sophia and everyone, then, not to mention Kitty, and he was a proficient Earth Mage, and well capable of battle magic. His business in Kjaran during Amerand’s coup hadn’t been at all innocent, either—he’d gone there with purpose.
When he didn’t continue the conversation, she assumed he was done with her. She closed her eyes and sat back on the mattress, turning her focus to chewing the inedible lumps of the survival bar. It didn’t taste like cardboard, but it was a near thing. Instead, it was lukewarm and unpalatable, tasting like a mix of herbs found in herbal medicine drinks—which it probably was.
It had the consistency of plasticine, crudely stamped into a bar shape.
But it would keep her going. And she had another three in her bag for the next few days.
She glanced behind him to where the house’s kitchen lurked. Her first impression of it had been of an outdated, rustic atmosphere, but she was willing to bet there were a few things she could raid from its cupboards.
She didn’t have energy, though. Fuck, she didn’t even want to stand right now.
But, just as she thought Gobardon was planning to ignore her for the rest of the night and she was debating the merits of finding the bathroom and using it versus how much she didn’t want to lever herself to her feet right now, his voice rumbled out again.
“Did the military treat you well?”
She almost choked on her bar. Granted, the bar itself did most of that for her.
“You haven’t hung around soldiers much, have you?”
“I have met and conferred with many military officials,” he said, settling back into his lounged position on the couch and turning off the flashlight feature on his phone.
“Not grunts like me, then.” A sardonic grin broke over her teeth. “Let’s just say that dusty couches and dodgy mattresses would be the least of your concern if you joined up. Boot camp was a fucking ride, man.”
“Was it?”
She lifted her eyebrows at his positive tone. “You actually want to hear about it?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have asked.”
In the span of a second, his gaze lifted from the screen of his phone and unerringly found hers. He locked eyes with her, and a shock went through her right down to the floor. It was like touching an electric wire.
For a second, her mouth wouldn’t work. She just stared back at him, numb.
“I—well.” She chewed her tongue and dug her fingers into her thighs, using the bite of pain to re-ground herself. “You know the point of boot camp, right?”
“Yes. It is to train soldiers.”
“No, it’s to turn a civilian into a soldier and get them to a basic level of obedience and training that the rest of the programs can work with. Doesn’t matter if you’re going navy, air, or army, you gotta go through the same camp—at least here, anyway. They do it a bit different in Mersetzdeitz, and I hear Swarzgard is just fucked. But anyway—to do that, they have to break down the individuality of each recruit, and they go to some fucking ridiculous lengths to do it. That’s partially why our civilian rights are waived during the process, so we can’t just walk away when it gets too tough. For the first few weeks, you live, shit, and breathe military. They time your sleep, monitor your rations, and scrutinize every single inch of your base life until they’ve made you into an obedient little soldier who won’t even think about an order before obeying it.”
“Perfection isn’t a bad thing to strive for,” he said.
“Sure. But it wasn’t perfection they wanted, it was obedience and submission. Once I had a DS do a surprise inspection. When she couldn’t find anything wrong with my room, uniform, or manner, she took my tub of boot oil, screwed off the lid, and berated me for not cleaning up the oil on the inside of the lid.”
Gobardon fixed her with a confused look. “What?”
“Yep. It happened.”
“That’s…”
“Fucked?” she suggested.
“It seems excessive,” he said.
“That’s the whole point of it. I thought I had her beat, but her job is to find something—anything. It’s psychological.” She snorted. “Another one made us have a funeral for a fly I’d killed, including hymns and last rites.”
I don’t have to let him know that I was the one who delivered that eulogy.
He was quiet for a moment. His clothes rustled, and he crossed his legs, his face shifting in the light as he returned his attention to his phone.
Right. He didn’t care.
She turned her own attention to the house for a moment. It had dimmed to almost full dark outside, but her eyes had adjusted such that the light from Gobardon’s phone was enough to get a fairly detailed view of the room. When he’d put her down, she’d been too goddamn tired to notice much, but now, her mind had settled from the effort. She was still tired, her eyelids ached to close, and she could feel the weakness and shakiness of her muscles, and the way that even her nerves had a jittery ache, but she had a few minutes before her brain and body decided she absolutely needed to be unconscious on the bed.
