The Autumn Republic

“All this.” He tapped the pocket where he kept his tobacco. “Cigarette smoke. Something I didn’t think of, but a Kez cavalryman would. Good call.”

Nila ducked her head. “Thank you.”

“A fighting Privileged,” Olem said. “Six months ago, if I had to guess what extraordinary thing you’d become, I would not have guessed that.”

Nila knew it was meant to be a compliment, but it niggled at her all the same. “You don’t think I’m capable?”

“You’ve shown yourself to be capable.”

“But you wouldn’t have thought that.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

“And what did you mean, Colonel Olem?”

Olem removed the rolling paper from his pocket and was about to sprinkle tobacco on the center before he made a face and put it back. “Privileged are born to it. You were a laundress. No offense, but it didn’t seem like something on your horizon.”

Nila opened her mouth, ready to take the argument further, then decided against it. What was she doing, arguing like this? Olem was right, of course. A Privileged? Her? It was laughably unlikely.

“If you don’t mind me saying,” Olem said, “you’ve been on edge. More than just a chafed ass.”

Nila let out what she had wanted to be a dismissive laugh, but it came out as just this side of hysterical. “You could say that.”

“The field marshal has a habit of using the hottest fire to temper soft metal,” Olem said. “I’m not sure if he should have sent you.”

“I’m soft metal, am I? No. It’s not that. Well. It is that. But so many more things. I’ve never ridden before and my body hurts so badly I want to cry every moment. I’m untested, barely trained. This infernal fog!” Her voice rose a little too high and a nearby cuirassier glanced at her.

Olem sat unmoved, listening for several moments before he said, “At least you know your failings.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Really. I mean it. I’ve met dozens of officers who think their immaculate mustache can move the world. Not knowing one’s weaknesses gets people killed.”

Nila shook her head and gave a short laugh, relieved to hear this one sounding a little less desperate. “Little do they know that an immaculate beard is what it takes.”

Olem grinned at her. “Right you are.” His hand was halfway toward his rolling papers again before he swore under his breath.

“Are you with anyone?” Nila asked, the question leaving her lips before she could stop herself.

Olem glanced up in surprise. “Huh? Well…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Kind of. It’s a tenuous thing.”

Nila was surprised to find herself hurt by his answer. She had turned him down, after all, and that was months ago. Maybe she had hoped he would pine for her a little longer. “Another soldier?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s she like?”

“Long legs. Black hair. Very good at what she does.”

“Oh? And what does she do?” She felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth when Olem’s cheeks turned red.

“She’s a powder mage.”

Nila gave a low whistle. “You don’t settle, do you?”

“Never have,” Olem said, giving her a lingering glance. She opened her mouth, but forgot her response immediately when Olem held up a hand. “Do you hear that?” he whispered.

Up and down the line, cuirassiers grew alert. Nila strained her ears to listen, but couldn’t hear anything. “What is it?”

Olem put one hand on the stock of his carbine. “I thought I heard a horse down there.”

They remained in silence for several minutes, during which Nila barely allowed herself to breathe. The fear and anxiety all returned in those precious minutes of waiting, and she could feel her heart hammering against her chest like a bird trying to escape its cage.

A shadow appeared in the fog down in the gully. Nila thought her heart would burst at any moment, until she saw Olem relax, his finger edging away from the trigger of his carbine.

“It’s one of ours,” a cuirassier said. “Looks like Ganley.”

A horse came out of the fog carrying a blue-uniformed rider. Olem called out a greeting, and Nila sat back in her saddle, trying to find a comfortable spot on which to sit. There wasn’t one. She closed her eyes, trying to reach the meditative state that Bo had taught her-a place between this world and the Else, where she could let her worries fade.

She had yet to reach it.

When her eyes opened again, she found that she’d slipped past her target and gone into the Else-here at least, she sighed to herself, the fog couldn’t penetrate. The hills rolled on in the distance, and she could see that the gully before them was indeed a deep one, extending thirty feet down and on into thick brush in the distance. Hundreds of small flames danced before her eyes like fireflies.

Several things happened at once. First, she screamed. Second, the returning scout, Ganley, fell from his horse, his bloody throat grinning up at them all from the ground, and third, those hundreds of fireflies suddenly shot forward and the rumble of hooves brought Nila out of the Else and into the real world, where horses seemed to erupt from the mist, ridden by Kez cavalry in their green-on-tan uniforms.