The Thousand Names by Wexler Django

Author:Wexler, Django [Wexler, Django]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-07-01T18:30:00+00:00

Some time later, Graff sat back. Sweat trickled across his forehead, and he wiped it away absentmindedly, leaving a smear of red under his bangs.

“It’s no good,” he said. “The ball’s still in there somewhere, but if I go groping around trying to find it I’m just going to make things worse.”

Winter looked down at Bobby’s face. His—her—mouth worked silently, but her eyes were tightly shut, as though in a dream from which she couldn’t escape.

“If we were to take her to a cutter . . . ,” Graff began.

“Would it make a difference?”

“No,” he admitted. “Probably not. There’s too much bleeding, and h— She’s already running a fever.”

“Any idea how . . . long?”

“A few hours at best,” he said.

“Will she wake up?”

Graff gave a weary shrug. “I’m no doctor, just a corporal who picked up a little stitching and sawing. Though I doubt even a doctor could tell you.”

Winter nodded. “You’d better go, then.”

“What?” He looked up at her. “Go where?”

“Someone in the rest of the company must need your help. Folsom, if no one else.”

“But—” Graff gestured helplessly at the girl on the floor.

“I’ll stay with her,” Winter said. “Someone should.”

He turned away, but Winter caught a fleeting glimpse of relief in his face. She tried not to hold it against him.

“I’ll check back in,” he said, retreating. “Later. And you can come and find me if he—I mean, when she—”

“I will.” Winter ushered him to the exit. When the tent flap had fallen closed, she stared at it wearily for a few moments, then turned around and sat down beside Bobby.

Graff had covered the wound with makeshift bandages, though the blood was already soaking through. Winter kept her eyes on the girl’s face. It was tight and drawn with pain, her boy-short hair clingy and matted with sweat. Winter smoothed it absently with one hand.

“No cutters,” she murmured. “Well, of course not.”

She hadn’t even thought about that possibility herself. This girl planned better than I ever did. The breasts that had so disturbed Graff were only slight swells, and Winter wondered how old Bobby really was.

I wish she’d told me. A fantasy, of course. Winter knew as well as anyone that a secret spoken aloud, even once, was a secret lost. But I would have asked her so many things. How she made it through recruitment. Where she came from. Why she came to Khandar. It was singularly cruel, she thought, to discover that she wasn’t alone just hours before she would be alone again.

Winter was surprised to find that she was crying. She closed her eyes against the tears, but they welled regardless, trickling down her cheeks and pattering onto Bobby’s jacket. One drop touched the corner of her mouth, and she licked automatically, tasting the salt and the acrid tang of sweat and powder.

“Winter.” Feor was leaning forward, peering at Bobby.

“You don’t need to gape at her,” Winter said.

“Her,” Feor muttered, as though tasting the word. “A girl.” And then something else, low and fast, that Winter didn’t understand.

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