19 - Violet

VIOLET

Before I knew it, my evening with Tom was through, and I had returned to the convent. Our mission in Dawncastle had given me a sort of sternness, a whispered reputation, and from then on the other girls had avoided me. That is, except Josephine, of course.

I slept through the night in my bunk, and resumed training under Headmother Heprose the following day. This went on for a few weeks, until the time came where again she wanted me to accompany her on some secret expedition. This time, Josephine was not to come along.

It seemed like the Headmother almost delighted in keeping things from me, the way she told me to dress and whisked me into the black car waiting outside. At least this time it was day and the sky was clear.

We both sat in the back, with a woman driver whom I did not know up front. The car drove west and north a long ways out of the city, and it did not seem we were going to Pax. This, I figured, meant we were not leaving the country, since we were not headed to a port. I took some relief in the idea.

After an hour or more, I noticed that the quiet Headmother had shut her eyes. I could not tell whether she was asleep or just concentrating. Looking past her as we went through a tunnel, I saw my own reflection in her passenger window. My black hood was up, and the brightest thing in my entire wardrobe was the blue NS armband on my sleeve. In the blurriness of the reflection, I could not see the scar on my nose bridge, and I liked that. I liked imagining I was just as I had been before.

I touched the armband cloth, and to my surprise, the Headmother spoke. "It suits you," she said, and I looked over. Her eyes were still shut. "You should work on sight without eyes," she said, and I realized that in some unnatural way she was watching me even now. "It could serve you."

I glanced at the driver, who was a member of the Women's Auxiliary, and wondered what it would be like to be her. She seemed about my age, with an olive uniform and white gloves. I hadn't heard much about the auxiliaries, but they seemed to be treated alright.

"How did you come to join the National Sorceress Corps, Headmother?" I asked.

"I always knew I wanted to practice ritual," said the headmother. "In days of old, a sorceress would look for a lord or a duke to be her patron. With the NS, my patron is the whole of the state. What's more perfect than that?"

Shortly after this conversation concluded, we arrived at the Army training fields of Willow Bay, in the prefecture of Norland. It's hard to imagine it now, but at the time it was just a few fields and hills and ditches.

I saw troops in metal helmets and fatigues conducting their exercises. The car came to a stop, and someone opened my door. It was a black-haired major named Titus Brooklight, a man in his forties. He reminded me of a schoolteacher. Specifically, he reminded me of one of the stricter ones. He bowed to me as I exited the vehicle, and I bowed back. Headmother Heprose was right behind me. Immediately, mud coated my black boots up to the ankle. It had rained heavily the past week, and the ground of Willow Bay had soaked it all up like a sponge.

"Sister, Headmother," said Major Brooklight, "I'm afraid your boots and hems will be muddied to the knee here. The rains took a toll on our training course."

I saw him wait for our driver to drive on, and she did. Luckily, the motorcar itself did not get stuck in the mud.

"All the better for the grit of the men," said the headmother.

"Quite," said Brooklight. "Welcome to Willow Bay. What you see is what you get, and what you get is bullets, dirt, and men."

I saw the headmother eye a large blocky vehicle hidden under a tarp. It was too big to be a car, and I could tell by the lack of wings it was not a plane. A few men from an armored battalion sat nearby it at a wooden picnic table.

"I have a feeling there's a bit more than that," said the headmother, and when she said it, Brooklight followed her gaze.

"Why do I get the sense you could tell me each scratch on the barrel without ever lifting the tarp?" he asked. It seemed he sensed her power of sight without eyes. Either that, or he just knew it by reputation.

"You don't commission a National Sorceress for her ignorance," said Helena Heprose.

At her curiosity, Major Brooklight walked up to the tarp. He pulled it off, and what was revealed underneath was a brand new, gleaming, round, domed tank. It was about eight feet tall to my five, and maybe thirty feet long. You can probably guess that this was a Mark III, although none of us knew of such thing as a Mark III at the time. It was, in fact, one of the first Mark IIIs, constructed not on an assembly line, but in the Army Engineering Labs.

"Still smells like the factory floor," said Major Brooklight.

"Oh, I wish Tom could see this," I said, smiling at it. I just knew he'd have a million fun and clever things to say to me about its design and operation. I imagined him there, arm in arm with me, giving it a look-over. The image brought me comfort.

"Ready to get those robes dirty, Sister?" Major Brooklight asked.

This question surprised me, partially because I was not yet used to being called ‘Sister.’ Apprenticeship was meant to last half a year, and mine had not even lasted a month. "Sorry?" I said.

"You're on, Shrineborne," said Headmother Heprose.

"I'm riding that?"

I saw the other men of the tank crew walking up to their vehicle. The tank captain was a small man named Vincent Brewer. He introduced himself and bowed his head to me. "On the right side of the turret exterior, there's a half-cover bucket dip for an external rider," he said. "Nestle in and put your feet against the low rail to brace. It's the best spot for armor protection, visibility, and quick dismount. We've tested it ten different ways."

He laughed, and I didn't know why. Then he rolled up his combat uniform sleeves to show off a handful of scrapes. Evidently, he had been the one testing which position was best for riding on the tank's exterior.

"She can perform combat neutralizations, right?" Major Brooklight asked the headmother. He was talking about me, but not to me, as if I wasn't there. I felt like a dog or a fancy cannon, the way he said the words.

"A man is made of the same stuff in war and peace," said the headmother, enigmatic.

Doing as instructed, I climbed up onto the exterior of the tank turret and sat where I was told to. For being on the outside, I was mostly protected, and I was glad for that. I didn't think in that moment about how close I was to the barrel, or how much it would rattle my skull if the main gun were to fire with me sitting there. The captain, gunner, and driver all clambered in and closed the hatch. Major Brooklight, who was standing in the mud, called up to me. "We've got junior enlisted with blank-firing rifles along the course. As the tank goes through, just bring them down."

I was surprised by how quickly this was all unfolding, and how little instruction I had been given. "She's used to training on the condemned," said the headmother, and it was hard to hear her at that distance. "You may not like what happens to your recruits."

"A broken bone or two, we can tolerate," said the major, "just as gently as is reasonable."

The engine of the Mark III rumbled alive beneath me. When you're sitting in that spot on the turret, the running of the engine gives you quite a shake. It was a difficult feeling for young me to square with the stress of training, and later with the rigor of combat. In a strange way, and I know it’s perverse, I deliberately used the body state spurred by the rumble to guide my inner spirit and attune.

"You're the first woman to ever touch the steel of a Mark III, Sister!" Titus Brooklight shouted over the noise. "She and you both, the pride of our nation."

"Ready?" I heard a voice say below me. I hadn't expected a man to be below me, although of course I knew he was there. It was Vincent Brewer, the small tank captain, speaking through an open hatch. Instinctively, I crossed my legs for modesty. Then I realized I didn't need to. With the uniform trousers of a sorceress, none of that mattered.

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"Ready!" I said to him, and the tank jolted forward. It was shockingly fast, and even louder than at idle. I gripped a rail so as not to fall off.

Ahead, as the tank plowed forward, I saw a recruit in khaki aiming a Springbolt rifle at me from a dugout. I thought for a second, trying to make sure that the major really had said to use deathsgate ritual against these men. The last thing I wanted was to hurt them in a miscommunication.

Then the soldier fired a round at me. It was a blank, but at the time I didn't know what a blank was, and the feeling of having someone shooting in your direction was quite shocking. I threw a hand outward toward him. With a cold gust of wind, the rifle flew up and back. To the outsider, it would have looked as if it was pulled by a rope and pulley. The recruit, in his foolishness, hung onto it. He sailed about eight feet in the air, hanging onto the rifle like it was a trapeze bar. Then he yelled before tumbling back into the dirt.

"Ack!" I said, having slightly miscalibrated my action. I had not meant to throw the rifle that hard. I needed my strength.

Another two recruits popped up further down the track as the tank continued to roll. I tried a lighter hand flick, knocking one's head into the other one. Both of them fell, and I hoped they weren't too concussed.

Up on a hill, three more of these recruits lay prone. All three of their wooden-stocked Springbolt rifles plinked away, with the men reaching forward to re-rack the bolt-action mechanism after each shot. Leaning forward, gripping the edge of the tank turret, I reached for something above them. It was a kind of monkey bar structure, perhaps steel or aluminum, the type of thing they used for maneuvering assessments. I pulled my hand down, and a supporting piece of wood cracked. The whole big monkey bar apparatus collapsed, and all three of those recruits had to scramble not to be caught beneath it. I was glad they did not get pinned.

The tank caught air, then came down hard. In my focus, I had accidentally placed my bottom lip between my teeth, and in the thunking of the tank I bit through the flesh. It stung like a hornet bite, and I hoped it would not need stitches. Blood flowed down my chin, but I paid it no mind. I was focused only on the exercise.

The tank turned a corner, continuing along the muddy path, and headed back toward the road where my two assessors were standing. Another recruit had been firing at me, and because of the pain in my lip I hadn't noticed. I felt stupid for that. If those had been real bullets, I could well have been killed. I reached my hand out to him, telekinetically grabbing his rifle at a distance, and popped him across the face with it in annoyance. I couldn't tell how badly he was hurt, but he fell, and so did the rifle.

The Mark III suddenly stopped, and I lurched forward. A metal rail hit me in the gut, and I felt immediately ill from the blow. I knew it would bruise, and I knew I might heave, too. I felt the turret underneath me start to turn through some powerful mechanism. Simultaneously, the barrel ahead of me began to rise. My feet had been hanging down on the side, and I had to hurriedly pull them up onto the low steel bar Brewer had indicated, so as not to have my feet crushed under the rotating platform. That could have been a nasty sight indeed.

Bracing in the instructed position, I saw a wooden mock-up of a tank sitting on a hill. It was aimed right at us. Then, before I could even think, the main gun of our own tank fired. The only way I can describe it is hitting the water from a great cliff dive while not in the right position. It was worse than that, in fact, because I was just about deafened for a few seconds from the great noise. My teeth and jaw were shaken, and my neck hurt in a way that I knew would continue for days to come. I felt my eyes themselves rattle from the blowback.

A second or two later, as my senses were returning, I saw the wooden mock tank had been blown to smithereens. From the opposite hill, almost directly behind me, I heard a Paxanan war cry.

"For the emperor!" six recruits shouted, charging toward the vehicle with training bayonets.

Our vehicle guns were all pointing the wrong way, so I knew the obligation to fell them was on me. Exhausted and disoriented, I almost fell from the tank, drained both by the blast and the heavy use of ritual. Barely keeping an eye open, I waved a hand and did the only thing I could think of, since telekinesis was failing me. "Know fear," I said, and sprinkled it with a gesture across the men.

The charging recruits stopped short, their eyes widened. One screamed a horrible scream, the same kind of scream I had heard when I had first tried this spell on condemned recruits in the convent basement. Then all six of them dropped their weapons and fled with terror.

I could barely hear anything, but I caught sight of Major Brooklight hurrying down from the road with Helena Heprose behind him. Brooklight was furious, yelling out to the six fleeing men. "Halt exercise!" He neared the tank, confused, and watched the frightened men continue to run. "I said, halt exercise! You disgrace your weapons in the mud, Privates!"

"Don't be too hard on them," I heard the Headmother call after him. "She took them out of their right minds."

It was true. I had. More than that, I was just about out of my own, from all the exertion of what I'd done. The hatch beside me opened, and Captain Brewer stuck his head out. "Unbelievable, Sister," he said.

I quite literally did not have the strength to answer him. I lay on the top of the tank, hood back and hair over my mouth and nose. My jaw was loose, and my tongue sat on my teeth, and I stared out at the blue horizon. "Sister," he said, looking concerned. "The major's coming. Sister?"

Then I felt Brooklight and Heprose come up behind me. "Well, I for one can't believe my eyes," said the major. I couldn't tell exactly, but I thought he sounded pleased. I tried to thank him, but the words only came out as a murmur. I felt unconsciousness circling me.

"She looks like she's on her tenth shot of whiskey," I heard the major chuckle.

"She'll be fine," said my headmother. "She gave you her all."

Knowing that my assessors were not angry, I started to slip into sleep. I heard Helena Heprose clamber up onto the top of the turret and put a hand on my chest, assessing me, feeling my heart. She knelt down, and I could smell her, and she put her lips to my ear.

"I hope you know what you've done here," she said softly. I think it was only through some ritual connection that I could hear her, because I was still so deafened from the blast.

"I just... did as you asked, Headmother," I croaked.

"Yes," said the headmother, "and you did so well you may well have turned National Sorceresses into Army Corps combat equipment."

I was too delirious to make sense of that. I could not figure out whether it was a remark of encouragement or scorn. She half carried me back to the car, and I slept a muddy, druggy sleep the whole way back to the convent. When we got there, it was night, and I wandered alone up the steps to the second-floor dormitories with my feet feeling like they were cast in lead. The other sisters and apprentices were having dinner, thank goodness, so I had the room to myself.

Still fully dressed, I sat on my bed and held a cool cloth to my gnashed, bloody lip. I stared into the middle distance and lost all sense of how much time had passed. When I came back to reality, young Josephine was standing near me in her trousers and blouse. "Oh!" she said with a start. "It looks like a pig's torn through here. Goodness."

I realized she was remarking on the mud. When I looked down at the muddy footprints, Josephine looked back up at me. Now she saw I was quite out of sorts.

Immediately, I could tell she felt bad for scolding. "We can clean it up together," she said, trying to get me to smile. "Twice the hands makes light work."

When I didn't smile back, she noticed just how beaten down I was. "What's happened?" she asked. Then she lowered the reddened rag to see the wound on my lip.

"I should get some bloodlight extract from the apothecary," I said. It hurt to speak, and my voice was slurred a bit from the fatness of my lip. "Make sure it's not infected."

Josephine had been hard at work learning her own school of ritual. Much of it involved the sanguine, and there was a lot she could derive about a person's state from a connection with the blood. As such, she took the rag from my hand and sniffed it. Then, tenderly, she kissed my blood-coated chin and licked some of the blood off her own lips.

"It'll heal well," she said, having assessed me.

Then, tall Josephine knelt beside me to be at my height. I put my hands to my sides for balance, and as my left hand slipped under my pillow, I felt a book. I realized it was her copy of Two Virgins in a Woodshed, and I gave it back. "I finished this," I said.

"You can keep it if you like," said Josephine.

I knew now, having read it, why she'd wanted to give me such a ‘literary’ education. Although the girls in the book were virgins, they were certainly not inexperienced in love by the time the whole thing ended. Their fondness for each other was really quite a shock in its lurid inventiveness as each page went on.

"Josephine," I said, "I don't want you pinning false hopes on me—"

Headmother Heprose entered at that moment, interrupting. "Shrineborne," she said, upset. "It's filthy in here."

I resented her using that tone, after all she'd put me through. I hoped she'd just forgotten I was near exhausted, but she probably knew.

"We'll tend to it, Headmother," said Josephine, sticking up for me.

"Shrineborne," said the Headmother, seeming to be displeased that Josephine was there.

"Yes?" I said, though I did not want to have to talk more.

"Is your head straight?"

"Yes, Headmother."

"Pack your bag. Pirouette is waiting at the dock. They just called in."

Josephine looked as surprised as I was, although she had more energy to express it. "We're going to the mainland again?" she asked.

"You're not going anywhere, Wistree," said the Headmother. I detected some bitterness in the older woman that I had not known before. "Shrineborne's going alone."

In my state, the thought of leaving alone scared me. It seemed to scare Josephine, too. "For how long?" she asked.

"Mind yourself!" Headmother Heprose shouted, coming down very harshly on poor Josephine Wistree. "Violet, I'll brief you in the car to the docks."

"Headmother, can't I go?" Josephine persisted. It was a very brave act, indeed, to stand up to the headmother when she was so cross. I knew that Josephine would not have done it for anyone else. "As a partner? Look at her, she's all shaken up."

I didn't want the headmother scolding Josephine more, and so I tried to intercede. "I'm fit for service."

Now the headmother's attention was fully on my blond would-be partner. "To be frank, Wistree," she said, "your excessive affection for Shrineborne casts doubts on your field readiness. I'm not in the business of honeymoon tours. You will stay at Eastwall Convent and train the new apprentices. She goes."