Breaking Ranks

Grant: A Clean Break

There was a good deal of traffic before the Mission House, as there often was after raids, but this time I was right in the thick of it, pressing forward into the packed chamber. There wouldn't be any messing about with individual funerals. Darian was to be offered to the cycle just as he had died—amid a dozen others and presided over by a noble in shimmering robes delivering a few rote words about keeping to Regulations.

"They stood fast," the Rune Reader was saying, his data slate bared open on his chest for all to see, displaying trapped pictures of some of the dead men. It was still jarring to see that magic, and I had looked away when my son's face had appeared in his armor, the picture trapped inside only a few months ago when he'd entered the House Guard.

Darian had stood there, proud as ever and not even fearing magic, and I had recoiled off to the side as a different Rune Reader had recorded Darian's face and details in her own data tome. Greta had been next to me as well, and she'd snorted at my reaction. Magic had never bothered her. She would have preferred a bit more magic in her life, I figure.

Greta was close beside me now, clad in mourning black, but just as distant as she'd been for years. Silent tears trickled through the powdered dust she'd bought a year ago, and a pretty penny it had cost me then, and I'd let her know in no uncertain terms...

I blinked and looked back to the funeral. The Rune Reader closed his data tome and set it on his podium with a solid thunk.

"And so they shall depart," the Rune Reader said, quavering voice reaching a fever pitch, "praise be to the Twelve above! A trader is in town who can deliver them to the Fab-ruh-kay-shun," he said, sounding out the unfamiliar syllables slowly, "Section's Recycling Tanks. May we all be so fortunate."

I nodded. That was fitting, and a lucky thing too, since the best most of us could hope for was a shallow grave. But sometimes traders were in town, looking to buy up Sandstone's sweet potato crop, and they knew they'd make a good price for delivering corpses to the Recycling Tanks.

According to Regulations we all merited delivery to the Tanks. But, as with all things, reality fell short.

By instinct, I reached for my wife's hand to squeeze it, and a moment later she squeezed back. That was some improvement, at least, over the coldness that had fallen between us.

The sound of the whinnying outside brought some life to this room of sobbing wretches. And, in a flash, I decided to see the trader depart. I wove my way though the congregation in their black clothes, recognizing tanners and weavers, even a few veteran House Guards like myself. I couldn't stand being in there a moment longer.

I stepped out the door of the Mission House, without really even thinking about it, as if trailing after my son's body might help bring him back. I blinked at the noon light, at a woman in a pre-Mutiny style jumpsuit hollering orders to her other wagon drivers. There were four carts, covered with canvas, and it was impossible to say which one carried Darian. Before the door shut behind me Greta had exited as well, and the two of us stood a few meters apart in the open courtyard as the carts rolled by.

"Curse you, Jan!"

The call came from a man standing beside a smaller, empty wagon. The plowhorse beside him sniffed the ground as a shady-looking sort beside him stood still and indifferent.

"Oh, Frank?" The woman looked over as her wagon's horse plodded forward. "Still hauling dung?" Jan sniffed. "As if I have to ask."

"Twelve damn you, Jan, a contract like that and you won't even share one wagon load? I'll complain to the Superintendent about this!"

"It's the free market, dung boy," she replied with a flashing grin, then seemed to notice us. The smile faded in an instant and she inclined her head in a somber nod. "Twelve rest their souls."

The trader snapped her whip and the carts trundled back into motion, the other trader glaring behind her. His helper was staring intently at the trader as if committing the woman to memory.

My wife gave a heavy sigh beside me. I turned to look over. For a moment I thought about wrapping her up in a hug, holding her close, giving her some comfort instead of just standing there grim and dull as ever.

I have sometimes thought, in the time since then, that I should have.

"Darian is gone now. Along with Luna and Leticia. The Twelve know no end of cruelty."

"Don't speak of them like that," I grunted mechanically.

Respect for the Twelve was just one of a million things we'd always argued about. I respected their teachings and the examples they set, and, though I hated to admit it, my wife had in private scoffed at their "supposed divinity." A death sentence, technically, though of course I would never have reported her.

Life with me was punishment enough.

Greta glanced over, her lined features still as beautiful as ever, even with her red-rimmed eyes and smudged powder. "There's nothing more keeping us together, is there?"

"Hmm?" I asked, my insides feeling hollow. I had been thinking of the first time I'd taken Darian out hiking in the woods outside Sandstone.

She sighed, tapping me on my back, a tender touch. Those had been rare these last few days. With the levy pulled back to just outside Sandstone, and a brief truce for an exchange of bodies, I'd been given leave to attend the funeral ceremony. They were probably better off without me.

"I'm going to go to my niece's," she said. "I can be of some use there, I think. And... it could be a start. To making a new life."

"To your niece's," I said woodenly. "Oh. To move? Oh."

"They have the space, now. And you know how things have been."

"Oh."

I knew how things had been. Somehow I hadn't ever thought she meant it though, not really. But my heart was already ripped out. This was nothing. One final sting, the burn of a moonshine-wrapped linen over a mortal wound.

"A clean break of it all," she was saying, wiping away a tear though her voice was calm as ever. "Why not? You live your life and I'll live mine."

My mouth felt dry. I didn't know what to say. I must have stopped and started a hundred times. It wasn't like I was angry with her. Not really. She wasn't even wrong.

"I'll help you move your things," I managed, after an eternity. "And then I should return to my unit."