[Witches' Horses] sort of Chevalier de Grammont
Title: Know when to walk away
Prompt: 60D "desert"
Word Count: 3539
Notes: coastal_physics REALLY likes giving me headaches--he asked for pre-Grammont Sinclair. =|
Contextual babble on the gentleman in question is available (locked) here. :)
I would have been pleased to clear 500 words with this.
---------
The end of the Russians' war and the retreat of their enemy had not particularly affected the pace of his work. As the eddy of washed-up Russian soldiers and dispossessed Siberians slowed to a trickle, the current of raiders increased. New money and ambitious projects--many of which involved long supply lines and poor communication lines--had proved a very tempting target for the civilians he was supposed to protect and rein in.
He'd known the incident with the witch would eventually get back to command. In retrospect, going himself had been a risk. But the woman had been all but sticking her tongue out at him from every screen for a solid week before he'd finally tracked her down.
His own report synopsis had read 'Tracked down individual responsible for encouraging raids beyond the border. Individual apprehended among large horde of stolen technology, including several pieces of proprietary military systems, refused to surrender custody of horde. Individual had rigged a variety of deadfalls and traps from the more complete portions of technology. Seven men--one sergeant--injured before individual and traps neutralised. List of injured men, expenses incurred and technology recovered attached.'
He'd expected to be dining on the story when it made it to his peers--at the worst to be asked to a meeting with the Colonel to explain how he hadn't spotted the energy signatures or distinct shapes before the woman had opened fire. He'd prepared for that, amassed information from the work his men had done on her house and the interviews they had conducted with her neighbours and allies. The delicate negotiations he'd held to get one of her enemies to give him information on her were appended to the main document as part of the itemization of that operation's expenses. Telling just enough of the truth to satisfy questions had become something of a hobby.
Instead, he'd received a document that, stripped of its polite language and identifying headers and footers read 'Due to increasing concerns about your mental stability and fitness for command, we have reviewed your record and submitted paperwork, as well as interviewed several of your fellow officers, both of your own rank and subordinate.
'Find attached your interim honourable discharge from the armed forces of the King. This interim discharge will become permanent upon the next general muster scheduled as you know for the summer. Attempts to use military expense accounts associated with your former rank, any access to military databases not immediately associated with acknowledging this order and transferring interim command to the subordinate detailed in this document--and no other--or using military channels to protest this order will result in a full court-martial, conducted by necessity of circumstances in the largest settlement within the bounds of your former command, with witnesses called from the population of your former command and full rights to execution given to the jury. Return to your Rusthåll, while permissible, would constitute your full agreement to never refer to, use, or speak of your military career or name, and to transfer all electronics in your possession--either physically or financially--to one of the listed military outposts. They will be destroyed.
'Your pay and savings are yours. As per the terms of military service, the house, grounds, and equipment granted to you as an officer are not. Our research has indicated your savings are sufficient to house, clothe and feed you independently; attached is the account number where you may now access your current pay, your savings, and the standard transportation fee for a discharged officer, increased for the months until the general muster of your regiment when you would ordinarily have been discharged. Do not attempt to access your old accounts; they have been closed and purged from the systems formerly holding them. Including that secondary savings account earning suspiciously high interest. You may spend as much time as you prefer examining your account to ensure your pay is intact. To the best of our ability to determine, your pay is intact. Questions regarding your pay will be answered. Do not attempt to access other accounts in that database.
'We expect an acknowledgement of this document within a standard shift of your receipt of it. Delays beyond what we consider reasonable will be entered in the record and actions taken according to our discretion. End message, you creepy trollson.'
He might have been reading slightly too much into the message footers, but only slightly. He took the time to invoke the Devil nine times in four minutes, words aimed at the screen and carefully avoiding any voice commands the terminal would recognise.
Ten minutes was enough to determine that whoever had been doing the accounting tallies for his pay and savings accounts had overestimated the rate of return on the savings by roughly 15% and had adjusted the new account accordingly. He'd used his private system and the previous month's reconciliations to check, not wanting to use his office's system and risk the access to military databases clause. Another ten minutes was enough to check which of his subordinates they'd chosen for his successor--Svärd, inevitably, the superstitious one who couldn't think on his feet--get to his quarters, and pack his civilian clothes and all his . . personal electronics. Including the tools to repair everything.
He had maybe two hours before Svärd would receive his own copy of the discharge, then--assuming Svärd was quick off the mark--six hours before his captain came to take his command, with the other captain and as many of the löjtnants as he could muster for witness that it was orders from above, not a fear-induced mutiny that supplanted their major. That was assuming he interpreted 'actions according to our discretion' correctly. It would be the sort of thing most of the officers he knew would consider reasonable.
Which left him perhaps an hour to clean out everything he could manage, acknowledge the order gracefully to delay the arrival of his replacement, and find a witch. He could trust his supply staff to unquestionedly provide him with about half the things he was listing in his head. Other items on the list would garner questions, even if he paid from an account instead of cash--a risk he should avoid--and he needed a horse who couldn't be hobbled by military command codes.
He didn't need to check the duty roster; he'd approved the updated version a day and a half ago and his memory was good. Slinging the duffel containing everything he planned to take from his quarters over his shoulder, he nodded a polite acknowledgement to the officer on secretary duty in his outer office--carefully using the side that had a visible eye to see the man's face with--and took his leave.
The bank machine didn't protest the account the discharge papers had given him; if it had, the protest wouldn't have lasted long. It could only give him coins for the last dregs of the account, having used up all the bills--large and small--for the withdrawal already. He'd even told it to give him equivalent prices in stones or rubles, and it still gave him a small mountain of skilling riksgäld. Several kilos heavier than he'd entered, he left the bank. Svärd would have the joy of ordering new money, he thought, and resisted the urge to grin at the eye aimed at the bank's door.
"Åke, just the man I wanted to see," he greeted the sergeant on duty as the door slid closed behind him. The quieter of the supply warehouses smelled of dust and solvents, unlike the hint of sweat and illegal alcohol that permeated the better-trafficked warehouse. The reuse of official bottles for homebrew was common enough--and useful enough, considering the Russian locals in the seedier outposts called the Swedish homebrew a halfway decent vodka and would pay well for it--that he'd never even bothered collecting a percentage of the sales.
"Sir?" Åke replied, rising from the stool behind the counter. The man had been reading a cheap novel on his paperwork pad, he automatically noticed, then discarded the thought that he needed to find out where Åke was sourcing them. Not his duty anymore.
"I'm outfitting a plainsclothesman," he explained to the sergeant, who grinned the relieved, idiotic smile of a man who wouldn't be reprimanded for reading books on duty.
"Usual budget, sir?" Which meant 'budget limit? What budget limit?'
"Naturally," he agreed, digging into his pockets as he began building the list he had reason to think Åke could provide. Which included a second, larger duffel, two books on Russian vocabulary and a grammar, and the whereabouts of the locals' current tavern. He'd been obliged to shut them down every few weeks to keep down the vermin population that fed on the mash and discarded food scraps. He sincerely doubted Svärd would realise why he'd shut the taverns down, and suppressed another grin at the thought of the military headquarters overrun with rats.
"Keep the change," he told Åke when the sergeant confirmed the end of the supply list he'd been given, and was in the process of opening the register. He'd never needed to tell Åke outright that he wanted the supplies listed as the cash purchases of six or seven different men over the course of several days, and the sergeant didn't disappoint him.
"Have a good afternoon, sir," Åke said, beginning to hitch himself back onto his stool.
"I will," he replied as he got the duffels arranged to some semblance of comfort. He did not tell the man to enjoy his book, though he'd spotted the title during the proceedings. No need to remind Åke about it now.
"I'll borrow your terminal," he told the eighteen year old on gate duty. The boy took one look at his shoulders and the rank tabs on them, glanced up so quickly it almost wasn't visible past his face, then snapped off a salute and got out of the chair and the room on double time.
Six keystrokes logged the guard out and himself in, another seven shot off a one-sentence response to the discharge orders, and two brought him to the brevet-command form. He didn't need to look up Svärd's information and certainly didn't need to look up his own to fill out the form.
After he sent it off, he logged back out, considered wiping the cache, then didn't bother.
"All yours," he told the kid, who'd been guarding the door to the gatepost.
The kid flinched at his voice from behind, but recovered quickly. "Thank you sir," he replied, snapping off a salute, then held the gate open so it didn't catch on a duffel.
He returned the salute in the shrinking space as the gate closed. If he played his cards right, it would be the last.
The guesthouse--home of several of the sergeants' mistresses, Russian and Swedish both--didn't object to a uniform entering at the front door and a blond man in faded clothes leaving by the back door. He doubted they'd have objected if he'd handed the uniform over to be cleaned, but he hadn't bothered. Just left it discarded in the back parlour, like a man in a hurry to get to skin, and tucked the eyepatch in next to his ribs in his civilian coat.
Ducking the eye he'd used in the past to keep a weather eye on the development of affairs, he slowed his pace. The Major moved like a wolf on the prowl; he had somewhere to be and someone to bring down. The civilian, well.
He was in no hurry to start his afternoon's drinking. Took his time ordering, his Swedish tilted just a little to Saami, like he might have difficulty reading the menu, and settled back in the quietest corner of the tavern to sip at it and get an idea of the terrain.
"Ylva, I know you can hear me," he said conversationally, if softly, to the empty air across the table.
After a moment, a mostly-hidden door to a back room cracked open.
He tossed down a couple of kopecks by his mostly-full glass, and stood. The duffels he didn't bother to sling over his shoulder, just bunched the straps together in his left hand and carried them with him into the witch's den.
"Well, well," Ylva cooed, her fingers toying just casually enough with a set of beads. "What brings you here, and in such a state? Didn't get enough information last time?"
He snorted, dropping the duffels to the floor with a hollow bang. There was her trapdoor blocked, for a few seconds at least. "Hardly. You gave me everything I paid for, and if I'd wanted more, I'd have paid more."
"So why are you here, Major?" she snarled, fingers clenched in the beads and about to rain down lightning if he was any judge.
"Do I look like a Major to you?" he shot back, and she blinked. Pressing the advantage--it wasn't every day a witch of any caliber was rendered speechless, however briefly--he added "I find myself in need of a horse."
"If you think I'll take an account you'd best be back to your beer," she remarked, voice smoothing out, half teasing.
He snorted, toed the nearest duffel until the metal in it chimed. "Have some faith, Ylva."
"Now, now--" she bit off his name before it was more than stillborn on her tongue. "It's never been me who needed faith," she said instead. "Unless you remember a certain afternoon differently than I do." She laughed, then, tucking her beads down the front of her shift and scooting down off her desk. "Of course, if you did, you wouldn't be here right now, asking me to find you a horse that your boys won't notice missing. What else will you have to go with her?"
He gave her the other half of the list, not bothering to pause every five or ten items as he had with Åke because she remembered for her living, even more than he had, up until that morning. She asked clarifying questions when she needed to, not bothering to try to hide her curiousity, and as the list ended she laughed.
"I suppose it would be silly to offer you a place to sleep for the night it will take me to gather your things."
"It would be," he agreed.
"I'll leave you to your own devices, then," she said, and shooed him off like a peasant herding geese.
His beer had been cleared away, which he didn't mind, and he spent the rest of the afternoon updating contact lists; a freetrader who'd gone by Andresson or Andreyevich depending on which set of papers and which side of the border he'd been on had died. Not well. He'd crossed the name off his mental list of possible sources the first time he heard, and started wondering about it the fourth. He still wasn't sure if the people sharing the news around were gloating or mourning, though; with the freetraders it might well be both.
Ylva was as usual as invisible as a hulder, which he alternately appreciated and worried at. No evidence of her gathering supplies was either a very good sign . . or a very bad one. He itched to slide the patch back where it belonged, to break into the systems and look at what she was up to, follow the money or look for the places things were suspiciously smooth.
He also wasn't stupid enough to do it. The uniform and the patch were what everyone remembered, and even if he could get back into the system undetected, he could hardly start chasing a witch without attracting the attention of any officer with eyes. So he fumed, reduced to using civilian terminals and never for too long, and his left eye stung from the breezes of the ventilation. Whenever the temptation grew unbearable he went and changed a bit of money for something more usable away from the fort and the Swedish exchanges. He was careful about it, never changing more than a piece or two in a single location, never carrying more than three on his person, and visible about his lack of funds. The challenge was a welcome distraction.
He passed the night in a flophouse, separated deliberately from his duffels and almost all his money.
Ill-tempered, poorly slept, wearing new clothes that didn't quite fit and aware he was carrying an uncomfortably large amount of money on his person, he threw himself back into the chair he'd used the previous day, and glared at nothing for a while.
"My totya said I'd find you here," a laughing girl's voice said, and he cast a baleful eye up a figure that would have distracted any of his löjtnants and more than three quarters of the sergeants to a face that did indeed bear a resemblance to a witch of his acquaintance. It might have been merely the power of suggestion. "She said she was terribly sorry, but would you meet her in the free-stable?" the girl continued, "She thought you might want to look your gifts over in person."
"She would," he growled, standing, and the girl dimpled up at him before she sashayed away, to whistles from the other men in the tavern.
Ylva was indeed waiting at the entrance of the free-stable, dressed like a freetrader's wife.
"My dear!" she cried when he emerged from the traffic, catching his elbow with a practiced gesture that pretended to familial without actually tipping him into hitting her for the impertinence. "You simply must come look at this horse. I think it will be perfect for your cousin."
Towing him to a private box--one with, as promised, a horse inside--she closed the box, locked the door behind them, and settled herself down in a chair in an engineer's corner of the box. "Do take your time looking her over. You should get your money's worth, after all," she said, smiling, and visibly made herself comfortable for a wait.
It did take time; she answered the questions he shouted from within the horse with attention, and none of the glibness most liars fell into as a habit after many years of practice. She even answered several questions with "I have no idea, rip off the panel and look." Her tone implied she knew he'd either already found the tools, or was carrying his own. Both reasonable assumptions, and his estimation of her unwillingly rose several notches as he continued to search through the horse.
It wasn't new, or too old. Russian made, Swedish modified, with good lines and no indication of sabotage. She'd earned her fees, he thought as he went over the engineer's station within the horse for the third time. If she meant him to die in the black, he couldn't see how she'd arranged it.
Emerging from the horse, he nodded, and she grinned, miming a courtly bow from her position in the chair. Crossing to her, he began emptying his pockets, handing over stones and precious metal coins before he switched to notes. She cooed over the pieces of amber he'd changed from kronar, rolling the pale-gold stones between her palms so they warmed.
"I do take kronar," she pointed out once she'd descended from feminine raptures enough to lay out the stones and tally their value.
"Yes," he agreed, and laid down a stack of banknotes to cover the remainder of his tab. "But you like amber."
She hesitated as he began to turn away, and he paused. "There's a farrier," she said, standing and turning away from the table and her money. He watched, a little nonplused, as the witch pulled a faded paper card with what looked like real ink designating the coordinates from between the pages of an outdated parts catalogue. She held out the card towards him, saying "Russian, but their Swedish is passable and I've heard stories that they can work on a Byzanti's heart without flinching. They do custom work, and they won't give out information on what shoes any horse they know is wearing, or for how long."
"Everyone's got a price," he corrected, but she shook her head.
"There's a reason you've never heard of them," she told him, and he found himself unwillingly believing her as she let him take the card and let him scribble down a note on a receipt for a drink at a tavern across town.
" . . Svärd will be the brevet major," he said as he gave the card back. "He's superstitious, and not as fast as he should be. If you take your time about it, you can probably keep him in place for a year or more. Don't scare him too often."
"Or he'll shout for reinforcements?" she lilted, smiling, then sobered as he shook his head, conscious echo of her own gesture.
"He'd burn the place down around you, if he thought it would work."
She bit the corner of her lower lip, then nodded. "He won't think it will work, then."
"Good hunting," he told her.
"You were the only one in blue and black who ever saw me more than once," she replied. "Good hunting, yourself."
Prompt: 60D "desert"
Word Count: 3539
Notes: coastal_physics REALLY likes giving me headaches--he asked for pre-Grammont Sinclair. =|
Contextual babble on the gentleman in question is available (locked) here. :)
I would have been pleased to clear 500 words with this.
---------
The end of the Russians' war and the retreat of their enemy had not particularly affected the pace of his work. As the eddy of washed-up Russian soldiers and dispossessed Siberians slowed to a trickle, the current of raiders increased. New money and ambitious projects--many of which involved long supply lines and poor communication lines--had proved a very tempting target for the civilians he was supposed to protect and rein in.
He'd known the incident with the witch would eventually get back to command. In retrospect, going himself had been a risk. But the woman had been all but sticking her tongue out at him from every screen for a solid week before he'd finally tracked her down.
His own report synopsis had read 'Tracked down individual responsible for encouraging raids beyond the border. Individual apprehended among large horde of stolen technology, including several pieces of proprietary military systems, refused to surrender custody of horde. Individual had rigged a variety of deadfalls and traps from the more complete portions of technology. Seven men--one sergeant--injured before individual and traps neutralised. List of injured men, expenses incurred and technology recovered attached.'
He'd expected to be dining on the story when it made it to his peers--at the worst to be asked to a meeting with the Colonel to explain how he hadn't spotted the energy signatures or distinct shapes before the woman had opened fire. He'd prepared for that, amassed information from the work his men had done on her house and the interviews they had conducted with her neighbours and allies. The delicate negotiations he'd held to get one of her enemies to give him information on her were appended to the main document as part of the itemization of that operation's expenses. Telling just enough of the truth to satisfy questions had become something of a hobby.
Instead, he'd received a document that, stripped of its polite language and identifying headers and footers read 'Due to increasing concerns about your mental stability and fitness for command, we have reviewed your record and submitted paperwork, as well as interviewed several of your fellow officers, both of your own rank and subordinate.
'Find attached your interim honourable discharge from the armed forces of the King. This interim discharge will become permanent upon the next general muster scheduled as you know for the summer. Attempts to use military expense accounts associated with your former rank, any access to military databases not immediately associated with acknowledging this order and transferring interim command to the subordinate detailed in this document--and no other--or using military channels to protest this order will result in a full court-martial, conducted by necessity of circumstances in the largest settlement within the bounds of your former command, with witnesses called from the population of your former command and full rights to execution given to the jury. Return to your Rusthåll, while permissible, would constitute your full agreement to never refer to, use, or speak of your military career or name, and to transfer all electronics in your possession--either physically or financially--to one of the listed military outposts. They will be destroyed.
'Your pay and savings are yours. As per the terms of military service, the house, grounds, and equipment granted to you as an officer are not. Our research has indicated your savings are sufficient to house, clothe and feed you independently; attached is the account number where you may now access your current pay, your savings, and the standard transportation fee for a discharged officer, increased for the months until the general muster of your regiment when you would ordinarily have been discharged. Do not attempt to access your old accounts; they have been closed and purged from the systems formerly holding them. Including that secondary savings account earning suspiciously high interest. You may spend as much time as you prefer examining your account to ensure your pay is intact. To the best of our ability to determine, your pay is intact. Questions regarding your pay will be answered. Do not attempt to access other accounts in that database.
'We expect an acknowledgement of this document within a standard shift of your receipt of it. Delays beyond what we consider reasonable will be entered in the record and actions taken according to our discretion. End message, you creepy trollson.'
He might have been reading slightly too much into the message footers, but only slightly. He took the time to invoke the Devil nine times in four minutes, words aimed at the screen and carefully avoiding any voice commands the terminal would recognise.
Ten minutes was enough to determine that whoever had been doing the accounting tallies for his pay and savings accounts had overestimated the rate of return on the savings by roughly 15% and had adjusted the new account accordingly. He'd used his private system and the previous month's reconciliations to check, not wanting to use his office's system and risk the access to military databases clause. Another ten minutes was enough to check which of his subordinates they'd chosen for his successor--Svärd, inevitably, the superstitious one who couldn't think on his feet--get to his quarters, and pack his civilian clothes and all his . . personal electronics. Including the tools to repair everything.
He had maybe two hours before Svärd would receive his own copy of the discharge, then--assuming Svärd was quick off the mark--six hours before his captain came to take his command, with the other captain and as many of the löjtnants as he could muster for witness that it was orders from above, not a fear-induced mutiny that supplanted their major. That was assuming he interpreted 'actions according to our discretion' correctly. It would be the sort of thing most of the officers he knew would consider reasonable.
Which left him perhaps an hour to clean out everything he could manage, acknowledge the order gracefully to delay the arrival of his replacement, and find a witch. He could trust his supply staff to unquestionedly provide him with about half the things he was listing in his head. Other items on the list would garner questions, even if he paid from an account instead of cash--a risk he should avoid--and he needed a horse who couldn't be hobbled by military command codes.
He didn't need to check the duty roster; he'd approved the updated version a day and a half ago and his memory was good. Slinging the duffel containing everything he planned to take from his quarters over his shoulder, he nodded a polite acknowledgement to the officer on secretary duty in his outer office--carefully using the side that had a visible eye to see the man's face with--and took his leave.
The bank machine didn't protest the account the discharge papers had given him; if it had, the protest wouldn't have lasted long. It could only give him coins for the last dregs of the account, having used up all the bills--large and small--for the withdrawal already. He'd even told it to give him equivalent prices in stones or rubles, and it still gave him a small mountain of skilling riksgäld. Several kilos heavier than he'd entered, he left the bank. Svärd would have the joy of ordering new money, he thought, and resisted the urge to grin at the eye aimed at the bank's door.
"Åke, just the man I wanted to see," he greeted the sergeant on duty as the door slid closed behind him. The quieter of the supply warehouses smelled of dust and solvents, unlike the hint of sweat and illegal alcohol that permeated the better-trafficked warehouse. The reuse of official bottles for homebrew was common enough--and useful enough, considering the Russian locals in the seedier outposts called the Swedish homebrew a halfway decent vodka and would pay well for it--that he'd never even bothered collecting a percentage of the sales.
"Sir?" Åke replied, rising from the stool behind the counter. The man had been reading a cheap novel on his paperwork pad, he automatically noticed, then discarded the thought that he needed to find out where Åke was sourcing them. Not his duty anymore.
"I'm outfitting a plainsclothesman," he explained to the sergeant, who grinned the relieved, idiotic smile of a man who wouldn't be reprimanded for reading books on duty.
"Usual budget, sir?" Which meant 'budget limit? What budget limit?'
"Naturally," he agreed, digging into his pockets as he began building the list he had reason to think Åke could provide. Which included a second, larger duffel, two books on Russian vocabulary and a grammar, and the whereabouts of the locals' current tavern. He'd been obliged to shut them down every few weeks to keep down the vermin population that fed on the mash and discarded food scraps. He sincerely doubted Svärd would realise why he'd shut the taverns down, and suppressed another grin at the thought of the military headquarters overrun with rats.
"Keep the change," he told Åke when the sergeant confirmed the end of the supply list he'd been given, and was in the process of opening the register. He'd never needed to tell Åke outright that he wanted the supplies listed as the cash purchases of six or seven different men over the course of several days, and the sergeant didn't disappoint him.
"Have a good afternoon, sir," Åke said, beginning to hitch himself back onto his stool.
"I will," he replied as he got the duffels arranged to some semblance of comfort. He did not tell the man to enjoy his book, though he'd spotted the title during the proceedings. No need to remind Åke about it now.
"I'll borrow your terminal," he told the eighteen year old on gate duty. The boy took one look at his shoulders and the rank tabs on them, glanced up so quickly it almost wasn't visible past his face, then snapped off a salute and got out of the chair and the room on double time.
Six keystrokes logged the guard out and himself in, another seven shot off a one-sentence response to the discharge orders, and two brought him to the brevet-command form. He didn't need to look up Svärd's information and certainly didn't need to look up his own to fill out the form.
After he sent it off, he logged back out, considered wiping the cache, then didn't bother.
"All yours," he told the kid, who'd been guarding the door to the gatepost.
The kid flinched at his voice from behind, but recovered quickly. "Thank you sir," he replied, snapping off a salute, then held the gate open so it didn't catch on a duffel.
He returned the salute in the shrinking space as the gate closed. If he played his cards right, it would be the last.
The guesthouse--home of several of the sergeants' mistresses, Russian and Swedish both--didn't object to a uniform entering at the front door and a blond man in faded clothes leaving by the back door. He doubted they'd have objected if he'd handed the uniform over to be cleaned, but he hadn't bothered. Just left it discarded in the back parlour, like a man in a hurry to get to skin, and tucked the eyepatch in next to his ribs in his civilian coat.
Ducking the eye he'd used in the past to keep a weather eye on the development of affairs, he slowed his pace. The Major moved like a wolf on the prowl; he had somewhere to be and someone to bring down. The civilian, well.
He was in no hurry to start his afternoon's drinking. Took his time ordering, his Swedish tilted just a little to Saami, like he might have difficulty reading the menu, and settled back in the quietest corner of the tavern to sip at it and get an idea of the terrain.
"Ylva, I know you can hear me," he said conversationally, if softly, to the empty air across the table.
After a moment, a mostly-hidden door to a back room cracked open.
He tossed down a couple of kopecks by his mostly-full glass, and stood. The duffels he didn't bother to sling over his shoulder, just bunched the straps together in his left hand and carried them with him into the witch's den.
"Well, well," Ylva cooed, her fingers toying just casually enough with a set of beads. "What brings you here, and in such a state? Didn't get enough information last time?"
He snorted, dropping the duffels to the floor with a hollow bang. There was her trapdoor blocked, for a few seconds at least. "Hardly. You gave me everything I paid for, and if I'd wanted more, I'd have paid more."
"So why are you here, Major?" she snarled, fingers clenched in the beads and about to rain down lightning if he was any judge.
"Do I look like a Major to you?" he shot back, and she blinked. Pressing the advantage--it wasn't every day a witch of any caliber was rendered speechless, however briefly--he added "I find myself in need of a horse."
"If you think I'll take an account you'd best be back to your beer," she remarked, voice smoothing out, half teasing.
He snorted, toed the nearest duffel until the metal in it chimed. "Have some faith, Ylva."
"Now, now--" she bit off his name before it was more than stillborn on her tongue. "It's never been me who needed faith," she said instead. "Unless you remember a certain afternoon differently than I do." She laughed, then, tucking her beads down the front of her shift and scooting down off her desk. "Of course, if you did, you wouldn't be here right now, asking me to find you a horse that your boys won't notice missing. What else will you have to go with her?"
He gave her the other half of the list, not bothering to pause every five or ten items as he had with Åke because she remembered for her living, even more than he had, up until that morning. She asked clarifying questions when she needed to, not bothering to try to hide her curiousity, and as the list ended she laughed.
"I suppose it would be silly to offer you a place to sleep for the night it will take me to gather your things."
"It would be," he agreed.
"I'll leave you to your own devices, then," she said, and shooed him off like a peasant herding geese.
His beer had been cleared away, which he didn't mind, and he spent the rest of the afternoon updating contact lists; a freetrader who'd gone by Andresson or Andreyevich depending on which set of papers and which side of the border he'd been on had died. Not well. He'd crossed the name off his mental list of possible sources the first time he heard, and started wondering about it the fourth. He still wasn't sure if the people sharing the news around were gloating or mourning, though; with the freetraders it might well be both.
Ylva was as usual as invisible as a hulder, which he alternately appreciated and worried at. No evidence of her gathering supplies was either a very good sign . . or a very bad one. He itched to slide the patch back where it belonged, to break into the systems and look at what she was up to, follow the money or look for the places things were suspiciously smooth.
He also wasn't stupid enough to do it. The uniform and the patch were what everyone remembered, and even if he could get back into the system undetected, he could hardly start chasing a witch without attracting the attention of any officer with eyes. So he fumed, reduced to using civilian terminals and never for too long, and his left eye stung from the breezes of the ventilation. Whenever the temptation grew unbearable he went and changed a bit of money for something more usable away from the fort and the Swedish exchanges. He was careful about it, never changing more than a piece or two in a single location, never carrying more than three on his person, and visible about his lack of funds. The challenge was a welcome distraction.
He passed the night in a flophouse, separated deliberately from his duffels and almost all his money.
Ill-tempered, poorly slept, wearing new clothes that didn't quite fit and aware he was carrying an uncomfortably large amount of money on his person, he threw himself back into the chair he'd used the previous day, and glared at nothing for a while.
"My totya said I'd find you here," a laughing girl's voice said, and he cast a baleful eye up a figure that would have distracted any of his löjtnants and more than three quarters of the sergeants to a face that did indeed bear a resemblance to a witch of his acquaintance. It might have been merely the power of suggestion. "She said she was terribly sorry, but would you meet her in the free-stable?" the girl continued, "She thought you might want to look your gifts over in person."
"She would," he growled, standing, and the girl dimpled up at him before she sashayed away, to whistles from the other men in the tavern.
Ylva was indeed waiting at the entrance of the free-stable, dressed like a freetrader's wife.
"My dear!" she cried when he emerged from the traffic, catching his elbow with a practiced gesture that pretended to familial without actually tipping him into hitting her for the impertinence. "You simply must come look at this horse. I think it will be perfect for your cousin."
Towing him to a private box--one with, as promised, a horse inside--she closed the box, locked the door behind them, and settled herself down in a chair in an engineer's corner of the box. "Do take your time looking her over. You should get your money's worth, after all," she said, smiling, and visibly made herself comfortable for a wait.
It did take time; she answered the questions he shouted from within the horse with attention, and none of the glibness most liars fell into as a habit after many years of practice. She even answered several questions with "I have no idea, rip off the panel and look." Her tone implied she knew he'd either already found the tools, or was carrying his own. Both reasonable assumptions, and his estimation of her unwillingly rose several notches as he continued to search through the horse.
It wasn't new, or too old. Russian made, Swedish modified, with good lines and no indication of sabotage. She'd earned her fees, he thought as he went over the engineer's station within the horse for the third time. If she meant him to die in the black, he couldn't see how she'd arranged it.
Emerging from the horse, he nodded, and she grinned, miming a courtly bow from her position in the chair. Crossing to her, he began emptying his pockets, handing over stones and precious metal coins before he switched to notes. She cooed over the pieces of amber he'd changed from kronar, rolling the pale-gold stones between her palms so they warmed.
"I do take kronar," she pointed out once she'd descended from feminine raptures enough to lay out the stones and tally their value.
"Yes," he agreed, and laid down a stack of banknotes to cover the remainder of his tab. "But you like amber."
She hesitated as he began to turn away, and he paused. "There's a farrier," she said, standing and turning away from the table and her money. He watched, a little nonplused, as the witch pulled a faded paper card with what looked like real ink designating the coordinates from between the pages of an outdated parts catalogue. She held out the card towards him, saying "Russian, but their Swedish is passable and I've heard stories that they can work on a Byzanti's heart without flinching. They do custom work, and they won't give out information on what shoes any horse they know is wearing, or for how long."
"Everyone's got a price," he corrected, but she shook her head.
"There's a reason you've never heard of them," she told him, and he found himself unwillingly believing her as she let him take the card and let him scribble down a note on a receipt for a drink at a tavern across town.
" . . Svärd will be the brevet major," he said as he gave the card back. "He's superstitious, and not as fast as he should be. If you take your time about it, you can probably keep him in place for a year or more. Don't scare him too often."
"Or he'll shout for reinforcements?" she lilted, smiling, then sobered as he shook his head, conscious echo of her own gesture.
"He'd burn the place down around you, if he thought it would work."
She bit the corner of her lower lip, then nodded. "He won't think it will work, then."
"Good hunting," he told her.
"You were the only one in blue and black who ever saw me more than once," she replied. "Good hunting, yourself."