On the verge of exile, Samaren is offered an escape (post-revolution)

[guardiansverse]

She had maybe half an hour, while the camp was settling down after the evening’s change of shift. Guilia pressed her bundle closer to her chest and ducked behind a row of weary women returning from the kitchens, under a tatty standard that separated one city’s militia from its neighbour, past a crowd gathering around a fire to listen to a sacredote speak of the fortunes of holy war. She had to cross more of the camp from the little enclosure where her Danio slept with the rest of his brothers, to her goal on the far end of the commanders’ ground. At least the tent was not guarded: no need, when the one within had been given it as a place of honour.

Perhaps he had no cause to suspect. But Giulia had not survived all this time of war by being a fool: no one died quicker in war than foolish women. She knew that eyes were everywhere. She had so little time: time to do one grand act of foolishness, and damn every man in the war.

She called out very softly at the tent flap. “Little general, I’ve come to see you.”

She would have wanted to wait for a response, but there was no time: she would have to rely on the established wisdom that a soft-spoken woman was no danger. When she came in, he was just sitting up in the murk of three stubby candles. Wary, curious in the way of someone who has never been able to indulge curiosity for long. He said, “who are you? I think I’ve seen you before.”

Giulia said, “I’m Danio Orisso’s mother. Your brothers called him Dogsgut.”

It had been customary in the little general’s unit, she had heard, to name the boys after the worst thing they had eaten to survive. Danio had spoken with pride of his commander, but the boy before her eyes was as malnourished as the rest; still, it sat differently on him, packed into a strange kind if tightness all over the growing body that could not afford to be gangly or awkward. His hair was a wild mop, straw-coloured and dirty. She’d found him lying on his cot, doing nothing much - toying with a length of metal Giulia abruptly recognized as an Eastern chain-whip. That particular tale of him was true, then. The others... boys exaggerated, soldier boys most of all. But Danio had said, I’ve seen what he can do, and when she got him back she had sworn to herself that she would trust him.

The little general looked at her with only a fraction more interest. She had stopped being a potential threat, it seemed; now she was just another object in the small space. “You can’t have Dogsgut back. He’s one of mine.”

Giulia breathed in, chest pressing hard against her bundle. “Your name is Saul, is that right?”

“Yes. Saul Samaren. My family was from Tezzei.” On the wrist of his left hand, she saw, the one not holding the whip, there was a bracelet of Tezzei glass beads. Turquoise and deep-ocean blue. A little treasure: she wondered how he’d kept hold of something of its value, in the midst of war. “I’m not going back to - “

“Saul. My son isn’t yours. Whatever you’ve made of him, I’ll make him a man again.” She had to swallow back her fire. She’d told herself when she left her tent, this was also someone’s son once. “But for all you’ve done to him, you got him here alive. I’ve come to help you. They’re going to declare you a criminal tomorrow. You have to run.”

He blinked in abject confusion, perhaps at the suggestion, perhaps at that word, run. She continued, fast and hard. “Danio sent me to tell you. They want all boy soldiers to go home now they have to build trust with the people here in the North, and you’ll carry the blame nicely. They have a hundred deaths to try you for, they aren’t short."

With every word, she saw his confusion deepen. Sun’s blood, he really could not understand. “But it’s war,” he said, unsettlingly simple. “What am I meant to do if not kill?”

“It doesn’t matter. They need you gone.”

“They’re afraid of me.”

“Yes.”

His eyes flashed. “They should be!”

“Oh, lad. That is the point.” She gritted her teeth at that look of defiant pride. Just a starved orphan boy, what else did he have? “They want the boys to go home. Be farmers, tradespeople. What can you be?” He did not move, sat stiff and still on the cot. His right hand had stopped twisting the chain-whip; his left, bearing the bracelet, flexed open and closed again. She took another step, thrust the bundle out at him. “Listen to me. This has food, a change of clothes, and some wound-salve. Take it and go. The border isn’t far. Hyem is peaceful, and they say its Land’s Own is a great man.”

“Are they going to try and execute me?”

Barely a response, but she should not have expected more, perhaps: boys his age in Ilyiga had never known peace, barely knew what a Land’s Own was. But she knew, and knew what tomorrow would mean. “They mean to exile you, bambino.”

“Don’t call me that, I’m fifteen.” His voice strained, furious to speak as one who had seen and knew it all. “They can’t do it. They need me. They need me to fight.”

Danio had said just the same. “The time for fighting is over,” she said quietly. “This is men’s war now. The boys are going home. Where will you go, Saul?”

He had been someone’s son. She could picture it already, tomorrow’s dawning day. The bracelet would serve them well for a symbol: they would scatter the precious Tezzei beads in the camp dust, trample the turquoise underfoot. The way the war had trampled the lives of every Ilyigan child. This boy with Tezzei glass about one hand, Samar steel in the other: what hopes did someone have for him, once?

“They can’t exile me.” He sounded hollowly baffled now, staring down at those two hands. His hair fell in his eyes: she felt the most laughable urge to wash that nest of dirty straw, as though she could wash the general away from the boy. “They can’t. I fought for them. I fought.”

Giulia gave the bundle another urgent shove, not caring that she tore it on the edge of the chain-whip’s blade.

“They can. They will.” Another push. He hissed and pushed back, stronger than his bony frame looked. “Being a refugee is hard, but a hundred times better.” The fabric was beginning to tear in earnest. “Damn you, I promised Danio I’ll - “

“Damned Dogsgut’s damned mother!” he exploded, heaving to his feet. Giulia stumbled back, clutching for bread and dried meat that fell scattering. “You stupid woman, what do you know about war!”

“I know it destroys the boys of this land,” she said, quiet and cold. He shook his head wildly, slamming the blade of his whip into his palm with a painful sound.

“Not me! I’m a general! They fear me and they need me!” His eyes burned; she thought about the sacredote preaching outside. “You take your garbage and your lies and go away and hide, and you tell Dogsgut, he’s going nowhere. He’s a soldier and he’s mine!”

Giulia pulled herself straight with a snap. The bundle disintegrated between her hands: everything fell, bread into the dirt, salve jar shattering. She met his eyes squarely. He was only a boy.

“My son is not yours,” she said, icy. “My son is not a soldier. He is coming home. And you...” she drew a deep breath. There was no time. He stood before her, weapon in hand. She took a step back, but not in fear. “I don’t know what you are, Saul Samaren. I don’t want to be glad that you’ll be gone from my country. But perhaps out there in the world, there is someone who can make you a man. I hope they find you, before another war does.”

With that last her mind cooled, but she could not look at him anymore. She turned her back, deliberate in doing so untrembling. She heard him draw in a breath of his own and throw himself back down onto the cot. The chainlinks of the whip rang in his hands, and the Tezzei beads clinked against each other.

Tomorrow one of the two would be broken, Guilia thought. It was inevitable. Foolish to think it could ever have been otherwise. Danio would ask her if his commander was safely gone, and she would say... she would say...

He isn’t your commander, she decided on her answer. He is not your brother. He was not your friend. That was the war. It’s the men’s war now, and you are a boy. And he...

By the time she was back to her tent, to her son, the answer was still incomplete.