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“Would it be so bad? You’d be with Jude, and me, and all the rest,” Milla reminded him. Alvin clenched his hands to hide the shaking.
“You’re the first person to ever offer me something like that, after finding out who I really am.”
“What about you, soldier? You know how to show a girl a good time?” a sultry voice cooed in his ear, and a pair of delicate arms twined around his neck. Alvin knew who it was — a pink-haired bombshell who’d spent the evening slipping from barstool to barstool, playing her way around the field. She didn’t even seem tipsy. Quite the feat considering the number of drinks that had been bought for her. He was pretty sure he’d counted at least five.
That made her a professional of some sort, though whether she was a confidence trickster or just a well-practiced lush was open to investigation. Given the care in her appearance and the professional ease in her delivery, he’d bank on the former, despite how young she looked.
His gloved hand closed lightly on her narrow wrists, and he glanced over his shoulder to meet her coquettish gaze with a sly smile of his own. “Maybe I do. You want to find out?”
Her cheeks colored a warm coral. Score one. “Oh my. I think I like you. Take me away from this place, soldier-boy,” she breathed in his ear. He chuckled and got up, dropping a handful of gald on the bar. “Running off with a woman whose name I don’t even know … it could be dangerous.”
“It’s Mink,” she play-pouted at him. Spirits, it looked good on her.
“I’m Alvin.”
“Why are you always up at such an unbearable hour?” she groaned at him, pulling the blankets back over her head to block out the draft of cold air. “That’s the third time this week.”
It was a moment before he answered. “Sorry, gorgeous. Military orders wait for nobody.” Alvin finished scrawling a response and shooed the sylphjay out the window. He flopped down on her side of the bed, and waited until the strands of pink hair peeking out of the covers showed signs of movement again. “Wakey wakey, sleepyhead. I gotta go.”
She rolled over and gave him a raised eyebrow. “Not like that, you don’t,” she pointed out sleepily. “You should at least get dressed first. Where are they sending you this time?”
Alvin hesitated, then got up to rummage in the closet. His voice drifted out a few moments later. “Fort Gandala. For about a week, and they didn’t say why. Don’t try to get ahold of me, all right? You probably shouldn’t know that.”
She sat up at that point, much more alert, and pulled the covers around her. “Ooh. Secret mission? You’re moving up, Al.” He snorted in response, and strode back to the bed to pull on his boots. “Gandala’s a hellhole. A million degrees and nothing to do. Hopefully they’ll keep us too busy to know how bad we’re sweating.”
“Sounds lovely.” Her voice dripped with irony, and she leaned over to peck him on the cheek. “Try not to melt.”
“Can’t promise that. But if I come back as a puddle in a barrel, you’ll know why.” He tilted her chin up to kiss her in return, then headed for the door with a wink and a wave over his shoulder. “See you in a week, Mink. Try not to be too lonely without me.”
Alvin could feel her eyes follow him as the door closed behind him. He jogged down the stairs of the apartment building, the scrap of paper from this morning tucked securely in his pocket. The lamplighters were just starting to make their morning rounds, and the city was close to deserted. There was no one to speak of his whereabouts, but he didn’t want to take chances. Taking a left, he shifted over a couple of streets before heading straight for the docks. Twenty minutes later, he was securely lodged aboard a boat bound not for the desert, but for Lakutam Seahaven.
Only then did he pull out the note and reread it. Mom.
Off-season for Xian Du meant fewer prayer pennants to snap in the evening breeze, and much smaller crowds. Not quite a ghost town, but it was definitely emptier than it had been earlier in the year. It left Alvin feeling a little uneasy, as if there were nowhere to hide. He didn’t dally long, taking only enough time to secure himself a place at the inn, before crossing the bridge towards the apartment he rented for his mother.
He rapped once on the door and let himself in, announcing his presence with a call of “Hey, Isla,” before heading up the stairs to the main floor. “Sorry I took so long to get here. We hit some rough weather on the water.”
The apartment smelled of antiseptic and a complex herbal concoction, which the dark-haired doctor was brewing on the stovetop. “Alvin,” she greeted him, not looking up until she’d finished adding a handful of chopped bulbs to the pot. “Things have gotten better since I sent you that message, but since you’re here, I have some questions. Do you have some time?”
Relief shot through him. The letter had sounded bad, but Isla’s demeanor and the soft regular breathing of his mother eased that worry. “Sure. Just give me a minute, okay?” He crossed over to the bed where his mother lay peacefully asleep, and took one of her hands in both of his. “Been missing you,” he said softly. “Things have been good for the past few weeks. Your little Alfred made a new friend at school. She’s kind of a troublemaker. He doesn’t trust her more than an inch — he thinks she’ll get him into trouble someday — but he likes her. He’s been working hard on his schoolwork, too. Good grades. You’d be proud.”
It might have been Alvin’s imagination, but he thought he felt his mother’s fingers squeeze his. He squeezed back, then gently tucked her hand back under the covers, a silent I love you. “So what is it?” he asked, getting back up to rejoin Isla.
She waved him at the small table, and he took a seat while she decanted the brew into multiple jars. He suspected it was a stalling tactic, as her lips parted twice, only to close again as she kept moving. Finally, when the pot was in the sink and the jars were set aside to cool in the window, she took the chair across from him, and fixed him with a rock-steady stare. “There’s no delicate way to put this, so I’m going to be blunt. Just where are you two from?”
“Huh?” That was about the last question Alvin had expected. “A little place out in the middle of nowheresville, Cheagle Clan lands. No future in that place, and no good care for her. Glad to be gone.” It was the same story he’d fed the owner of the apartment building, and pretty similar to the one he’d told the Rashugal recruiter, although he’d substituted the boondocks of Travis country there. “Why?”
The underground doctor shook her head, rejecting the lie. “There’s no place in the Cheagle clan called Trigleph. I lived all over that part of Auj Oule as a child. Your mother talks in her sleep, Alvin, and when she’s delirious. She spent a lot of last week delirious. She talks about balls and galas, she talks about power politics with people I’ve never heard of, she talks about your father as the head of a noble household, and she talks about something called spyrix. I’ve never even heard of Trigleph, and neither has the Kanbalar library. You’re in something deeper than I’ve ever seen. So level with me. What is going on?”
Caught out, Alvin wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s complicated,” always bought him a few moments’ thought, but it was nowhere near enough, right now. She snorted indelicately in return. “No kidding.”
“Look, Isla … ” he hesitated. How much could he tell her? He was already trusting the most important person in his life to this woman, and she wasn’t exactly on the level to begin with. He leaned on one hand, and bit the bullet with a sigh. There were no easy lies to cover this up. “You’re right. The Kanbalar library has never heard of Trigleph. You can’t get there from here normally. I don’t even know how it happened. All I know is that during that tsunami that hit Fezebel Marsh fifteen years ago, our cruise ship ended up here.” Not entirely true, but close enough. He had his guesses about how it had happened, after enough of his uncle’s mutterings.
She stared at him nonplussed for a long moment, then burst into laughter. “Oh please. Alvin, everyone knows you’re shady, but that’s one whopper of a lie.” At the sight of his solemn face, her laughter subsided. “A cruise ship? Wait.” He could see the wheels turning in her mind, and hoped she wouldn’t —
“Those Exodus contacts. The ones you’re having me get medicine from. They’re from that "cruise ship” too?“ Damn, she did. He realized, perhaps even before Isla did herself, that there would be no mercy for him now. She continued musing aloud, "And you’re hiding from them?”
“Thought you said you didn’t believe me. Just a big fat lie.” He leaned on one hand with a teasing grin, a gentle nudge to brush it all off as a tall tale.
Isla looked back at him, obviously replaying the story in her mind. “No. But whatever really happened, you’ve got history with them. What do they want from you?”
Alvin’s eyes darkened, and the hand he was leaning on curled into a fist. “It doesn’t matter what they want from me. What matters is keeping my mother safe and as well as possible,” he said flatly. “You’re in no danger from them as long as they don’t know about either of us.”
Her eyes widened slightly. Good, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Keep moving, before she can think too much. “Just keep your head down and it’ll be fine. I should go. I’ll come back in the morning, before I have to head back to Fennmont.” He shoved the chair back and got up, heading for the stairs. Too late.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Alvin,” she sang out towards his back. He could practically feel the gald signs in her voice. “Oh, and by the way, Xian Du’s put a tax on all those fresh herbs your mother needs. I’ll be doubling my fee from now on.”
“Right,” he gritted out through clenched teeth, and the door slammed shut behind him.
Mink had wrapped Alvin up in her arms the moment he’d walked in. “Where have you been?” She pulled back to hold him at arms’ length, and looked him over with disapproval. “Ten days in the desert and you didn’t even come back with a tan?”
“Aw, were you worried about me?” He leaned over to drop a kiss on the top of her head. “What can I say? They kept us in the fort the whole time. Hot and humid.”
She folded her arms and gave him a look that said she wasn’t buying that line, accompanied by that masterful irritated pout. “Alvin.” He caved, a little. He’d missed her, too.
“All right, all right. No, I wasn’t in the desert. Sorry for lying to you, gorgeous.” He ruffled her hair, all tease. “But if I told you where I was, I’d have to kill you, and neither of us wants that.”
She laughed, but it was forced, her eyes suddenly flat. He’d struck some sort of nerve. “Whoa there. It was a joke. What’s with the face?”
Mink looked away from him then, though she didn’t hesitate. “Nothing.”
He’d never stopped figuring she was a con artist, but that was an overreaction even for a paranoid one. Spy? Intel’s been looking for a spy.
“Hey, everyone’s got secrets,” he reassured her, pulling her into the crook of his shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me. Wouldn’t be fair anyway, since I can’t tell you.” She stiffened, and for one split second it looked like she wanted to slug him, before she sighed. “I missed you, you big jerk.”
Alvin chuckled. “You were worried.” She did punch him then — a sharp elbow in the gut that he probably deserved. “Ow! Let me make it up to you. Dinner at the Hotel Fantasie? View of the ocean, and the best wine they’ve got?”
Mink looked as if she wanted to protest just on principle’s sake, then folded, curling into his arm. “And a walk on the pier.”
“As long a walk as you want.”
“Mink, where’d you hang up my scarf?” Alvin frowned at the interior of the closet, distinctly bereft of his signature black-and-orange.
She called back from the far side of the apartment, but it was muffled by going through the thick walls of the home tree. He left the door hanging open and went to find her, eventually turning her up in the living room, deep in a book. “Couldn’t hear ya. What’d you say?”
There was a moment of hesitation before she answered, without looking at him. “It’s on the balcony. It’ll keep its color better if you air-dry it. And Alvin … ”
Uh-oh. That kind of phrase usually meant trouble. He raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“It’s Jill.”
He blinked in surprise, this piece of information coming out of nowhere. “Jill.” He tasted the name on his tongue, then saw the expression on her face and stopped short. “What’s wrong?”
She closed the book, still looking down. “I hate it.”
He wrapped an arm around her, trying to turn her regret into a smile. “You didn’t have to tell me.”
“No, I wanted to.” There was a sudden firmness in her voice and the set of her shoulders that said this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. Alvin felt an uneasy node of guilt form in his gut. “Mink is my working name.”
“I know.” No matter how gently he’d said it, he was sure —
Her eyes snapped to his face, and there was a touch of fear in them, immediately followed by a blaze of anger. “You knew? Al, you j—”
He laid a gentle finger on her lips. “Shhh. Not exactly, but I suspected, okay? No one’s really named Mink,” he teased, winking at her to lighten the mood. It did precious little to calm the fire in her expression, and he pushed on, more seriously. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, it didn’t make a damn bit of difference to me.”
She deflated slowly, and he pulled her close, promising, “I won’t use it if you don’t want me to.” He almost regretted saying it, the savor of her real name still lingering in his mouth. But Jill shook her head. “No, it’s all right, but — be careful with it.”
“I will be.”
“Everyone knows you’re a liar, Alvin. I knew you’d lie to me too. But do you really think I’m so stupid I’d buy a story like that?” Jill’s words echoed bitterly in his memory, punctuated by the slam of the door behind her. Alvin sagged down in his chair, the remains of breakfast still littering the table.
It wasn’t a lie. The one time it wasn’t a lie …
He jammed his hands in his pockets in silent fury, fingers brushing against the two slips of paper that had finally pushed him to spill part of his story.
Dear Alvin,
Please be aware that the medicine Leticia needs has …
TO ALL INTEL OPS: Orda Palace has issued a reward of 10,000 gald for the capture of …
He tossed both crumpled pages onto the table. Fine. She didn’t believe him. Fine. Might as well get rid of that little leak, then. No sense putting himself or his mother even more at risk.
He let out a shaky, angry, heartbroken breath. Fine.
Pulling the page from the military towards himself, he turned it over, and began to write.
The door eased open, the afternoon sun throwing a slanting beam over the room. It illuminated the table, still a mess from the morning, and Alvin’s back. If he’d moved since Jill had left, it seemed it had been only to retrieve the now mostly-empty brown bottle that had been used to refill his glass from breakfast.
Her heels tapped hesitantly on the floor behind him, and the door closed with a quiet click behind her. There was the intake of a nervous breath about four paces behind him before her lips parted. “Al, I — I shouldn’t have said that. We both have always had secrets. It doesn’t matter. I know you’ll tell me the truth when you’re ready. I’m sorry.”
He turned, lifting his head slowly. There was no light in his eyes.
“Yeah. So am I.”
The door to their bedroom burst open, and a cohort of Rashugal troops swarmed out.
Why is it always so damn simple for her? His fury at Milla’s pity warred with grief, loss, and a rejected jolt of gratitude for her acceptance. The mercenary jerked himself away from her bed, his gun once again leveled at her eyes. “You’re out of your mind.”
She simply watched him, unblinking. It was as if he couldn’t move. One breath, two ….
Alvin crumpled in the face of her unwavering small smile, as if she knew him better than he ever did. He dropped the gun back in its holster, turned on his heel, and left.