CHAPTER |
NINE |
It was the best Longest Night party Jax could remember. There was dancing, tables full of food, a band that could actually stay in tune, everything he’d complained was missing from last year’s celebration, and he was already sick of it.
He’d tried to skip, but Brigitte dragged him down from the gate personally and ordered him to enjoy himself. Since that was impossible, Jax stuck to the bare minimum: sitting on a bench at the edge of the yard and drinking until he didn’t care anymore, which wasn’t working nearly as well as he’d hoped.
“You’re doing this to yourself, you know,” said Cooper, plopping down beside him to catch his breath. “There’s lots of town girls here who don’t know your reputation. If you didn’t stare at everyone like you were planning how to stab them, you’d be up to your neck in offers.”
“Don’t want to dance,” Jax said, glaring into his mug of ale, which had stopped tasting good two refills ago.
“I bet you would if certain squad members were here,” Cooper replied in a singsong voice.
Jax’s fingers tightened on the wooden mug. “Shut up.”
“Certain blonde ones,” his friend went on. “Who selflessly devote their off hours tutoring the less fortunate.”
“I said shut up.”
Cooper rolled his eyes. “I don’t see why you’re so uptight about this. So what if you like Rosalie? Everyone likes Rosalie. She’s nice and, more importantly, she’s rich. If you didn’t avoid the mess hall like the plague, you’d know that the entire male population of the base, and no small part of the female, has been scheming to get her attention all month. The only reason none of them have succeeded is because she spends all of her time with you.”
“She’s not hanging around me because she likes to,” Jax said defensively. “We made a deal. I teach her to be better at fighting titans, she helps me with my reading. That’s all it is.”
“Right,” Cooper said. “So you’re sitting here drinking alone in the dark because you’re pining for reading lessons.”
“Are you trying to get me killed?” Jax demanded. “She’s a noble lady, and she’s my subordinate. Taking liberties with either leads straight to a hanging. Anyway, weren’t you the one telling me to get rid of her?”
“That was before I realized you two had a thing,” Cooper replied, pressing his hands over his heart. “What can I say? I’m a romantic.”
“You’re obnoxious is what you are,” Jax snapped. He was about to change the subject by suggesting a trip to the cake table, Cooper’s ultimate weakness, when he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse-and-carriage coming in fast.
Jax’s first thought was that something had gone wrong. A holiday that revolved around public bonfires and drinking tended to go south pretty fast, but it wasn’t the fire cart approaching. It was a hired coach, and the moment it rolled to something like a stop in front of the base gate, Rosalie burst out of it.
Jax rubbed his eyes. Surely he hadn’t had that much to drink. When he looked again, though, she was still there. She was even back in her uniform, no more fancy dress. She’d wiped most of the makeup off her face as well, leaving a hard scowl behind as she marched straight through the center of the party toward the officers’ table.
“Uh-oh,” Cooper whispered. “Trouble in paradise, you think?”
Jax shoved his mug at Cooper and took off through the crowd. He was too far away to hear, but he could see Rosalie talking to Brigitte. It must have been serious, because the lieutenant set down her mug and motioned for Rosalie to come with her to the gate tower.
Keeping to the deep shadows thrown by the fire, Jax followed.
“Care to explain what this is about?” The lieutenant’s voice was sharp, but not angry. She sounded more curious than anything as Rosalie handed her a large rectangular piece of paper. “What is this?”
“Money,” Rosalie said, her normally cheerful voice hard as the stone under her feet. “I’m financing all new equipment for the Trost Garrison. Vertical maneuvering gear, ammunition, cannon parts, whatever you need.”
Brigitte stared at the paper in silence. “This is…quite unusual,” she said at last, folding the note and setting it on her desk like a precious jewel. “Has Lord Dumarque given his permission?”
“He doesn’t have to,” Rosalie said. “It’s not Lord Dumarque’s money. It’s mine. I want to spend it on something that matters, and we can’t win this war without functioning weapons.”
“It would do a lot,” the gate lieutenant said, opening the paper to look at the sum again. “But much as we need it, I must urge you to reconsider. I’m not going to ask what this sum was supposed to be for, but are you sure this is how you want to use it? Because once I take it, it’s gone. With a budget like this, I can put in a rush order with the factory towns tomorrow.”
“I’m sure,” Rosalie said, standing even taller. “This is the front line against the titans. If it falls, everything falls. Making this wall stronger is the best investment I can think of, and this way I know for certain that I’ll be leaving behind something worthwhile when my service is over.”
“It will definitely help,” Brigitte said, standing up. Then, to Rosalie’s astonishment, she bowed, lowering herself from the waist. “Thank you, Private Dumarque. I swear your generosity will not be wasted.”
Rosalie nodded, her cheeks red in the lamplight. Brigitte was already pulling out account books and shouting for someone to get the quartermaster to her office, so Rosalie took her chance to slip away. She’d just shut the lieutenant’s door when Jax stepped out of the shadows beside it.
Rosalie jumped almost a foot into the air, covering her mouth to keep from shrieking in alarm. Jax pressed a frantic finger to his lips and pointed down the hall, away from Brigitte’s door and the frenzy of confused-looking staff officers who were now rushing through it.
He turned on Rosalie to ask what the hell she thought she was doing, but she beat him to the punch.
“I’m sorry.”
Jax blinked. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, her eyes sad. “About getting so angry the other night. You were right. My family did sell me. I suppose I always knew it, I just didn’t want to think about it that way. But wrong or not, they’re my family and they need me. I can’t turn my back on them, so I’ve decided to make the most of a bad situation and give my bride price to help fund the Garrison.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that,” Jax argued. “That’s your wedding money, right?”
Rosalie shrugged, brushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “It was supposed to pay for my wedding clothes. This is a much better use. Like you told me once, buying new equipment for the Garrison will do a lot more good than one rich girl soldier.”
Jax closed his eyes with a curse. He had said that, hadn’t he? “I’m sorry.”
Rosalie waved it away. “Don’t be.”
“No,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I shouldn’t have said those things. You’re not…” He sighed. “I’ve been unfair to you, Rosalie.”
She gave him a frankly skeptical look, which he deserved. Calling the horrific way he’d treated her unfair was like saying the titans were a mere nuisance.
“Can I tell you a story?” He was half hoping she’d say no. But she nodded.
“I grew up out on the southern edge of Maria,” he said, talking quickly before he lost his nerve. “My parents were woodcutters, but we didn’t own the land. The forest belonged to a noble, and he let us live there in exchange for cutting his trees. He paid us in food for the timber. Not much, but we got by. Then, one day, there was an accident. My dad’s legs got crushed by a falling log. He couldn’t walk after that, which meant he couldn’t work. And if he couldn’t work, we couldn’t eat.”
“But it wasn’t his fault,” Rosalie said.
Jax shrugged. “When you’re poor, everything’s your fault. The foreman didn’t care why we weren’t bringing in our wood for the week. We didn’t have it, and that made us useless. He called us vermin, said he was going to give our house to a family that could do the work. Something had to be done, so I took my dad’s ax and went to work in his stead.”
Rosalie’s face was pale when he finished. “How old were you?”
“Eleven,” Jax said. “But like I said, there was nothing else to be done. Dad was laid up and my mum had just given birth to my little sister, so it was up to me. I cut what wood I could reach and made up the difference by doing pretty much anything people would pay me for. In the winter, I used to walk behind the horse carts picking up dung so we could burn it for fuel instead of wasting wood we could trade for food.”
He stopped there, waiting for her to look disgusted, but Rosalie just nodded for him to continue.
“I did that for a year,” he went on. “Then, just when I was getting big enough to meet the quotas, the titans appeared.”
He still remembered that morning, clear as lightning. He’d just stepped out of his house with his ax over his shoulder to go to work when he saw the titan in the road, its mouth gleaming wet in the bright sunlight as it swallowed what was left of their neighbor.
“It came to our house,” Jax said, his voice shaking. “My dad couldn’t run, so he got the thing’s attention. It ate him while the rest of us escaped. But there were more. We tried to climb the trees, but they were faster than us. One got my mother. Bit her right out of the tree, like she was a piece of fruit. She was in its teeth when she thrust my baby sister at me and told me to run. So I did. I took my sister and I ran away fast as I could.”
“You were right to run,” Rosalie said. “You saved your sister’s life.”
“No,” Jax said angrily. “I got us here, to Trost, but the city was already full. Refugees from Maria were everywhere, and there wasn’t enough food to go ‘round. I was just a kid. I had no money, nowhere to go. I couldn’t take care of a baby. I couldn’t even take care of myself. I couldn’t do anything, so I…I gave her away.”
The words hung like swords in the silence, and Jax dropped his eyes in shame. “I gave her away,” he said again. “There was another family. They’d just lost their daughter, and they offered to take my sister off my hands. I didn’t want to give her up, but we were starving. They had food and relatives willing to take them in up north, which was more than I could offer. So I…I let her go.”
Rosalie took a deep breath. “Where is she now?”
“I don’t know,” Jax said. “I haven’t seen her since that day. But I’m not telling you this for sympathy. I just wanted you to know I was wrong when I said Maria folk look after their own, because I didn’t. I gave up my sister, my own flesh and blood. I have no right to criticize you or your family, because I did the same thing.”
“It is not the same thing,” Rosalie said fiercely. “You gave your sister to a family because you were starving. You helped her survive.”
“But the crime’s the same,” he said, eyes glued to his boots. “I tried to make it right. When they announced they were sending people out to reclaim Maria from the titans, I signed up right away. They said you could keep whatever land you could claim. I thought if I had a farm, somewhere I could grow food, I could convince the family to give my sister back. I wasn’t even afraid of the titans because we were going out on the king’s orders. Surely, I thought, he would send soldiers and cannons to protect us while we resettled the land.”
“But he didn’t,” Rosalie said quietly. “The reclamation of Maria was a disaster.”
“It was a scam,” Jax snarled. “They sent us out with nothing, knowing we would die! They couldn’t feed everyone, but instead of making do with less for themselves, the nobility and the king disposed of us. Of the two hundred and fifty thousand who took the bait, only a hundred of us made it back. I don’t even remember how I got back to the walls. I’d given up on my sister by then. Given up on everything. They’d taken it all.”
“ ‘They’ who?” Rosalie asked. “The nobility?”
Jax shrugged. “The nobility, the king, the titans. They were all responsible. But I couldn’t kill the king and his cronies, so I decided to go after the targets I could reach. At least they pay you for killing titans.”
Rosalie looked down at her knotted hands. “I can see why you didn’t like me.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t like you,” Jax said. “I hated you from the moment I saw you. But I was wrong. You’re not like the nobles who sent me out to die. You’re a fine soldier, and I’m…” He sighed. “I’m sorry, Rosalie.”
They stared at each other in silence, the red firelight flickering across their faces until, at last, Rosalie’s lit up with a grin.
“What?” Jax asked, suddenly wary. “Why are you smiling?”
“Because,” she said, grinning wider, “you finally called me by my name.”
Jax winced. “I’ve been an absolute beast to you, haven’t I?”
“You have, but your apology is cheerfully accepted.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get too happy about it,” he muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Just because you threw a king’s ransom at Brigitte and I blubbered my life’s story at you doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. You’re still my soldier, and that’s how I’m going to treat you. Though I was hoping we could start reading again. You can’t leave me hanging on that ending. It’s cruel.”
“Do you want to finish now?” she asked. “We should have just enough time for the last chapter before dawn breaks.”
“I’d love to,” Jax said. “But are you sure? It’s still Longest Night.”
“I’ve had enough Longest Night for one year,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Come on, let’s go read.”
The sudden curl of her bare fingers around his made Jax’s heart hammer. Sergeants did not hold hands with their subordinates, but Jax couldn’t bring himself to let go. If anything, he held on tighter, jogging behing Rosalie as she dragged him out of the tower.
At the Garrison headquarters building in the center of Trost, Captain Woermann was having a very different Longest Night.
He’d spent the evening jumping between parties, attending as many celebrations in Rose as possible as consolation for the fact that he hadn’t been invited to a single event in Sina. He finished his rounds just before dawn, then took his carriage back to his office. His plan was to sign his daily paperwork and spend the rest of the day recovering at home, but when he arrived at headquarters, one of his aides was waiting on the steps along with a courier in House Dumarque livery.
As soon as Captain Woermann opened the carriage door, the courier handed him a folded note. Fingers trembling, Woermann broke the wax seal. When he opened the letter, he saw only one line on the page.
Get my daughter back.
That was it. Four words written in the telltale angry strokes of a man who had been pushed too far. The note mentioned no reward, but Woermann had received desperate letters before, and they always worked out in his favor.
“Tell Lord Dumarque I am happy to oblige,” he said, placing the note in his pocket.
The courier nodded and hopped onto his horse, riding away as fast as he’d no doubt come in. When he was gone, Captain Woermann waved his aide over. “What was the name of the sergeant who was injured when Miss Dumarque made all that trouble?”
“Markus, I believe, sir,” the young man answered. “From the Supply Corps.”
“Send him to my office,” Woermann ordered. “But sober him up first. He’ll need his wits about him.”
The aide saluted and hurried inside. Woermann entered more slowly, climbing the wooden stairs to his corner office at the top to make a last-minute alteration to the weekly cannon report.
Since soldiers who’d been up all night drinking couldn’t be expected to perform their jobs well the next day, the military traditionally had the morning after Longest Night off. Even Rosalie knew this, which was why she was surprised when the night watch woke her shortly after sunrise and said that Squad 13 had been ordered to report to the lieutenant’s office immediately.
“Sorry to ruin your morning off,” Brigitte said when they’d all filed in. “But I just got the cannon report, and one of the big guns on the western wall is down. I’m going to need your squad to go out and do repairs.”
Willow arched a bushy eyebrow. “Aren’t cannon repairs the Supply Corps’ responsibility?”
“Yes,” Brigitte said. “But headquarters says there’s no one in Supply Corps they can roust to do the job right now. Your squad has a gunnery expert and a decent engineer.” She nodded at Rosalie and Emmett. “You should be good for the job. Just be quick about it. There’s a storm coming.”
“But the weather’s lovely, lieutenant,” Emmett said.
It really was. The morning after Longest Night had broken beautifully clear and cold, but Lieutenant Brigitte was shaking her head. “I’ve got enough old wounds to feel the weather twenty miles away. It’s coming, so I suggest you get your job done ahead of it.”
She finished with a pointed glance at Jax, who looked grimmer than Rosalie had seen him since their very first day as a squad. The whole exchange struck her as extremely odd, but orders were orders, so off they went, Jax glowering all the way.
By the time they’d gotten into their gear, found a cannon repair cart, and hauled it up the lift to the top of the wall, the weather was already changing. Clouds were rolling in from the west, turning the blue sky a dark, seething gray.
The strong wind was growing colder by the second. But Rosalie was more concerned about the patches of ice that had started forming on the top of the wall. She was watching her feet so closely to avoid a slip, she didn’t even notice the snow until she looked up and realized she could no longer see Trost through a wall of white.
“Jax—”
“I know,” he said right beside her, making her jump. “We need to pick up the pace,” he called, raising his voice over the wind. “Everyone keep moving, and stay away from the edges. Especially the Maria side.”
They all nodded grimly. A slip off either side of the wall would kill you, but a dead body on the Maria side would bring titans. Though he was the one who’d told them to stay away, Jax kept drifting to the Maria edge, peering off the side like he expected a titan to come leaping out of the snow.
“What are you watching for?” Rosalie asked.
“Nothing,” Jax muttered, shaking the snow out of his hair. “I just hate not being able to see is all. Weather like this is dangerous anywhere, but especially up here. If Brigitte hadn’t given the order personally, I’d say to hell with the cannon.”
Rosalie frowned. She had a feeling he wasn’t telling her the entire truth. Before she could press him, though, they reached the cannon they’d been sent to fix.
It was a big twelve-pounder, like the guns mounted above the gates. It was already buried in snow, but when Rosalie brushed it off the barrel looked new and clean. She scraped the snow off the gearbox next, looking for the problem while Emmett unpacked the tools from the cart. The more she cleaned, the less things made sense.
“I don’t get it,” she said, shaking her frozen fingers. “Everything looks good. Crank, pivot, rotating mechanism, the rail lock—they’re all fine.”
“Firing pin and barrel check out, too,” Emmett called over the howling wind. “I even loaded a shell, just to be sure, but it went in great.”
“Well if it ain’t broken, why did Brigitte send us?” Willow asked, pinching her nose. “Though what I really want to know is what smells so bad.”
Rosalie frowned. She hadn’t noticed with her head in the cannon—machine oil and gunpowder were pretty overpowering—but now that Willow mentioned it, there was an odd, sour smell on the cold air.
“It smells like something died,” Willow said, covering her face. “Probably a deer.”
“Doesn’t smell like a deer,” Jax said quietly, peering over the Maria side with his hands on his sword sheaths. “Can’t see a bleeding thing, though.” He glanced back at Rosalie and Emmett. “You’re sure nothing’s wrong with the cannon?”
“As sure as we can be without firing it,” Rosalie said, pointing at the freshly oiled gears. “I don’t know what was in the report, but this is one of the better cannons I’ve seen on the wall.”
“Maybe whoever reported it made a mistake?” Emmett suggested.
“Maybe,” Jax said skeptically. “Either way, we’re done here.”
That was the best news Rosalie had heard all day. But when she went to help Emmett pack up the repair cart, Jax said, “Leave it.”
“Out here?” Emmett said, looking in horror at the blowing snow. “But it’ll get buried!”
“We’ll dig out tomorrow,” Jax said. “Right now, our priority is to get back to base before we freeze. The cart will just slow us down.”
“But it could be ruined by tomorrow,” Emmett said anxiously. “You know how Captain Woermann feels about lost gear.”
“I’ll take responsibility,” Jax promised. “It’s not safe to be on the wall in weather like this, and I’d rather lose an equipment cart than a squad. Just tie a tarp over it and let’s go.”
Emmett obeyed reluctantly, covering the cart with its oiled cloth, but Rosalie’s eyes were on Jax. He was talking like a responsible officer, but his face was pale and his blue eyes were wide. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he looked terrified, and he still hadn’t stopped staring over the wall into titan territory.
“This isn’t about the weather, is it?” she said quietly, stepping up beside him. “There’s something out there.”
Jax’s fingers drummed nervously on the handles of his maneuver gear. “You’ve heard about my first squad?”
Rosalie nodded. The moment anyone in the Garrison learned that Jax was her sergeant, they fell over themselves telling her about how his first team had died horribly.
“Did you…” Willow swallowed nervously. “Did you kill them?”
“Of course not! Do I look like a murderer?”
Willow and Rosalie exchanged nervous looks, and Jax winced. “Never mind,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Point is, they did die, but I didn’t kill them.”
“So why don’t you tell everyone that?” Rosalie asked angrily. “The whole Garrison thinks you’re a killer!”
“I’m well aware of my reputation, thank you,” he said testily. “But there’s no point in trying to set the record straight. No one would believe the truth if I told it.”
“Why not?” Emmett asked, stepping away from the now tied-down cart to join them. “What happened?”
Jax looked nervously at the snow blowing on the Maria side of the wall. “Have you ever heard of the Gobbler?”
Rosalie vaguely remembered the name. “Isn’t that a titan?”
“An aberrant,” Jax said, nodding. “Looks like a child with weird, long limbs. But he’s a big bastard, and he loves the snow. Blizzards always bring him out.”
“What makes him so bad?” Willow asked.
“Because when he’s out, soldiers vanish.”
“Vanish?” Rosalie repeated skeptically. “You mean they get attacked?”
“If I’d meant that, I would have said it,” Jax snapped. “But there’s no attack. One minute they’re on the wall, the next they’re not. They’re just gone. Poof.”
“Wait, they vanish off the wall?” Emmett said. “How does that happen?”
“If we knew that, it wouldn’t be a mystery, would it?” Jax snapped, pointing back down the wall. “Let’s get moving.”
They fell in to single file and started marching, Jax in front and Rosalie at the rear. Happy as she was to be headed back to base, Rosalie wasn’t ready to let this go. “How does a titan attack people on top of the wall?” she yelled over the wind.
“No idea,” Jax yelled back. “But I lost my whole squad that way last winter. One minute we were all there, the next I was alone.”
“If they vanished, how do you know it was the Gobbler?” Willow asked. “Maybe they fell?”
“Because I saw him,” Jax said. “That’s why I was away from the squad when it happened. I’d caught a glimpse of the Gobbler and went to investigate. When I came back, my team was gone. I thought they’d cut and run, but when I spotted the Gobbler again a few minutes later, his hands and teeth were covered in blood, and he had that stupid smile on his face.” Jax clenched his fists. “I couldn’t even find parts to send home to their families. That’s why they call him the Gobbler. Because he gobbles everything up.”
Rosalie looked nervously at the curtain of snow shrouding the Maria side of the wall. “And you think he’s out there now?”
“I haven’t seen him yet,” Jax said, picking up the pace. “But this is his weather, which is why we need to get back to base as fast as possible.”
“I just wish that awful smell would go away,” Willow said, putting a hand over her mouth. “Where is it coming from?”
It seemed to be getting stronger. By the time they’d lost sight of the cannon, Rosalie could taste decay on her tongue. Desperate for something to block the odor, she bent down to grab a handful of fresh snow and shoved it into her mouth, sighing in bliss as the clean, cold meltwater swept down her throat.
The relief lasted only a moment, so she stopped and reached for an even bigger handful. She’d just finished packing the clean snow into a nice ball when something grabbed her from behind, wrapping around her body and yanking her off her feet before she could scream.
