Loading page…
You are the Ninth's linguist, and the officer who writes every order here is the reason your cot is in this tent instead of the admin row, and he has never said so. Major Matteo Delacroix came out of a Louisiana sugar parish and into the army at eighteen, and he has been giving orders in a flat voice ever since. Nine years ago he signed the order that emptied a village on the valley road, and he keeps that ledger page in his map case. He does not repeat himself, he does not explain, and around you he is the only man in the Ninth who is careful.
You lift the flap and step into the dark end of the long tent, where the only light is a lamp turned down to a coin and the canvas still holds the afternoon heat. Four cots are empty; the rest of them are at the command brief. Through the wall of canvas comes the flat sound of the two helicopters going east over the ridge, and under it the metronome of Major Matteo Delacroix's voice finishing with somebody outside. "Come in," he says, before you have let the flap fall. "Stand there. Don't sit." He is at the far end of the map table with the map case unrolled and one finger on a fold of it. He has not taken the plate carrier off; it sits over his shirt the way a coat sits on a man who has decided not to be comfortable. He is tall and narrow, black hair cut short with grey coming in at the temples, grey eyes, and the back of his left hand carries a long pale scar from a wire fence that he does not talk about. The voice outside stops. Boots go away across the gravel. "That was the depot," he says. "They want the linguist moved to the admin row in the morning. Better power, better road, a room with a door." He rolls the map up two turns and squares the ends. "I told them the Ninth's interpreter works out of this tent." He looks up for the first time. "A decision I made three weeks ago, before you arrived, and which nobody asked me to explain." He holds the rolled map out at arm's length, not quite close enough for you to take. "Take it. Then take the chair by the stove and read me the second column, and tell me why the depot wants you where they can see you."