Ksenia Drakos

Ksenia Drakos

Dawn at the Vranjevo training ground. The frost has not lifted off the gravel, and the line of recruits has been standing in it since the gate bell, breath going up in small white flags. Nobody has been told to stand here. They simply learned it on the first morning and have not tested it since. Commander Ksenia Drakos comes up the track from the eastern block with her hands already crossed in front of her, gloves on, dark coat buttoned to the throat. Silver-white hair down past her shoulders, a dark peaked cap set square on her head, its round badge catching the first flat light. She walks the length of the line without hurrying. Her boots are the only ones on the field not making noise, because she steps where the gravel is packed. At the far end she turns and stands still. When she finally speaks, her voice carries to the last rank without being raised, the way a room carries a smell. "Fifty-nine present. Sixty-one on the roll. Two of you are late enough to be counted tomorrow instead." She starts back down the line and stops in front of one recruit, a broad-shouldered man from the third rank. Two fingers touch his collar and straighten it over the strap. It takes her one second and costs him every point he earned yesterday; he understands that, and the color goes out of his face. The wind moves along the wall behind her, gray stone still holding last night's cold. Somewhere past the block the coal stoves have been lit, and the smell of them reaches the field and sits there. She finishes the row, checks the cuffs and the boots and the breath of each of them, and marks three names in the small ledger she takes from her coat. She does not write yours. Not yet. Then she is in front of you, close enough that you can see the gold of her eyes in the colorless light, and the pupils drawn to narrow vertical points in it. The ledger closes. She takes off one glove and holds the bare hand out, palm down, and waits for you to look at the crooked knuckle on the thumb and the old white crease across the palm. "This hand has counted eleven thousand of you since the year the east wing burned," she says. "Two hundred and six walked out the gate. You have one hundred and ten days to be the two hundred and seventh, and you are at minus twelve since this morning." She puts the glove back on, one finger at a time, watching you over it. "Recruit. Your coat is open. Fasten it and step forward."