Well Met (128)

PSI-2

The gaslamps barely dented the night. It was clear and cold, with only a silver sliver of moon hung over the smoky rooftops like a set piece.

Further hobbled by a lack of glasses, Ann was doing her level best to wrangle about two dozen children into a close-knit group so she could herd them safely and quietly around the back of the house. “Be careful, my darlings. Don’t fall now, don’t fall!” Her heeled boots thumped and wobbled on the uneven ground, but her ankle strength was equal to the task. She could even run, if necessary!

Sanaam peeped out of the front door, holding his shoes in his hands. He did his level best to avoid the creaking boards in the porch, although he wasn’t as good at that as Ann or Milo or any of the more permanent residents, then he bypassed the stairs altogether and leapt down, landing in an awkward crouch. He recovered with a minimum of clinking glass and looked into the street with a grin that rapidly faded. There seemed to be rather more shifting shadows in the distance than he’d been expecting. He stood on one foot, hopping, and replaced first one shoe, then the other, on his way over. “Ann!” he hissed.

“Yes, dear?” she replied, smiling.

He waved her over and she obligingly presented her ear for whispering when he put up his hand, “I said pick out the best ones!”

Ann took a step backwards and straightened her coat. “They are all the best ones.”

“Hi, Maggie’s Daddy!” Bethany piped up with a grin. “Can we climb you?”

“Shh, little one, maybe later,” Sanaam said. He sighed and smiled. “This is going to be one of the most expensive useless gifts my wife can’t return that I’ve ever bought. Was it a sol each?”

“Just so, dear,” Ann said.

He attempted a rapid headcount.

Maggie lifted a hand and called, “Don’t forget me, Dad! I’m working here!”

“Maggie, you annoy people for free all the time!” Sanaam said. He gasped and clapped both hands over his too-loud mouth.

“The silence spell on three of our bedroom walls is extra,” she told him.

He sighed. “Oh, all right. Is Erik in there with you?” He was coming up one green kid short, but they kept moving around and it was dark.

“No, he didn’t want to mess with Mom,” Maggie said.

“Chicken,” Bethany put in.

“Hang on, I’ve got to make change out of Hyacinth’s glass jar,” Sanaam said. He cut down Green Dragon Alley to avoid the yard and the porch.

Ann motioned the group of them towards the alley while walking backwards so she could address them, “Does everyone know the words? I’m so dreadfully sorry I can’t write it up on the chalkboard for you.”

A few of them sang it, and a few of them said it, creating a drone not unlike a bagpipe: “’You can’t always get what you want!’”

Ann motioned for quiet. “Shh, shh, shh. Not yet, my little loves! It’s a surprise! I’ll say when. Come this way. Be careful…” She picked up Charlie, he was the shortest, and lifted him over the uneven ground to set him safely near the back stairs. “There, how is that?” she asked him.

He giggled at her. “You’re strong.”

“When the circumstances require it,” she said.

Sanaam came out of the back door a few moments later and paid his improvised choir — probably some of them more than once. “Okay, wait’ll I get up on the roof!” The kitchen lights remained on in his absence and painted the alleyway in strokes of brown, blue, red and green.

There was some muted giggling and Ann tried to shush them. “Just wait now, just wait…”

Once again shoeless, Sanaam crept out onto the widow’s walk, firmly in the danger zone. He waved his arms for attention and then signed ‘okay’ at them. Ann lifted both hands to conduct and opened her mouth to sing along.

———

“Come through, Zephyr. The way is clear.”

It was a long time before he met her. It was a long time before he assigned a face and a body to the tinny little voice on the radio. Long before he knew her, he came to love the sound of that voice. Weak and distorted as it was, that voice meant safety and success.

They put him in charge of the Zephyr, an army supply ship. Nothing to do with the navy. Nothing to do with formally enlisting either, fortunately. He volunteered, they wanted to know what he could do, he said, “You have boats, don’t you?” He could quit whenever he wanted! In theory. In practice, the Marselline Army owned the boat and there were quite a lot of people with guns on that boat who were rather attached to having a captain. He had grown attached to a lot of them too, enlisted and volunteer. That’s how they get you, he often thought. It’s not a job, it’s emotional blackmail. You start out helping your country and you end up helping your best friends.

Speed was the name of the game and the Zephyr was built for it: small, light and with a magic drive that sent her over the tops of the waves like shit through a goose. Get in, get out, no fucking about. The capacity of her hold was similarly cheated, though they did not often fill up all the slipspace. It took time to unload — better to do a quick dump, get out and come back than hang around making a target of yourself. A magic drive and an infinity hold were damned expensive to construct, and no picnic to maintain. But, used well, they could supply a whole country’s worth of troops with only two or three vessels.

Sanaam and his crew had charge of about two-hundred miles of Gund coastline at the moment, with five different ports of call. Gundaland had recently backed out of its nominal support of Marsellia and torn up the First Coalition — the Premier might live to regret it, and Marsellia’s young Emperor was regretting it already. At fourteen, Bertie didn’t get much say in how his Empire, such as it was, was being run, but if Gundaland was out the only thing to do was beat them over the head until they were back in or they got out of the way. The Vasa Union had come over to Marsellia’s side of things, so there were plenty of places to pick up supplies with only a little ocean in between.

“Only a little ocean” is never “only a little ocean” when one gets magic involved, of course.

They were standing against the rail of a humming, levitating ship and looking at a vast white field of sea ice between them and their first port of call. The sea here was cold, but not that cold. Not when left to its own devices.

“We’re rated for ice, Cap,” Bill said. As if he needed reminding.

“It is not the ice, my friend,” Sanaam said pensively. “It’s whatever the people who’ve been walking around on the ice have done to it.”

“I don’t think this far out…”

“And how far in should we be willing to chance it?”

“Think we should go around?”

Sanaam sighed. “I don’t know if there is an ‘around’ at the moment, Bill. Get on the radio and see what you can find me.”

Before Bill could lift up the microphone, the speaker crackled to life on its own: “Please identify! Over!”

“Uh, this is Zephyr, MEA427. Reply 63,” Bill said. Bill was a volunteer too. An Iroquoi with a nasal accent, dual citizenship and delusions of patriotism for his adopted land. He claimed to be an ex-cowboy. Sanaam doubted cows required that level of technical skill, but maybe magic drives and sundries were more of a hobby, like fighting wars.

“I’m going to need a little bit more, Zephyr, over,” the radio said acidly, though the voice had followed them over to channel 63.

Sanaam dove for the radio and threw open the codebook. “Let’s go out for oyster stew, over!” he cried.

The radio was silent for a moment. “It is Woden’s Day, Zephyr. You are damn lucky your beacon is functioning. Shall we try it one more time before I disable your engine and try to get hold of your superiors to vouch for you, over?”

“Uh, that would be a negative, sir,” he replied. “No engine here, and not any more coal than would fit in a tin cup, over.”

“I am inclined to peg that tin cup at your head, Zephyr, along with half the silverware, the dining room table and the kitchen sink, over.”

“Sorry about that, sir. Are we clear to approach? Uh, over.”

“Save for the rather large amount of ice in the way, Zephyr, but I am dealing with it presently. Please maintain your position, over.”

Sanaam glanced up from the microphone with a doubtful frown. “What does she mean she’s dealing…”

In the distance, there was a circular flash of orange light, like a visual effect in a syncotech. There followed further flashes, but no repetitive music, only a distant sound like thunder.

“Pardon me, are you blowing things up and talking to me on the radio at the same time?” Sanaam demanded of the microphone. “Over!”

“In a manner of speaking, Zephyr. I have a headset. Please hold. Out.”

Sanaam abandoned the microphone and ran back to the railing. “Is that woman out there all by herself?” He had some binoculars somewhere… He patted his pockets, then drew out the small case and engaged the mechanism. The green metal case split down the middle and the lenses popped up.

Bill yanked on his arm. “Cap, be careful, the light…”

“She’s doing deconstructions, that’s as bright as they get,” Sanaam said. He peered through the lenses and tried to find something human scale below the light show.

“What if she does something else?” Bill said.

“It’s too far,” Sanaam muttered. He examined the binoculars. “Bill, where’s the goddamn magic on these things?”

“Oh, sure, ask the orange guy, he knows magic,” Bill said.

“Jacinda!” Sanaam called.

“Give me the damn things,” Bill said. He snatched the green case and examined the lenses. “It’s either a button or a slider…”

Jacinda jogged over, resplendent in a military greatcoat with an obvious pistol on her hip. Her long dark hair bespoke some Iliodarian ancestry, but she didn’t even have a southern accent. She wore the hair in a single coiled braid that made her look like a cinnamon roll. She was not quite as good at tech as Bill, but much more intimidating. “What’s going on?” she said.

“Bill’s being mean to me!” Sanaam declared.

“Want me to shoot ‘im?”

Something clicked inside of the green case. A set of gears on the side of it engaged and turned. The lenses whirred, adjusted and sprouted cylinders of red light with arcane symbols dancing around the outer edge. Bill deciphered them: “‘Virtual zoom! Copyright Icona Camera Company, 1362!’” He lifted the case to his eyes and examined the flags flying from the mast. He could see the weave of the fabric. “Wow!”

“Does it take pictures?” Jacinda said.

“Give me!” Sanaam said. He made a grab for the binoculars and Bill held them away, over the side of the boat.

“Let’s see ya clap your hands and say ‘I do believe in fairies’ a couple times,” Bill said.

“Damn it, Bill, that is vitally important military…”

There was a violently white flash of light which started small and blossomed in a ring shape, leaving a purple glow in its wake. It rushed towards them like a shockwave and passed through them, a hot wind with a scent of ozone. The entire ship shuddered feverishly and stilled. The vast expanse of white sea was shot through with glowing purple threads. It broke up and disintegrated into waving green water.

“What in the hell?” Jacinda said.

“Ouch! Damn it!” Bill said. He dropped the binoculars on the deck and stuck his fingers in his mouth. The green case rattled, snapped itself shut and burst into flame, trembling and emitting a shrieking sound like a firework. Jacinda aimed her pistol at it.

Sanaam stamped on it — which stopped the fire and the shrieking but left a scorched place on the deck in the shape of a pentagram with more arcane symbols around it.

“‘Warranty void,’” Bill read shakily.

“Come through, Zephyr. The way is clear,” the radio said.

All three of them screamed.

Sanaam grabbed the microphone, dropped it, snagged it by the cord and dragged it back to his mouth, “If that was you, sir, you have just destroyed what I can only assume are a very expensive pair of military-issue binoculars! …Over!” he added, into the silence.

“Are your eyes intact, Zephyr, over?” said the radio.

“Yeah, thanks, over!” Sanaam shrieked, causing an instant of feedback.

“Your magic drive and your sails should be, also,” the radio said. “I assume that is why you are carrying no more coal than would fit in a poorly-disguised call sign, over?”

Sanaam regarded the microphone. His mouth narrowed and puckered as if he’d just consumed an entire tube of hemmorhoidal ointment. “Can I buy you a drink when we get into port, crazy lady?” he said conversationally. “Over.”

“I have other obligations, Zephyr. Out.”

Quiet, for a moment. “Bill, could you tell the drivers…”

“First lemme hear ya say, ‘Thanks for saving my eyes, Bill.’”

Sanaam threw the microphone at him. The cord didn’t reach.

———

She seemed to be based out of Bernthold, but she surprised him by popping up in Huldaberg and Diethelm. He had no idea she was really based out of Kriemhild, about twenty miles inland, nor did he know about her ability to cover mileage quickly by turning into a giant eagle. They ported her out to wherever some magic needed breaking, and she radioed technical assistance over even longer distances — when she wasn’t applying her tactical skill to the command of a regiment. But it was off the coast of Bernthold, where he’d first heard that tinny voice come over the radio and tell him the way was clear, that he finally lost patience and went over the side of the boat to meet her in person.

Sanaam was below deck and engaged with a minor drag control problem when Bill’s voice came over the comm system, shrieking: “Stop the boat!” The magic drive was very responsive that way. They didn’t even need to turn broadside. However, Sanaam did slam face-first into a wall full of delicate dials and buttons when the air anchor engaged, switching several of them over to red. He pinched his bloody nose shut with one hand, depressed the button on the speaker with the other and demanded, “What the hell is it?”

“Ice!” came the crackling reply.

The nose of the boat was several feet into a flat, glasslike sea of green.

“It’s clear!” Bill snarled, as if they didn’t have any right to do that.

“It’s obvious,” Sanaam said stuffily.

“Not at speed it fucking well isn’t, Cap!” Bill said. “If we could’ve shifted her out of second we’d be five miles into it already!”

The radio emitted a squeal of feedback and screamed into life, “Marselline vessel, stop where you are!” It faded in an explosion of static. This was matched by an explosion of orange light in the distance.

Sanaam waited a few beats to see if he was going to get an ‘over,’ then he depressed the button on the microphone and attempted, “We’re stopped, sir! We see it! Over!” There was another long silence and he wondered if he’d caught her in crosstalk.

“…phyr, is that you?” the radio said. “Ov…” It was lost in another burr of static, but this one was not accompanied by any obvious explosion.

“It’s us, sir. We…” He clutched the mic in both hands and hollered into it, “We have a large shipment of deli meats, frozen waffles and lawn furniture for you! Over!” There was a notable cloud of smoke, or some kind of vapor rising in the distance. It was bright green.

“The toaster oven is on fire, I will be right with you, Zephyr!” She was still on the call channel and she followed with another message, “This is Commander Glorious D’Iver, requesting assistance! I… My location is somewhere on the ice, I cannot be exact! …escort may be separated from me or dead! It is possible we are… made to attack each other! …non-lethal methods! I repeat, use only non-lethal methods! We are coping with illusory magic out here! They are using…” More static, and a purple light lit up the green cloud. It dissipated briefly and then reformed.

“Oh, shit,” Bill said.

Sanaam approached the railing, still clutching the microphone. The green cloud was lit from within by multiple flashes of color. Either she was throwing everything she had at them or they were throwing everything they had at her. “They’ve been planning this. Remember that sea monster outside of Diethelm?”

“That was obvious,” Bill said.

“That was a beta test,” Sanaam said. He twisted his hands around the mic, as if attempting to throttle it. The radio was eerily silent. “They had a fog machine, didn’t they? I mean, it was a literal fog machine. Like a haunted house. They were shaping it and projecting things on it, but it was all down to a…”

The cloud lit up orange and dissipated again, then reformed.

Sanaam went cold. His voice was flat, numb. “Bill, I think she’s trying to undo the magic keeping that cloud up, but they’re using a couple of goddamn fog machines and she can’t see them.”

“Holy shit, Cap! Call her!” Bill cried.

“Commander D’Iver, this is Zephyr! Can you hear me? Over!”

Silence, for a time. “…difficulty, Zephyr. If you can hear me, I’m… may be some time! Put your feet up and have a cup of…”

Squirming, he gave her a little while longer to come back with an ‘over,’ then he hit the button and called out, “Miss D’Iver, the cloud isn’t magic, it’s mechanical! They’ve got fog machines out on the ice so they have something to play with! You’re not going to un-magic that cloud! You have to find a physical object and smash it! Are you reading me? Over!”

He waited.

“Come back, please, Miss D’Iver!”

Bill sighed. “They’re jamming the signal or they’ve got her so turned around she can’t hear.”

Sanaam set the microphone gently beside the radio. “Bill, what have we got on this damn boat that isn’t designed to kill people?”

———

“Cap, just because she’s doing non-lethal, that doesn’t mean they are,” Bill warned him from the top of the rope ladder.

“I know it, my friend,” Sanaam said with a smile. “I’ll try to get you on the radio if I survive.”

Bill saluted him, a rare thing. Sanaam drew an umbrella from the narrow pack on his back (it had been intended to contain a folding table) and snapped a smart one back at him with the tip of it. He was wearing a black riding helmet, a military blue shield vest, a pair of glasses with yellow lenses, and winter boots with crampons, also taken from the infinity hold. The boots bit securely into the ice when he stepped down, and he was on his way.

Behind him, the crew joined together to shout, “Good luck, Cap!” A single voice, it sounded like Jacinda, added, “Don’t die!”

He brandished the folded umbrella over his head in what he hoped was a friendly manner, then he pressed it crosswise against his chest like a cutlass and ran.

———

Commander D’Iver beheld, though the swirling mist, the approaching figure of an enormous black man, with a blacker riding helmet and bouncing, distended ears. He was holding a bright red umbrella over his head and wearing yellow sunglasses and a soldier’s vest that just barely buttoned over his large belly.

Well, that’s new, she thought. She had just dealt with another spate of monstrous lizard-men and had reason to suspect that was one of the automated effects. She was doing her best to time them, but there were actual people out there improvising new things in her direction too. The situation was distracting by design and it was difficult to keep track. A screaming soldier in a Marselline uniform ran between them. She threw up a hand in its direction and declared, “Oxen can be trained to genuflect!” The soldier appeared to dissipate, but she couldn’t be sure. There were several apparent bodies on the ground around her, enough to account for her entire escort, but they kept changing position when she wasn’t looking. She stretched out a hand at the approaching giant and said, “Drop the chocolate suitcase!”

Sanaam saw a mass of something swirling and pink and terribly threatening barreling in his direction like it was the bowling ball and he was the pin. He brought down the open umbrella and it ricocheted aside. “Don’t shoot at me!” he cried. “I’m just here to bring you some oyster stew!”

The Commander, who had just turned to deal with what appeared to be a regiment of Gund soldiers aiming their rifles at her, did a quick double take. Unfortunately, where there had once been a giant man, there was now a stuttering collection of black dots on an orange background, like a comic strip with halftoning. A real bullet (probably) whizzed past her cheek and she brought up her hand with the appropriate gesture for a shield. Her vision warped like a fisheye in that direction, but it didn’t make much difference. “Is that you over there, Zephyr?” she said hoarsely.

“Yes! Don’t shoot!” He sounded nearer, but there was a lot of screaming and banging and distortion to deal with.

“I am not shooting!” she snapped. “There are others who are! If you want me to know where you are, you’re going to have to find me and grab hold of me! My vision is…” A horse ran by with its mane and tail on fire, which briefly derailed her train of thought. “My vision is impaired!” she said. “Damn it!” She dropped the shield and switched it to her opposite hand. “Buzz bombs at three o’clock!”

Through his tinted lenses, Sanaam made out the stout figure of a woman in a military blue greatcoat. She had short dark hair and was wearing a headset with a microphone and a single can over her right ear. She had just created a flat piece of pink-shaded magic to ward off a swirling cloud of green-shaded magic.

Pink must be defensive, he decided. He didn’t have time to read the directions on the damn glasses, just that they were called ‘Magi-Vision’ and they were meant to help you do anti-magic. Which he could not do. But it was sure as hell useful just to be able to see everything.

And, he thought, lunging forward, if they are doing the green magic to make her put the pink magic over there, then the real bullets… He brought down the umbrella again and felt something solid zing off of it. “That is one mother of a repel charm on that thing!” he said. The fabric wasn’t even stained.

She peered blindly in his direction. “Please find me, Zephyr!”

“I’m about to scare the hell out of you, Miss D’Iver!” he warned her, just an instant before bringing his hand down over her face. “Keep them on! Keep them on!”

She clutched her face. The tinted glasses were dangling off her ear with the can on it. She pulled down the headset and made the glasses more secure. When her hand came down her expression was murderously sour. “I am not a ‘Miss,’ Zephyr!”

“Married?” he asked her, disappointed.

“Commissioned!” she snarled. “Oh, my gods!” She threw up her shield to block a large purple cloud of something. “Your giant snake is invisible!” A blast of pink intersected the purple and did it no harm. “What the hell am I wearing?”

“A giant snake?” Sanaam said, blinking. What appeared to be a genuine Marselline soldier, covered in swirling green fog, ran out of the mist at him with arms raised in an attempt to tackle him to the ground. He hit the button that folded the umbrella and swatted her hard on the side of the neck. The soldier fell to the ground, choking and clawing at her throat, which was enveloped in crackling red magic. “Ooh, sorry!” Sanaam said. He raised the umbrella again and clocked the soldier on the back of the head. She fell onto the ice, unconscious. “Head shots,” he muttered to himself. “It’s not a sword. It’s not a sword.”

“Is that a gen 5?” Commander D’Iver asked him.

“It’s a gen 6!” he said happily. “It flies! Would you like one? I’ve got lots!” He pulled another from the pack on his back.

“I can do everything it can do,” she said dully. “Ah!” She put up her hand again. “Drop the chocolate suitcase!” The swirling mass of purple dissipated. “Purple is physical force!” she cried. “Very good!”

“Green is visual and pink is whatever you’re doing,” Sanaam said. “What is a chocolate suitcase?”

“A rare phrase,” the Commander replied. “I collect them for their utility. Stand back-to-back with me, Zephyr, if I am touching you I know where you are. It’s easier to communicate if…” A soldier covered in green fire ran towards her, brandishing a knife. She brought up one hand for the shield and then aimed the curse with the other one, “Oxen can be trained to genuflect!”

Sanaam laughed. “What?”

The green fire shredded like gauze. “Commander D’Iver?” the soldier said suspiciously.

“Zephyr, do you have any more of those glasses? Duck, Corporal Pratt! Oxen can be trained to genuflect!” The green cloud died before it could reach him. She slammed the proffered pair of glasses onto his face, bruising his nose. “Keep them on, Corporal Pratt! Do you perceive the unconscious form of Lieutenant Dix?”

“Sir?” said Corporal Pratt. He pushed up the glasses, blinking.

“I am reasonably sure it is real. Please remove her to the shore, which I believe you may also be able to accurately discern! As I was saying, Zephyr, it is easier to understand each other if neither one of us is being killed!”

“Sir!” Sanaam replied. It was a great deal shorter than ‘Commander D’Iver.’ He triggered the umbrella in the direction of an approaching purple cloud. It deflected skywards. A charging Gund soldier, ringed in green (Ah, and that means it’s not over his eyes, Sanaam thought.), aimed an extendable polearm at him and tried to remove the umbrella. Sanaam hit the button and triggered it to unfold. A few deflections led to an entanglement, and he twisted the handle to engage flight mode. “Oh, fine, have that one!”

The soldier cried out as his polearm was whimsically lifted into the fog with enough force to carry him upwards a few feet before he relinquished it and went for his gun.

Sanaam removed another umbrella, a blue one, and struck the soldier on the side of the head. The soldier shot Sanaam, the bullet bounced off the shield vest, Sanaam whacked the soldier on the head and this series was repeated twice more with increasing disbelief before the umbrella sprang open and flipped itself inside-out. “No, that’s rubbish, that’s a regular one,” Sanaam said. He jabbed the metal tip of the sub-par blue umbrella in the soldier’s face and drew out a black one with his off hand. That one knocked the man out.

“I am experiencing grave doubts in your competence, Zephyr,” the Commander said.

Sanaam overrode her, “We dealt with something like this in Diethelm, sir! The fog was being produced mechanically. That’s why you can’t get rid of it with magic. There’s a machine or two out there we need to crush to clear the air!”

Silence from the Commander, not even a rare phrase.

“Sir?”

“Hand me that piano!” she snapped. The whole area lit up pink and the fog briefly thinned. “I am annoyed the effect is so simple, Zephyr, that is all. Do you see anything likely?”

“A lot of guys running around, sir!”

“Likewise,” said the Commander. “Did the machine you encountered in Diethelm have metal components?”

He nodded. “Most of it was, sir.”

“I need a moment,” she said. “Can you protect me?”

“Half of you,” he said. Smiling sweetly, he handed her another umbrella.

She sighed, popped it open, and crouched behind it to do math.

He brandished his like a baseball bat. “Come on, cowards! I can see you!” A bullet whizzed past his ear. He popped open his umbrella and crouched behind it, behind her. “This is better,” he said. He employed a second umbrella with his off hand. “This works better.”

She groaned. A moment later, she nudged him with a hand, “If you are in error about the nature of the machine, I am about to murder all of your tactical umbrellas for no gain.”

“What if I hide one behind another one?”

“You will look even sillier and accomplish nothing, but by all means,” she said. She stood and folded her umbrella, planting it tip down in the glass green ice. She swept a wide gesture with one hand as she spoke, “If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college!”

The central shaft of the umbrella disintegrated in orange embers, followed by each folded rib. The silk fabric detached and fluttered to the ground in one large circular piece. Her headset likewise fell to pieces, depositing the cloth microphone cover on the breast of her coat.

“People are still shooting at us, sir!” Sanaam warned her, as his protective umbrellas began to dissolve. He released the handle of the left one and the metal bits floated upwards and vanished like reverse snow.

“With metal bullets, Zephyr,” the Commander said calmly. She dusted the microphone cover from her breast.

A Gund soldier ran out of the mist with fixed bayonet, noted the bayonet and the rifle it was attached to were rusting away in her hands and veered off with a petrified expression.

“My first mate has pins in his arm,” Sanaam noted with vague horror.

“I have made an allowance for mergers and prosthetics. As long as these fog machines of yours do not contain human flesh, all will be well.”

The metal buttons had gone from his vest and his belly sprang outwards comically.

“It really is a shame about the standard sizes,” the Commander said. “Fat people are not bulletproof.” She brought her hand up in the shield position but the approaching grenade dissolved before it impacted. The green fog was thinning similarly. “Hand me that piano!” she declared, and a large swath of atmosphere cleared around her. “Excellent,” she said. She held up her shield hand, awaiting the approach of a magic or human-based offense. “Am I addressing the ship’s captain, then?”

“Sanaam Sadiq,” he said. He offered his hand.

She did not accept. “I remain Commander Glorious D’Iver,” she said. “We are well met.”

———

So that was the first time he fought with her. But he did not propose to her until she fell through the ice and almost drowned.

He still didn’t know about that, even now. It might have been an honest mistake. The magic could have fallen apart on her before she was prepared. Army uniforms were ridiculously heavy, especially the feminine ones. He was a civilian and knew how to dress to avoid sinking, she was at a disadvantage from the start. Levitation spells took time, even if you hooked them up to a rare phrase, let alone turning into an eagle and getting airborne from a full stop. It was not impossible that she was just unlucky.

And she certainly would not have done it to make herself seem vulnerable and approachable. He was already well aware of exactly how much she needed him, which had averaged out to maybe a tenth of a percentage point above zero after the rescue in the fog.

But she might’ve done it because she knew better than he did that he was damn well going to marry her and she wanted to make him wonder for the rest of his life. She did have a sense of humor in there. A mean one.

Nevertheless, he pulled her to the surface and Bill threw them a line and once they were safely on deck, dripping, he had dipped into the well of his courage and exasperation and said, “Sir, we had really better get married before one of us dies!”

And she said, “All right.”

Look, the point was, whether it was her needling him for getting the codebook the wrong way up, or trying to dispel him with countermagic, or pretending to almost die just to irritate him — she had started it!

And there was nothing for it but to hire a cadre of variously off-key children — at great personal expense! — to wake her up at three o’clock in the AM on the morning of their anniversary so he could take a picture of the expression on her face with his brand new camera and cherish it.

He raised his best-ever birthday present to his eye and tapped firmly on the bedroom window.

“You can’t always get what you want!” the droning voices of the children reminded them both. About half the kids peeled off to finish the phrase after three repetitions, while the other half gave out another, “You can’t always get what you want!” They broke off in muttering consternation, while Ann assured them, “Oh, that’s all right!”

The bedroom window was removed from its frame.

Sanaam eagerly depressed the button on his camera, but the flash failed to engage in the dim light. “What?” he cried. A paper-wrapped photo dispensed gamely, like an insolent tongue.

She didn’t even look at him. She addressed the children, “Will that be all?”

Bethany cupped hands to her mouth and bellowed, “Maggie’s Daddy didn’t think you’d let us sing any more than that!”

“He is not completely stupid,” the General said. “Are you down there, Magnificent?”

“Happy anniversary, Mom!”

“I appreciate the sentiment but your delivery leaves a lot to be desired.” Now, finally, she leaned out the window and regarded him frantically shaking his camera. “Is it underexposed? What a shame.” She smiled. “If I had known I was volunteering for upwards of twelve years of this nonsense, I would have shot you the instant you informed me you were bringing me oyster stew,” she said fondly. “Dismiss your erstwhile crew and come to bed, Captain.” She turned and then paused, “The way is clear.”

Sanaam considered his camera, his ruined photo, and his evil wife. He beamed and signed a double thumbs up at the children, “Thanks, kids!” then he climbed in the window. It was a bit of a squeeze, but he managed it.

Ann peered up into the darkness until she made out the window replaced in its frame, then she turned and spoke to the children with a smile: “Come inside and we shall all have cereal and hot chocolate for breakfast!”