"Wait," I said, "don't you want to know about your father?"
Martens put down the flimsy, stapled his hands beneath his chin, gave me a cold look.
"I would," he said. "In a bar, after a good dinner, once this war is won. Until then, no. Dil."
One of the guards, the old man, reached out, not quite touching me, but clearly inviting me to follow. I didn't. I couldn't go back to the Knife to tell him that his kid was alive, and apparently the commander of a mercenary outfit about to get slaughtered.
The dirt, the exhaustion, the silences. They didn't have the look of a winning military force. They looked about ready to collapse.
I felt sorry for them all, for Martens with his walled-up office, for the young man with the gun and his hostility, for Rennie stuck in her trench, for the kid on the motorcycle. With the exception of Martens and his troops, none of them had looked like they knew what they were doing. Rather, they'd looked desperate, pushed to the wall, civilians taking up arms against a sea of troubles.
"Do you need help?" I said.
That got me another cool look. Behind me, Dil exhaled a tired breath. I could imagine him shaking his head behind my back.
"Help?" Martens said. "Yes, we need help. We need an army group worth of drop infantry, and a carrier task force with bombards to clear the voidloving company from our world. But I don't see a self-proclaimed envoy from a fallen Syndicate world being able provide that. Can you?"
"I'm a warder," I said.
It didn't get me the reaction I'd hoped for.
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"Good for you," Martens said. "We've got mages. How do you think we've survived this far?"
The way he said mages made me think he didn't know a whole lot about them, or magic. Another munger who got his knowledge from the adventure vids. Likely, it meant that my help would matter. I needed to get on his good side, fast.
"So you know their worth," I said. "Wouldn't one more be an advantage?"
"What do you want?" Martens said.
"To help," I said.
"Why?"
I could have told him about his father, about the Star Horse, how everyone relied on the Knife to keep them safe, and how the Knife was falling to pieces himself, wanting to trade his life for his one surviving son. Tell him the whole story. Talk softly, layer it on.
But it wouldn't have been the truth. That truth had gotten me to New Millet, taking the Knife's place. But another truth had made me offer, a bigger, truer truth.
"Because I've been where you are," I said. "I've seen the losing end of a magewar, and you are on the losing end, mages or no mages. That ward you've got above your city? It doesn't even cover your outer perimeter. The shells are coming through, or else the enemy has figured out how to disable your wards enough to shred the upper stories of your buildings. You're hunkering down in a two-story with blocked up windows. You don't even have a proper command bunker, or proper com tech, only all these thin, white flimsies everywhere."
I breathed heavily, my mouth having run away with me again. Too bad. If Martens wanted to throw me out, he would.
"And one mage can change all that?" he said.
"I don't know," I acknowledged. "But I can try."
"Dil," Martens said.
The guard leaned forward, his weight shifting, causing the floorboard to creak. If the crudmucker grabbed me, I'd elbow him in the face.
"Take this man to the professor," Martens said. "And disarm him."
"Hey," I said, "I'm an-"
"A departing envoy," Martens said. "Or our freshest volunteer, who follows orders."
"Can't fight without a gun," I said.
"A mage can. I'm not letting an armed stranger close to the only thing keeping the company at bay."
He had a point. I might not like it, but I'd have done the same thing in his position. He wasn't a complete munger.
I stretched out my arms, letting the old guard, Dil, take my Hurmer, my M3, and my slimline.
"Careful with that," I said when he removed the slimline. "It's special."
Dil nodded.
"I'll take good care of it," he said. "Sir."
