Crimson Veil

Chapter Eight — Fault Lines

Eve’s pov

Renna introduced herself by telling me I had stocked the supply cabinet incorrectly.

She was a senior healer — eight years in the Veil, from the way she wore the rank insignia on her uniform with the particular ease of someone who had stopped noticing it was there. Sharp-featured, precise in her movements, with the kind of competence that was real but also weaponized, deployed as a means of establishing hierarchy rather than simply as a way of doing good work.

"The drawing agents go on the second shelf from the top," she said, standing in the middle of the ward with her arms folded, watching me reorganize the cabinet I had organized three days ago without complaint from anyone. "Not the third. The third is for wound irrigation supplies, which are ordered by frequency of use, not alphabetically. Theron may have told you differently but Theron is not the senior ranking healer in this ward."

I moved the drawing agents to the second shelf. "Of course. Thank you for clarifying."

"The intake records from Tuesday also have inconsistencies."

"I'll review them."

"The notation format—"

"I'll review them," I said again, with the same even tone, and turned to face her.

She was looking at me with the particular attention of someone taking a measure. I had the sense that she was waiting for me to either capitulate entirely or push back with enough heat that she could address it, and that either response would give her what she was looking for.

I gave her neither. I looked back at her with the calm that Mira's lessons had given me and waited for her to say something that required a response.

Whatever she saw in my expression, it wasn't what she'd been expecting. She unfolded her arms and moved toward the next task with the slight stiffness of someone regrouping.

"The Commander's treatment notes need to be filed separately from the general ward records," she said, over her shoulder. "Privacy protocol."

"I was already doing that," I said.

She didn't answer.

~ ~ ~

It happened three days later.

I was in the main ward with a patient — a young soldier from Third Division with a recurring shoulder issue that had more to do with his training form than any injury, and I was trying to explain this to him with tact while he remained optimistically convinced that I would find something dramatic wrong that would excuse him from the next rotation.

Renna came in while we were talking.

She stopped at the end of the treatment bed and said, loudly enough that the three other soldiers in the ward could hear clearly, "Ashcroft, this patient was assigned to Theron this morning. You're overstepping."

I knew for a fact that Theron had asked me to cover his afternoon intake because he had a senior staff meeting. I had it in writing.

The soldier on the bed looked between us with the uncomfortable expression of someone who did not want to be in the middle of this.

"Theron asked me to cover," I said, calmly. "I have the note if you'd like to see it."

"The assignment board shows—"

"I have the note," I said again. Still calm. Still even.

The ward was quiet in a particular way — that held quality of people pretending very hard not to be listening.

And then I heard footsteps in the corridor, and Adam Voss walked through the ward doors.

He stopped just inside the entrance the way he always did — that brief, complete assessment of the space. His eyes moved across the ward, registered the tableau — me, Renna, the soldier, the watching audience — and something in his expression went very still.

He crossed to the supply table near the far wall, which was the stated reason for entering the ward. He had asked Caine to request a specific salve two days ago.

But as he passed behind Renna, he looked at her.

Just looked at her.

He didn't stop moving. Didn't say a word. Didn't alter his pace by a single step. It was a look that lasted less than two seconds, the kind of look that communicated something without using any of the mechanisms that communication was supposed to require.

I watched Renna's spine straighten. Watched the color in her face change in a way that wasn't embarrassment exactly but was related to it — the particular flush of someone who had just been reminded of something they had briefly forgotten.

She turned back to me. "I'll confirm with Theron," she said, in a tone that was a full register quieter than before.

She left.

The ward gradually remembered how to make noise again. The soldier on the bed let out a breath. "What was that?" he muttered.

"Nothing," I said. "Let's talk about your shoulder."

I did not look at Adam. I heard him pick up the salve from the supply table, heard his footsteps cross back toward the door. He was almost through it when he paused — just briefly, a half second — and I had the distinct sense, without being able to explain why, that the pause was directed at me.

Then he was gone.

I finished the appointment with steady hands and a carefully neutral expression and told myself that the warmth in my chest was simply the general satisfaction of a difficult situation resolved.

It was not an entirely honest accounting.

~ ~ ~

That evening Sera sat on the end of my bunk and said, "Tell me about Renna."

"There's nothing to tell."

"There is absolutely something to tell and I know this because Corporal Hadden from Third Division told me at dinner that Adam Voss gave Renna a look in the healing ward this afternoon that made a fully trained soldier physically lean away from it." She tilted her head. "Apparently on your behalf."

"He was in the ward for a supply pickup. It was incidental."

"Eve."

I looked at my treatment notes.

"He stood in the ward doorway for a moment before walking in," Sera said, more quietly. "Hadden saw him. He stood there and looked at what was happening and then he walked in." She paused. "That's not incidental."

I didn't answer.

She didn't push it further, which was one of the things I valued most about her — she knew when she had said enough. She stretched out on the end of my bunk with her hands behind her head and looked at the ceiling.

"I like it here," she said, after a while. "I didn't expect to, but I do."

"Me too," I said, and was surprised to find it was true.

Outside, the stronghold settled into its nighttime rhythms. The watch bell marked the hours. Somewhere in the building, in the section that ran quieter than the rest, a lamp would still be burning in the Black Division's command post.

I was trying very hard not to know that.

I knew it anyway.