Page 171 of The Infernal Battalion

He leaned against the battlement, taking another swallow from the bottle and feeling it burn its way down his throat and into his churning stomach. After a few moments of silence, he coughed.

“Sothe,” he said, and then repeated it in a shout. “Sothe! Where are you? I know you’re watching me.”

There was nothing but silence.

“Sothe!” He thumped the stonework with one hand, and winced. “You want me to sit here screaming your name all night?”

Something shifted in the shadow of a crenellation. Sothe’s voice was soft. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”

“Well, things have fucking changed, haven’t they?” Marcus shook his head, sending the world spinning. “You found Winter.”

“I did.”

“And you found out he—​she—​was...” He couldn’t finish.

“Your sister. Ellie d’Ivoire.”

Saints and fucking martyrs. Just hearing the name out loud sent his heart racing, a mix of terror and anticipation and other emotions he didn’t understand. Ellie, he told himself, trying for discipline. My sister. Ellie. She’s alive. Winter is my sister.

It was no good. There were two people in his head. Ellie, four years old, smiling and clever. And General Ihernglass, enigmatic, competent, lethal in a crisis. A little girl and a grown man. A child and a soldier. Now the world was insisting they were one and the same.

Don’t be stupid, he told himself. What did you expect? That Ellie would still be four when you found her?

But logic was a thin reed to cling to. He kept trying to push the two images together, like forcing a jigsaw puzzle piece into a place where it didn’t fit, and they kept springing apart again.

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

“You might have told me,” Marcus said. “That’s why you found her, isn’t it?”

The shadow shifted as Sothe nodded. “Once I became aware of her identity, I was... torn. I thought she deserved to make the choice herself.”

Marcus had to admit he couldn’t see the fault in that. Balls of the fucking Beast. Could Winter really have chosen not to tell me? Let me live the rest of my life not knowing? It would have been easier for her, wouldn’t it?

“So, now what?” Marcus said. “Your conscience is assuaged? You’ve redeemed yourself?” He snorted.

“My conscience was never the issue here, Marcus.” Sothe stepped out of the shadow, into the half-​light of the torches on the walls. “I don’t try to pretend I haven’t done terrible things, or that I can make up for that. A person’s life isn’t like a ledger book, where this much good cancels out that much bad and all debts are paid. I will always be the person who killed at Duke Orlanko’s command and never asked why.” She bowed her head. “All I can hope for is to be someone else as well.”

“And you think this helps?”

“I thought that I owed you the truth.”

“Does Winter know?”

“Know what?”

“What you did to my—​to our parents. That it was you who took her family away from her.”

“She does. I think she is... still trying to understand how to feel about me.”

Marcus leaned back against the wall, stone cool against his cheek. The bottle sloshed gently in his hand, but he suddenly wanted nothing more to do with it.

“What are you doing here?” he said. “Don’t tell me you think this makes us even.”

“I left after Janus resigned because I had unfinished business with Orlanko,” Sothe said. “And... because I thought that perhaps Raesinia would no longer need my help. I have returned because I was wrong.”

“What happened to Orlanko?”

“I killed him,” Sothe said matter-of-factly.