“Your thoughts on the new newssheets, Tirolo?”
Quint nodded and gave the colonel an awkward smile that probably looked more like a grimace.
“I call them opinion journals. They don’t reflect current events as much as attitudes about current events.” He gave her another two pages of observations. “My background is a barrier to understanding,” Quint said. “They promote willot culture and ideals to the exclusion of all else, it seems.”
Gerocie smiled with a twinkle in her eyes. “I want your opinion, but I won’t appreciate defensiveness in your analysis. I’ll be sending you journals from our neighboring countries for you to provide me with feedback.”
“But there are articles in the willot language,” Quint said, his heart rising in his throat as he said it. “I…”
She held up her finger. “I know you are studying willot, Lieutenant Tirolo. You aren’t as careful to hide your materials as you think. I want you to learn since I need your analysis on our friends across the border, and some of them speak willot more than they do the common language. I want you to keep up your discretion.”
“My books aren’t sufficient to translate all the words,” Quint said.
She nodded. “I have a valise for you. It is our secret,” she said as she lifted a valise to the top of her desk. “This is as much as I will give you. It is up to you to fill in any more blanks. South Fenola has become unstable, as your newssheets have revealed. We still haven’t recaptured the land that Gussellia grabbed in the battle you observed. My job will get harder since Racellia has exposed a weakness that others wish to exploit.”
“But don’t you have diplomats feeding you information?” Quint asked.
“Military diplomats, yes. Many of them are bought off by our neighbors just as we have their people in the pay of Racellia.” She grinned. “You know nothing of this, correct?”
“A little of that is revealed through what is reported in the newssheets,” Quint said.
“Continue your work, Lieutenant, and I may let you off your leash in a few months,” Gerocie said.
Chapter Ninetee
n
Quint celebrated his seventeenth birthday with Marena. The other three officers in the flat had been assigned to the army in another battle with the Gussellians.
“I invited someone over,” Marena said. “He said he doesn’t mind hubites.”
She answered the door and in walked Master Pozella.
“How has the senior lieutenant been?”
“I’ve been okay,” Quint said. “I thought I’d be put in the basement and left to rot, but I’ve found a niche, thanks to Colonel Gerocie.”
“Happy birthday, too,” Pozella said. He tossed an envelope on the table.
Quint picked it up. “This is my mother’s writing.”
“I would hope so. She gave me the letter,” Pozella said. “Go ahead, read it. Don’t save it for later.”
Quint felt lightheaded. He hadn’t communicated very much with his parents since he was drafted into the Racellian wizard corps. His parents were fine. His mother didn’t have much to say except she was surprised he was an officer in the wizard corps. Neither Quint’s father or mother thought that would be possible for Quint, but Master Pozella had told them about Quint’s talent. She wished him well and said he didn’t have to respond to the letter.
Quint looked at Pozella. “They really are all right?”
“As right as any other hubite in the southeast. They are among their kind, unlike you.”
“I’m enduring,” Quint said, realizing that his statement was truer than he had intended. “Colonel Gerocie has me learning willot on the sly. I’m reading newssheets and opinion journals and giving her my analysis. It’s like what we were doing in strategic operations, but it’s mostly political, I think. I give her the analysis and then she does what she wants with it.”
“You have started analyzing willot articles?” Pozella said, pursing his lips.
“My vocabulary is growing, but I can’t speak the language.”
Marena snorted. “It is just as well. For some, hearing a hubite speaking the mother tongue would be too much to bear.”
“I shouldn’t have admitted it,” Quint said.
Marena laughed. “I’m not one of those people and neither is the master, I’m sure.”
“You’re right,” Pozella said. “My concern is what you will read. Willot articles are blunter about foreigners.”
Quint was going to say he wasn’t a foreigner, but Pozella was right about the general attitude.
“I’ve met friendly willots and unfriendly willots,” Quint said. “If you read as many articles as I have, you’d know that the antipathy is always there, beneath the surface of the majority of willots in Racellia. I’m finding that the rest of the countries on South Fenola feel the same, but they don’t have sizeable hubite populations.”
“Then I don’t have any objections,” Pozella said. “Is this the extent of your birthday celebration?”
“Most of the strategic operations officers are in the field this week,” Marena said. “Our dinner will be good tonight, but quiet.”
“Quiet can be good,” Pozella said.
Quint smiled. “A letter from my mother and two of the few people I can count as friends is enough for me. I’ve learned to temper my expectations.
