Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(14)

“What, no whorehouse?” Cat asks, joining them. Jillion Magraff hovers at the edge of their little group.

“Where are you ladies going?” Jack asks Rio.

Rio shrugs. “I’ll follow Castain; she’s my guide to the seamy side of life. I suppose you’re off to have a different kind of fun.”

Jack grins. It is an irresistible thing, his grin, full of mischief and fun. “I’m not much for bordellos, I’m afraid; I’m saving myself for the future Mrs. Stafford. But I guess I’ll see if I can keep Suarez and Geer out of the guardhouse.”

Beebee shows every sign of wanting to go with the men but says, “Well, I suppose the ladies will need an escort. Anyway, Sergeant Cole said . . .”

“Yeah, you protect us,” Cat says, rolling her eyes, but not unkindly. Cat Preeling is approximately twice Beebee’s size, and Cat once strangled a Kraut with the strap of her M1.

The five of them, Rio, Jenou, Cat, Jillion, and Beebee, spend the next several hours wandering alien alleyways, buying snacks of unfamiliar food from women squatting beside open charcoal braziers, and picking out trinkets to send home to little brothers and sisters, moms and dads. Rio buys a small silver necklace for her mother and tucks it into her pocket.

At a stand whose rickety table looks ready to collapse under the weight of bronze cookware, brass filigreed boxes, and, incongruously, a ragged and scorched chunk of steel bearing most of a German cross, Rio spots something.

She points at it and says, “Show me that.”

The shopkeeper, a very old man with a face like leather that’s been boiled then left out in the sun to shrivel, ignores her.

“That!” Rio says, pointing insistently.

The shopkeeper shakes his head and adds a wagging finger.

“Can’t you understand plain English?” Cat demands, self-mocking. “We’ve come to save you from the Hun, you ungrateful—”

“It’s on account of you being a woman, I expect,” Beebee says. “The men, most of them, have a blade of some kind, not the women.”

Rio stares at him. Clever boy. “Okay, you ask him.”

Beebee steps past Rio and points at the object, and the shopkeeper reluctantly hands it to him. It is a dagger, a curved knife with a silver butt on the dark, hardwood hilt and a silver scabbard covered in a repeating pattern of curlicues.

Beebee hands it to Rio, who draws the blade slowly. The scabbard is curved, the blade, almost a foot of lightly corroded steel, slightly less so. Rio tests the edge.

“A little dull, but I could sharpen it up.”

“You sending it home?” Jenou asks skeptically. “For who, your dad?”

“Maybe,” Rio says with a shrug and hands it back to Beebee, much to the shopkeeper’s relief. “Tell him you’ll give him a dollar.”

Beebee and the shopkeeper haggle for ten minutes before arriving on a price of six dollars. Beebee takes the prize and hands it to Rio, who slips it into her belt.

“I think he was saying how it’s called a koummya,” Beebee offers.

“Koummya and I’ll stabbya,” Cat quips.

“My birthday present to myself,” Rio says with some satisfaction.

“Your . . . ,” Jenou says, and then stares at her, mouth hanging open. “Oh my God, honey! It’s your birthday! I cannot believe I forgot your birthday!”

“Eighteen,” Rio says, then, noticing the surprised looks from everyone but Jenou, adds, “Um . . . nineteen?”

“They’re not going to kick you out now,” Jenou says, and gives her friend a hug before holding her out at arm’s length to look her up and down. “Well, there you go, honey. You are a legal adult.”

“Clearly we need a beer to celebrate,” Cat says. “How the hell do we find it, that’s the question.”

“Down that alley over on the right,” Beebee says, which earns him curious looks from his companions. He shrugs. “I noticed some GIs coming out. They looked like they’d been drinking.”

Cat slaps him on his narrow shoulder, earning a wince, and says, “We may have use for you after all, young Bassingthwaite. Lead on!”

The tavern is a low-ceilinged, dimly lit place with a short and narrow door providing the only light. Had there been artificial light it likely would not have penetrated the thick blue cigarette smoke that swirls and hovers and is parted by the squad’s entry into the room. At least twenty GIs are crammed in so tightly that the two small round tables have become de facto stools.

Rio has been in British pubs, and those could be raucous at times—she has sidestepped more than one drunken brawl between American GIs and British Tommies. Or between American GIs and American sailors. Or between white GIs and black GIs. Or . . . Well, fit, energetic young men far from their families had a tendency to get into trouble, especially when drunk. But the tone of this place is subtly different. Here there is more weariness on the one hand and on the other hand a more desperate edge to the braying laughter. There are silent, sullen drinkers and loud, lit-up, electrified drinkers who are all raw nerve.

Rio checks shoulder patches and the condition of uniforms and the look in men’s eyes and knows these are not rear-echelon soldiers but men who had been in the fight.

There are a number of long looks plus the inevitable catcalls and lewd propositions as Rio, Jenou, Jillion, and Cat, with their male escort Beebee, walk in. The more civilized men offer to buy them drinks; others offer to give them a baby so they can muster out and go home.