Monstrous Regiment

at all. Shall I tell you that Tilda was pregnant when they brought her back to the Gray House after the fire? She had it, and they took it away, and we don’t know what happened to it. And then she got beaten again because she was an Abomination Unto Nuggan. Does that make you feel better?” said Tonker, tying the rope to a table leg. “There’s just us, Polly. Just her and me. No inheritance, no nice home to go back to, no relatives that we know of. The Gray House breaks us all, somehow. Wazzer talks to the Duchess, I don’t have…middle gears, and Tilda frightens me when she gets her hands on the box of matches. You should see her face then, though. It lights up. Of course,” Tonker smiled in her dangerous way, “so do other things. Better get everyone into the storeroom while we light the candle.”
    “Shouldn’t Tilda do that?”
    “She will. But we’ll have to be ready to drag her away, otherwise she’ll stay and watch.”
    This had started like a game. She hadn’t thought of it like a game, but it was a game called “Let Polly Keep The Duchess.” And now…it didn’t matter. She’d made all kinds of plans, but she was beyond plans now.
    They’d done bloody well, for girls…
    A last barrel of water had been placed, after some discussion, in front of the storeroom door. Polly looked over the top at Blouse and the rest of the squad.
    “Okay, everybody, we’re…er…about to do it,” she said. “Are we sure about this, Tonker?”
    “Yep.”
    “And we won’t get hurt?”
    Tonker sighed. “The dusty flour will explode. That’s simple. The blast coming this way will hit the barrels full of water, which’ll probably last just long enough to see it rebound. The worst that should happen to us is that we get wet. That’s what Tilda thinks. Would you argue? And in the other direction, there’s only the door.”
    “How does she work this out?”
    “She doesn’t. She just sees how it should go.” Tonker handed Blouse the end of a rope. “This goes over the beam and down to the dish lid. Can you hold it, Lieutenant? But don’t pull it until we say. I really mean that. C’mon, Polly.”
    In the space between the barrels and the door, Lofty was lighting a candle. She did it slowly, as if it was a sacrament or some ancient ceremony every part of which held enormous and complex meaning.
    She lit a match, and held it carefully until the flame caught. She waved it back and forth on the base of the candle, which she thrust firmly onto the flagstones so that the hot wax stuck it into position. Then she applied the match to the candlewick.
    Polly and Tonker watched her kneel there, staring at the dancing flame.
    “Okay,” said Tonker. “I’m just going to pick her up, and you just carefully lower the lid over the candle, right? C’mon, Tilda.”
    She raised the girl carefully to her feet, whispering to her all the time, and then nodded to Polly, who lowered the lid with a carefulness that amounted to reverence.
    Lofty walked as though asleep.
    Tonker stopped by the leg of a heavy kitchen table, to which she’d attached the other end of the rope holding the flour bags.
    “Okay so far,” she said. “Now, when I pull the knot we each grab an arm and we run, Polly, understand? We run. Ready? Got her?” She hauled on the rope. “Run!”
    The flour sacks dropped, streaming white dust as they fell, and exploded in front of the door. Flour rose like a fog.
    They raced for the storeroom and fell in a heap past the barrel as Tonker screamed, “Okay, Lieutenant!”
    Blouse pulled the rope that raised the lid and let the candle flame reach—
    The word was not whoomph. The experience was whoomph. It had a quality that overwhelmed every sense. It shook the world like a sheet, painted it white, and then, surprisingly, filled it with the smell of toast. And then it was over, in a second, leaving nothing but distant screams and the rumble of collapsing masonry.
    Polly uncurled and looked up into Blouse’s face.
    “I think we grab things and run now, sir,” she said. “And screaming would help.”
    “I think I can manage the screaming,” muttered Shufti. “This is not a very nurturing experience.”
    Blouse gripped his ladle.
    “I hope this isn’t going to be our famous last stand,” he said.
    “In fact, sir,” said Polly. “I think it’s going to be our first. Permission to yell in a bloodcurdling way, sir?”
    “Permission granted, Perks!”
    The floor was awash with water and