Sorcerybound (World's First Wizard Book 2), Aaron Schneider [accelerated reader books .txt] 📗

then rolled it down his extended fingers before flipping it up to balance it on his lower two fingers. Eyes still locked on Ambrose, he walked the open razor up his hand with little flexes of his knuckles before spinning it around his index finger. The spin terminated in the razor leaping into the air and landing in his other hand.

The little display done, he began to employ the blade across his face.

“You could have just said yes.” Ambrose huffed, failing to conceal how impressed he was. “What were you, apprenticed to a barber at the orphanage or something?”

Milo paused with the keen blade resting against his cheek.

“Something like that,” Milo replied coolly, his eyes becoming cold and distant.

Ambrose took note of the change, and for some time, neither of them spoke.

Milo had nearly finished clearing his jawline after tending to his cheeks when Ambrose finally spoke up, his expression pensive.

“I was in a sort of gang once,” he said, arms crossed over his massive chest. “Good boys, most of them, at the start. More scared than evil if you understand what I mean.”

Milo flicked the blade in the water a few times before scowling incredulously through the mirror.

“How is one sort of in a gang?”

Ambrose’s lips worked beneath his mustache, making it twitch and wriggle like a woolly caterpillar trying to escape from under his nose.

“July 1830. France was having another revolution, and my mother wanted none of it, so we went to Saarbrücken, where she had a cousin,” Ambrose said, heaving a sigh as he settled into his tale. “First taste of a real, modern city, and didn’t take long before I fell in with some other French lads whose families had also fled the turmoil in France. Told ourselves we were going to be the neighborhood protectors, keep those Prussians from mistreating us proud French.”

“How noble,” Milo muttered as he considered whether to apply the razor to his mustache in full or just enough to tame the growth.

“Soon enough, we found a group of hardy young men who weren’t afraid of throwing their weight around and didn’t have to do tedious things like work,” Ambrose remarked dryly. “We set off planning to protect ourselves and our people from brutal Prussian constables, but before long, someone called those constables to protect our people from us.”

It was Ambrose’s turn to stare off into distant times.

“Stupid as we were, when two constables showed up to have a word with us, we attacked them,” Ambrose said, a note of sad resignation in his voice. “It was a short fight and eight against two after all. Arnald Toulouse, our capitaine, knocked out a tooth from each man’s mouth and stuck it in their pockets as a reminder. Unfortunately for us, they remembered all our faces, and with a bunch more friends, they rounded us up the next day in the street.”

Ambrose shook his head.

“They beat us until we could hardly stand,” Ambrose muttered, his voice softer. “And then they beat Arnald to death in front of us and made us carry him to an unmarked pauper’s grave in a nearby churchyard.”

Ambrose stroked his mustache pensively.

“First time I ever saw a man die, and he was my friend. I was seventeen.”

Milo put the razor down, his freshly trimmed mustache and goatee shining and glossy.

“I killed my first man when I was twelve,” Milo said, his tone too flat to be conversational. “Can’t remember the first time I saw a man die.”

Ambrose broke free from his reverie to stare at Milo.

“I can think of only a few reasons for a twelve-year-old to want to kill a man,” Ambrose said, his tone level but cautious. “I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

“We needed a little more money to buy a case of schnapps from a smuggler that worked the Elbe,” Milo said after toweling his face off. “We were going to drink half the schnapps and sell the rest to the other children in the Krieg-Waisenhaus. We robbed a small old man in a top hat one evening. He fought back with his cane, knocked Roland to the ground. I stabbed the man under the arm seven times for that.”

Ambrose’s eyes narrowed, studying Milo’s reflection.

“We ended up drinking all of the schnapps,” Milo said, putting the towel down to inspect himself one last time in the mirror.

Ambrose frowned, nodding as he turned back toward the dust motes.

“And now here we are.” He grunted. “Working for the Germans. Funny how life works out.”

“That’s a word for it.” Milo sighed.

Jorge arrived in the late afternoon via auto caravan.

Milo and Ambrose heard the sentry call out that Jorge was inbound and moved quickly down to the courtyard, where they encountered Captain Lokkemand.

The towering officer glared down his nose at both of them but said nothing for a moment. Behind him, the platoon of soldiers they’d acquired before leaving Afghanistan, excluding those on sentry duty, of course, were arrayed behind him in immaculate parade-ground formation. To a man, the platoon stood with perfect discipline and composure, something Milo knew was the fruit of Lokkemand’s efforts.

“Good to see you up and about, Volkohne,” Lokkemand managed stiffly as the seconds dragged on.

“Thank you, sir,” Milo said, throwing up a salute as he suddenly realized his breach of military protocol.

The captain nodded, returning the salute with a muttered “at ease” before turning back to watch the line of trucks come roll across the bridge.

Milo dropped the salute, keenly aware, not for the first time, of what a poor soldier he made. Staring at Lokkemand, with his ramrod posture, crisp movements, and towering presence, he knew the officer was in so many ways the perfect soldier that Milo never would be. The magus knew down to the bottom of his soul that he couldn’t be like Lokkemand, and even if he could, he never would be. The realization of the difference between the unwilling penal conscript and the proud career officer had never been cast in sharper relief.

And yet, as they stood waiting