Glain swiveled to face her squad. “In the carrier,” she said. “Move!”

They scrambled in. It was a tight fit, but the carrier was designed for a full squad and gear. Jess found his seat as the steam engine hissed and gears engaged to rattle the carrier forward. It picked up speed on the flat ground. No windows, so Jess couldn’t tell where they were going except far and fast. The parade ground itself was enormous, and held close to twenty different environments and set pieces around the edges. He’d been in most of them during training, including one that doubled as a set for an Alexandrian street. He assumed that was where they were being driven.

He was wrong.

When the carrier jolted to a stop and the squad jumped out, Jess found they were at the farthest western edge of the High Garda compound: a restricted area near the edge of the field where trainees were not allowed to venture. Jess’s misgivings twinged again as the squad lined up behind Glain’s rod-straight form. Not right, he thought. The entire area was surrounded by a high stone wall with just one visible gate.

Behind them, the carrier’s bubbling hiss rose to a gusting sigh as gears engaged again and it raced away. The tracks spat a long plume of sand over the squad. As Jess blinked grit away, a solid man in High Garda uniform with two Horus eyes on his collars—a full centurion in rank—looked them over with a bleak, unforgiving gaze. “All right,” he said. “Gear to your right. Get it on. You have sixty seconds.”

Jess joined the rush to the equipment piles off to the side. A High Garda flexible armored coat emblazoned on the back with the Library symbol, and a heavy black weapon. No reloads for it. Jess was all too familiar with the gun; he’d carried one in Oxford, when he was still a postulant. Even after all the practice he’d had with it over the past few months, it felt like a hot alien creature in his hands, unfamiliar and hostile.

It brought back such bad memories.

“Live rounds?” someone behind him asked as Jess checked his weapon.

“You have live stunning rounds and half-strength regular rounds,” the centurion said. His accent had the lilt of southern Africa, Jess thought, and it matched with the burnished darkness of his skin. “They’re still dangerous, so pick your targets and try not to kill each other.”

Jess shook his head; they weren’t beginners. They were a tight, trained squad now, and they’d all gotten to know how the others moved. He could pick up cues from body language through peripheral vision. They hadn’t had a targeting mistake since the first week together. Well, except for that incident with Tariq, but that had been orders, not accident.

Half-strength rounds were not normal. These would leave real, lasting damage, and if they hit in the right places outside of armor, could even break bones, damage organs. Why use them today? Another piece that didn’t fit in place. The assigned job was too easy, the location too remote, the ammunition too odd. There was something not right about this, and though Glain had an excellent, impassive mask of a face, he could see the tension in the sharp way she moved. She knew something she wasn’t sharing. He was tempted to confront her, but he knew better; here, in front of the rest of the squad, she’d just slap him down.