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“Maybe it’s just those.” Colin wandered off to a shelf a couple of racks over and picked up one of the guns. “These look fine.”
Sebastian went in the opposite direction, examining hardware as he went. They all looked fine too.
Colin came up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the perfectly suitable grenade Sebastian held in his hands. “Maybe that was just a bad box?”
“Maybe.” Sebastian set the grenade back and looked around the room. “There sure is a lot here, though.”
“Well, we did just start a war with an empire who specializes in war.” Colin grinned crookedly. “We had to stockpile to be ready.”
“Sure, but there’s a lot here.” Sebastian went to wave his hand about but caught himself at the last minute and settled for a more subdued, encompassing head nod. “In this room. In this building.”
Colin looked around as though just noticing how full it was. He was a good man but a trusting man. Maybe too trusting. “Maybe. A lot of it will be taken to the barricades, though, when we all head out.”
“I guess.” Sebastian wasn’t convinced, and he’d been doing this long enough—and nonstop since he started—to trust when it felt like he’d gotten his claws into something. “When exactly did Sheila join up?”
Colin’s eyes narrowed. “Sebastian.”
“Colin.” Sebastian returned. “Just answer the question.”
Colin was as committed to the cause as Sebastian, and he relented with a sigh. “Couple months ago. She’s always had a head for numbers, and she needed a job.”
“Why?”
“Because her husband died, Sebastian, and she’s got two little kids.”
“How did her husband die?”
Colin gaped at him for a second as though he couldn’t believe Sebastian was still pursuing this line of questioning, and Sebastian was reminded that Colin almost never saw him on a job. Time for an unpleasant reality check, then.
“Tell me how her husband died, Colin.”
“An old landmine.”
Sebastian grimaced, at least, and Colin nodded.
“Yeah. He wanted to get into farming. Sheila said he had a real green thumb.” Colin crossed his arms. “Bought some land off some guy for less than it was probably worth. Went out to decide what crops he wanted to try his hand at and was blown sky-high.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sebastian said honestly. “I suppose that made the Resistance all the more attractive?”
“Something like that.”
The landmines had been placed by the original invading Klah’Eel force decades ago. They’d mined the countryside on their ultimately unstoppable march to Ralscoln and then never bothered to clean up after themselves—partially from disorganization and a lack of capital, but partially, Sebastian was sure, because they just didn’t give a shit.
The Klah’Eel government the Resistance had toppled, with Governor Tesh at the top, had always insisted they were gathering the funds, the manpower, the technology, but they’d always dithered. Higher priorities had always come up, the funds had always evaporated in a cloud of corruption, and civilians had continued to be blown up in their own fields.
The Resistance had tried to help. They’d probably demined more of Southern Tava than the Klah’Eel ever had. And they’d lost more men to it as a result.
“Had she had an interest in the Resistance before that?”
“She’d supported me, if that counts?” Colin shrugged. “She was interested in raising her two kids and not much else beyond that.”
“Where are those kids now?”
“Here.”
“Here, here? In headquarters?”
Colin shook his head. “No, with one of our aunts on the city’s west side.”
