Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 448
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"Bring me some water, boy. What’s your name?"
"Cal," she said.
The soldier grunted. "I’m Maenin. That’s Crouson, and
the bastard across the fire is the Winckler. We been with this
thing from the beginning. You’re pretty scrawny," he
observed. "How long you been with the army?"
"Not long," she said shortly. Her voice was an octave
lower than normal. She liked the way it reverberated in her
chest.
Maenin was a huge, hairy man. Calandria thought he
smelled as if something had crawled into his boots and died.
She handed him a cup of water and sat back on the stone she
had chosen as her seat.
A vista of campfires and tents spread out down the
hillside, and in the distance the walls of the palace spread in
black swathes across the plain. Diadem gleamed whitely,
outshining the milky way. Somewhere up there, the Desert
Voice was debris or imprisoned. She could only hope that
someone would come to investigate when the ship failed to
report in.
Meanwhile she had to concentrate on thinking and acting
like a man. She spat at the fire and scratched the short hair on
her head. On the way here she had modified her body in subtle
ways; that and a layer of grime made her look like a young
man. With all that, Maenin still seemed to see femininity in