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dark. “Are you drunk?” she
asked at last. There was something in the way he was talking.
    “Not hidden enough. Not drunk enough.
Can’t do anything right.” He lifted his arm and something clinked
against the stones at his side. He raised the bottle to his lips
and drank heavily.
    “Where did you get that?” Carmen asked
curiously, for the camp had been dry ever since she had arrived.
Not because Garrett wanted everyone sober, but because alcohol of
any sort was impossible to obtain.
    The label on the bottle in Garrett’s
hands was a familiar one. Carmen hadn’t seen it since before she
had left for college. It was Vistarian mescal. “Did Hernandez slip
you the bottle?” she asked.
    “Go back to your skinny lover. Leave me
alone.”
    He might not be drunk enough to suit his
tastes, but he was still very drunk. His speech wasn’t slurring,
though. Garrett’s super-human discipline didn’t take a breather
even when he was blasted.
    Carmen sighed. “I need you to dig in and
focus for a moment,” she said sharply. “We need to send someone to
the rendezvous point. They need to observe it until we get there
for the meeting, so we can make sure it isn’t an Insurrecto trap.
It’s nearly a day away from here but twelve hours observation
should minimize the risk.”
    Garrett smiled and his teeth were very
white in the moonlight, contrasting with the darkness over his
face. “Ms. Fix it,” he said.
    “Garrett, snap out of it,” she said.
    “Why?” he asked, his tone
reasonable.
    “Because I can’t talk to you when you’re
like this.”
    “Don’t want to talk to you anyway,” he
muttered.
    “The feeling’s mutual,” Carmen shot
back. “You’re always talking about the chain of command. I have to talk to you and you have to give the order. So save
me from having to spend any more time listening to your self-pity.
Straighten up for thirty seconds and I’m out of here.”
    He stretched out his legs, leaning back
to keep his balance on the top of the pile, then in one large
lunge, stepped back down onto the ground. He straightened up, the
bottle swinging from his fingers and making sloshing sounds. He
hadn’t bothered recapping the bottle.
    Carmen crossed her arms, fighting the
anger rising in her. She had never seen Garrett drunk before, but
even drunk, he seemed formidable. He stood over her and spoke with
perfect clarity. “Send your scout. You will, anyway.”
    “I wouldn’t!” she refuted hotly. “Not if
you haven’t said to.”
    “Then you’ve surprised me.”
    “After the weeks and weeks of you
bawling me out for not following orders, for trying to do my own
thing? Do you really think I’m so stupid I can’t learn
anything?”
    He circled around her and with the
moonlight over her shoulder, his moon shadow lurched on the dry
ground. “You’re not stupid,” he said flatly. “But you’re reckless.
You let your emotions drive you.”
    “You sound like Spock now,” she said
dryly, not trying to follow him as he walked around her. He was
speaking clearly, but there was a looseness about his gait that
betrayed him. He wasn’t staggering—not yet. But he was close to
it.
    “He might have been right. ’motions are
grit.”
    Carmen cocked her head. “That’s why
you’re hiding out here?”
    He stopped circling. He was behind her,
so she turned to face him. He was looking at her. No, he was
looking through her, like what she had said had punched
buttons and now his brain was firing.
    “Go back to the fire,” he said softly
and this time he sounded far more sober than he had since she had
stumbled across him.
    “I can send the scout?”
    He grimaced. “Send Angelo. He’s so good
at ingratiating himself. The locals will adore him.”
    Carmen let out a breath, letting go of
the need to defend Angelo. She stepped away from Garrett. “I
suggest you get some sleep.”
    “Nothing there but bad dreams,” he
muttered and this time, his words slurred.
    Carmen hurried away, heading