at herself with a knife and seeing which part of her would hurt most.
There were men standing at the doors of the town hall in Chalcaster: two soldiers in red that royal decree had not seen fit to request for the war effort. They carried glaives with broad blades, which clanked together to bar her way as she tried to simply walk between them.
‘Let me in. I have business with the Mayor-Governor,’ she bade them with as much authority as she could manage. They exchanged leering looks.
‘Bet you have, miss, I just bet you have,’ one said. ‘Only thing is, miss, he’s busy, see? Got a lot on, what with the war to run, miss. You wouldn’t understand, but it’s a difficult business.’
Emily had drawn herself up, as far as that went, and clutched at her purse furiously. ‘I fully understand that the business of a war, soldier, is a complex matter,’ she told him, making her ‘soldier’ every bit as much of an insult as his ‘miss’. ‘I also understand, however, that as Mr Northway only has a small – one might say insignificant – part of it to himself, I am sure he can spare me a few minutes. Kindly go and tell him that Emily Marshwic awaits his pleasure – if that is the right word.’
Mention of her name changed their expressions. She thought at first it was because the Marshwics represented a good old stock that went back forever, but then the soldier said, ‘Oh, right, miss. We got special orders about you Marshwics. I reckon you’d better go straight in, miss. He’s looking forward to seeing you.’
The two men exchanged knowing looks, but they lifted their glaives and she swept between them before they could change their minds, or decide to humiliate her any further.
And then she had been standing in front of Mr Northway’s polished desk, like a schoolgirl up before the master for truancy. The man himself, the loathsome Northway, was bent over a ledger, counting some minutiae. When she had entered he had given her a look that put her in her place and then, his eyes following his finger down a column of figures, made some calculations on his abacus and jotted a few notes, all with the air of a man with time to spare, war or no war.
‘Now.’ He had closed the ledger with a snap. ‘Why did I think I would be seeing you so soon?’
Mr Northway’s dour style of dress made him look not dignified but as morbidly patient as a vulture. His hair had receded into a widow’s peak over a high forehead, though the scholarly dignity it lent to his face was sabotaged by a mouth wide and mobile with mischief. His eyes were deep-set and piercing, but blinked furiously in mock emotion whenever he made some particularly bare-faced statement. He had spent perhaps near four decades on this earth, and in that time he had certainly been busy with self-advancement.
‘If you know why I am here, Mr Northway, then you might save me a great deal of explanation,’ Emily said.
‘My dear Miss Marshwic.’ Northway folded his hands across his belly. ‘Emily, in fact – I presume, on the basis of our long acquaintance I may call you Emily?’
‘As always you presume entirely too much, Mr Northway.’
‘You may nonetheless call me Cristan.’
‘Alas, that is a kindness that I cannot avail myself of.’
At last he had indicated for her to sit, and she did so with poor grace. Northway looked down at his hands, grimaced briefly, and looked back at her with his slightly mocking smile. ‘I do wish you would realize that I am not in any way your enemy.’
She considered retorting Except insofar as I am an honest woman, but felt that would be descending into mere abuse and get her nowhere. ‘You were no friend to my father,’ she noted, managing to bring her tone down to the merely accusatory.
Northway sighed. ‘You are not your father, any more than I am mine, Miss Marshwic. Mine was a bootblack polishing the boots of the lowly – and a petty criminal besides. I feel that, regarding both professions, I have at least moved several rungs up the ladder.’
His office was lavish by any standards. The stacks of ledgers jostled with marble statuettes and gold candlesticks, busts and fine paintings. There were gilts and velvets and rich dark woods in evidence everywhere she looked. She knew it well, for it had been her grandfather’s once –