her. It seemed impossible already that this atrocious business should have gone on so long.
‘Sergeant . . .’ Caxton lowered her voice. ‘I know it’s necessary . . . that we need to know where they are, but . . .’
‘I know, Ensign. I feel the same way.’ There had been those who had even cheered at the first scream, recounting to one another the tortures that Lascari would devise for the prisoner. Even those who hated the enemy most, who would have no compunction about killing Denlanders, and killing them slowly, had quieted down after some twelve hours of it or more. Even sadistic and vicarious glee had its end, and they were past that – long past.
At last she turned her path towards the Stag Rampant hut, to the Survivors’ Club. She guessed there would be scant cheer within.
There they all were, though. Brocky looked a little grey still, with his bare chest and stomach swathed in a mess of bandages at which he scratched and picked absently. Tubal fanned and shuffled the undealt cards, sparing her a weak smile as she entered. Mallen had his head down, shoulders hunched, eyes glinting deep within the maze of his tattoos. And Scavian, Giles Scavian, was sitting there with his eyes red and angry. He flinched at each fresh cry, and his fists clenched tighter. She wondered whether Warlocks ever fought each other, and what such a spectacle would look like if they did.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she said softly, taking her place at the table.
‘Vile evening,’ Brocky corrected. ‘For the Lord’s sake, someone go pour us a fresh glass of something. Marshwic?’
‘Is it my turn? I thought you were master of ceremonies tonight.’
‘I’m hurt. I have a wound.’ Brocky displayed his disarranged bandages. ‘I’m a wounded war hero.’
Even that raised only a ghost of a smile around the table.
‘I’ll do the honours, then,’ said Emily, because to have something to focus her mind on seemed a good thing right now. As she passed into the next room, she heard Scavian’s chair scrape back, and he joined her as she selected a bottle from Brocky’s stash.
‘Giles,’ she began, ‘I . . .’ Seeing him there, haunted by it all, she asked herself: Has he? Has it ever fallen to him to do that task?
‘No,’ he said, at once, reading the accusation even as it formed in her face. ‘I would not, when they asked me. No loss to Lascari. He enjoys the work. But not I. It’s one of the reasons I took the robes off.’
She nodded slowly, knowing there was more to come.
‘They called me a traitor, of course, but what could they do? They needed me, and only the King or another Warlock could punish me.’
‘Lascari?’
His smile glinted hard and savage for a moment, uncharacteristic. ‘He has not tried it. Emily, in truth you must know – I want you to know – this is not what the King’s service is about, or what the anointing of a wizard should lead to.’
‘War makes monsters of us all,’ she observed.
‘Surely, but so long as we know that we can at least try to remain human.’
Hearing that, and having seen all she had seen, she was forced to wonder whether it was not humanity itself that had claimed men like Lascari or Sergeant Sharkey – men who revelled in their power over others. Perhaps it is our humanity that we must strive to avoid. I will have to ask Mallen about the indigenes. Are they free from our vices or as vile as we?
‘I know that you would not do such a thing, Giles. The King chose wisely when he set his hand on you.’
Her words brought a smile to his face that nearly smoothed out the lines of pain.
‘Thank God, you understand,’ he said, reaching a hand towards her tentatively.
She took it, feeling beneath the skin the same heat that was being put to work on the prisoner. ‘You will always have me,’ she assured him. ‘When you need me, you will have me.’ The words came out oddly martial: a soldier to a comrade, not a woman to a man.
Will I always be thus: a soldier? Grammaine, Chalcaster, her former life – everything before her conscription felt as though it was now in some other room, with the door closing by degrees. Can I ever be plain Emily Marshwic again, with no rank and no uniform?
‘Hey, in there! Drink, damn the pair of you!’ Brocky’s roar broke them apart,