have us do?’
‘You moved first,’ she told him flatly. ‘Your damned Parliament deposed and killed your king, and then you turned on us. You can’t be secure, with a monarchy on your doorstep. You can’t forget your crime of regicide, with another king on another throne so close.’
‘So, that is what they told you, is it?’ said Doctor Lam.
‘It is the truth.’
The second soldier reappeared then, with a bowl of hot tea and some thin wafers, which he set on the table. Emily had the impression he had been waiting outside for the voices to subside. When he asked if he should go, Doctor Lam suggested that he should stay.
Here it comes. Emily watched the soldier kneel down at the doctor’s shoulder. She had no doubt that he could overpower her, in her present state. She imagined herself splayed out across the table, dissected, raped, burned . . .
‘What?’ she asked savagely. ‘What now?’
‘Now . . .’ Doctor Lam poured two small cups of steaming tea with meticulous care. ‘Now we come to the balancing point.’ He took one cup, sipped gingerly at it. ‘I do not expect you to believe what I am about to say, but I feel that I must say it nonetheless. Will you not try some tea? And there is hard-tack if you like. At the moment it is all we have for provisions.’
She took the other cup, sniffed at the acrid liquid, and then drank. It tasted as it smelled.
‘The regicide of King Dietricht of Denland, second of that name, was not at the order of those who would later become the Parliament,’ said Doctor Lam carefully. ‘The deaths of that mild-mannered and rather simple-minded man, his wife and newborn son were, however, crimes of ambition. I ask you, who could benefit from their demise?’
‘Those who replaced him,’ she replied promptly. ‘Your precious Parliament.’
‘The motive is correct. Shortly after the death of King Dietricht under the assassin’s knife, we received a royal proclamation, whose writer announced that, by right of blood, he had inherited the throne of Denland to add to the throne of Lascanne. A proclamation, of course, by King Luthrian the Fourth of that nation. He did not know that we had caught the assassin’s handler, and had from him, before he died, the great secret: the man who employed him.’
She just stared for a heartbeat, as if not quite hearing him. The words trickled into her, until they touched some red-hot core of loyalty she had not known she possessed. Then she exploded.
She went for him across the table, scattering wafers and tea, clawing for the old man’s throat. The soldier intercepted her but even so she raked one nail across Doctor Lam’s face before she was wrestled away. ‘Liar!’ she screamed at him. ‘Liar!’
The soldier twisted one arm behind her back and tightened his hold until the pain crushed her rage, and all the while Doctor Lam merely watched her, his mournful expression ever deepening.
‘Is everything all right in there, sir?’ someone asked from outside, and the doctor assured the questioner that it was.
King Luthrian IV. She saw herself back in Deerlings House, before all this madness. The ball and how wonderful it had felt to dance with him and bask in the glory he shed like sunlight. And now this decrepit creature was telling her that her king was a murderer, a thing of plots and assassins.
‘You lie. Every word of it, you lie!’ she told him.
‘You will believe what you wish,’ said Doctor Lam. ‘As for me, my tale is near complete. We had no king, and our country had been claimed by the man who paid the killer. What could we do but muster what forces we could, just to hold off the armies of Lascanne? If only it were that simple. But we cannot simply work to keep your soldiers off our soil, like a man who shuts his gate against a mad dog and never leaves his garden again. If we are to win this war we will have to win it. To cross into your land and place our soldiers on your soil. What a stupid thing to have to do. What a terrible point to come to, for two nations once such allies.’
With hands almost steady he reset the teacups. ‘It is always worst,’ he said, ‘when brothers fight.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Our King is a man of honour, a good man.’
‘No doubt you believe so,’ said Doctor Lam. ‘I think