off with funds to Chalcaster.
As Emily climbed down from the buggy in the market square, she spotted a blind man begging there. He sat with his back to a wall, holding out a cap with a stolid, grim patience. He had a long coat wrapped about him, but within it, his shirt was a soldier’s issue. A leather band covered up his eyes.
‘Poldry, a coin.’
The old servant took out their purse, lighter than Emily would have liked, and found a penny for the man.
Alice tutted. ‘Emily, if we are to present ourselves to the King . . .’
‘You do not even know that he will come to Deerlings,’ Emily hissed at her, scandalized, for the girl had spoken quite loud enough for the beggar to hear her. ‘And this man is here now. He has fought for his country.’
‘And will you give away our funds to every supplicant until we have nothing?’ Alice retorted.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Emily told her. ‘Why must you always exaggerate . . . ?’ But, even as she said it, her eyes were roving the square. There were fewer market stalls than she remembered and, of those she saw, even fewer had the wares she might have expected. Little food, she noticed, and many vendors seemed to have simply brought in a jumbled haul of possessions in the hope that someone might desperately need old shoes, grimy clothes or battered furniture. And plenty of people in Chalcaster seemed suddenly to have lost all idea of what they really needed or wanted, instead staring at the detritus of other people’s lives as though it was impossible to know what preparation the future might require. They were mostly women, those who tried to sell, as well as those who picked over it all and did not buy. Women and old men, and in amongst them were the veterans.
These were the worst examples, she knew: men who would not die and could not be returned to the fighting. The new hospitals were ruthless in sending men back to the war, if they could serve in any way at all. Here were men who could not march, who could not hold a gun, who could not see the enemy. They passed through the thinning crowd with their awkward, arrhythmic gaits, each man moving to a different drummer. Alice’s expression was one of nervous revulsion. Mary would probably have been frightened if she were here, seeing in these men her husband or her brother. Emily herself was surprised to find that they made her angry. She seemed to have been angry a great deal recently, in a way that her tutors would once have beaten out of her. It was not becoming, they would have said. But it is what I am becoming. These men were the victims of the Denlanders. They were husbands and fathers and sons whose only crime had been to love their country and their king. They had gone to the war to defend all they held dear, and the war machine of the Denlanders had ground them up and spat them back, ruined them for all time with its guns and its knives.
She found the thought came close to overwhelming her, and she clutched at the side of the buggy for support, her knuckles turning white with the effort.
‘I know,’ Alice agreed, misreading her reaction. ‘Why doesn’t Northway do something about all this? If these men are in need of help, he could deal with it. Isn’t that what he’s for? Why have them all out in plain sight?’
Emily knew she should reproach Alice over that, but the girl had dangled some attractive bait before her. Why wasn’t Mr Northway providing aid to the veterans? The obvious answer was that it would cost money, and he surely coveted every penny the Crown gifted him with, and squirrelled as much of it away for his own use as he could. And so these brave, damaged men must hobble and beg. It was easy to look at them now and see his leering face condemning them.
And he was culpable, surely . . . but Emily found the thought ringing hollow for all that. Mr Northway was wicked but he was not the war.
Her eye was drawn then to the Mayor-Governor’s offices, which dominated one side of the market square. Another two of his soldiers were posted at the door, and they had guns now in place of the glaives. She had been hearing stories of how harshly they