rehearsed like an actor. ‘It would be useful to have someone with authority to go and explain our situation to them, there. They need to know how badly we need the reinforcements. You could go and get us resupplied.’
Mallarkey’s eyes dodged between them, from Tubal to Emily, Emily to Scavian. They had put only the thinnest varnish of pretence on this offer. He was being given the chance to run away and he knew it, and knew that they knew.
He drew himself up, and for a moment they thought he would rise to the occasion and decide to stay, but then he said, ‘I . . . think that would be . . . a wise course of action. Yes, I’ll go today . . . No sense in waiting. After all,’ he gave them a smile that was a ghastly rictus of self-knowledge, ‘we need those reinforcements as quickly as possible.’
After he had gone off to pack his meagre possessions, Mallen came to join them at the table.
‘Good work,’ he said. ‘One less thing to worry about.’ His voice had been the most vehement in speaking for the plan. ‘That makes you the colonel, Salander.’
Tubal shrugged. ‘I’m open to suggestions. I wonder how many more grenades the Denlanders have.’
‘Enough, I’m sure,’ Scavian said. ‘Who knew they would use them?’
‘They must have been husbanding them all the way through the swamps just for this,’ Emily guessed.
‘We’re lucky they didn’t think to bring a cannon,’ Mallen said gloomily.
*
She found the quartermaster sitting at one edge of the barricade, beside a sharp-toothed hole the Denland grenades had made, picking at splinters and staring out at the swamps. The sun was crawling behind the cliffs to the west, the dusk creeping in by stages along with the swamp-exhaled mist.
‘Brocky,’ she said. He looked up, and she saw his face was blotchy with tears.
‘Marshwic.’ He shuffled sideways along the wood to give her a place to sit, and she joined him.
‘I’m sorry about Marie.’
He sniffed. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘To be . . . so full of life, to shine so bright. You’d never have thought . . .’ He choked, then continued as best he could. ‘She never thought she’d be hurt. She thought she was immortal.’
‘Or she acted it, for the others,’ Emily agreed. ‘She was right in the thick of it, they said. She was right beside Pordevere when he led them in. There were so many wounded then, and she was . . .’
His shoulders began shaking and she trailed off, not sure of what else to say.
‘I . . . never had luck with women,’ he got out. ‘They never looked twice at me. Who would? That one I told you about, when I was engaged . . . she robbed me blind when she left. Just after the money – and precious little I had of it. More than that . . . beyond that . . . my whole life with no female company but the whores my purse would stretch to. I had no hope. Bachelor-born, that was me. Then . . . her. She was my sun, Marshwic. She was my bloody sun from the moment I set eyes on her. She lit up my whole bloody world. How did I come to find her? And how did she come to like me? Not that mummery in the swamps, acting the fool and getting shot, she saw right through that. She saw . . . God only knows what she bloody saw in me.’ He sat hunched over his balled hands, pressing his grief into his belly. ‘And I will never ever have another woman like her. How could I? There’ll never be another like her.’
She wanted to put her arms around him, to comfort him in some way that did not involve the painful business of putting words to it, but his pain was so intense and private that she did not dare touch him.
‘She . . . she might still recover, Brocky She’s strong. She’s stronger than any of us. If anyone can pull through, it’s her.’
He looked at her then, and she could not at first identify the precise emotion that twisted his expression, but he put a hand out and covered hers with it. She realized then that it was compassion – for her – that moved him.
‘I thought you knew,’ he said. ‘I thought you must have known. She’s dead, Marshwic . . . Emily. She’s dead this