the air, only the steam of the train due to take them home. The fight was gone from them.
Even so, Emily could tell her own Levant men and women from those who had fought at the Couchant. Their heads were held higher; their stance suggested yet a touch of pride. They stood like soldiers, not prisoners, and she was glad for that. They were the undefeated ones. The war had washed past and over them, and they had held firm. They had only ceased the fight when there was nothing left to fight for, after their brothers and sisters at the Couchant had buckled and broken. She was grateful – more grateful than she could say – that Doctor Lam had left them with that much dignity.
There was a scattering of navy men too, put ashore by Denlander ships who had hauled them out of the water. Emily understood that the sea war was still dragging itself out, with the Denlander fleet scouring the seas. The surviving warships of Lascanne had scattered or taken refuge in the ports of foreign lands still ruled by kings.
News of home: she was filled with it today. Doctor Lam himself had sought her out in the impromptu prisoner-of-war camp the Denlanders had set up for their defeated enemies. She had felt strange: was she truly meeting him in peacetime, and with nothing more to fear from him? They had shared a glass of brandy during a few minutes of conversation. He had told her of how the home front was going.
‘They do not fight,’ he explained. ‘Our men push deep into Lascanne, and they are almost unopposed. A few local pockets of resistance, nothing more.’
‘I don’t think there’s anyone left to fight them,’ Emily confessed.
‘No doubt,’ he agreed. ‘But I had feared for the worst: children, women, old men, even babes being put under arms by your King.’
‘And what of the King?’ She recalled that golden man at Deerlings House, who had danced with her, and still felt the echo of what had thrilled through her then. Some feelings are hard to forget.
‘He has fled, they say,’ Doctor Lam replied. ‘The capital is taken and the streets were almost bare. The palace is staffed by our men now, but the King has fled along with some few of his supporters. We will find him.’
‘No doubt,’ she had conceded, but was left wondering.
Now the train beckoned her. She would leave Doctor Lam behind and see what might be pieced together of her home and her past. Grammaine. What would it look like, now? Would she recognize it? And her family and the servants? Or would it all seem as strange as a fever dream, after the swamps of the Levant?
‘Tubal,’ she said, ‘do you want a hand up?’
‘I’ll manage.’ He levered himself upright, stubbornly. The other three were a little way further down the platform, and Emily matched Tubal’s pace as they rejoined them. Brocky was the only one who wore a smile. Scavian’s frown had stuck itself on his face the day they surrendered, and had never healed.
‘How far do we go together?’ Brocky asked.
‘Five stops, I think. Then Em and I have to change for Chalcaster.’
‘Giles?’ Emily said, breaking him from his distracted, unhappy mood for a moment.
‘I . . . you invited me to Grammaine, a long time ago now it seems. If that invitation is still open I will take it . . .’
‘Of course it is. Please—’
‘I have to see my family first. I have to see what’s left,’ he continued. ‘I hope . . . I think they may have fought when the Denlanders came. It would be the proper thing to do. The brave and noble thing to do. The thing my family has always done.’ He clenched his fists. ‘But I hope that, this once, they turned their backs on tradition.’
‘Come soon,’ she urged him.
‘As soon as I can.’
‘Enough time for partings later,’ Brocky insisted. ‘Let’s get ourselves underway. Come on.’
‘Time for partings now,’ Mallen pointed out.
‘You’re not staying here, surely?’ Brocky was genuinely surprised.
Mallen’s expression remained perennially unreadable. ‘This is where I live, Brocky. My home. Where else?’
‘But . . .’ Brocky grinned incredulously. ‘I couldn’t stay another day anywhere near those swamps, and I hardly saw the inside of them, anyway. I mean . . . come on, Mallen.’
‘Home.’ Mallen shrugged. ‘The swamps are home for me. I love them. Nowhere I’d rather be.’
And his woman, his Denlander love, she’ll come looking for him there,