‘They’re not an evil people,’ said Emily simply. ‘I don’t like them, and we’ve all lost friends to them. But had we won, how well would they be faring, do you think?’
They considered that, and Brocky nodded glumly. ‘You’ve got a point, Marshwic.’
‘However, they are careful and they are pragmatic,’ Emily continued. ‘And they will do anything, if they feel it must be done.’ In her heart weighed a cold stone from thinking about the future of Giles Scavian.
*
There were enough soldiers in Chalcaster to cause all of them alarm. Emily counted at least two squads, of a score of men apiece, formed up in the marketplace, and the same number in individuals and pairs, on corners and walking down streets. There were a half-dozen outside the governor’s offices, instead of the usual two, and they looked decidedly askance at the three visitors, noting how they stood, their scars and signs of battle.
One made a move to stand in Emily’s way as they ascended the steps, and she glared at him imperiously. ‘I am here to see the Mayor-Governor,’ she told him. ‘Have you any reason to stop me?’
He looked beyond her at Tubal and Brocky ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Are you going to give me one?’
‘Emily, you go in, see what you can do,’ Tubal suggested. ‘We’ll stay with the buggy.’
‘Does that meet with your approval?’ she asked of the soldier and, after a glance at his colleagues, he shrugged and let her pass.
She went straight to the man’s office, ignoring any soldiers and clerks who cast worried looks at her, and when she got there she found Mr Northway waiting for her. He had his hands splayed across the papers in front of him, and there was something in his look that she did not like.
‘Giles Scavian,’ he said, in a crisp, clear tone, and she felt her world contract to just this: to this office, this man, her beating heart. Oh, I have been playing a dangerous game, and never known it until now.
‘Cristan . . .’
‘Giles Scavian,’ he repeated. ‘Warlock and servant of the King. Veteran of the Levant. I don’t recall you mentioning the name.’
She licked her lips, waiting, but inside she knew that she had met a kind of justice. She had somehow believed that she had escaped undetected in her divided affections. Some part of her had thought itself very clever, while the rest had simply not thought at all.
‘Of course, I realize there was a sort of gloss that you put on your memoirs,’ he went on crisply. ‘A sense of something unspoken that, seen from the right angle, looked uncommonly like a man. A man you were taking some pains not to talk about. But a man left behind in the Levant, along with the war. Not a man here, now.’ His eyes were fixed on hers like the gaze of a serpent, pinning her in place. ‘Which was what I assured myself, when you spoke. For I would have had to be . . .’ his hands twitched ever so slightly . . . blind, not to see that there had been someone else. And that was your prerogative, in the heat of battle. Or maybe that someone was a someone whom you had already met, at Deerlings let’s say, even before the Women’s Draft. I am very good at remembering names. I recall the dashing young Giles Scavian.’
‘Cristan, listen to me.’ In the face of this interrogation, her words seemed ridiculous now. Still, what else had she? ‘I need your help.’
‘And who do I find amongst my papers,’ he continued, as though she had not spoken, ‘but Giles Scavian, Warlock and veteran, whom the Denlanders put in my cells after dark last night, and over whom they deliberate even as we speak.’
He stood up and hunched his way over to the back of the room, giving the plasterwork a cursory examination. When he turned back to her, his face was wiped clean of emotion. ‘And now you need my help?’
‘Yes, Cristan . . . Please.’
‘On behalf of Giles Scavian.’
You always did make me play your damned games. ‘Yes, Cristan.’
‘Whom you . . . knew well at the Levant.’
‘He is a close friend of mine, a good friend of mine. I owe him my help.’ She could not tell whether his face was going to freeze in place or cave in. He held it masterfully somewhere between the two.
‘Truth,’ he said simply. ‘Our association, Miss Marshwic, is