to cinders if it pleased him. Why else is he here?’
‘What if he . . . gives his word. I’ll vouch for him. He’s a man of honour.’
‘No, ma’am. Orders are orders,’ said the provost and, from Emily’s shoulder, Scavian added, ‘And I could not promise to give that word.’
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Emily, the country is on a knife-edge. The King is still free and gathering supporters. There will be rebellion, revolution.’
‘More blood, more death,’ she said bitterly.
He nodded. ‘I am sworn to the King, Emily. If he calls, I can do nothing but answer.’
‘But we’ve lost. What will an uprising do except kill hundreds more men, women and children, on both sides? You can’t want that.’
He grimaced. ‘Ask me that a season ago and I’d have told you yes, better to die fighting in order to be free, than to live in a shadow.’
‘And now?’
‘And now . . . now I think about Colonel Resnic, and Pordevere, and Marie Angelline, and I wonder who else will join the roll of the dead when the guns are taken up again. If I had the bugle and the choice of whether to sound rebellion or not, then I cannot say whether I would blow it – but I do not. If the King asks, I must answer. I made an oath, Emily.’
‘They will kill you for that oath,’ she said bitterly.
‘They are considering it,’ he admitted.
‘Giles, I don’t want you to die.’
‘It has been in the cards this last half year, Emily. Here or at the Levant, how different can it be from some last stray shot of the war finding its mark? Perhaps that is all it is: some long-delayed gun of Denland doing what they had ample chance to do. I left two fingers on the battlefield. Perhaps they’ll send me back to look for them.’
‘Giles, stop.’ She felt that she would begin weeping soon, and she did not want to in front of the Denlanders, in front of Northway ‘Giles, I can’t bear it.’
‘Strength, Emily.’ His hand clinked in the chains, as though he would have touched her hair if he could. ‘I know you. You can bear anything.’
And she could hardly endure being there, now the world had turned sour again. Had she ever wished for him to seek her out after the end of the war? Had she dreamt of it? For Scavian had finally come for her, all the way from his lonely home, and they were going to take him from her forever.
*
The governor’s office loomed bleak and grey before her, but the guards had learned who she was now, her reputation and her war history. There was a hint of nervous respect as they let her past. She ignored them. She had no time for them.
Time, in fact, was running short and sparse.
She had come here every day, or if not her then Brocky or Tubal. Every day one of them had talked their way into the cells to see Scavian, as if by laying eyes on him each morning they prevented his execution until the next dawn. Emily, though, took a diversion to see the Mayor-Governor. She spoke with him, but only on one subject.
She demanded, she instructed, she requested, she begged him to release Giles Scavian.
And she received his assurances in return: he was doing all he could. He was working on it. He had a favour to call in. He had a contact he would contact. He could not simply order the man’s release, for the Denlanders were his masters and not the other way round. But he was working on it, he assured her.
And each day went by, and the Denland Parliament deliberated on the fate of Giles Scavian and the other Warlocks caught by their soldiers, and time was closing in like a noose.
Last night, for the first time since it ended, she had dreamt about the war. It had been night, in her dream, and the Denlanders were coming against the barricades. She saw the flash of the grenades and felt the ground shake beneath her feet, although there was no sound in her dream save something like a slow tide. Everything was slow: the movements of the soldiers, the spinning splinters of broken wood. The rifle shots coursed past her like tiny insects. She dreamt of firing musket and pistol into the charging Denlanders, and drawing her sabre, whilst white-gold fire seared out from the fingers of Giles Scavian.