faster than if it had been thrown by hand, pierced his armour of flames, and punched a hole in the imprint of the King’s hand. And he caught her eyes helplessly and fell backwards, his fire guttering out. Without his fire, the battlefield grew dark and darker still until there was nothing to be seen, nothing at all save the knowledge that he was dead.
And she awoke knowing that today was a bad day, and that all the following days would be bad days. She awoke knowing that Mr Northway’s best was not good enough, and knowing, too, that he had no intention of aiding her in this endeavour. Why should he? Perhaps it was true that he could not have Scavian released with a word, but what incentive did he have to work for Giles’s release, or even the Warlock’s simple preservation? Northway would let the deed be done, and then try to take up his wooing where it was left off, his rival put safely out of the way.
She burst into his office, and it struck her that she had come full circle with him. Their relationship, which had expanded to cover all the distance from Chalcaster to the Levant, had contracted back to her haranguing him across his desk.
He glanced up from the single sheet of paper he was reading and, when she slammed her palms on the desk, he flinched ever so slightly.
‘Have you made any progress?’ she demanded.
‘Emily, I am working on the problem,’ he said. ‘It is not so simple—’
‘Damn you and your working!’ she said to him. ‘How much time do you think he has? I know the Denlanders. They’re nothing if not efficient.’
‘Emily, please—’
‘Mr Northway,’ she said, ‘would you explain precisely what you have been doing these nine days?’
‘Emily, my work keeps me extremely busy—’
‘Mr Northway—’
‘Very well then, Miss Marshwic, I shall tell you. I have stalled. I have delayed. I have lost papers and misheard orders. I have done all in my power.’
‘Have you, indeed? And is he saved, then?’
He did not answer, but his eyes flicked down to the paper in his hands, and she snatched it from him. This encounter had become unreal, too close to that other time when he had held in his hands the news of Rodric’s death.
Her eyes skimmed across the details, scantly phrased and no more than she had expected. The Denlanders were terse and economical with words when drafting death warrants.
‘So,’ she said.
‘Emily please—’
‘This is where your best has led us, is it?’ she asked him.
‘I do not have the authority—’
‘Mr Northway, I suspect your motives,’ she told him, and he sat back and stared at her.
‘Do you, indeed, Miss Marshwic?’
‘Is this the man who could get anything he wanted? Who worked his way from bootblack up to governor in so short a time, and to hell with any who got in his way? Is this him who has ridden the tide of invasion and bobbed back into place like a buoy? And can he not have one man released from his own cells by sleight of hand or legislation or bribery?’
He looked up at her with no hint of any of their shared past in his expression. ‘And is this what you think of me, Miss Marshwic?’
‘Show me what else I can think, from what I have now seen,’ she told him.
He stood, and was round the desk quickly, reaching to capture her wrist in his grip. ‘I have done so much, so much, and this is all I have from you to show for it?’ he burst out. ‘I see you have regained your righteousness. I had thought it a casualty of the war.’
With more ease than she would have believed, she prised his fingers away from her skin. ‘Does he still live, Mr Northway?’
‘He lives. The Denlanders have not seen this yet.’
‘And when will they? How long do I have to say goodbye?’
She had thought that he would storm down there at once and present it to them, but something softened in him. ‘In three days, Emily, they will want to know why they have not heard, and they will send a courier by rail to deliver the orders in person. Three days is all I can give you.’
She could not thank him. She could not muster the words for it, the taste of gall was too strong in her mouth.
As she walked away from his office, she thought, though, of all the hard, hard work he had done to