Emily looked at the message and shook her head, seeing first and foremost that it was simply not of the grade of paper that Mr Northway would use. When she cracked it open, the writing inside was neat but strange to her.
‘Well?’ Tubal prompted.
She looked it over a second time, before passing it to him wordlessly.
To the esteemed Lieutenant Emily Marshwic, heroine of the Levant.
Good men and women lie idle in their beds, while Lascanne suffers under the oppressors hand.
Did they not know that, whilst they may crush our armies with their machines, they cannot crush our Spirit?
The folk of Lascanne shall arise. The menace of Denland shall be driven out, in the name of our most worshipful monarch Luthrian IV.
Lascanne shall be free!
We write to you in confidence for, in these dark times, you hold a lamp aloft for the faithful to rally to.
Past nightfall this evening, a man shall come for you. Go with him. You shall meet your fellows: those who also hold faith to King and country.
Long live the King!
‘Unsigned,’ Brocky noted. ‘They’re not fools.’
‘A trap?’ Tubal wondered. ‘The Denlanders, wanting to see if you’ll bite?’
‘Anything is possible.’ Emily accepted the letter back and perused the lines again. ‘And it’s not as though I want to stir up revolution. All the things that Provost Gottred said to me are true . . . surely true?’
‘But . . . ?’ said Brocky.
Long live the King. ‘I feel as though I had more control over my destiny when I was still in the army,’ she said. ‘Since I came back to Grammaine, I’ve been every man’s puppet. Every malcontent sees me as a saviour. Doctor Lam thinks I’m a firm hand on the rudder. Mr Northway . . .’
‘Quite,’ Tubal agreed.
‘And now they want to make me queen of the rebellion. And what would happen then, when the Denland army arrives here in force, rather than just some four score guardsmen? When they burn down Grammaine because it was mine, and they take Mary and Alice because they are family? When they shoot you, Tubal, because of who you are, and take your infant son away in case he leads a revolution from his crib? What the devil happens then – when their damned traction-guns are buckling Chalcaster’s streets? Will the people rise up? And what will they rise up with? Pitchforks? Staves? Grandfather’s antique matchlock? Can you imagine what the barricade would have been like, if not one of our men had been taught to fight?’
‘And yet . . .’ Brocky scratched at his belly. ‘And yet . . .’
‘And yet,’ Emily agreed, knowing that the situation was slipping beyond her even as she said the words. She felt she had fallen into a river and was being drawn under by the current, her hands clutching at the grasses of the bank but sliding, always sliding away.
‘These rebels might free Scavian.’ Tubal finished the thought for her. ‘You could convince them to help. They will have the weapons – some at least – and the manpower.’
‘If it isn’t a trap,’ Brocky reminded them.
‘If it’s a trap, let them take me,’ Emily decided. ‘I will go. Not for love of rebellion and not for love of Lascanne, but for Giles Scavian I will go.’
33
He came after nightfall, as promised, slipping into the yard of Grammaine alone with the deepening dusk.
Emily had been waiting in the kitchen, feeling thoroughly on edge. Was this a Denlander trap? What on earth would she be led into? Across the kitchen table she played cards with Tubal and Brocky, in remembrance of old times.
She had decided this would be a night for symbols. If she needed to raise a mob to save Scavian, she would require symbols. She had told Jenna to lay out her uniform in all its battered glory, and now she felt the comfortable wear and tear of it as the cloth found its long-accustomed folds. The pistol was in her belt, her sabre hanging from the back of her chair by its baldric. Her helm sat atop the table.
‘Are you sure you don’t want someone to come with you? Or you could ask Grant to follow you. They’d not see him,’ Tubal asked, for the hundredth time.
‘I’ll risk nobody on this but myself,’ Emily assured him. ‘I am the one they sent for. Why? God knows. You were in command.’