in these very veins?’
‘Of course, Your Majesty.’
‘Why then, where I once had Warlocks, I shall anoint more. The power has not left me because I have been driven from the throne.’
She frowned at him. ‘But . . .’ But Scavian! ‘But from where, from what? What nobles . . . what men of good family?’
‘If only you had been born a man, my dear Emily.’ The King put a hand on her shoulder, sizing her up, and she felt the touch as hot and fierce as the campfire itself. ‘You would have made a fine Warlock, none better. It is true that in the past we trained our Warlocks over long years, and we picked them from the finest bloodlines – those which already bore an answering spark of royalty in them, so that our magicians would be both loyal and potent. Your family has given me good service before. Perhaps your sons shall serve so again. However, in these dark days, I must make do with what fortune has left me. I have few nobles, but of willing men I have a sufficiency.’
‘But . . .’ She glanced around at Griff and the other tattered villains, and to her horror there was a sordid hunger about their expressions. They think he means them.
He does mean them.
‘But these are criminals! These are villains!’ she exclaimed. ‘Surely you cannot think of giving them such power. How would they use it?’
‘In my service!’ The King’s voice, even slightly raised, halted her objections. ‘They will be my new Warlocks, and their power shall be mine to call upon, and no other’s. Let them be weak, let them lack the discipline and skill of the magicians of yore, yet let them be mine. It is meet that I should use every means at my disposal to free Lascanne from under the Denlander boot!’
‘Your Majesty, please reconsider,’ she said. Even to regain his throne, even to protect his own life, will he give such mad power into the hands of any greedy vagabond that swears to him? She thought of Justin Lascari, anointed Warlock, and what he had tried to do before the end. The touch of the King was no guarantee of virtue, and nor was a nobleman’s bloodline. In that moment she came perilously close to understanding the enemy: who could she ever trust with such searing power? Scavian. Only Giles Scavian.
And she thought once again of Doctor Lam’s words, and all his dire prophecies of what would happen if Lascanne rose against its conquerors.
‘Do not worry, Emily,’ the King told her. ‘You will lose no honour by it. You will be my captain here. You will raise the people in my name, become my glorious banner! And you will start tonight.’
‘Tonight, Your Majesty,’ she said heavily.
‘For tonight the first blow will be struck for Chalcaster,’ he explained. ‘Tonight we shall deliver a message for the Denlanders that cannot be misinterpreted.’ He smiled, all warmth and glamour. ‘These are frugal times, Emily. This one thing must serve equally as the King’s justice, as our first blow against Denland, and as my gift to you, for service done and for all the service you have yet to do.’
‘I require no gifts, Your Majesty,’ Emily replied nervously.
‘No man nor woman may require gifts from the Crown, but the Crown may bestow them at the Crown’s own will,’ he declared. ‘You, over in the trees, bring forth your bounty!’
For a moment Emily was waiting for a whole host of men, an army of rebels, to sprout from the darkness, but it was merely two men, as ragged and rough as the rest, and between them they dragged a third, hauling him forth and hurling him at the King’s feet. She saw a man dressed in dark clothes, lying curled up about his stomach. In this place she almost did not know him.
But it was him: Cristan Northway.
‘Your Majesty . . . what is this?’ she asked, her unease deepening. What has been done to him? Has he been stabbed?
‘Know you all that this man is a traitor,’ the King stated. ‘He did not fight, come the war. He cowered in his office and, when the Denlanders came to Chalcaster, he gave himself over to them, to be their creature – to oppress his own people in their name. Here is a turncoat and a traitor, gentlemen.’
Northway coughed and uncurled himself a little. Not stabbed then, but merely beaten. He had a flower of bruises across his