the demon of Denland would be unleashed, until on neither side of the border would there be anything one could still call ‘human.
I wish Mallen were here now. Or Brocky, or Tubal, or Scavian. Someone to help me out of this. What will happen, if I do not shoot?
They were waiting. The King was waiting. He was letting her take her time. He believed she had been waiting for this moment since her father died. Had he come to her a year ago, she might have pulled the trigger already, she supposed, but she was not that same woman any more. She had pulled many, many triggers between then and now.
After all he did for me.
And if Northway was a villain, then he was in good company here. Griff the bandit, Balfor the convict, and who were the rest, really? Men that had crawled from the same mould, cast from base metal in imitation of the real thing. Thieves and petty criminals who feared the Denland order that the conquest was bringing, or courtiers who had hidden out the war behind the King’s skirts. She could shoot any one of them, and call it justice.
Standing there, her pistol directed downwards at Mr Northway, she had a moment of truth come to her, as calm and still as the moment before a battle charge. In her head, fragments whirled and spun, words and conversations: Mr Northway, Scavian, Doctor Lammegeier. The war was anatomized and picked apart like a diseased corpse – to find the cause, to excise the tumour. Lest it spread; lest the disease claim more lives; lest it claim them all.
Past the lies of the broadsheets, past the history lessons at Gravenfield, past the muted platitudes that were all most soldiers could ever write from the battle front, there was a cause. All those dead men in red and grey rotting and being consumed in the Levant, they had been put there by someone. The butchery of the Golden Minute was no random tragedy, nor was the mass grave of the Denland dead, or Father Burnloft stammering over the latest casualties. She made herself recall Marie Angelline’s agonized face and Brocky’s grief, and what had it all been for? What had made it all? Who was the architect of this house of blood and corpses?
And she felt her finger tighten on the trigger, and this once, this once only, she knew for sure that she was right. Doubt and worry fled from her, and she fired.
The echo of the shot, passing backwards and forwards through the trees. The look on his face would be branded onto her memory for all time to come.
The look on the face of the King, after she had shot him through the very heart. He looked hurt, as though she had rejected some courtesy he had offered. Flame crackled across his face briefly, and from one hand to the other: an aimless, failing discharge.
He fell, toppling to the wet ground beside the low-burning fire.
And silence fell. Silence like the moment before creation. Silence.
The men around her, Griff, Balfor and the others, were staring at her with horror, but it was Northway’s weak voice that broke into the silence with, ‘God Almighty, woman, what have you done?’
She let the pistol fall from her grasp and drew her sabre in a smooth, even arc of silver steel, looking from face to face around the circle.
‘Come on!’ she cried. ‘Come on, you rats. Come take your vengeance!’ and each one gaped at her, and did not dare. Griff flinched and looked aside, and Balfor was already creeping towards the horses, and within moments they had gone, every man of them, repatriated back into the shadows from their moment of glory.
She fell to her knees beside Mr Northway Only now was she starting to shake with the enormity of it. No more rebellion. No organized resistance to Denland, not without the banner of the Crown. No escalating reprisals from their Parliament; no death camps; no terror. No more war. She had strangled her country’s freedom with her bare hands, in order to save the men and women who lived in it.
‘What now?’ came the faint voice of Mr Northway. ‘What follows that?’
‘There will be rumours,’ she decided. ‘Always rumours, but a dozen men who would not dare face a single sword will not come forward to make accusations. I think you and I will hold the truth of this in the daylight world, and we are both used to keeping secrets.’
‘That we are.’
‘Will you free Scavian?’ she said.
‘I?’ Northway blinked at her. For a moment it seemed as though the question had no meaning for him. ‘Why they’ll free him themselves, I should think. And joyfully.’
She did not understand, and it must have shown on her face.
‘The King is dead.’ Northway mimed waving a tiny flag. ‘Long live those Warlocks who no longer bear his mark upon them. That was why you shot the royal person surely? To save your man there?’
The mark . . . But of course, just as the Denlander magicians had been stripped of their powers when their king died, so too would Scavian and his fellows be waking up now, no more than normal men, no more or less a danger to Denland rule than any other man.
‘That was why you shot him?’ Northway pressed, but she just stared at the King’s cooling corpse, seeing futures fade away.
‘Were you going to save him? Was that why you came here?’ At last she helped him into a sitting position, though it plainly pained him.
‘I cannot say.’ He managed a strained laugh. ‘I thought I was, but perhaps I was fooling myself. I did not want him free, Emily. I wanted you – and you love him.’
‘He loves me,’ she corrected. ‘But . . .’ She had known this even as she fired. It had been part of the price, paid willingly in the end. ‘I could not ever be with him. He loved his king, Cristan. He was a King’s man through and through. I would be false to him, to accept his love, because in my heart I would know that he would rather have died than I save him by the death of his master.’
Northway was silent for a time after that, waiting patiently, propped up on one arm, until the quiet finally drew more words out of her.
‘I saved Scavian by regicide,’ she admitted to him, and then cut off his resigned nod when she added, ‘but it was you I committed regicide for.’
*
It would be dawn before they finally struggled back to Grammaine, a slow, painful journey on foot since all the horses were gone, but Emily did not care.
The war was over, her war was over, and she had won.
About the Author
Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. He is the author of the ten-book fantasy series Shadows of the Apt and a standalone science-fiction novel called Children of Time.
Guns of the Dawn is his first standalone historical fantasy novel.
Catch up with Adrian at www.shadowsoftheapt.com for further information plus bonus material, including short stories and artwork.
BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY
Shadows of the Apt
Empire in Black and Gold
Dragonfly Falling
Blood of the Mantis
Salute the Dark
The Scarab Path
The Sea Watch
Heirs of the Blade
The Air War
War Master’s Gate
Seal of the Worm
Guns of the Dawn
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my advance readers Janine Ashbless, Justina Robson, Tom Jewell, Esther Reeves, Helen Walter, L. M. Myles and of course Annie Czajkowski.
Thanks to John Tams for allowing me the use of his lyrics for the initial quote.
Thanks also to line editor Peter Lavery, my agent the inestimable Simon Kavanagh, and to Julie Crisp, Bella Pagan, Louise Buckley, Sam Eades and everyone else at Tor who made this book possible.
And thanks to the insect-kinden, for being patient.