her to action. She had got out of the habit of being a lady of leisure, and could not recapture it. Instead, most days found her riding, with Grant or alone, across the grounds of Grammaine and the neighbouring land. She rode in her uniform most times, and with her sabre at her side, which she had been given as ensign. She met no bandits – nothing more villainous than a twelve-year-old child poaching pigeons – and she almost wished she had. She assured herself that a confrontation with the Ghyer would go differently now. She would never be so foolish or so helpless again. But the Ghyer was consigned to history, and she would not have the chance to show him she was now her father’s daughter.
Mr Northway called for her once, or so Poldry told her. She did not regret being out. She could not say now what her reaction would be should she see him again. There was a glowing coal still within her that spoke of Rodric, poor Rodric, who had been so pale and brave in his own new uniform.
When she was out on horseback, she could forget her dead brother, her dead father, the tangled future of the Levant front. She could lose herself in the wind, the pounding of the hooves, the simple fact of riding.
Little Francis was bigger than before. He was teething, too, and making his discomfort known to all and sundry. Emily took her turn in holding him, swaying him from side to side to lull him. As he slept, she watched him for an hour or more at a time, listening to the sounds of the house around her: Cook in the kitchen, Jenna scrubbing the floors, Mary humming to herself in another room.
These are the things I am fighting for. She had stepped out of this place – stepping backwards as one might from a painting, to better appreciate it. Perhaps Grant was right and she would never truly re-enter it, never quite get past the picture frame again, but it would be worth it. She would go to war to save Grammaine from the ravages of Denland; to save the future for Francis; to save the past for her family. Love of her country was a great storm that bellowed and fell silent, but this love of home was a breeze that blew steady and forever.
So the days passed, one by one. She sat up in the evening along with Elise and a couple of glasses of wine, and they talked about other recruits and what they might be doing, how the Couchant front was advancing. Elise would tell her what she had seen in Chalcaster: the fashions, the people, the observations Alice had made. It was all so new to her, another world entirely, or perhaps the same world seen through a different lens. She wore clothes that were Mary’s cast-offs, the fashions and cuts all wholly strange to her, and she delighted in them. Yet Emily had not found any comfort in her own wardrobe. Instead, now she wore breeches, shirt and jerkin from Rodric’s room – and if Mary was shocked, she said nothing.
*
And of course the day came, the seventh or so, when it seemed that the call would not come, the papers would never arrive. Perhaps the army of the King could win this war without Emily Marshwic or Elise Hally. And, on that day, Emily went downstairs to find Penny Belchere in the kitchen with a solemn look on her that did not suit her at all, and in her hand two letters marked with the King’s seal.
‘Tomorrow, first thing,’ Emily announced, when she had read hers. Elise’s was still unopened in her hand, for the girl was no great reader. ‘They want us to report to Chalcaster station tomorrow, five in the morning. The train will take us to Locke, wherever that is.’ Even as she said it, the map unfurled in her mind’s eye. Locke, mustering point of the Levant front, last port of call for civilization, before the swamps began.
‘Hell,’ said Elise quietly. ‘I wish I’d been clever enough to run away.’
Emily gave her a long look. ‘You still can. I won’t say.’
Elise grinned at her. ‘That’s mighty generous, Ensign Marshwic. Any chance the offer’ll still be open after the fighting’s started?’ She clapped Emily on the shoulder: a familiar mannish gesture. ‘It’s a strange thing, you know? Now it’s come, now we’re off, I don’t care. It’s