train, raising the shutters on the windows for a last look at their loved ones. She saw Elise hop aboard, calling out that she would save Emily a seat.
Emily sighed, knowing that the people of Chalcaster, those they would leave behind, were watching her. Knowing that to them she was the enemy in that moment, because she was the one taking their mothers and sisters and children away to war. This was what it was like to have responsibility for the lives of others. There was no greater burden.
She began to walk slowly back along the platform, looking for any last red jacket that might still be dawdling. She could hear the train’s engine gradually building a head of steam, blowing out smoke to be lost in a dark sky.
‘Miss Marshwic, I presume.’
She stopped, did not turn yet. The voice needed no introduction.
‘You presume?’
‘Your new wardrobe makes it hard to tell.’
At last she turned, and it was as though nothing had changed, as though she had never signed up, just for a moment. He was standing there, in the same tatty black, and she felt a wave of complex, angry emotions at the sight of him. She could have been back at his office, hearing the news of Rodric’s death.
‘Mr Northway,’ she said.
‘You make a fine soldier, Miss Marshwic. Ensign Marshwic, I beg your pardon.’ His face was oddly naked, and only later did she realize that it was without its customary defensive smile.
‘Are you here to count heads, Mr Northway?’ In saying his name, his title, she felt a strange power over him. He was a civilian and she a soldier.
‘As it happens, I am. The King may not have sent sergeants to round you all up, but he nonetheless wishes to ensure that none of his new darlings of war has second thoughts.’ A pause hung between them, and then he forced himself to say, ‘I am here to see you, though, one last time. Speak with you as well, if you will. But see you, at any rate. Which I have now done.’
The noise of the train was building behind her, and she felt unjustly put upon that he should beard her here. What did he want with her, after all that had been said the last time – or left unsaid?
‘I must go to my command, Mr Northway,’ she said, feeling strangely important.
‘I . . . have great hopes of your return, Ensign. Emily,’ he said, and when she moved to correct him, something in his face held her back.
‘Mr Northway . . .’ She wanted to turn away angrily from him, to board the train and never see him again, but she did not. Instead, she recalled dancing with him when nobody else would ask her. She saw the dreadful storm of emotions that had unmanned him when he had won her and lost her over Rodric’s dead body. She saw him shooting the Ghyer, a villain turning on a villain, and all for her.
Her father’s ghost clamoured at her, but it was a spectre that had lost its substance this last year, as she had finally faced up to whose finger had been on that trigger. What a knowledge for a daughter to bear that, when the accounts were drawn up and the auditors in, he would rather spare himself the hurt than spare his daughters. No wonder they had all loaded their hate onto Northway, for where else could they direct it?
And Cristan Northway was no saint: a villain through and through, but one freely condemned out of his own mouth. In the end, save for that one omission, he truly had never lied to her. How many other people could say as much?
She looked at his face again, and saw that he was frightened for her, and had no way to say it, but his eyes spoke it clearly enough.
The train made a deep, solid sound, and she knew it was about to get underway.
‘We will continue this conversation when I return,’ she told him and, before she could think about it, she had taken his cold hand in a brief clasp with both of hers and let it go. Behind her, the train began, ever so slowly, to move, lumbering along the length of the platform at a slow walking pace that was increasing speed every second.
‘Return,’ he told her, ‘please.’
And she turned and caught at an open doorway and swung herself in, pack and all. She glimpsed him just the