The colonel’s gotten sick of me badgering him about it.’
‘Well, then, I’ll go and badger him myself,’ she decided.
Tubal weighed her up with a glance, then shrugged. ‘Try,’ he said. ‘Why not? After all, I’m just a Salander that married into money, but you’re a Marshwic. The colonel’s a Resnic, old family. Hell, maybe he’ll listen to you, when he won’t to me. That sort of thing counts with him.’
*
The rain had been a solid thing for three days and Mallen had declared, with his curious certainty, that it would be a good five-day rain. Nobody made war once the clouds broke in earnest against the cliffs of the Couchant front and started to shed their load. Somewhere out in the swamps, the Denlanders would sit hunched under the canopy shelter, flicking water out of their eyes, just as the Lascanne troops did. In this weather they were all victims.
Those that chose to could make the pilgrimage to the acerbic, toad-like quartermaster and demand their regulation-issue rain-cloaks, which in Emily’s recent experience had no water-repelling qualities whatsoever. Still, she took what shelter she could from it as she hurried across the centre of camp.
The tent city that was the Lascanne base camp had a heart of wood. A half-dozen of what would be mere shacks anywhere else were here the epitome of architecture. Three were company headquarters, along with one for stores and one for the infirmary. The last, and grandest, was the colonel’s. This she made for, swatting her way through the rain, slipping on the treacherous, churned grass.
The door opened just as she approached, and she stopped dead, for the figure descending the slatted steps to the ground was swathed in a mantle of dark blue, the hood shrugged up to hide his head. Twin herons held their heads high across his chest.
She was abruptly taken back to far-off Deerlings House: the ball, the gaiety of the great and good. And, of course, he had been sent to the Levant front. The Women’s Draft, and Mr Northway, and now Tubal, these things had conspired to force him from her mind. She had never thought to meet him.
‘Mr Scavian!’ she declared, a society lady again for a moment, and no soldier. ‘I had not thought . . .’
But her voice died away, for the face that stared out at her from that hood was not Giles Scavian’s but belonged to a man older by a decade and more, with hair receding from his forehead and a raptor’s cruelty about the mouth. His eyes were like flint.
‘Scavian, is it?’ he snapped out. ‘So, you’re one of little Giles’s playfellows,’ he snapped out.
‘Forgive me, sir. I merely thought . . . I saw your dress—’
‘Oh, Mr Scavian considers it beneath him to dress according to his station,’ the Warlock snarled. ‘Who are you, then, girl? Where did you dredge Giles Scavian from in your past?’
‘My name is Emily Marshwic, sir. I met him . . . just before I joined.’
His eyes narrowed to such a sharp edge that she felt they might cut her. ‘Marshwic,’ he echoed. ‘Well, now, we’ve more than scullions and maidservants in the latest load for the grinder, have we? Marshwic, well, well . . .’
‘Sir, I’d like to see the colonel.’ She made to move past him, but a strong-fingered hand hooked her collar and dragged her back and round to face him. His hand, against her skin, was hot, shockingly hot, and when he pushed his head forward to look at her, she saw that the King must have been of an odd humour the day he anointed this one. The red weal of the royal hand was wrapped about the man’s throat like the mark of a strangler.
‘Marshwic?’ the Warlock pronounced. ‘Know me then, Marshwic: Justin Lascari, Warlock to the King, of seniority and power, I am by far the better of that creature Scavian.’ The rain sprang away from him as steam, although his clothing never smouldered. ‘I am the King here, and no other,’ he told her, and then his hand blessedly released her. She felt that she, too, must now have a raw red mark about her throat.
His expression changed into something else, equally predatory. She realized belatedly it was a smile. ‘You interest me, Marshwic. That’s a name to conjure with,’ he said, and then he was gone, stalking off into the rain that barely touched him.
She took a moment to calm herself, before struggling up the steps and rapping