they were still, she decided. Despite the eyes, the face, the hair, they could almost be children standing there. When they moved or spoke, the humanity fled from them. Every gesture or expression bespoke an ancestry utterly at odds with her own.
Mallen bridged the communication gap, though. He must have been here a long, long time. She wondered how they looked to him, whether he could tell them apart, read nuances of feeling in those vast eyes.
*
Not a sign, not a glimpse of a Denlander, after that three-day expedition into the swamps. She was relieved. She was also frustrated. Elise was unavenged, in some strange way. Emily herself was untested. She did not know if she could do what a soldier must, now that Elise had died on her. She could not talk to Mallen about it, for he had no small talk. She did not want to take it to Tubal either. He was her brother-in-law, but he was her superior officer. He was also her commanding officer until Captain Goss returned to lead the Stag Rampant. So she kept it inside, instead, and it sat there uneasily.
The camp provided a welcome chill, after the suffocating heat of the swamps – a heat that owed nothing to latitude or altitude, and everything to the furnaces of rot that underlay all things. Up above them all, two hundred feet of sheer rock away, she heard the distant pounding of the big guns. The Couchant front was seeing a busy day. A thunderhead of cloud in the east was lumbering slowly towards its precipitous demise against the cliffs and crags. More rain being delivered, regular as the gunfire.
She sat heavily at a trestle table before the cooking fires and called out for something to eat. Privilege of rank. Let someone run after me, for a change. The stocky woman stirring the pot gave her a sour look as if to say she had snubbed higher ranks than ensigns today, and Emily was about to lever herself up again when she sensed someone approach from behind.
When she turned, more quickly than she had intended, she found her hand had gone instinctively to her father’s black pistol, which was loaded and thrust through her belt.
For a second, lost from context, she did not recognize the girl, and she was not quite recognized in turn: two familiar women cut apart by a change of scenery.
And then: ‘Who . . . Is that Penny Belchere?’ Emily stood up, making connections.
‘It is you!’ Belchere exclaimed, sounding as much angry as glad. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘In the swamps,’ Emily replied simply, and then, with a little justifiable exaggeration, ‘Fighting the war.’
‘I’ve been here almost a day,’ Belchere complained.
Emily looked at her blankly. ‘Count yourself lucky. I’m here for the duration. Have you been drafted?’
‘No!’ Belchere exclaimed. ‘Though everyone round here seems to think I have. I’m messenger corps, remember? Why do you think I’m here? If I’d known I’d get sent here, I’d never have joined—’
‘And then you’d be here for good, like enough, just as I am,’ Emily pointed out. ‘Now, keep calm and talk straight or I’ll make you salute me, soldier. What is going on?’
Belchere visibly composed herself. ‘I’ve got a message for you. Can I give it you now, so I can get the next train out of Locke?’
‘A message . . . ?’ A shiver went through her: something wrong at Grammaine; some disaster befallen her sisters. What else could drive a message so far from home? ‘Let me have it.’
‘All yours.’ Penny handed over a sealed envelope. ‘I’m supposed to wait for a reply.’
‘Well, then, you’d better wait.’ Emily reconsidered her tone. ‘Sit down. Get something to eat. Let me read.’
She moved off a few steps, to keep it private, and broke the seal.
My Dear Emily,
Or perhaps we are once again distant in manner as well as geography. My Dear Ensign Marshwic, then. What a chimera you have become.
I hope this missive finds you well. I hope it finds you at all, indeed. I exceed my authority in simply sending my messenger so far off course. In these days, though, a governors writ runs far. What crimes of avarice I could get away with if my waking moments were not divided between the essentials of duty, and you.
You will remember what I told you about the war. You will have found the truth of it: not so well as the papers proclaim, is it? I would that I could