a rickety stool, with a pipe in one hand, caught in the act of lighting up. With his sleeves rolled up, his shirt open halfway down his chest, he looked no less fierce and strange than he did out in the swamps. It was as though someone had dressed up a savage as a civilized man.
The other was the camp quartermaster, a man she knew by sight. Heavy-built, unshaven and jowly, he slumped within the confines of a vastly moth-eaten, stuffed-leather chair that had seen many and varied better days. She had always seen him before in scruffy civilian attire, the tail of his shirt hanging out, the top button of his breeches unbuttoned beneath his swelling belly. Here, though, he appeared a true man of means in his club, with a blue-and-gold checked waistcoat complete with watch-chain.
‘Emily, you know Daffed Mallen, of course,’ Tubal said, indicating Mallen. It was her first indication that the man even had a first name. ‘And this reprobate and general no-good individual is our quartermaster, Mr John Brocky. Gentlemen, I would like to introduce my sister-in-law, Emily Marshwic.’
‘To what end?’ Brocky asked suspiciously. ‘Are you pimping her?’
Before Emily could retort, Tubal got in. ‘I am proposing her for membership.’
‘A new member?’ Brocky laughed. ‘A little late for that, no? And a woman? Can’t be done.’
‘Rules say nothing about it,’ Mallen noted quietly.
Brocky squinted at him. ‘I’d have thought you’d be with me on this, Mallen.’
Mallen looked from Emily to the fat quartermaster, and back. ‘I know Miss Marshwic. Knows her business, she does. She gets my vote.’
Tubal gave him a nod of thanks, but Emily was too surprised to stay silent. ‘Master Sergeant—’
Mallen raised a finger. ‘Club rules, no ranks.’
‘Where’s his lordship?’ Tubal asked.
‘In the next room, opening a bottle or two,’ Brocky told him. ‘Let’s call him in, get a second opinion. I’ll wager he’ll back me. Sorry, Miss Marshwic, but, really . . .’
A third man had appeared at the narrow doorway leading to the next room, a corked bottle in one hand and a blankly surprised look on his face. ‘What . . . ?’ he began.
She did not recognize him at her first glance. Out of context, out of uniform, it took a second look to match his face and the sheared-copper colour of his hair to her distant memories.
‘Mr Scavian,’ she said, and feared that he would still not know her. Two brief conversations, one crowded evening, a lifetime ago and a country away. How could he be expected to recall? But a faint smile was coming to his lips, although his eyes were bewildered, still, and unsure. ‘Upon my soul,’ he said, ‘Miss Marshwic. What . . . what brings you to this place?’
How far we have travelled, she thought, but this was the same man she remembered so clearly.
‘You can’t know each other,’ Brocky complained, somewhere in the background. ‘It isn’t fair.’
‘Looks like you’re in, Em,’ Tubal told her, but she barely heard him, approaching Giles Scavian as though he might vanish at any moment.
‘I looked for you,’ she told him. ‘I remembered, but you weren’t there. The only Warlock was—’
‘Lascari,’ he finished. The scowl he gave did not suit him. ‘I learned soon enough not to wear the blue. Nineteen Warlocks have been sent to the Levant. Only two yet live, myself included. The Denlanders learned to aim at our robes. They know to fear us.’
‘Excuse me, club rules, or do you put a shilling in the jar?’ Brocky objected. ‘All too serious, no?’
‘Brocky, this is not club business. This is my renewing an old acquaintanceship, in truth,’ Scavian told him with dignity.
‘Then you’re agreed that Emily can be a member,’ Tubal said to the quartermaster in triumph.
‘Shall we say I’m resigned to it,’ Brocky grumbled sourly. ‘Look, Scavvers, if you’re going to sweet-talk the lady, can you at least finish fetching the brandy as you do it?’
Scavian coloured a little, and backed off into the next room. Emily followed him in, expecting a map room, a war room. Instead, she discovered something of a secret larder. Bottles, she saw; bales of pipe tobacco; dried meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling. ‘What is all this?’ she asked. ‘There’s nothing like this stuff in the stores.’
‘Our quartermaster has a multitude of contacts,’ Scavian explained. ‘In every shipment from Locke there’s something of his crated up and marked “medical supplies”. Miss Marshwic . . . I do not know whether I am glad to see you or