Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘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 have kept you here, Ensign. I
would that I could have kept you safe.
It is the strangest thing that I cannot close my eyes, or take a moment’s thought, without thinking on you and where you have gone. I read each day the reports of what is daily done in
the name of war. I would spare you, Ensign, if I could.
The past is no man’s clay for remodelling. It is fired the moment it is moulded, alas.
I have an offer for you, Ensign. I want you to commit treason with me. I want you to join with me in a conspiracy. Have I outraged you? Do you tear up this sheet of paper even now, or
cast it at the feet of your Colonel Resnic? I say not. You read on.
You will wish to speak to those you love here, to tell them how it goes with you, in words that the Kings law does not permit. I will give you that chance, Ensign. What you hand to
Belchere will make a most secret progress back to Chalcaster, and thence to wherever you will. There is my treason, and there is yours. I only ask that, as you write, you do not forget him
whose venal soul gives you that chance. Write to me, Emily, if you would.
Do I know you so well? Have I struck a mark? Always, even with your anger and loathing turned on me, yet you know me and I you. Who is there now to slam back my door and harangue me
with such righteous indignation? Who is there now to hate my name so fiercely? What a flame has gone out here, since you went to war!
We understand each other, do we not?
Your obedient villain,
Cristan, if you will have him so – if not, Mr C. Northway, Mayor-Governor of Chalcaster and servant of the King.
After the last word, she read through it again, and then let the piece of paper hang from one hand, as she stared off at the slow-approaching cloud. She felt her loneliness so
keenly that it cut her like a knife. She had so few friends here, so many strange faces. And the war was not going well: he had been right. The insidious Doctor Lam played his games, and men and
women of Lascanne died amid the hell of the swamps. Nothing was as she had been led to believe. The world – all bar one man – had lied to her. She had tried so hard to force her words
out of this place, to speak to Mary and Alice across the miles, and he could not have known that. Belchere must have received her orders before Emily had ever gone to the colonel. And yet here his
message was, his lifeline: a hand extended by Mr Northway, bane of her family.
And it was not Mary or Alice she thought of, as she held the letter close. Instead, she saw a man in shabby black on the railway platform at Chalcaster, felt the coolness of his hand as it
slipped out of hers.
Return, please.
She read the letter once more, and saw again words that she had taken for granted. He knew her, her fears and her wants. If she gave her imagination the freedom, she could know him in return:
the cold office, the papers making demands in the name of the war effort, his slim-fingered hands pursuing their joyless work. Was that a heaviness about him, that no Marshwic could tear him from
his duties with her demands?
I would that I could have kept you safe.
Write to me, Emily.
Her name, unqualified. She was always Ensign Marshwic or Sir here. Her name sounded strange to her own ears; she had left it behind, in the keeping of Mr
Northway.
His words sidled into her mind, his imagined voice sly and mocking. She felt oddly awkward, exposed. He had read her mind. He had known her needs before she ever formed them. He was Mr Northway
the villain, made to gloat, boast and threaten. His entreaty slid beneath her defences. She felt weak and angry with herself for it, but she could not put the letter down.
I
should expose him, tell the colonel of his treason, finish the man.
He had put the blade in her hand.
But Mary, Alice! This is what I want, after all, only what I want.
And she smiled ruefully because that was not it. Her sisters had been forgotten, these last five minutes. Instead she knew only that a man she had once hated had gone to these lengths for her,
risked all to give her what she needed. The man cared enough, despite his faults, to put this chance her way.
His cool hand
, she thought.
His tight carefulness on the ballroom
floor.
And she saw again his expression as she left him for the train and the war. She relived his despair when he held the knowledge of Rodric’s death and yet, when he could have had
her in his hands, he had told her the truth, as he always did. The idea of Mr Northway, the bitterly truthful Mr Northway, crept into her through her own treacherous memories and the words of his
letter. She felt hot and unsteady suddenly. He was seducing her in ink, and she was being seduced. A wave of contradictory feelings threatened to overwhelm her. What could she do to escape Mr
Northway, when his hooks were planted inside her by her own hands?
She would write to Mary and Alice, yes, but what could she write to them that they would understand? The sudden death a musket shot could bring, the venomous oven of the swamp, the guilt of
having a death hanging about her neck? How could she load these burdens onto her two sisters? They would not bear them. The colonel was right: the weight would break them. Tell them that she lived,
yes; tell them that she fought for king and country, but how could she wound them with the truth?
But she had never hidden a thing from Mr Northway, as he had not from her. Of all people, he would understand. He would not flinch. He had known grimmer things than this. She did not need a
priest for her confession, but a devil.
How strange that war has brought the two of us to this pass.
She felt so close to him now, as she had never done when he was there right before her. How the war had remade her, remade
them both, into two halves of a broken thing!
She
would
write to him. She would write to her sisters, something true but, yes, shying from the whole truth, but she would write honestly to him. He would keep her heart for her, until
the war was done and she had need of it again.
That decision made, she folded the letter to slip into her jacket pocket, and one of the many weights she bore was gone from her. The bottled thoughts that sat so heavily on her stomach could
now be poured out.
She returned to Belchere and told her to wait, for there would be a reply.
We are not the things we think we are, when we are tested.
We do not know how much we lean on others until those props are taken away. On our own feet at last, we are unsteady. I am grateful, therefore, that you have sent me this crutch, just
as I began to fall.
Your martial adversary,
Emily.
Tubal cast himself down beside her, heedless of the mud on his jacket. His helmet was pushed back off his head until it hung between his shoulders from its strap. There was dirt
on his face, but his expression was calmer than she ever remembered from home.
‘So,’ he said, his voice a mere undertone, half lost amid the water-sound. ‘Settling in all right?’
Emily, lying stretched along a moss bank with her feet in the water below, shifted slightly, trying for comfort. ‘It’s hard, Tubal,’ she said.
‘Hell, yes,’ he agreed. ‘So tell me about how it’s hard.’ Around them, the swamp covered a multitude of sins as eight squads of Stag Rampant, one hundred and sixty
soldiers in all, eased into position, one by one.
‘I don’t mean
this.
’ Emily took a chance to look at him, rather than at their objective. ‘This is hard, but I expected it. I knew fighting, warring, was going to
be like this, but . . .’
‘It’s the gaps in between,’ he finished for her, elbowing his way up the bank a little, keeping his musket just clear of the mud.
Emily thought of her letter, winging its way to Mr Northway even now: her kindred spirit, her adversary. Locked in conflict for so long, they shared some place between them that no other could
touch. But he was not
here.
It could be tens of days before she heard from him, if at all. It was a dangerous game he was playing, after all, by flouting the King’s law.
‘It’s . . . I had a good friend when I first came. Now she’s gone and . . . I’m an ensign and so the soldiers hold me at a distance.’ Her birth worked against her,
too. Just as at Gravenfield, she was the only gentlewoman in camp. It seemed all the other houses and families of Lascanne had sent servants to do their dirty work.
Down the line, Stag Rampant troopers were falling into place like game pieces being advanced. Mallen was out there somewhere, invisible, with a whistle to his lips.
‘I bought myself a lieutenancy when they were going cheap for volunteers,’ Tubal recalled. ‘Hell, if I’d known it would put me in the firing line so much, I’d have
saved my money.’
‘Tubal . . .’ How unlike a soldier she would sound. She did not want to embarrass herself before Mary’s man, did not want to become just his sister-in-law and not his junior
officer, but it hurt her. Each night, each empty day, weighed on her more and more. When the orders arrived, it had been a relief to descend into the boiling purgatory of the swamps, to take up the
musket once again. At least there she had a place and a purpose. ‘Tubal . . . I’m lonely.’
When she said the words, they sounded so poor that she wanted to take them back, but Tubal’s expression was nothing but sympathy.
‘You’re right, it is hard,’ he agreed. The last few soldiers were just moving into place now, and Emily felt the almost welcome knot of tension form inside her. Any moment, any
moment . . .
‘You know,’ said Tubal, tensing too, ‘if we’re both alive at the end of today, I’ve a mind to invite you to become a member of my club.’
‘Your
club
?’ As if he was a man of means in Chalcaster again and could spend his evenings as he chose, in the company of his peers.
‘Why not? We never said “no women” when we made the rules. It didn’t come up.’ He flashed her a quick grin, and then Mallen’s whistle sounded and they were
both scrambling to their feet, along with tens of other soldiers, to go charging down a root-studded slope into the mist and the trees.
Down the line, Justin Lascari, resplendent in his night-blue robes, thrust forth his hands at the unseen enemy and gave out a harsh shout. Fire leapt from his palms, from his fingertips, in a
screaming explosion that seared its way with withering force into the trees and plants before him, shrivelling them and blasting a tract of water into scalding steam. There were screams then, and
Denlander soldiers bolted out in all directions, some on fire, some clutching their faces, their eyes. Shots from the advancing Lascanne line picked at them as the ambushers skittered down the
slope towards their targets.
In those first few seconds, it was all Emily could do just to keep on her feet. Tubal was skidding and sliding beside her, holding his musket high for balance. A tree sped past between them, and
she burst through a spiderweb of vast proportions; then there was movement ahead.
She saw a glimpse of recognizable motion, a human form in drab clothes bolting away, and she tried to bring her musket to bear on it, but the shape was gone too fast into the mist between the
trees. Elsewhere, down the line, she heard shots and cries, all muffled in the dank air.
She did not stop to think, not for one moment. Concentration took up the whole of her mind.
At the foot of the slope, with a tree to one side for cover, she swept the barrel of the musket about, looking for targets. Along the line on either side of her there were brief rattling
volleys, but she and Tubal seemed to be in an oasis of calm. Mallen’s second whistle came, issuing belated orders to push forward, engage at will. She thrust herself away from the tree and
shouldered her way through the dense foliage, the vast overarching ferns, the ankle-deep moss.
Something passed before her face, without being seen, and punched a perfectly round hole through a fern frond beside her. She had a instant’s shock, despite herself, and then she had
pulled the trigger, punching her own borehole through the greenery and hitting nothing. Cursing herself, she dropped into the shadow of the plants and reloaded as fast as her shaking hands would
permit. Tubal went down on one knee beside her, gun to his shoulder and waiting for his moment.
‘Ready?’ he asked her. She nodded, breathlessly. The Denlander would have reloaded, too. He would be just as ready as them.
‘On three,’ he said. ‘One . . . two . . .’ His knuckles whitened on his gun.