Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tubal had slipped her a flask of brandy earlier on, but she left it untouched. The warmth of the swamp radiated outwards, doubled and redoubled now that summer was upon them. Despite the clear
sky above, there was no hint of cold.
She hated these night watches because they forced her to think, and she had become all too uncomfortable with thinking recently.
Thinking about Mr Northway, for example. His last letter had been concise, abrupt almost. He had enquired about her health, her continued survival. She had read his mockery in it all; that
stand-offish, superior attitude which she was starting to recognize as his armour against the world. What gave more food for thought was Penny Belchere’s account of him. A glass of port had
seen the messenger girl sniggering over how Northway had slammed all the doors closed and kept to himself for four days after Emily’s last brief missive. Belchere had described how the
bureaucracy of Chalcaster had been left to rot while he brooded; how Northway had looked when he finally summoned her in again. There had been the dark rings of sleepless nights about his eyes, and
a look of fire in them.
‘Go,’ he had instructed, ‘as fast as you can!’ And Belchere had gone, picking her way from station to station in search of a train still going north and carrying
passengers.
Emily crumpled his letter – his cool and distant letter – in her hands, and through it she thought she felt the heat of all the things he did not allow himself to say.
How did I come to matter so much to a man such as Cristan Northway?
But power makes for a lonely man, and who else would dare intrude on him, day or night, whenever she had a complaint to raise?
She searched within herself now, in those small and thoughtful hours of the night, and tried to find there what she felt about him. The hatred had long drained away; the load of grief her father
had left her with, the bitter rivalry one generation dead, it was all gone, but what had replaced it?
She summoned his image to mind, shrouded in black and smiling that damnable smile. His dealings with the world had been so cursed and venal that he had put up barrier after barrier, just to
shield himself from it. And yet she smiled to think of him. He brought a feeling to her that warmed her more than the swamp ever could, and yet she would not name it – not yet. No more would
he, she knew.
And then there was Giles Scavian, wizard and nobleman, kind and gentle. Another man who had not found the right terms to describe his emotions, but he would have a dictionary full of them before
Mr Northway found any. There was nothing closed or hidden about Mr Scavian.
And, as she thought it, she heard a step behind her, and turned to see a figure, cloaked and robed against the night, coming close by her.
‘Mr Scavian?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Again you ask for Scavian. A man might become suspicious.’ The voice betrayed his identity, more than the vague shadow in the darkness. Lascari was the wrong wizard for her
thoughts.
‘How can I help you, Mr Lascari?’
‘Many ways, no doubt.’ He was heavy with sarcasm tonight. He bundled himself too close to her, almost touching. Lamplight struck sparks from the flints of his eyes. ‘One always
wonders what a woman thinks of, alone at night.’
‘Does one?’ she riposted, too quickly. He never failed to unnerve her, did Lascari. The King’s wizards could not read minds, but he had a way of seeing into hers and laying out
its contents like an autopsy.
‘Distant sweethearts, perhaps?’ He endowed the words with a wealth of distaste. ‘This war must be hard on you to be away from your home, your family.’
‘No more than on any man,’ she said firmly.
‘You think that, do you?’
There was such disdain hanging in the air that she felt bound to argue with him, for the sake of herself and Angelline – and for all her sex. ‘Have I not served, Mr Lascari? Am I not
a sergeant in the King’s army? Have I been of such little use since I came here?’
For a moment he was silent, just a shape in the dark, but then he made a little wheeze of a noise and she realized he was laughing. A flame lanced into life between them, spiralling and spitting
between the fingers of his hand. ‘It has teeth, does it?’ His smile was lean and devoid of humanity, a dead man’s strained rictus. ‘It has killed a man or two, and now
fancies itself a soldier.’
More a soldier than you.
But she did not say it, in the end, biting down on the words. Lascari was dangerous and untouchable. Should he decide to turn his powers on her, there was none
who had the rank to stop him.
‘I am glad to see you have fire,’ he told her. ‘It befits one of good name. We must look after our names and keep them shining.’ The burning hand inched closer as he
examined her face. ‘You are not as pleasant-featured as I had thought. In fact you are almost plain,’ he observed.
Alice had said the same on more than one occasion, and it had stung. Now, from the lips of this man, it had no power to hurt her.
‘I have something for you,’ he said abruptly. ‘Since you had such recent dealings with them, I thought you would see the Denlander.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No doubt. The colonel wishes news, and so Captain Pordevere and that painted creature’s scouts procured for him a Denlander. Some pioneer, no doubt, less lucky or skilled than the
rest. We have him in the colonel’s rooms even now. Perhaps you would like to see him.’
‘Why would I want to?’ she asked him, and his smile grew wider and tauter.
‘To hear what he has to say. He is going to tell us his commander’s plans: when they will attack, and where. Where they camp. How best for us to attack his friends.’
‘I doubt he will say anything of the sort.’
The fire in his hands flared out towards her, making her stumble back, hands raised to her eyes. It twisted and clawed about his fingers, raking the air, hissing and crackling.
‘He will tell us anything and everything that we ask, and more, and more, until he can think of no more to say,’ said Lascari. ‘I thought you might like to come and watch. A
wizard’s craft can be a beautiful thing.’
She stared at him, struck dumb by the lack of feeling with which he had said the words. She could only shake her head. She had no idea whether Justin Lascari was mad or just dutiful, but she
wanted nothing more to do with him.
‘Ah, well,’ he said. ‘You will at least be able to mark the progress of our conversation, no doubt.’
She had cause to be glad later that she had drawn the night watch. Few of them were to get any sleep that night, or the next.
*
No man should scream so much
, she thought. The human throat should not be capable of it, and yet the Denlander had shouted himself raw all last night, and all today as
well. Those soldiers who had rejoiced most, when the man was brought in, looked haggard now, as though they themselves had been put to the question in his place. The shuttered windows of the
colonel’s building flared red and orange and white, as Justin Lascari used his powers.
Evening now, and she found herself wishing for another night watch, because such enforced wakefulness should be put to use. Instead, she merely did the rounds, passing by each pale sentry with a
few words of encouragement. Most already had one or two keeping them company, for the first time ever. She even found Caxton standing by one lantern, her long pale face set into its familiar
unhappy lines.
‘I don’t recall your being on the roster for tonight, Ensign,’ Emily chided, and the other woman shrugged.
‘I don’t know how much more I can take, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘I mean, how long can a man last?’
Emily had no answer for her. It seemed impossible already that this atrocious business should have gone on so long.
‘Sergeant . . .’ Caxton lowered her voice. ‘I know it’s necessary . . . that we need to know where they are, but . . .’
‘I know, Ensign. I feel the same way.’ There had been those who had even cheered at the first scream, recounting to one another the tortures that Lascari would devise for the
prisoner. Even those who hated the enemy most, who would have no compunction about killing Denlanders, and killing them slowly, had quieted down after some twelve hours of it or more. Even sadistic
and vicarious glee had its end, and they were past that – long past.
At last she turned her path towards the Stag Rampant hut, to the Survivors’ Club. She guessed there would be scant cheer within.
There they all were, though. Brocky looked a little grey still, with his bare chest and stomach swathed in a mess of bandages at which he scratched and picked absently. Tubal fanned and shuffled
the undealt cards, sparing her a weak smile as she entered. Mallen had his head down, shoulders hunched, eyes glinting deep within the maze of his tattoos. And Scavian, Giles Scavian, was sitting
there with his eyes red and angry. He flinched at each fresh cry, and his fists clenched tighter. She wondered whether Warlocks ever fought each other, and what such a spectacle would look like if
they did.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ she said softly, taking her place at the table.
‘Vile evening,’ Brocky corrected. ‘For the Lord’s sake, someone go pour us a fresh glass of something. Marshwic?’
‘Is it my turn? I thought you were master of ceremonies tonight.’
‘I’m hurt. I have a wound.’ Brocky displayed his disarranged bandages. ‘I’m a wounded war hero.’
Even that raised only a ghost of a smile around the table.
‘I’ll do the honours, then,’ said Emily, because to have something to focus her mind on seemed a good thing right now. As she passed into the next room, she heard
Scavian’s chair scrape back, and he joined her as she selected a bottle from Brocky’s stash.
‘Giles,’ she began, ‘I . . .’ Seeing him there, haunted by it all, she asked herself:
Has he? Has it ever fallen to him to do that task?
‘No,’ he said, at once, reading the accusation even as it formed in her face. ‘I would not, when they asked me. No loss to Lascari. He
enjoys
the work. But not I.
It’s one of the reasons I took the robes off.’
She nodded slowly, knowing there was more to come.
‘They called me a traitor, of course, but what could they do? They needed me, and only the King or another Warlock could punish me.’
‘Lascari?’
His smile glinted hard and savage for a moment, uncharacteristic. ‘He has not tried it. Emily, in truth you must know – I want you to know – this is not what the King’s
service is about, or what the anointing of a wizard should lead to.’
‘War makes monsters of us all,’ she observed.
‘Surely, but so long as we know that we can at least try to remain human.’
Hearing that, and having seen all she had seen, she was forced to wonder whether it was not humanity itself that had claimed men like Lascari or Sergeant Sharkey – men who revelled in
their power over others.
Perhaps it is our humanity that we must strive to avoid. I will have to ask Mallen about the indigenes. Are they free from our vices or as vile as we?
‘I know that you would not do such a thing, Giles. The King chose wisely when he set his hand on you.’
Her words brought a smile to his face that nearly smoothed out the lines of pain.
‘Thank God, you understand,’ he said, reaching a hand towards her tentatively.
She took it, feeling beneath the skin the same heat that was being put to work on the prisoner. ‘You will always have me,’ she assured him. ‘When you need me, you will have
me.’ The words came out oddly martial: a soldier to a comrade, not a woman to a man.
Will I always be thus: a soldier?
Grammaine, Chalcaster, her former life – everything before her conscription felt as though it was now in some other room, with the door closing
by degrees.
Can I ever be plain Emily Marshwic again, with no rank and no uniform?
‘Hey, in there!
Drink
, damn the pair of you!’ Brocky’s roar broke them apart, and Emily hastily measured out some glasses.
Brocky it was who took it on himself to keep the conversation moving, against the backdrop of a tortured man’s pleas. He seemed able, in his self-involved way, to screen
them out just as the linen mesh in the shutters kept out the worst of the insects. His topic of conversation now was, perforce, himself. Himself and Angelline.
‘I seem to recall you all scoffed,’ he said. ‘All except Marshwic, perhaps.’
‘I scoffed,’ Emily insisted. ‘I scoffed with the best of them.’
‘You all scoffed, then,’ he said. ‘And now, you see, just a little daring, a little bravado, and the lady is quite smitten with me.’
‘“Smitten”?’ Mallen queried.
‘I’d only heard that you got shot in the flab, Brocky. I hadn’t heard she’d been shot in the head,’ added Tubal.
‘Well, if not smitten,’ admitted Brocky, ‘then let us say that the lady and I are getting along famously. It’s amazing what a little common experience can do.’
‘“Common experience”? You’re a fast worker.’ Mallen drained his glass and stood up to collect the empties.
‘We’d have overheard any “common experience”,’ Tubal objected. ‘After all, the lady’s voice is famously loud.’ Then he coloured a little and
glanced apologetically towards Emily, who met his look levelly.
‘One might wonder where such a voice comes from,’ Scavian mused. ‘What practice has, as it were, honed it.’
‘The profession of the lady in question?’ agreed Tubal.
Brocky’s leer grew deeper. ‘As it happens, old fellow, the lady has been trained in the most demanding of professions. The shout of command, the sweep of the sword, the athletic
step, the keenness of memory and sharpness of eye . . . in short, she’s on the stage!’
Mallen stopped in the doorway at that, and there followed an awkward pause. Acting was hardly considered a prestigious business, but Brocky seemed delighted.
‘Actress, is it?’ the scout asked.
‘Actress, dancer, singer. She was with the Lord Castellan’s Touring, don’t you know. And you know what they say about actresses.’ He went into a spasm of winking and
elbow-nudging to give them a clue, if they didn’t.