Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Tubal, present now, nodded sympathetically. He had found just the same.
‘Anyway, his family were on a list. They hated the Denlanders and, the way I saw it, the Denlanders hated them right back, but it wasn’t swords drawn yet. They knew a bad thing when
they saw it. They were lying low. That part of the country, there’s a lot of old family stuff. Estates and family trees. A lot of people holed up and waiting for the King to come round, you
know. Bloody dreamers: they should know when they’re beaten, is what I say.’
‘Mr Brocky, that’s terribly disloyal of you!’ Alice objected.
‘Disloyal?’ He bristled at her. ‘I fought at the bloody Levant, excuse my language. There’s no man can call me disloyal.’
‘Go on, Brocky,’ Emily prompted.
‘Right, well . . . Old Scavian and his father don’t get on, by the way. Being a friend of his is no way to get into that family’s favour, so no advancement for poor old Brocky.
That was a fun time of it. Scavian thought his old dad would be delighted with him for getting anointed by the King, but all the old man could do was complain that Scavian hadn’t died like
his brother – how dare he come back alive with the war lost, and all. I got the impression this older brother of his had been something of a favourite, if you see what I mean.’
He stopped to sip at the wine, wrinkled his nose a bit, and continued. ‘Anyway, just a few days ago, Denland soldiers turn up, a whole squad, at the house and they’re asking for
Scavian junior. Bastards’ve come to arrest him – ’scuse my language – and it’s just as well I hear them arguing with the doorman, and I go and fetch Scavian. Him and
me chuck some stuff into a bag and get going because it’s either that or get locked up. Or fight it out which, to be honest, is Scavian’s first plan. He could have done it, too, with
the fire and the whatnot. But I wouldn’t have given a pin for the chances of me or his old dad or the servants, or anyone really, when they sent a full company of riflemen after him the next
time. So we run for it. Only choice, really.’
‘So where is he?’ Emily asked impatiently. ‘I’m coming to it. We think of where best to head, you see, and it’s here. Where the bloody hell else –
’scuse me – can we go? But he knows you’ll cover for him, hide him out, and so we try to make it here. You have no idea how bloody difficult – pardon me – that turned
out to be. Denlanders are hot on our trail. We change clothes, buy hats, change trains, and all the while we keep seeing those bloody grey uniforms at every turn. They are most exceptionally keen
to catch Mr Giles Scavian. It takes us four days just to make it to Chalcaster, and most of our money’s gone by then – on bribes mainly, so people don’t see us when we’re
moving. I mean him with his red hair, and I’m hardly the least conspicuous person you ever saw. It wasn’t easy, I can tell you.’
He shook his head. ‘And we pull in at Chalcaster, ready to hotfoot it for here, wherever
here
turns out to be, and outside the station there’s a squad of them, and they know
him as soon as they set eyes on him. Anyway, he tells me to run, and I thought he was going to take them on, fire against the rifles. God knows how many bloody people he and they would have killed
between them, doing that. You’d have seen the lights and heard the noises all the way out here, believe me. But then he just . . . gives up. Trusting me, the silly sod, to find you. Trusting
you, more fool him, to do something. He just holds his hands forward for the manacles, and they come at him like he’s death incarnate, I can tell you. They were terrified of him, and I reckon
if he’d so much as looked at them funny, they’d have shot him.’
‘So . . . ?’
‘So he’s locked up in Chalcaster,’ Brocky finished. ‘And I am here telling you all this.’
‘But what has this Mr Scavian done?’ Mary asked.
‘He’s a Warlock,’ Tubal replied at once. ‘They must be rounding them up. They must be worried about a revolution.’
‘They must really be worried,’ Emily agreed. ‘They’ve been trying to mend fences since the war ended. This is going to stir people up. They must really think Giles and
the others are a threat.’
‘So?’ Brocky asked her.
She blinked at him.
‘So do something,’ he hissed. ‘You’re the only chance the lad’s got. You must know the way things work around here. Go help him.’
Emily looked from him to her family, and nodded. ‘I can do that,’ she decided. ‘I have some influence, I think.’
‘Emily, be careful of what you ask that man,’ Mary warned her. ‘You must not play games with Mr Northway Do not put yourself in his debt.’
Emily smiled at her. ‘Mary, I am already in his debt, so much so that I may never be rid of it. I will explain to you sometime, but now I must go to Chalcaster to free Giles Scavian.
Brocky, Tubal, you’re with me?’
‘Certainly.’ Tubal levered himself to his feet with Mary’s help.
‘Now don’t you do anything foolish, Tubal,’ she warned him. ‘I don’t want to find you in the next cell to this Mr Scavian. Remember you have a son.’
‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I’ll take care. Besides, Emily here’s the one for doing mad things.’
‘Me?’ Emily demanded,
‘He’s got you right there,’ Brocky agreed. ‘Please God, tell me there’s a cart or something to take us back. My bloody feet hurt every bloody way.’
‘Dispenser heal thyself,’ Emily remarked unsympathetically.
‘Besides, you’re not leaving me behind,’ Tubal pointed out, ‘and I’m hardly going to be walking to Chalcaster.’
By that time, Emily was leading the way into the kitchen and out into the yard.
‘Grant! Have the buggy ready!’ she called. ‘I’ll drive it.’
‘I wondered how long it would be before the Denlanders started throwing their weight around,’ put in Tubal, from behind her. ‘All too good to be true, until now. All sweet as
you like.’
‘They’re not an evil people,’ said Emily simply. ‘I don’t like them, and we’ve all lost friends to them. But had
we
won, how well would
they
be faring, do you think?’
They considered that, and Brocky nodded glumly. ‘You’ve got a point, Marshwic.’
‘However, they are careful and they are pragmatic,’ Emily continued. ‘And they will do anything, if they feel it must be done.’ In her heart weighed a cold stone from
thinking about the future of Giles Scavian.
*
There were enough soldiers in Chalcaster to cause all of them alarm. Emily counted at least two squads, of a score of men apiece, formed up in the marketplace, and the same
number in individuals and pairs, on corners and walking down streets. There were a half-dozen outside the governor’s offices, instead of the usual two, and they looked decidedly askance at
the three visitors, noting how they stood, their scars and signs of battle.
One made a move to stand in Emily’s way as they ascended the steps, and she glared at him imperiously. ‘I am here to see the Mayor-Governor,’ she told him. ‘Have you any
reason to stop me?’
He looked beyond her at Tubal and Brocky ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Are you going to give me one?’
‘Emily, you go in, see what you can do,’ Tubal suggested. ‘We’ll stay with the buggy.’
‘Does that meet with your approval?’ she asked of the soldier and, after a glance at his colleagues, he shrugged and let her pass.
She went straight to the man’s office, ignoring any soldiers and clerks who cast worried looks at her, and when she got there she found Mr Northway waiting for her. He had his hands
splayed across the papers in front of him, and there was something in his look that she did not like.
‘Giles Scavian,’ he said, in a crisp, clear tone, and she felt her world contract to just this: to this office, this man, her beating heart.
Oh, I have been playing a dangerous
game, and never known it until now.
‘Cristan . . .’
‘Giles Scavian,’ he repeated. ‘Warlock and servant of the King. Veteran of the Levant. I don’t recall you mentioning the name.’
She licked her lips, waiting, but inside she knew that she had met a kind of justice. She had somehow believed that she had escaped undetected in her divided affections. Some part of her had
thought itself very clever, while the rest had simply not thought at all.
‘Of course, I realize there was a sort of gloss that you put on your memoirs,’ he went on crisply. ‘A sense of something unspoken that, seen from the right angle, looked
uncommonly like a man. A man you were taking some pains not to talk about. But a man left behind in the Levant, along with the war. Not a man
here
, now
.
’ His eyes were fixed
on hers like the gaze of a serpent, pinning her in place. ‘Which was what I assured myself, when you spoke. For I would have had to be . . .’ his hands twitched ever so slightly . . .
blind
, not to see that there had been someone else. And that was your prerogative, in the heat of battle. Or maybe that
someone
was a someone whom you had already met, at
Deerlings let’s say, even before the Women’s Draft. I am very good at remembering names. I recall the dashing young Giles Scavian.’
‘Cristan, listen to me.’ In the face of this interrogation, her words seemed ridiculous now. Still, what else had she? ‘I need your help.’
‘And who do I find amongst my papers,’ he continued, as though she had not spoken, ‘but Giles Scavian, Warlock and veteran, whom the Denlanders put in my cells after dark last
night, and over whom they deliberate even as we speak.’
He stood up and hunched his way over to the back of the room, giving the plasterwork a cursory examination. When he turned back to her, his face was wiped clean of emotion. ‘And now you
need my help?’
‘Yes, Cristan . . . Please.’
‘On behalf of Giles Scavian.’
You always did make me play your damned games.
‘Yes, Cristan.’
‘Whom you . . . knew well at the Levant.’
‘He is a close friend of mine, a good friend of mine. I owe him my help.’ She could not tell whether his face was going to freeze in place or cave in. He held it masterfully
somewhere between the two.
‘Truth,’ he said simply. ‘Our association, Miss Marshwic, is built on it. I say this too often, I’m sure, but I have never lied to you. Perhaps it’s because there
is none other with whom I could be so truthful.’ He came back to his desk, hands gripping tight to its edge without his apparent knowledge. ‘So then, why don’t you tell me about
your friend Giles Scavian?’ He had tensed himself, ready for whatever she said, and she knew that to tell the truth would wound him, to lie to him would wound him more.
Could she deny her feelings for Scavian with a straight face? Could she make him nothing but a comrade-in-arms? Could she lie to Cristan Northway, so that he would not know it?
God forgive me.
For, after all this time, she knew that she owed this man the truth. She had been living her two separate lives, thinking that a single shot would end both of them soon
enough, and now they had come together, tangled like old ribbon.
Giles, forgive me.
‘More than a friend,’ she whispered.
He swallowed, and she thought he swayed slightly, still clutching at the desk that was his livelihood and support. He repeated her words soundlessly to himself and then said, ‘And you come
to me when the worst kind of chance has put him in my cells, under my roof, and you ask that I defy the Denlanders and set the man free?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And this Scavian, he is so much more than a
friend
that my hopes for you are dashed, Emily? So much more that, even before I asked, I had no hope or chance of you? I must
know.’ Quite matter-of-fact, his voice now, but she could see him holding shut a great floodgate of emotion with all the strength he possessed.
‘Cristan, I don’t
know.
I can’t see my way to the end of it. I need more time. Please.’
‘You offer me that bait, at least, as an incentive to free him?’
‘Cristan!’ she snapped, catching his attention. ‘I will not lie to you, nor have I.’
He nodded wearily. ‘I cannot release him.’
‘Cristan!’
‘Emily, I can’t. He’s not mine to release. The Denlanders have him, and I’ve no authority over them. They have three soldiers down there in the cells with him, night and
day, guns trained on his every move. The first flash of fire from him and he’s a dead man. They’re terrified of him. You already know what they do to things they’re scared of.
They’re hunting down every surviving wizard. While the King’s at large, they’re too much of a risk, too dangerous, too much of a flag to rally to. I cannot order him released. I
do not even have the keys to his cell under my control.’
‘What will they do to him?’
‘Why, they will kill him, of course,’ said Northway simply. ‘What did you think?’
‘You know that for certain?’
He made an airy gesture. ‘They don’t know it themselves yet but, when they’ve held their Parliament and their councils, they’ll come to that decision. You cannot take a
wizard prisoner – not for long. It has always been so. With wizards, you must kill them or avoid them; there is no middle ground.’
‘Cristan, you’re talking about my friend!’ she yelled at him. ‘I can’t let them kill him! I won’t! I’ll damn well shoot my way in and rescue him myself
– and let them kill me if they dare!’
‘Which they would, without a thought,’ he confirmed. ‘Shall I say I’m sorry? I’m sorry. It would have been a fine wooing gift to free your lover for you, but I
cannot make it happen.’
‘Will you do what you can? You have influence. I know you, Cristan. You always have ways of getting what you want.’
His lips twitched. ‘We have learned to compromise, have we not, you and I?’
‘For God’s sake!’ she exploded. ‘What do you want from me? What must I say to make you do this for me?’
He stared at her, and there was a lean hunger in his eyes that brought her up short.
‘Is that it?’ she said. ‘Are you holding him to ransom now. Is that what you want, for me to pledge myself to you in return for his safety?’
He made as if to speak, and she knew that he wanted that very much, more than anything. He wanted to have the coin to buy her, to make her his own. He bared his teeth like an animal at the
thought, feeling the desire rise inside him. In the end, though, the words that hissed out through his teeth were, ‘No. I will not take you at such a price, for how long would I keep you,
then? If you are to come to me, then come freely or not at all.’