Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Alice was tugging at her again, though, sounding breathless as she said, ‘Look, Emily, look!’

  ‘Is it the King?’

  ‘Almost, look!’ A group of men had entered the ballroom by the far doors, and the glittering crowd of the well-to-do eddied away from them to allow a better look. One was silver-haired, Lord Deerling’s years at least, an elegant gentleman with a cane and a great red patch, like a birthmark, across his face. The others were of an age with Emily, or even younger. What marked all of them out, though, was their dress. Their jackets were blue – but the deep blue of an evening sky on the cusp of night. The garments were cut longer than greatcoats, falling in great sweeping folds to the floor. There was silver piping at their shoulders, tracing the outline of twin herons across their breasts. They bore no swords, unlike the bulk of the officers and noblemen there, nor even a dirk at their belts, but each wore a chain of white gold secured on the left side with a sunburst inset with blue stones. There were other details that Emily could not make out clearly across the breadth of the room, but she knew them already. She had seen that uniform before.

  ‘Warlocks!’ breathed Alice. ‘Wizards of the King!’ She clasped her hands together. ‘And young as well! What joy!’

  ‘And every other eligible young woman will be thinking exactly the same, and most will make a better match, and they will not be aiming so wildly beyond their estate,’ Emily warned.

  ‘Oh, hush to you,’ Alice told her. ‘“Love cares not for privilege”,’ she quoted from somewhere.

  ‘You cannot have love at first sight, sister, until the gentleman has actually looked upon you,’ Emily chided her, but Alice, she felt, would make a fool of herself no matter what, and so why say more? She watched as the elder wizard accepted the greetings of Lord Deerling and his lady. The younger men’s eyes flicked around the room, from face to face, and Emily felt that they were mostly as overawed by the prestigious gathering as she was.

  ‘Oh, Emily, look!’ Alice cried again, but at the very room this time. The door through which the wizards had entered was now closed, but the wall it was set into was moving, opening outwards to reveal a mirror-image room beyond: a doubling of the ballroom; another swathe of gilt and paint and silvered glass that the guests dispersed into. Dominating the far end of this extended room was a magnificent staircase, carpeted in deep red with the fighting stags of Deerling heraldry embroidered on each step. Either side of these stairs was arrayed the orchestra.

  At first, Emily did not see what caused the ripple of surprise amongst the guests, but as people drifted further into the larger space, and she and Alice were also drawn in, she realized that every musician was a woman. Some were girls younger than Alice, and some were spinsters with grey hair and lined faces, but each and every one was female. Even concert musicians had taken the Red in the King’s service.

  The King—! And even as she thought it, the orchestra struck up the first passionate strains of Lascanne’s national anthem.

  He appeared at the top of the stairs, casting his gaze down onto his lords and ladies, gentry and officers, with a slight and subtle smile. His Majesty, by the grace of God, King Luthrian of Lascanne, fourth of that name. A ripple went through the crowd below him, as men bowed low and women curtsied, all the way back as far as Alice and Emily, who bobbed with the rest. When they looked up again, he was halfway down the stairs.

  Emily caught her breath because he was all she had heard he was, and every inch the most beautiful man she had ever seen. His hair fell to his shoulders in deep brown curls, and his heart-shaped face was free of blemish, regular as a statue’s but filled with benign and noble character. A half-smile never left his lips, as though he saw the joke in everything around him, but was far too polite to laugh. His beard was a sharply trimmed diamond shape, his moustaches elegant as stiletto blades. His eyes flashed, all human experience mirrored there. Here was a king who laughed and cried along with his people, who knew their ills and their woes, their great joys and their little pleasures.

  His cloak of turquoise velvet was swept back from his shoulders like the wings of the heron that graced his coat of arms, and at his throat, above his shirt of spun silver and his waistcoat of cloth of gold, was a crescent gorget of precious metals inlaid with gems, which he was known to prefer to the weight of Lascanne’s crown.

  ‘Rise. All rise, please.’ His voice, clear as a bell, rang out across the great space of the ballroom. ‘My lords, my ladies, my guests and friends. I cannot express the joy it brings to me to be here visiting Deerlings once more. Not an hour have I ever spent here, but it has been a happy one, and none happier than this. Let no man say that, come strife or rack, we cannot hold to the pleasures and the heights of joy that we have known.’

  ‘Long live His Majesty! Long live the King!’ cried out the elder wizard, and the crowd echoed his words.

  ‘Isn’t he magnificent!’ Alice squeaked. ‘And scarcely five and twenty, your very own age, sister.’

  ‘I fear you match me above my station,’ Emily told her drily.

  ‘I could speak on at length, dear friends,’ the King continued. ‘If I were master here instead of a mere monarch, I would dote on each and every one of you, and give my thanks that you have come here at my invitation. It is Deerlings House that is the true ruler here, however, and the hands that built it intended this chamber for dancing. Who am I to gainsay their wisdom?’

  He gave a flourish of one hand, and the orchestra took up the first dignified movement of a waltz they all knew.

  ‘I have no partner!’ Alice wailed. All around them, gentlemen were asking ladies for the honour of this dance, but there were far more women than men and Emily knew that she and her sister were destined to be left behind by the dancers like driftwood by the tide.

  ‘I do not feel like dancing just now,’ she declared, putting a brave face on it as she retired to one side of the room, where some of the Deerlings servants had been setting out chairs.

  She looked round for Alice as she reached there, but her sister, who had been at her very shoulder, was now gone. A moment later, to her astonishment, she saw the girl partnered with a uniformed man twice her age, who was marching her gravely through the steps of the waltz as though it was a military manoeuvre. Alice noticed her staring and stuck her tongue out as she and her stiff major sailed past.

  ‘That girl . . .’ Emily muttered to herself, wanting to conjure up a remark particularly scathing, but the fact that she was genuinely envious took the moral wind out of her sails. Alice danced well, she noted, and she looked well too. If the cut of her cloth was inferior, then her energy and her smile more than made up the difference. She belonged here, Emily realized. Alice belonged in a way that she herself did not.

  I am no socialite, after all, and I will be glad to get home again. But it was not true, and she felt utterly helplessly jealous.

  The waltz drew to a dignified close, and their hostess, Lady Deerling, retired from partnering the King with a low and delighted curtsey. His Majesty extended one arm to a lady, swan-like in white, and the musicians took up the first few notes of a livelier tune. Alice was swooped upon by a debonair aristocrat whom Emily did not recognize. The dance began again, with the ladies and the men weaving in and out between one another, constantly slipping between partners in a complex, shifting knot.

  ‘My lady?’

  Emily glanced up, and then rose to her feet more suddenly than she had intended, for it was one of the young wizards who now stood before her, watching her with amber-coloured eyes. He was a lean, neat-looking man with a narrow, clever face and hair like new-cut copper.

  ‘I am sorry, sir, you startled me.’

  ‘Miss Marshwic,’ he went on.

  She opened her mouth a few times, utterly thrown from her train of thought.

  ‘Am I right?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I had thought . . .’

  ‘You are correct, sir, but how . . . ?’

  ‘No magic, Miss Marshwic. In truth, I can see your mother�
��s likeness in your face. Your father’s too. I heard that you would be here.’

  ‘You have me at a disadvantage, sir.’

  He smiled, looking unintentionally vulpine. He might have been a few years her junior, but that face would still look young in a decade’s time. ‘I apologize. My name is Giles Scavian, a humble apprentice. My training was at the hands of—’

  ‘Of Patrick Scavian, my father’s friend.’

  ‘My uncle,’ he agreed, and she had placed him now. The same Warlock who helped her father oust the Ghyer had kept a boy in training. They all did so, as their duty to provide the King with fresh champions. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Scavian.’

  Giles Scavian gave her a little uncertain bow, and she wondered if a wizard’s training left him much time for learning the social graces.

  ‘That is not your uncle you entered with, I think?’ Emily enquired.

  Scavian glanced at the elderly wizard, currently tripping the steps of the dance along with the nimblest of them. ‘Alas, no. My uncle has passed away.’

  ‘The war?’

  ‘Some years before, in truth. It always comes too soon, does it not? You can attest to that as much as I.’

  She let her society facade drop at that, just a little; her father’s death had been so much on her mind.

  ‘It still seems so recent,’ he continued softly, and she felt a brief welling of misery within her that she fought down.

  Scavian’s expression must have mirrored her own. ‘I am sorry to trouble you. I know nobody here,’ he confessed. ‘In truth, when I spotted your face from across the room, I felt that I knew you already. It was your parents that I read there, but still . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I am afraid I ramble. I have been a Warlock in training first, a gentleman only second, these years.’

  She smiled at him. He was earnest, so still with an edge of awkwardness that most men of his age had long shed. ‘You do not dance, Mr Scavian?’ she enquired.

  ‘I cannot master the passes,’ he said. ‘Besides, my fellows and I are here for other purposes. The King has promised to anoint us this very night and make us Warlocks in truth.’

  ‘A great honour. Your uncle would be proud.’

  ‘I hope so.’ The dance was drawing to a close, and he gave her an apologetic smile. ‘Forgive me, but I must be on hand for the King, should he need me. May we talk later?’

  ‘I would like nothing more,’ she replied. As he slipped away she saw Alice approaching, flushed from her exertions on the dance floor.

  ‘Were you . . . ? Was that . . . ?’ she started, but there was no way to avoid the truth. ‘That was one of the King’s wizards!’ Alice exclaimed.

  ‘The younger sort,’ Emily agreed, enjoying the look that came over her sister’s face. ‘His name is Giles Scavian, a very pleasant fellow indeed.’

  ‘Well, all very well for you,’ said Alice. ‘But I warn you now that I fully intend to dance with the King before this night is ended, and so you may consort with as many wizards as you wish.’

  ‘How generous of you,’ Emily remarked. The King, meanwhile, had lighted on another partner, and she recalled how his reputation for seeking female company outweighed even his love of music and dance or sword and lance. Perhaps Alice might yet achieve her wish.

  But Alice was off again as soon as the musicians signalled the next dance, straight into the arms of one of the Brossade brothers, his metal hand gleaming around her waist. Emily sighed, seeing no further sign now of Giles Scavian, and prepared to sit down once more, when a shadow fell across her.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss Marshwic. Would you do me the honour of this dance?’

  She did not need to look: the voice said all. It was Mr Northway, of course.

  7

  Surely you must remember that night as clearly as I? You must guess now how I felt in that moment.

  I am looking across the edge of the swamps as I write this, or at least when the rain reveals them to me. I confess to a touch of that feeling even now: anger and horror and helplessness.

  His expression was still that mocking thin-lipped smile, devoid of all mirth or conviviality, but she recognized in it a shield of sorts that could take the blow of her refusal and let him walk away.

  What does he hope to gain? She met his eyes and saw there how he fully expected to be turned down, and that he would turn it into one of his jibes, at how predictable she was.

  And no one else had asked her, the only man who had so far spoken to her having declined to dance at all.

  And quite deliberately she took his proffered hand. ‘Mr Northway, I do not owe you this on my own account, but you saved my sister’s life as well, and perhaps I owe you one dance for her.’ So it is Alice’s fault. How fitting.

  ‘So you can be bought,’ he murmured, as he led her out onto the floor. ‘But with good deeds. What a costly currency.’ Nevertheless, behind the sly words something new had come into his face that she had never seen there before.

  Does he look this way when he counts his gold? For surely there was a species of glee in his uncomfortable features, a fierce little joy born of avarice fulfilled.

  This was another dance of changing partners, albeit one more measured and less tangled than the last, and Emily found her place just as the main movement started up and the dancers began revolving around each other in pairs. She had not danced for some while and the steps came slowly to her, so that for a dozen bars she was a fraction of a beat behind, until she caught the measure of it. Then she found the chance to watch Mr Northway, which was an education.

  He danced like a man who had learned it from a book – and learned well – but had never actually practised before. Each move was there but clipped and careful, and each step he made drew his eyes down to his feet. He, who lived through situations wholly under his control, was abruptly out of his element. He danced with the worried concentration of a child, and could barely spare a look for her. That made her feel sad for him, which surprised her. He had schemed for this, and found the courage for it, and now he had what he wanted – what he had not really expected – and he still could not enjoy it. Instead she was the one watching him stumble.

  Then they changed partners, and she was whisked away from him to touch hands with a grave-faced soldier who had not removed his sword, so that it rattled against his legs and hers as they passed round one another. Beyond, she saw Mr Northway trading his exacting steps with a lady of quality, who never glanced at him, as if he was beneath her notice.

  Why has he come here? the thought occurred, as she grew more confident in treading the measures of the dance. And then a sour and unfamiliar stab of sympathy: poor Mr Northway, to have done such terrible things just to gain power, to have done the difficult things that had been forced on him once he had it, and to reap this penance as his reward . . .

  She almost missed her step in her sudden confusion, but the grave-faced officer did not notice, and she caught herself. How her sisters would frown if she revealed such thoughts to them.

  And what would Father say?

  Ah, yes, but she would have her own questions to ask of her father if he was given back to her for just one night.

  She passed from hand to hand, now partnering an elderly lord whose long steps were elegant as a stork’s, but she hardly noticed him. She had wanted so much to dance at Deerlings, and now, like Mr Northway, she could not enjoy it through the turmoil of her own thoughts. The bold soldier who partnered her next smiled at her, but she did not even look up at him. The black-clad Mr Northway kept passing at the edge of her vision, a hole cut into the colour of the other dancers. Still with his precise steps, he had grown in confidence now, and he even caught her eye once as they crossed paths.

  Then the final leg of the dance began, and they were back together, her fingers touching his cool hand as they circled one another like prize-fighters. She realized now, and somehow had never noticed it before, that he was barely any taller than she. In that moment only she led, and he followe
d. For once, he had no sharp words, no mockery, no sudden reversals to bring to her.

  As the musicians wrung out the final chord from their instruments, she gave him her best curtsey. When he straightened up from a bow, there was a little colour in his pale cheek. He stood and repaired his dignity, stitch by stitch, as though wondering what on earth he was doing there.

  As she returned to her chair, he followed, but she found that she did not mind so much. The look she gave him, after she had sat, was challenging.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Marshwic, it was a pleasure,’ he said, his expression still not settled.

  ‘You did not believe I would accept, I think,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Am I so easily read, Miss Marshwic?’

  ‘This once. But why, Mr Northway? You owe me that.’ The musicians had struck up some incidental music as the guests milled and regrouped themselves across the dance floor. Servants passed amongst them with trays of wineglasses or titbits from the kitchens.

  Northway glanced away from her. ‘Your sister does not approve,’ he noted.

  ‘She is entirely right in not approving, and your evasions are usually more elegant,’ she told him.

  His protective smile was back, as he looked at her: that serpent’s curve of his lips that did not reach the eyes. ‘I have the greatest admiration for you, Miss Marshwic. You have quite enlivened my time in office, all these years that we have crossed swords. A woman of will and determination – I have always said so. You are a credit . . .’ To your father, she heard in his pause but, without losing an inch of smile, he wrestled it into, ‘to your family.’

  ‘Are you offering a truce, Mr Northway?’

  ‘Miss Marshwic, I would never deny you the chance to make war on me at every opportunity. It is one of your most engaging traits, and speaks highly for you.’