‘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.
Emily recalled Marie Angelline at war: quick to command, ready to lead, easy to follow. Acting? Who knew? Perhaps, inside, the girl was as unsure and frightened as the rest.
Brocky opened his mouth to add another innuendo, but a particularly harsh scream of agony broke through to derail him. Scavian stood up and swore under his breath.
‘I wish the poor bastard’d break and get it over with,’ Tubal said. ‘This is the third prisoner we’ve had since I came, and none of the others lasted like this. What the hell are they doing to him?’
‘Just the usual,’ Scavian said. ‘Lascari is . . . persistent, that is all.’ The usual rules of the Club seemed to have lapsed.
‘Have . . . ?’ Emily glanced about, wondering what their reaction would be. ‘Have any of you known any Denlanders from before?’
Brocky shrugged. ‘One or two in the city, on business. Denlanders get the pox like anyone else.’
Tubal gave a weak cough of a laugh. ‘We used to get all our paper through a Denlander merchant. Hammell, that was his name. It was cheaper to buy in bulk from him than in bits and pieces from the local mill. That always struck me as mad, but I wasn’t going to question it.’
‘Only . . . I spoke with one . . . when I went out, last.’ In halting tones she recounted her experience in the indigene village. Towards the end of the account Mallen had come back with full glasses, and he hovered in the doorway, listening mutely.
In the end, Tubal spread his hands. ‘What can we say? It’s a revelation to any soldier, but it’s no less true: they’re people just as we’re people. They believe they’re right, and so do we. You have to think it would be a saner thing if the King and his privy council just kicked the hell out of this new parliament of Denland, and left the rest of us out of it. But there you are.’
‘That’s disloyal, Salander,’ Scavian challenged him.
‘You’ll see me leading my men out as usual the next time they send us,’ Tubal replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to think war’s a good idea.’
‘Surely they have to realize they’re wrong, though, in the end. They have to know that we’re in the right, defending our homes,’ Emily insisted.
‘The people up above us love to lie, and people down here love to be lied to,’ Brocky said reflectively. ‘There’s many a way of telling someone he’s doing the right thing. Lascari surely thinks that he’s doing the King’s will right now, and if the King knew about it, he’d have to agree. Us knowing the enemy’s plans is worth one singed Denlander, he’d say. And we sit here and listen to the result of that thinking, and we all cringe inside, but what’s right and what’s wrong? And if you can’t make the call when one man is – let’s face it – torturing the life out of another poor bugger, then how can you do it with wars?’
‘Brocky,’ interrupted Scavian. ‘This is too serious. Club rules, yes?’
He wants so badly to know what he does is right. Emily caught Scavian’s eye and smiled, but got no smile in return, angry and confused as he was.
‘We all used to be like good friends, until the regicide,’ Brocky grumbled. ‘Then some bastards across the border off a king, and we’re all stuck here fighting a fool’s war. You’ll grant me that, Scavian?’
‘I suppose I cannot, in truth, deny it,’ Scavian said. ‘My grandfather fought alongside the Denlanders in the Hellic wars, after all. You’re right, there was no need for this.’
‘A toast,’ said Emily, startled by her own boldness. ‘A toast to the ordinary Denlanders, perhaps. Not to their leaders, but to them.’
After thoughtful hesitation, four glasses were lifted to join hers.
Later on, after three rounds of brandy and a half-dozen hands of cards had failed to quell their unease, Emily excused herself to do the rounds of the sentries again. She was aware that, in making this choice, she was doing exactly what she had chided Ensign Caxton for doing. Her actions were not the mark of a good officer but of someone with time on her hands.
As the impossibly protracted agonies of the captive Denlander wailed out into the night, and as Justin Lascari did his grim duty for king and country, she went from man to man, from woman to woman, skirting the camp’s perimeter.
‘You’d think they’d hear,’ said one, with his eyes fixed on the swamp. ‘You’d think they’d come and rescue the poor bastard.’
‘Perhaps they will, so keep your eyes sharp.’ Emily passed on down the line, holding out no hope that any such thing would happen.
‘I once knew Denlanders,’ came a voice from behind her. ‘Spoke with them. Knew them well.’
‘Mallen,’ she acknowledged, turning to see his spare frame looming out of the dark.
‘Before the war,’ he continued. ‘Back when no one came here. None from Lascanne, anyway: just me. Only other people studying here were Denlanders. We got to know each other. All on the same side, back then.’
‘It must have been easier,’ she observed.
‘Than war?’ He snorted.
‘And your friends, they have fought?’
‘Some.’ He pinched an insect out of the air as it whirred past his face, looked it over and let it go. ‘Hunted them down myself. Had to. They were near as good as me.’
‘I’m sorry, Mallen.’
He shrugged. ‘They understood.’ When he looked at her again, his eyes caught the lamplight briefly and shone. ‘Good job, Marshwic.’
A pause, then she understood. ‘The indigenes? I thought you might be angry. I should h
ave told you before.’
He gave a brief bark of a laugh. ‘You? They told me, day after you left them.’ He shuffled, and she realized she had never seen him awkward before, or anything less than self-assured. ‘I owe you,’ he said shortly.
‘Really? For . . . the swamp people? The indigenes? I can’t say I understand . . .’
His hand had gripped her wrist hard, before she saw it move. He pulled her close, and she was uncomfortably aware of the alien cast of his face, with those tattoos breaking up the betraying human lines and angles.
‘My people, Marshwic – more than you; more than Lascanne. I can’t ever be one of them, can’t live like they do, see the world as they do. Been trying all my life to understand them, though. You did well. Good job.’
He released her just as quickly, stepping back a pace but unwilling just to go.
‘You don’t need to owe me anything,’ she told him.
‘Always pay my debts, understand?’ he said and, thinking of the indigenes and the lengths he went to in order to protect them, she had to admit that he did.
He suddenly tensed all over, looking about him. A heartbeat later she realized why. The screaming had stopped.
‘Perhaps Lascari needs a rest himself,’ she said, but he shook his head, holding up a hand for quiet, just as if they were in the jungle.
‘Dead,’ he pronounced. ‘No question of it.’
‘Well, that’s got to be for the—’
‘No,’ he warned. ‘They’ve got all they can from him. Understand? Questioning’s over, so what happens next?’
Emily frowned at him. ‘They know about the Denlanders . . . or some of it.’ A familiar clutching weight began to form inside her stomach. ‘An attack? They’ll want an attack.’
Mallen nodded, backing away into the night, leaving her heir to the sudden silence of a war being advanced.
21
My Dear Emily,
I find you alive and in good health. I would beg you to take a greater care of your well-being, and prescribe no further battles. Might you not find some safer way to conduct this diversion of yours?
Guns of the Dawn Page 32
