Luca led his horse into the stable courtyard, guilty and glad to leave Johan behind. Carmitha was over by her caravan. She was folding up freshly washed clothes and packing them into a big brass-bound wooden trunk. Half a dozen of her old glass storage jars were standing on the cobbles, full of leaves and flowers, their green tint turning the contents a peculiar grey colour.

She nodded politely at him. He watched her as he took the stallion’s saddle off; she moved with a steady determination that discouraged interruption. Some thought had been finalized, he decided. The trunk was eventually filled, and the lid slammed down.

“Give you a hand with that?” he offered.

“Thanks.”

They lifted the trunk in through the door at the back of the caravan. Luca whistled quietly. He’d never seen the inside so tidy before. There was no clutter, no clothes or towels slung about, all the pans she had hanging up were polished to a bright gleam, even the bed was made. Bottles were lined up on a high shelf, held in place by copper travelling rings.

She shoved the trunk into an alcove under the bed.

“You’re going somewhere,” he said.

“I’m ready to go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“I’ve no idea. Might try Holbeach, see if any of the others made it to the caves.”

He sat on the bed, suddenly very tired. “Why? You know how important you are to people here. God, Carmitha, you can’t leave. Look, just tell me if someone’s said or done something against you. I’ll have their bloody nuts roasted very slowly over a furnace.”

“Nobody’s done anything yet.”

“Then why?”

“I want to be ready in case this place falls apart. Because that’s what’ll happen if you leave.”

“Oh Jesus.” His head sank into his hands.

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know. I took a ride round the estate this morning to try and make up my mind.”

“And?”

“I want to. I really do. I don’t know if it’ll make Grant back off, or if it’s going to be a complete surrender. I think the only reason I haven’t gone already is because he’s equally torn. Cricklade means an awful lot to him. He dreads the idea of it being left unsupervised for a whole winter. But his daughters mean more. I don’t suppose that leaves me with much choice.”

“Stop fishing for support. You always have choice. What you should ask yourself is, do you have the strength to make and sustain the decision.”

“I doubt it.”

“Humm.” She sat on the antique chair at the foot of the bed, looking at the despondent silhouette in front of her. There is no border any more, she decided, they’re merging. It’s not as fast as Véronique and Olive, but it’s happening. Another few weeks, a couple of months at the most, and they’ll be one. “Have you considered you might want to find the girls as well? That’s where your problem starts.”

He gave her a sharp look. “What do you mean?”

“All that decency Grant’s wicked little mind is eroding. You haven’t lost it yet, you’re still feeling guilty about Louise and what you tried to do to her. You’d like to know that she’s all right as well.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t think straight any more. Every time I speak I have to listen hard to the words to find what’s me and what’s him. There’s still a difference. Just.”

“I’m tempted to be a fatalist. If Norfolk isn’t rescued for a few decades, you’re going to die here anyway, so why not give in and live those years in peace?”

“Because I want to live them,” he whispered fiercely. “Me!”

“That’s very greedy for someone who’ll do that living in a stolen body.”

“You always hated us, didn’t you.”

“I hate what you’ve done. I don’t hate what you are. Luca Comar and I would have got on quite well if we’d ever met, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, right.”

“You can’t win, Luca. As long as you’re alive he’ll be there with you.”

“I won’t surrender.”

“Would Luca Comar really have killed Spanton? Grant would, without hesitating.”

“You don’t understand. Spanton was a savage, he was going to destroy everything we are, everything we’ve worked to achieve here. I saw that in his heart. You can’t reason with people like that. You can’t educate them.”

“Why do you want to achieve anything? It is possible to live off the land here. We can, us Romanies. Even Grant would be able to show you how. Which plants to eat. Where the sheep and the cattle huddle in winter. You can become a hunter, dependant on no one.”

“People are more than that. We’re a social species. We gather in tribes or clans, we trade. It’s the fundamental of civilization.”

“But you’re dead, Luca. You died hundreds of years ago. This return will only ever be temporary, however it ends: in death or in the Confederation rescuing us. Why do you want to build a cosy civilization under those circumstances? Why not live fast and stop worrying about tomorrow?”

“Because that’s not what I am! I can’t do that!”

“Who can’t? Who are you that wants a future?”

“I don’t know.” He started sobbing. “I don’t know who I am.”

There were fewer people in Fort Forward’s Ops Room these days, a barometer of the Liberation’s progress and nature. The massive coordination effort required for the initial assault was long gone. After that, the busiest time had been following the disastrous attack on Ketton when they had to change the front line assault pattern, splitting Mortonridge into confinement zones. It was a strategy which had worked well enough. There certainly hadn’t been any more Kettons. The possessed had been divided up, then divided again as the confinement zones were broken down into smaller fractions.

From his office, Ralph could look out directly at the big status screen on the wall opposite. For days after Ketton he’d sat behind his desk watching the red icons of the front line change shape into a rough grid of squares stretched over Mortonridge. Each square had gone on to fission into a dozen smaller squares, which became rings and then stopped contracting. The sieges had begun, 716 of them.

It left the Ops Room with supervising the mopping-up operation across open land. The Liberation command’s main activity was now managing logistics, coordinating the supply routes to each siege camp and evacuating the recovered victims. All of which were handled by different, secondary, departments.

“We’re redundant,” Ralph told Janne Palmer. She and Acacia had stayed behind after the early-morning senior staff meeting. They often did, having coffee together and bringing up points which didn’t quite warrant the attention of a full staff meeting. “There’s no fighting left,” he said. “No bad decisions that I have to take the blame for. This is all about numbers now, statistics and averages. How long it takes the possessed to finish eating their supplies, balancing our medical resources and transport facilities. We should just turn it over to the accountants and leave.”

“I’ve not known many generals to be so bitter about their victories,” Janne said. “We won, Ralph, you were so successful that the Liberation has become a smooth operation where no one is shooting at us.”

He gave Acacia a quizzical look. “Would you describe it as smooth?”

“Progress has been smooth, General. Individuals have of course suffered considerable hardship out on the front line.”

“And on the other side as well. Have you been monitoring the state of the possessed we’re capturing when those sieges fail?”

“I’ve seen them,” Janne said.

“The possessed don’t actually surrender, you know. They just become so weak the serjeants can walk in unopposed. We broke twenty-three sieges yesterday, that produced seventy-three dead bodies. They just won’t give themselves up. And the remainder—Christ, cancer and malnutrition is a bad combination. Once we’d put them through zero-tau, seven actually died on the emergency evac flight back to Fort Forward.”