It seemed a crowd of people was waiting for him when he arrived, all bobbing and bowing and eager to lay hands on him. For once he was happy to have a crowd of flunkeys around, unbuckling straps, pulling off his boots, bringing him a warm woollen robe. They had built a blazing fire in the hearth and closed the shutters on the pouring rain beyond the balcony. They brought in ewers of steaming water and trays of food and drink. They would have washed him too if he had let them. He ordered them out and performed that task himself, but he was too tyred to use the towells that had been left out and sat alone watching the flames with his bare feet stretched out to the hearth, a puddle of water on the flagged stone of the floor below him. His skin was white and wrinkled and there was still dead men’s blood under his nails, but he did not care. He was too weary even to pick at the tray of delicacies they had set out for him, though he poured himself some wine and gulped it down in order to warm his innards. So good to be alone, to have silence and no immediate decisions to make. To just feel the kindly wine warm him and hear the rain rattling at the window.

“Hail, the conquering hero,” a voice said. “So you are back.”

He did not turn round. “I’m back.”

The Torunnan Queen came into the firelight. He had not heard her enter the room.

“You look exhausted.”

Odelia was dressed in a simple linen gown, and her hair hung loose around her shoulders, shining in the firelight. She looked like a young woman ready for bed.

“I waited for you,” she said, “but they said you were somewhere in the city, with the army.”

“I had things to do.”

“I’m sure you had. You have been nearly six weeks away. Could you not have found time to visit your Queen and tell her about the campaign?”

“I was going to leave it until the morning. I’m meeting the High Command at dawn.”

Odelia pulled a chair up beside him. “So tell me now, plainly, without all the military technicalities.”

He stared at the flamelight which the wine had trapped scarlet in his glass. It was as though a little heart struggled to beat in there.

“We found a Merduk army near Berrona, close to the Searil, and destroyed it. They had been ravaging the whole country up around there. They took the women and murdered the men. The entire region is littered with corpses, depopulated. A wilderness. The march back to Torunn was… difficult. The waggons slowed us down and we went short of food. Half the horses are gone, but our casualties were very light, considering. I believe the Torrin Gap is secure again, at least for a while.”

“Well, that is news indeed. I congratulate you, Corfe. Your band of heroes has done it again. How many Merduks did they kill this time?”

He thought of the unbelievable slaughter within the Merduk camp, all order lost, men squirming for their lives in the thick mud, shrieking. Ranafast’s Torunnans had captured two hundred of the enemy as they tumbled out of their tents and cut the throats of every last one. No quarter. No prisoners.

“What news here, in the capital?” he asked, ignoring her question.

“Berza’s fleet has defeated the Nalbenic ships in an action off the Kardikian coast. There will be no more ship-borne supplies for Aurungzeb’s armies. Fournier’s spies tell us that the Sultan has found himself a wife. He demolished Ormann Dyke and married her in the ruins. She is rumoured to be a Ramusian.”

Corfe stirred. “Ormann Dyke is—”

“No more. Yes. Kaile Ormann’s walls have been cast down, and the Merduks are busy rearing up another fortress on the east bank of the river. It would seem they intend to stay.”

“It could be a good sign—a signall that the Sultan is beginning to think defensively.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“This wife of his. Why should he marry a Ramusian? He has a whole harem of Merduk princesses to bed, or so I had always heard.”

“She is supposed to be a great beauty, that is all we know.”

“Maybe she’ll have an influence on him.”

“Perhaps. I would not put too much store in the wiles of women! They are overrated.”

“Coming from you, Your Majesty, that is hard to credit.”

She leaned forward and kissed him. “I am different.”

“That I believe.”

“Come to bed, Corfe. I have missed you.”

“In a moment. I want to feel my feet again, and remember what a chair feels like under my arse.”

She laughed, throwing her head back, and in that moment he loved her. He shunted the feeling aside, swamped by guilt, confusion, even a kind of shame. He did not love her. He would not.

“Fournier has been busy in my absence, I take it.”

“Oh, yes. By the way, did you ever meet a little deformed monk named Albrec?”

Corfe frowned. “I don’t think so. No—wait. Yes, once, outside Torunn. He had no nose.”

“That’s the one. Macrobius has told me that the fellow went out to preach to the Merduks.”

“There is a fool for every season, I suppose. What did they do, crucify him?”

“No. He is something of a fixture in the Merduk court, pontificating about the brotherhood of man and such.”

“We seem very well informed about the doings of the Merduk court.”

“That is what I have been leading up to. Fournier has planted a spy there, God knows how. He may be a weaselly treasonous dastard, but he knows his business. Even I am not allowed to know our agent’s name. Twice in the past month a Merduk deserter has come to the gates with a despatch hidden on him.”

“He uses Merduks? A man for every message? He’ll be caught soon. You can’t keep that kind of thing secret for long. I take it there is no way to get a message to this agent?”

Odelia shrugged. “I fail to see how even Fournier can do that.”

“What about your… abilities? Your—”

“My witchery?” The Queen laughed again. “They run a different road, Corfe. Do you know anything of the Seven Disciplines?”

“I’ve heard of them, that’s all.”

“A true mage must master four of the Seven. I know only two—Cantrimy and True Theurgy. I may be one step better than a common hedge-witch, but I am no wizard.”

“I see. Then I would like to talk to these so-called Merduk deserters.”

“So would I. There is something odd going on at the Merduk court. But Fournier has hidden them away as though they were a miser’s hoard. He may even have disposed of them already.”

“You are the Queen. Order him to produce them, or the despatches they carried at least.”

“That would offend him, and then we might lose his co-operation entirely.”

Corfe’s eyes narrowed and a light kindled in them, red from the hearth glow. When he looked like that, Odelia thought, you could see the violence graven in him. She felt herself shiver, as though someone had walked over her grave.

“You mean to tell me,” Corfe said softly, “that this blue-blooded son of a bitch will deliberately withhold information which could be vital to the conduct of this war, simply out of a fit of pique?”

“He is not one of your soldiers, Corfe. He is a noble, and must be handled with care.”

“Nobles.” His voice was still soft, but the tone of it set the hair rising on the back of her neck. “I have never yet seen one who was worth so much as a bucket of warm spit. These deserters, or whatever they are, their knowledge of what goes on in the Merduk camps could be priceless to us.”

“You cannot touch Fournier,” Odelia snapped. “He is of the nobility. You cannot sweep aside the entire bedrock of a kingdom’s fabric just like that. Leave him to me.”

“All right then; if the kingdom’s fabric is so important I will leave him alone.”

What would he be like as a king? Odelia wondered. Am I mad to consider it? He has so much anger in him. He might save Torunna, and then tear it apart afterwards. If only he could be healed.

She set a hand on his brow. “What are you doing?” he demanded, still angry.