Guns of the Dawn (69 page)

‘And the Crown’s final charge against this man,’ King Luthrian concluded, ‘is a deeply personal one. Do not think, Emily, that I am ignorant of your grievances and the
grievances of your family towards this man. Do not think that I do not know your father’s history, a loyal man hounded to his death by this creature’s villainy. Do not think, my Emily,
that I do not know this man to be your enemy as much as he is mine.’

‘What?’ Northway choked out, trying to sit up. ‘Why . . .
damn
Your Royal Majesty, but that was in your reign, and you knew and made no move to stop me!’

Griff kicked him hard in the back and he cried out, any further accusations stifled. Emily watched him shaking in pain, both hands crooked into claws.

‘Emily,’ said the King, ‘of all my subjects you are the most dear to me.’

She looked him in his beautiful eyes, and still she thought,
To how many others have you said those words?

"This is my gift to you,’ he explained. ‘You are armed, as befits a soldier. He is yours. Draw your weapon and execute this man, in the name of your King. Your family’s honour
shall be avenged, even as I too am avenged. Our causes are one and the same. Come, stand back from the accused, friends. Let her see him. Let her have a clear shot.’

‘You . . . want me to . . .’ The darkness of the woods seemed to wheel about her. The world was unreal, a patch of firelight and the awful, star-pricked darkness of the night sky.
‘To kill him?’

‘He is yours,’ said the King sweetly. ‘Have you not dreamt of this moment, to have this man in your power?’

‘I have, yes,’ she whispered, and took her pistol from her belt, staring down at him. He levered himself onto his elbow and tried to look her in the face, but could not.

What now?

She felt the familiar, comforting weight of the gun. How it had carried her through the Levant and beyond: her father’s gun, which carried the deaths of countless Denlanders, of one
lusting master sergeant and of her father in its bloody history. One more notch on its grip, and who was counting anyway?

Can I do this?

Was he not a villain, after all? A villain against her family, against the King, against the people of Chalcaster, probably against the Denlanders as well. He was a man who played all sides for
his own benefit, and now it had tripped him.
He would have let Scavian die!

What was he doing here? What deal had he really been trying to broker?

She checked that the pistol was still loaded, the powder dry, the ball and wadding in place, but it had so seldom failed her before, and it was primed and ready, faithful as always.

Can I? Can’t I?

And would the death of Cristan Northway solve anything? Really, anything? It would not save Scavian. It would not save Chalcaster. Doctor Lam’s grim future reared as she levelled the
pistol: women and children taken to the death camps; whole villages levelled just to catch one rebel. The more they were opposed, the more the demon of Denland would be unleashed, until on neither
side of the border would there be anything one could still call ‘human.

I wish Mallen were here now. Or Brocky, or Tubal, or Scavian. Someone to help me out of this. What will happen, if I do not shoot?

They were waiting. The King was waiting. He was letting her take her time. He believed she had been waiting for this moment since her father died. Had he come to her a year ago, she might have
pulled the trigger already, she supposed, but she was not that same woman any more. She had pulled many, many triggers between then and now.

After all he did for me.

And if Northway was a villain, then he was in good company here. Griff the bandit, Balfor the convict, and who were the rest, really? Men that had crawled from the same mould, cast from base
metal in imitation of the real thing. Thieves and petty criminals who feared the Denland order that the conquest was bringing, or courtiers who had hidden out the war behind the King’s
skirts. She could shoot any one of them, and call it justice.

Standing there, her pistol directed downwards at Mr Northway, she had a moment of truth come to her, as calm and still as the moment before a battle charge. In her head, fragments whirled and
spun, words and conversations: Mr Northway, Scavian, Doctor Lammegeier. The war was anatomized and picked apart like a diseased corpse – to find the cause, to excise the tumour. Lest it
spread; lest the disease claim more lives; lest it claim them all.

Past the lies of the broadsheets, past the history lessons at Gravenfield, past the muted platitudes that were all most soldiers could ever write from the battle front, there was a cause. All
those dead men in red and grey rotting and being consumed in the Levant, they had been put there by someone. The butchery of the Golden Minute was no random tragedy, nor was the mass grave of the
Denland dead, or Father Burnloft stammering over the latest casualties. She made herself recall Marie Angelline’s agonized face and Brocky’s grief, and what had it all been for? What
had made it all? Who was the architect of this house of blood and corpses?

And she felt her finger tighten on the trigger, and this once, this once only, she knew for sure that she was right. Doubt and worry fled from her, and she fired.

The echo of the shot, passing backwards and forwards through the trees. The look on his face would be branded onto her memory for all time to come.

The look on the face of the King, after she had shot him through the very heart. He looked hurt, as though she had rejected some courtesy he had offered. Flame crackled across his face briefly,
and from one hand to the other: an aimless, failing discharge.

He fell, toppling to the wet ground beside the low-burning fire.

And silence fell. Silence like the moment before creation. Silence.

The men around her, Griff, Balfor and the others, were staring at her with horror, but it was Northway’s weak voice that broke into the silence with, ‘God Almighty, woman, what have
you done?’

She let the pistol fall from her grasp and drew her sabre in a smooth, even arc of silver steel, looking from face to face around the circle.

‘Come on!’ she cried. ‘Come on, you rats. Come take your vengeance!’ and each one gaped at her, and did not dare. Griff flinched and looked aside, and Balfor was already
creeping towards the horses, and within moments they had gone, every man of them, repatriated back into the shadows from their moment of glory.

She fell to her knees beside Mr Northway Only now was she starting to shake with the enormity of it. No more rebellion. No organized resistance to Denland, not without the banner of the Crown.
No escalating reprisals from their Parliament; no death camps; no terror. No more war. She had strangled her country’s freedom with her bare hands, in order to save the men and women who
lived in it.

‘What now?’ came the faint voice of Mr Northway. ‘What follows that?’

‘There will be rumours,’ she decided. ‘Always rumours, but a dozen men who would not dare face a single sword will not come forward to make accusations. I think you and I will
hold the truth of this in the daylight world, and we are both used to keeping secrets.’

‘That we are.’

‘Will you free Scavian?’ she said.

‘I?’ Northway blinked at her. For a moment it seemed as though the question had no meaning for him. ‘Why they’ll free him themselves, I should think. And
joyfully.’

She did not understand, and it must have shown on her face.

‘The King is dead.’ Northway mimed waving a tiny flag. ‘Long live those Warlocks who no longer bear his mark upon them. That was why you shot the royal person surely? To save
your man there?’

The mark . . .
But of course, just as the Denlander magicians had been stripped of their powers when their king died, so too would Scavian and his fellows be waking up now, no more than
normal men, no more or less a danger to Denland rule than any other man.

‘That
was
why you shot him?’ Northway pressed, but she just stared at the King’s cooling corpse, seeing futures fade away.

‘Were you going to save him? Was that why you came here?’ At last she helped him into a sitting position, though it plainly pained him.

‘I cannot say.’ He managed a strained laugh. ‘I thought I was, but perhaps I was fooling myself. I did not want him free, Emily. I wanted you – and you love
him.’

‘He loves me,’ she corrected. ‘But . . .’ She had known this even as she fired. It had been part of the price, paid willingly in the end. ‘I could not ever be with
him. He loved his king, Cristan. He was a King’s man through and through. I would be false to him, to accept his love, because in my heart I would know that he would rather have died than I
save him by the death of his master.’

Northway was silent for a time after that, waiting patiently, propped up on one arm, until the quiet finally drew more words out of her.

‘I saved Scavian by regicide,’ she admitted to him, and then cut off his resigned nod when she added, ‘but it was you I committed regicide for.’

*

It would be dawn before they finally struggled back to Grammaine, a slow, painful journey on foot since all the horses were gone, but Emily did not care.

The war was over, her war was over, and she had won.

About the Author

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. He is the author of the ten-book fantasy series Shadows of the Apt and a standalone science-fiction novel called
Children of Time
.

Guns of the Dawn
is his first standalone historical fantasy novel.

Catch up with Adrian at
www.shadowsoftheapt.com
for further information plus bonus material, including short stories and artwork.

BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY

Shadows of the Apt

Empire in Black and Gold

Dragonfly Falling

Blood of the Mantis

Salute the Dark

The Scarab Path

The Sea Watch

Heirs of the Blade

The Air War

War Master’s Gate

Seal of the Worm

Guns of the Dawn

With thanks to my advance readers Janine Ashbless, Justina Robson, Tom Jewell, Esther Reeves, Helen Walter, L. M. Myles and of course Annie Czajkowski.

Thanks to John Tams for allowing me the use of his lyrics for the initial quote.

Thanks also to line editor Peter Lavery, my agent the inestimable Simon Kavanagh, and to Julie Crisp, Bella Pagan, Louise Buckley, Sam Eades and everyone else at Tor who made this book
possible.

And thanks to the insect-kinden, for being patient.

First published 2015 by Tor

This electronic edition published 2015 by Tor

an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-77005-8

Copyright © Adrian Czajkowski 2015

Cover images © Shutterstock

The right of Adrian Czajkowski to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, places, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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