‘What madness has so afflicted us, Captain Ivis?’

‘That question is best directed at poets, hostage, not soldiers like me.’ He gestured at the scene in the compound. ‘I fret at the loss of our surgeon, and fear that I will not stand well in my lord’s stead in this battle to come. He instructed me as to the training of these Houseblades and I have done what I could in his absence, but on this day I feel very much alone.’

He looked exhausted to her eyes, but even this did not shake her confidence in him. ‘His daughters,’ she said, ‘would not have dared do what they did, captain, if you had been home that night.’

Though she had intended her words to be assuring, she saw him flinch. He looked away, the muscles of his jaws tightening. ‘I regret my foolish wanderings, hostage. Alas, it soothes nothing to promise never again.’

Sandalath stepped closer, overwhelmed by a desire to give him comfort. ‘Forgive my clumsy words, captain. I meant but to show my faith in you. On this day you will prevail. I am certain of it.’

The gates had been opened and the Houseblades were mounting up and riding through them to assemble outside the keep. Corporal Yalad shouted out troop numbers, as if to impose order on the chaos, but to Sandalath’s eyes it seemed no one was paying him any attention. And yet there was no confusion at the gate’s narrow passage, and the flow of armed figures riding out was steady, although it seemed that that could change at any moment. She frowned. ‘Captain, this seems so… fraught.’

He grunted. ‘Everything is going smoothly, hostage, I assure you. Once we lock with the enemy in the field beyond, well, that is when all sense of order is swept away. Even there, however, I intend to hold on to control of the Houseblades for as long as I can, and with luck, if that is even a fraction longer than the enemy’s commander is able to do, we will win. This is the truth of all war. The side that holds its nerve longer is the side that wins.’

‘No different then, from any argument.’

He smiled at her. ‘Just so, hostage. You are right to see war in this way. Each battle is an argument. Even the language is shared. We yield ground. We surrender. We retreat. In each, you can find a match to any knockdown scrap between husband and wife, or mother and daughter. And this should tell you something else.’

She nodded. ‘Victory is often claimed, but defeat is never accepted.’

‘It is an error to doubt your intelligence, hostage.’

‘If I possess such a thing, captain, it gives little strength.’ She shook herself. ‘My life is measured out in lost arguments.’

‘The same might be said of all of us,’ Ivis replied.

‘But do win today’s argument, captain. And come home safe.’

When she looked up and met his eyes, she felt a rippling sensation travel through her, as if a wave of something was passing between them. It should have shocked her, but it did not, and she reached out to rest a hand against his arm.

His eyes widened slightly. ‘Forgive me, hostage, but I must leave you now.’

‘I shall take to the tower to watch the battle, captain.’

‘The day will lift dust and so obscure the scene.’

‘I will witness your victory none the less. And when Lord Draconus at last returns, I will tell him the tale of this day.’

He nodded to her and then departed, calling for his horse.

When she looked round the compound, she saw that it was almost empty, barring a dozen or so servants preparing cots along one wall and stacking strips of cloth to use as bandages. Two small kilns had been dragged out from the smithy and apprentices were stacking bricks around them, along with buckets, some containing water and others with what looked like iron rods bearing a variety of shaped ends. These were set down close to the kilns. More servants arrived with braziers, shovelling into the black-rimmed mouths of the kilns the coals and embers they contained.

Surgeon Atran should have been there, snapping out instructions and standing with her arms crossed and fury in her face at the thought of the wounded and dying soon to come. Sandalath could almost see her, just as she had almost seen Hilith in a corridor, and the keeper of records, Hidast, at his desk through the open door to his office. And her maids, showing her the welts Hilith had inflicted on them for some invented transgression. In her mind, or in some timeless corner of her mind, they still lived, still moved through the house bent on their tasks and doing all the things they were supposed to do.

She wanted them back. Even Hilith. Instead, all she had now were stones that whispered and the faint scuff of bared feet out of sight past some corner, and that chilling sensation of hidden eyes tracking her every move.