“Dead,” said Orso.
Brock bared his teeth as he tried to shift back on his bed. They were pink with blood still. “Can I ask… that they get a decent burial, at least?”
“In a pit with the rest. I have hundreds of loyal men to bury. I can waste no effort on traitors.” Bloody hell, he hated this. He stood, shoving back his chair, and turned towards the door.
“They were good men,” he heard Brock whisper. For some reason, it made Orso feel exceptionally angry.
“Good men and bad, they’re all meat now. If it’s any consolation, you won’t need to worry about it long. Your hanging’s within the week.”
And he strode for the door with his fists clenched.
The Truth
“Ah!”
“My scripture teacher used to tell me…” murmured Zuri, eyes narrowed with concentration as she stitched, “that pain is a blessing.”
“I like the man less and less.” Savine managed a watery grin. “Not the first time your needle’s come to my rescue. Usually it’s been sewing on a loose button… rather than stitching my head together…” She noticed that Zuri had a rip down one side of her dress, tightly wound bandages showing beneath, and the brown dirt smeared around that rip was not dirt at all, but dry blood.
“Zuri—”
“No need to worry about me.” She did not take her eyes from her work. “The blood is not mine.”
Savine rolled her eyes further down to look at her own dress. That same dirt was caked all down the front. “It’s mine?”
“My scripture teacher also told me…” still sewing as carefully and precisely as ever, “that scalp wounds bleed a great deal.”
“A man of varied interests.”
“You have no idea.”
Witty back and forth, as if they were discussing business on an ordinary day rather than hiding in a muddy hollow under the roots of a fallen tree, with everything in utter ruins. Savine wrapped her arms around herself, wrapped her arms around her baby and felt it move, thank the Fates. Her shoulder, her side, her neck were one great stiff throb where she must have hit the ground. She could easily have been dead.
A cannon had burst, that’s what Zuri told her. A splinter of metal had grazed her head, ripped her wig off and knocked her flat. A little lower and it would have sprayed her brains across the hillside. She had missed the chaos of the rout, bouncing unconscious in the back of a wagon. A lady of taste should appear to make no effort. The right things simply happen around her. She woke here in the woods, with the worst headache she’d ever had.
She could very easily have been dead.
But you know things are bad when you cling to that for comfort.
“Ah!” she grunted as Zuri’s needle bit again.
“Best stay quiet,” murmured Broad, squatting low beside the rotten carcass of the tree trunk, light flashing on his lenses as he peered off into the woods. His voice had a rough, hollow quality. “They’ll be hunting for us.”
Meaning they would be hunting for her. “Of course. I’m sorry.” Savine closed her eyes. How often had she said sorry before? Not often. And never really felt it. But this was a different world.
“How bad is it?” Her voice came very small. As if she hardly wanted an answer.
“Just a scratch.” There was no sign in Zuri’s face that she was lying. It was Broad’s face that gave it away.
“You’ve been stitching a long time for a scratch,” she croaked out.
“You know me, I will not stand for sloppy needlework.” Zuri leaned close to bite off the thread and sat back, frowning. “There might be a little scar. Something to add a dash of danger.”
As if they needed any extra danger. A scar was the least of Savine’s worries.
“Done?” asked Broad, standing over them. He offered one big hand. The one with the tattoo on its back. Savine noticed the knuckles were all scratched and scabbed. “Lady Savine?”
She stayed sitting. Watched the woodlice squirm among the rotten roots. Honestly, she was not sure she could get up. “Is my husband alive?”
“When I last saw him.”
She got the feeling there was more to that story, but she hardly dared ask. “He was hurt?”
Broad added no sugar to it. “Badly.”
“I see,” said Savine, cold all over. Broad, she felt, knew a bad wound when he saw one. He squatted slowly in front of her, baring his teeth as if moving was painful.
“We have to go. Can’t afford to wait for dark. Have to keep off the roads, make for the coast, then to Angland. We have to go now.”
“Yes.” Savine took a long breath. “But not towards Angland. I’m going back to Stoffenbeck.”
“What?” asked Zuri.
“I have to surrender. It’s my best chance to save Leo.”
Muscles squirmed on the side of Broad’s head. “Lady Savine, from what I saw, there might be no saving him—”
“It’s my only chance to save myself. We have no supplies. The king’s forces are everywhere. My entourage is down to two and it’s two more than I deserve. We’ll never make it to the coast. Not with me the size of a house.”
“You could go to your father,” murmured Zuri.
“There’s nothing he could do. He resigned. Difficult to shield the king from treason when you have a traitor for a daughter. I did this to myself.” She said it rather bitterly, for someone who had no one else to blame. “No one can undo it. Even if I could get back to Angland, do we really think the Inquisition would not reach me there?”
“We can try,” said Broad.
“You can.” Savine took his hand and gave it an awkward pat. “You should. Go back to May and Liddy.” She smiled up at Zuri. A queasy, hopeless smile, since she honestly had no idea how she would make it to the edge of the woods by herself, let alone back to the battlefield. “You, too, Zuri, you have your brothers to think about. The time has come for us to—”
“I will come with you.”
Savine stared at her. She had always liked to think of Zuri as a friend, but she knew she was a paid one. Knew someone of her taste and talents must once have had far higher ambitions than being a glorified maid. Ambitions that had been destroyed by whatever horrors she had fled from in Gurkhul. She had always liked to think of Zuri as a friend but had never imagined she would carry on being one if there was nothing in it for her. When it had become a terrible risk, in fact.
She felt as if she could have taken any amount of betrayal, danger, disappointment. But loyalty was somehow more than she could bear. There was no helping it. Savine put her hands over her face and started to cry.
She heard Broad give a weary sigh. “Reckon we’re all going back.”
No one challenged them on the way to Stoffenbeck.
Perhaps those searching for her were far to the North, watching the coast for her escape. Perhaps they were looking for someone fleeing her crimes, not limping meekly back through their very scene. Perhaps—bald, bloody and bedraggled—she bore little resemblance to anyone’s idea of the famous beauty Savine dan Glokta, and her own least of all.
As she toiled through the fields, sweat tickling at the burning scar on her forehead, she needed three hands. One to hold her bloated belly, one to hold her aching back, one to hold her throbbing head. She had no choice but to alternate between them, her shoulder aching with every step, breathing hard through her gritted teeth, while her baby quite literally kicked the piss out of her.