Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky Read Free Book Online Page B

stake: we must put on a
good show, or no show at all.’
    Mary’s lips moved, and Emily knew that she had been about to argue the case for the latter, but seen it for a lost cause.
    ‘The honour of our family will not feed us,’ she complained softly. ‘It will not repair the roof, or pay for medicine if Francis falls ill. Or will you have me go to our
tenants and tell them their rents have gone up because Alice must go to meet the King.
That
is the honour of our family, Emily: looking after those who depend on us – and those whom
we depend on. And now, with so many missing husbands and sons, will this idle pleasure of yours and Alice’s take food from their mouths?’
    ‘We have always managed,’ Emily tried weakly.
    ‘Yes, because
I
have always sat with the books and planned where each penny must go. And now I must go back to them and find some magical store of money, or find what essentials
are not so essential after all, just so that we may go dancing.’ And she stormed off without giving Emily a chance to answer.
    *
    Mary had spent several days closeted with the accounts, moving beads on her abacus and imaginary money in her head, before finally naming a sum that could be sacrificed to the
dressmaker’s. The price for this had been her own polite refusal of the invitation. She had never been one for dancing, she said, and she did not want to either leave Francis or travel with
him. Emily and Alice had exchanged guilty looks and shuffled their feet slightly. With her husband gone, and all the burdens and stresses of Grammaine on her shoulders, Mary had become a master at
hiding her true griefs. It was impossible to know how she felt as she made her announcement in a businesslike tone and packed them off with funds to Chalcaster.
    As Emily climbed down from the buggy in the market square, she spotted a blind man begging there. He sat with his back to a wall, holding out a cap with a stolid, grim
patience. He had a long coat wrapped about him, but within it, his shirt was a soldier’s issue. A leather band covered up his eyes.
    ‘Poldry, a coin.’
    The old servant took out their purse, lighter than Emily would have liked, and found a penny for the man.
    Alice tutted. ‘Emily, if we are to present ourselves to the King . . .’
    ‘You do not even know that he will come to Deerlings,’ Emily hissed at her, scandalized, for the girl had spoken quite loud enough for the beggar to hear her. ‘And this man is
here now. He has fought for his country.’
    ‘And will you give away our funds to every supplicant until we have nothing?’ Alice retorted.
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Emily told her. ‘Why must you always exaggerate . . . ?’ But, even as she said it, her eyes were roving the square. There were fewer market
stalls than she remembered and, of those she saw, even fewer had the wares she might have expected. Little food, she noticed, and many vendors seemed to have simply brought in a jumbled haul of
possessions in the hope that someone might desperately need old shoes, grimy clothes or battered furniture. And plenty of people in Chalcaster seemed suddenly to have lost all idea of what they
really needed or wanted, instead staring at the detritus of other people’s lives as though it was impossible to know what preparation the future might require. They were mostly women, those
who tried to sell, as well as those who picked over it all and did not buy. Women and old men, and in amongst them were the veterans.
    These were the worst examples, she knew: men who would not die and could not be returned to the fighting. The new hospitals were ruthless in sending men back to the war, if they could serve in
any way at all. Here were men who could not march, who could not hold a gun, who could not see the enemy. They passed through the thinning crowd with their awkward, arrhythmic gaits, each man
moving to a different drummer. Alice’s expression was one of nervous revulsion. Mary would