'Will you take wine, Lord Marshal?' murmured Meed, not even looking up. His voice seemed weak and reedy thin in the great space. West fancied he could almost see the old man's breath smoking.

'No, your Grace. I will not.' Burr was frowning. He had been frowning constantly, as far as West could tell, for the last month or two. The man seemed to have no other expressions. He had a frown for hope, a frown for satisfaction, a frown for surprise. This was a frown of the most intense anger. West shifted nervously from one numb foot to the other, trying to get the blood flowing, wishing he was anywhere but here.

'What about you, Major West?' whispered the Lord Governor. 'Will you take wine?' West opened his mouth to decline, but Burr got in first.

'What happened?' he growled, the hard words grating off the cold walls, echoing in the chilly rafters.

'What happened?' The Lord Governor shook himself, turned his sunken eyes slowly towards Burr, as though seeing him for the first time. 'I lost my sons.' He snatched up his cup with a trembling hand and drained it to the dregs.

West saw Marshal Burr's hands clench tighter still behind his back. 'I am sorry for your loss, your Grace, but I was referring to the broader situation. I am talking of Black Well.'

Meed seemed to flinch at the mere mention of the place. 'There was a battle.'

'There was a massacre!' barked Burr. 'What is your explanation? Did you not receive the King's orders? To raise every soldier you could, to man your defences, to await reinforcements? Under no circumstances to risk battle with Bethod!'

'The King's orders?' The Lord Governor's lip curled. 'The Closed Council's orders, do you mean? I received them. I read them. I considered them.'

'And then?'

'I tore them up.'

West could hear the Lord Marshal breathing hard through his nose. 'You tore… them up?'

'For a hundred years, I and my family have governed Angland. When we came here there was nothing.' Meed raised his chin proudly as he spoke, puffing out his chest. 'We tamed the wilderness. We cleared the forests, and laid the roads, and built the farms, and the mines, and the towns that have enriched the whole Union!'