I resolved to put aside my doubts, my reluctance to accept such an investigation, and press on.

A woman hailed me as I neared the end of the bridge, waving her scabbarded sword high above her head. Her dark navy uniform and cocked hat were almost lost to the night, but not so her horse which was such a fiery brown as to almost be red. The horse’s flesh and muscle appeared to dance and ripple, even as it stood still as only a warhorse can.

‘Inspector Morden!’ the woman called, once again waving her sword. I was only a few yards from her. ‘Come, sir. I’m s’pose to take you to the colonel.’

Drawing closer, I realised I had been wrong to think this soldier was approximately my age; she appeared young enough to remember the inside of a classroom in some detail. Her skin was smooth about the eyes and brow, and her curling black hair was heavily oiled. She introduced herself as one Cornet Pitzmun and, as she already knew my rank, I offered her my first name alongside my hand. This produced a huge grin characterised by well-kept teeth.

She wheeled her great red warhorse alongside my utterly unfazed mare, and led me towards the regimental camp fires that had created such an infernal impression upon me. They were actually a good distance from the city gates. I could not help but look back at Esteberg and wonder which, the city or myself, would be more changed when I saw it again. The words of the warden of St Leonars came to me: there was no way of truly knowing who or what waited in Drekenford, but they were no street-magician, of that there could be no doubt.

‘We’re breaking camp at dawn,’ Pitzmun said.

I grimaced, wondering what my day-brother would make of that. ‘Are all you soldiers both-siders?’

‘Almost all. Those that ain’t have other duties – cooks and stablemen and the like. Don’t fret, Inspector, we ain’t so different. We get along like most.’

I supposed I knew that already, to some degree; how else could the King keep fighting his wars? The expansion in the south was one more folly in a long line of Reikova’s martial follies; another bid for recognition, glory, and a little wealth from a small nation with an overly large mouth.

‘Is this your first posting, Cornet?’

‘Oh, no, sir. Baby-faced maybe, but I was at Pottersdrum, and Hayden Field, and—’

‘The Kettoman Succession?’ I said, not believing she could have fought in the northern lands over ten years previous.

‘That’s right. Good job we won that one, or we’d all be speaking Ketts!’

My maternal great grandmother had been Kettoman. On her death bed she refuted the statehood of Reikova, spat on the name of the King, and told my mother to use less soap when she washed her linen.

We were waved into the camp, which was made up of perhaps a hundred tents. A pall of smoke and sweat was heavy in the air. Men and women were sitting at their leisure, many cooking or dicing. Others oiled rifles with the kind of absent attention that I recognised from Alexsander’s care of his instruments. I had packed his favoured fiddle, our typical compromise – he could certainly fill an ale house or aid a family celebration with it, and I could manage its case as part of my travel luggage. None of the soldiers looked up at our passing, which went some way to lessen my self-consciousness at my lack of uniform and the size of my horse.