Her first instinct was to rush over and hug them. She even took a step to do it before she remembered herself. “No one could be more welcome,” she said, and she meant it.

Haroon bowed his head. “We are glad to be back with you.”

“And to see you so blessed.” Rabik leaned over Harod’s cot, making little kisses, then peered beaming into Ardee’s. “So doubly blessed.”

“I am sorry it took us so long to come. We tried to find you, after the battle—”

“I should be the one apologising,” said Savine. “You came to the Union to escape the madness in the South, and now look.” She had to dab at her eyes with her wrist. “We have made our own.” When she was younger, she must have gone ten years without shedding a tear. Now she could hardly get through an hour without a weepy moment. “I can’t tell you what it means… to have friends around me I can trust. To have—”

Downstairs the bell rang again and Savine felt that surge of panic. Nothing to worry about, of course, as Zuri slipped out to answer it, but Savine had to peel her hand away from her throat even so.

“They say God puts us all where we are meant to be,” said Haroon, softly.

“And you believe that?” Her voice sounded needy. With no beliefs of her own, she wanted at least to believe in someone else’s.

“I used to think my faith was unshakeable. When I was a soldier…” Haroon gave the slightest wince, as though at an unpleasant taste. “I did things in the name of God and never doubted. Things… I have come to very much regret.”

“We all have regrets,” murmured Savine. Haroon at least could blame God for his. She could only blame herself.

“Faith must be shaken from time to time, or it becomes rigid. An excuse for any outrage. I have come to believe that the righteous… should always have doubts.”

Rabik took Savine’s hand in both of his and smiled. Such an open, honest, beautiful smile. “We must have faith in each other,” he said simply. It was enough to make her smile herself.

“Citizen Kort is here,” said Zuri, from the door.

“Kort?” The name floated up from the distant past. As if a visit from great Juvens had been announced. Savine prodded ineffectually at her wig, trying to scrape together some shreds of her old self-assurance as Zuri’s brothers left the room. “Show him in… I suppose.”

“Lady Savine!” Kort had prospered, that was clear. His clothes were simply cut, of course, since simplicity was the fashion, but she knew expensive cloth when she saw it, and the broken-chain pin he wore to show allegiance with the common man was set with little diamonds.

“Citizeness Savine.” She used to be able to calibrate her smile with all the accuracy of a gunner ranging his cannon. Now it felt clumsy on her face, like a once-favourite pair of boots that no longer quite fit.