TK had listened to this with an air of bored patience.
“Is that your best argument? It’s not very good. I could vanish you now and despatch a company of marines to the Value System to run the place as a traditional Chinese farm. Within six months, not a trace of your crimes would survive as more than memories in the heads of 1,800 head of value, who would remain right where they are now, far from the eyes of the world.”
Nightminster just shrugged.
“Then shoot me and find out the hard way you’re wrong.”
“Don’t you care whether you live or die?”
“You’re failing to grasp that this situation is one of your making. I brought you Donald Aldingford to be vanished at Sunart Sans Souci and you were too precious to take him then when you had the chance. So, now the onus rests on you to resolve the problem with your faithful appointed regent. It is of no concern to me.”
“What about Lawrence Aldingford?”
“He’s dead.”
“You found his body?”
“I put out ‘wanted’ notices in King’s Lynn, Wisbech, Spalding and Peterborough. His chances of getting anywhere near those places were remote, but had be reached any of them, he would have been turned in as Fog on the run.”
TK spent a few minutes thinking over what to do about Nightminster. He knew his willpower was weakened by memories of long ago, when Nightminster was a teenager and Victorina was infatuated. Nightminster was the brother-in-law he should have had.
TK set aside the fate of Nightminster for the time being.
“You said you represented the Ultramarine Guild,” he said. “What do you mean by that?”
“The Ultramarine Guild is bitterly split over how to respond to the National Party. The majority want to extirpate the radicals from the face of the earth. On the other hand, there are those who see a tremendous opportunity. Should the National Party gain power in London, it would need to import and export goods, or the city would starve. There is great gold to be earned from such business.”
“And to which faction do you belong?”
“The latter. I see great gold. This afternoon I was able to persuade the Ultramarine Guild to appoint a coordination council composed of the Owner of Edinburgh, the Owner of Glasgow and myself. We three have estates far from London and so are seen as impartial. There is a constitution by which we can be voted out.”
“Presumably these two others, the owners of Edinburgh and Glasgow, are not the sort to get in your way.” TK said.
Nightminster just smirked.
“Now you’re too big to vanish, so we’ll have to put up with you,” Wingfield said. “Damn you.”
Nightminster’s smirk became even more infuriating. Wingfield dropped the Walther TPH in his pocket. TK stood up and made his way over to a drinks carriage where he sloshed whisky into three tumblers and brought them across on a little tray with a jug of water and a bowl of ice cubes.
“Pull your chair in,” he said to Nightminster. “Our new relationship calls for a celebration.”
He was watching Nightminster closely. The man appeared as pleased as a schoolboy as he dragged over his chair and tossed a couple of ice cubes in his tumbler. TK marvelled at how the man could be such an odd mixture of wily strategist in the same body as an adolescent frozen into May Day of 2073.
“You like this?” TK asked.
“Very smoky.”
“It’s from the Mull and Morvern Estate. Produces the best whisky in the west of Scotland in my view, although Shellingfield will tell you his Islay malts are better.” He put the tumbler down and stared at Nightminster. “Do you remember how we first met?”
“I had a fight with one of your cousins in Oxford High Street.”
“That’s right. The Proctor was going to throw you out. I saved you because I admired a man who had climbed out of an industrial asylum to reach Oxford. Then my little sister took a shine to you and you to her. You made such a sweet couple. Do you remember that?”
“I’d completely forgotten, until you mentioned it.” Nightminster was being sarcastic, just for a change.
“Then came the Sack of Oxford. I escaped the mob by evacuating—only just in time. But Victorina and you were in the north of the city and got caught up in it. You never told me exactly what happened.”
Nightminster’s long legs stiffened, he hitched upright in the chair, frowning. TK had identified Victorina’s corpse the next day on the University Parks of Oxford along with almost a thousand other victims of the Sack of Oxford. Her gorgeous hair was burned off and she had been beaten over the head with something heavy and blunt. Whether she had been sexually violated, TK could never bring himself to determine.
“I told you long ago,” Nightminster said. “We tried to join you and evacuate but the mob cut us off. We got sprayed by a flame-thrower and everyone scattered in panic. I looked all over Oxford for the rest of the night until I got beaten unconscious myself, but I never found her. You can’t imagine what it was like, so do not presume to judge me.”
Reliving that terrible night had obviously hurt Nightminster. His eyes glistened with distress.
“I’m not presuming anything,” TK said. “And I’m certainly not judging you. I observe a man who set out to change the world, yet squandered his life in the back of beyond. It hints at a bitter
