‘She was perfect for it, Tomas,’ he said. ‘A born actress and diplomat. That was what we were, in those days. Now . . . now I think it may be different. Since Vogel became Provost Marshal I think the Queen’s Men are a different type of organisation to the one I once served. I have many regrets in life, but choosing my daughter’s path without her knowledge is chief among them.’
‘Oh, it’s different now,’ I said, in a flat tone. ‘We are spies and killers and torturers. We lie to our own people, and set them against one another to forward the political agenda that best suits us. That’s the life you introduced your daughter to.’
I gave him a hard look that I regret to this day.
My sasura began to weep, and I immediately felt like an utter shit. The gods only knew he had done what he had thought was best for his daughter’s future at the time. He had found a way for her to achieve a knighthood and a position at court and in society, to better her social standing in Dannsburg far above anything she could have hoped for as a second-generation immigrant with no noble blood.
But just look how that had turned out.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Vogel had only just taken over when Ailsa came of age. I thought she could have the life that I had wanted. I didn’t know what he would turn the service into.’
I gulped my brandy and poured us both another, and Sasura drank gratefully with tears streaking down his face and into his beard.
‘You didn’t know,’ I said after a long moment, and I sighed. ‘No, of course you didn’t. I understand that and I apologise, Sasura. I’m sure it was a fine life once, the honour and the glamour of protecting the realm from within the shadows. The knighthood, and the social position that comes with it. But now . . . now it’s something else, and even I am only just coming to see exactly what.’
‘I thank you, my son-by-law,’ Sasura said, and he wiped his face with a silk pocket square and poured more brandy, his hand trembling slightly as he did so.
I found I didn’t have it in me to hold what he had done against him. His relations with his wife forty and more years ago were his own business and nothing I needed to know about, and I thought he’d truly only had Ailsa’s best interests at heart when he had proposed her to whoever had inducted her into the Queen’s Men and arranged for her to be given her knighthood. We drank together in companionable silence for a few minutes until he had composed himself, and then I ventured the question I really wanted to hear the answer to.
‘Why did Sabine stand down as Provost Marshal?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I had retired by then. Something between her and Vogel, I can only assume. I have spent the last thirty years trying to put the matter behind me. All I know is this: do not trust Dieter Vogel. Ever.’
I met his tear-filled eyes, and swallowed my brandy.
That, I thought, sounded like extremely fucking good advice.
*
I had to report the bombing to Lord Vogel, of course. I went that evening, after my meeting with Sasura. I had probably drunk too much brandy for that to be what you might call an entirely good idea, but it needed doing and after what Ailsa’s father had told me I was feeling far from well disposed toward the Provost Marshal that night. Even less so than usual.
‘Yesterday morning?’ he said, as he narrowed his eyes at me across his desk in his austere office in the house of law. ‘And you only tell me now, Tomas?’
‘I’ve been making my own enquiries, Provost Marshal,’ I said, ‘but so far I have not uncovered any leads. My investigation focused on Archmagus Nikolai Reiter, but I have now satisfied myself of his innocence.’
‘Hmmm,’ Vogel said, and that could have meant absolutely anything.
He looked at me for a long time, and once more I felt myself going cold down to my boots. There was just something about Vogel, something utterly soulless that could have sucked the heart out of the most passionate of men. I wondered what my brother would have made of him, and decided that no good could ever come out of that meeting. He frightened the living fuck out of me, that was for certain, and I’ve no shame in admitting that.
There are few men in the world I would fear to face with swords, as I have written before. I fear the things I can’t see. Disease, and magic, those I fear.
There’s another thing I can’t see, though, and that’s power.
Dieter Vogel was the most powerful man in the country at that moment, and I was well aware that he could do absolutely fucking anything he liked and the law be damned. That I feared, and I’ve no shame in admitting that either, but that doesn’t mean that I liked it.
‘I’m asking for guidance, sir,’ I said after a moment.
I hated myself for it, for sounding weak in front of him, but he had a way of making you need to say something just to fill the silence. That was a skill I had used myself in the back rooms of Ellinburg, I had to allow, but he could have given me lessons in it. He looked up at me, and he showed me the cutting edge of his razorblade smile. What he said was not what I had been expecting to hear.
‘Your operation in Dannsburg is obviously compromised,’ he said. ‘The magicians know who you are; we knew that would be a
