Part 1
She caught it.
Interesting.
The man was already moving before the shell reached its target. He did not run, because running would have attracted attention. Rather, he flowed backward through the gap in the hedge with the practiced fluidity of someone whose expertise lay in disappearing from places.
It was a test, specifically suggested by the higher-ups. Now he would report his observations. But first, he had to survive the escape.
He made it over the wall in two and a half seconds.
The drop was twelve feet onto uneven cobblestone. He absorbed the impact through bent knees and a rolling step that transitioned into a leisurely walk, his posture shifting from coiled predator to unremarkable pedestrian in the space of a single stride. Shoulders rounded. Gait loosened. His dark coat was reversible, naturally, with gray on the inside, and it was already turned. A flat cap materialized from his pocket, tugged low over features that were deliberately forgettable: neither handsome nor ugly, neither young nor old, the kind of face witnesses would later describe as "average height, average build, I think he had... eyes?"
He had cultivated the magic of face modification since childhood. It was his finest weapon.
He would have been among the top facial reconstruction surgeons in the Republic, if only he could have afforded the exorbitant cost of medical school and the necessary certifications. But, as he had often told himself, at least in the Republic, a man of simple origins had a chance at greatness.
Talent must never be buried. That was the unspoken social contract upon which the entire Republic had been built, the foundational myth so elegant, so reasonable, that most citizens repeated it with conviction. Inequality was tolerable, even celebrated, so long as the ladder remained visible. Not necessarily climbable. Visible. There was an important distinction, though the distinction was lost on most.
The theological justification had once been straightforward enough: the Holy Book taught that squandering one's divinely gifted talent was a sin, and for a nation to prove institutionally inept at mobilizing its resources, human or otherwise, constituted a spiritual offense of the highest order.
Or so the constitutional legend went.
The reality, as realities tend to be, was rather more complicated than the myth.
The Republic's founders had meant it. Genuinely, fiercely meant it. The early constitutionalists had dismantled guild monopolies, subsidized public academies, and built the most accessible examination system the continent had ever seen. For a shining generation, perhaps two, the ladder had been real. Climbable. Transformative.
But tearing down invisible barriers, it turned out, was ruinously expensive. And worse, it was politically treacherous. Every policy crafted to uplift one disadvantaged group inevitably displaced another. Subsidize rural students' tuition, and the urban poor demanded to know why their neighborhoods still lacked adequate schools. Expand medical licensing to those who couldn't afford traditional academies, and the guild-trained physicians screamed about diluted standards. Redistribute examination quotas to underrepresented regions, and the meritocratic purists cried foul.
The beneficiaries of each reform insisted not enough had been done, and they were usually right. The casualties of each reform grew more resentful with every passing year, and they were usually right too. And the privileged, who had never needed the ladder in the first place, didn't understand what all the fuss was about.
Over time, a quiet consensus settled over the Republic's political class. It was not spoken aloud, never formally acknowledged, but understood with the instinctive clarity of those who wished to remain in power. True social mobility required sustained, expensive, generational investment whose fruits would ripen long after the current Senate had been voted out of office. Whereas the appearance of social mobility, a well-publicized scholarship here, a photogenic rags-to-riches story there, a passionate speech about opportunity delivered every election cycle, cost almost nothing and polled remarkably well.
It wasn't a conspiracy. That was the insidious part. No shadowy council had convened to decide that the Republic's poor should remain poor. It was simply that, in a democratic system, empty promises that stirred hope proved infinitely more electable than expensive, unglamorous, long-term policies whose benefits wouldn't photograph well for a decade. And so the drift happened naturally, under progressive presidents and conservative ones alike, through reformist Senates and obstructionist ones, across wartime coalitions and peacetime majorities. The names on the ballot changed. The speeches changed. The drift did not.
And that was the Republic's quiet tragedy: not that the door had been locked, but that it had once been genuinely open, and the nation had simply found it cheaper to paint a picture of a door on the wall instead.
But a man who believes the door is open doesn't rattle the handle. He simply assumes he hasn't pushed hard enough yet.
The streets of Albecaster's affluent district gave way with surprising speed to something considerably less polished. A few blocks from the ducal townhouse's manicured gardens, honey-colored limestone yielded to soot-darkened brick. Eight more blocks, and the elegant mana lamps vanished entirely, replaced by oil lanterns on iron brackets that hadn't seen fresh paint since Emperor Winston's coronation.
He turned onto Richpenny Lane, a name that was aspirational, and climbed stairs to the third floor, avoiding the rotted second step, the loose seventh, and the missing eleventh that was slowly dropping into Mrs. Pawley's kitchen below.
His room was at the corridor's end. Actual brass key, actual tumbler lock, because enchanted locks required traceable mana signatures. He let himself in, locked the door, drew the curtain.
From inside a hidden pocket in his coat, he withdrew an object roughly the size of a cigarette case. Matte black. No seams, no buttons, no markings. He pressed his thumb against an unmarked point and felt the barely perceptible click of recognition.
A soft hum descended below the threshold of human hearing. The device didn't block surveillance; it simply disrupted it.
He'd been carrying the magical device next to a crumpled handkerchief and three boiled sweets.
Now, concealment. He crossed to the coal stove, crouched, selected the third tile from the left, and pulled. A shallow cavity he'd carved three days ago, lined with oilcloth borrowed from Mrs. Pawley's washing line. He placed the device inside, replaced the tile, blended graphite dust and coal ash into the grout lines, and studied his work.
Satisfactory.
The dog was waiting in the yard, acquired that morning from a street vendor for two Avalondian dollars. It would fit nicely with his cover identity as a lonely widower. Medium-sized, brown-and-white, the dog regarded its new owner with the frank assessment of a creature deciding whether this human was worth the investment.
He set off toward Redmore Park, a rectangular patch of surviving green featuring two elderly elm trees and a refuse bin losing its war against the local rat population. Halfway through the second circuit, while the dog investigated something near the larger elm, the man dropped a newspaper-wrapped bundle into the bin with the mechanical gesture of a man disposing of waste. Inside: a folded note, sealed with unmarked candle wax.
He walked on. The dog followed.
Part 2
Seven miles across Albecaster, the Continental Republic's Commercial Consulate occupied the second and third floors of a limestone building on Ashford Street. Visa applications, trade documentation, notarization, the sort of achingly tedious work that caused surveillance budgets to weep with boredom.
Which was, of course, why Angelica maintained a hidden station in the basement.
At twenty minutes past seven, a woman descended the service staircase with the confidence of someone who belonged there.
She was tall, five-foot-nine before the heels, with the broad shoulders and controlled movement of someone whose body was a precisely maintained instrument. Warm bronze skin that spoke of mixed heritage: angular cheekbones from her father's bloodline, generous mouth and strong jaw from her mother's. Hair a deep copper-red, pulled into a functional braid that caught the corridor light like banked coals.
Her diplomatic credentials named her Vice-Consul Valentina Corks. Angelica's classified files called her Crimson, Josh's trusted subordinate, the Field Coordinator who oversaw all activities within the Avalondian homeland.
The basement room was concrete walls, fluorescent mana lighting, a metal desk, two chairs, and a communications array disguised as a filing cabinet. On the desk sat a crumpled newspaper and a folded note, its wax seal broken.
Perched on the second chair sat a woman who appeared Valentina's opposite in every dimension.
Porcelain skin that seemed to drink the fluorescent light. Ink-black silk hair framing a face of delicate, ethereal beauty. Eyes the cold, depthless blue of ocean water that held secrets in its currents. Slender where Valentina was powerful. Composed where Valentina radiated energy.
Cultural Attaché Evangeline Park, per her credentials. Whisper, per Angelica's files.
Valentina sealed the door, engaging the deadbolt, mana-seal, and acoustic dampener, then crossed to the desk.
"Well?"
Whisper's gaze shifted like a gun turret tracking.
"Josh's conjecture was correct. She's a Familiar."
The words settled with the weight of confirmed impossibility.
Valentina picked up the note. Their field operative's handwriting, structured per protocol.
Target demonstrated interception capability consistent with Familiar-class reflexes. Recommend elevated classification.
"Look at the details," Valentina murmured.
"The speed she demonstrated," Whisper said, her voice matching her codename, low and precise, "was only achieved once under laboratory conditions by an operator who subsequently required three months' recovery from the neurological strain. This woman matched the same while seated in a garden chair, mid-conversation."
"A Familiar," Valentina repeated. "Operating on blue mana acquired from unknown sources. Illegally summoned."
"Which means we may have just found the leverage we've been looking for." Whisper paused.
"Though I'm surprised the Avalondians haven't detected it for this long," Valentina said.
Something flickered across Whisper's features. It was not quite frustration, but the particular melancholy of a professional watching institutional decline in real time.
"It's remarkable, really," she continued, her voice carrying a note that was almost... mournful. "There was a time when Avalondian intelligence was the standard against which every other service measured itself. Their tradecraft manuals were our textbooks at the Academy. Half the founding legends of our own service, including Josh, learned their craft from Avalondian instructors." She looked at the concrete wall as if seeing through it to the empire above. "Now their strongest rising star can't identify a Familiar sitting in a bed three feet away from her, answering questions with reaction times that would make any trained analyst immediately suspicious."
Valentina leaned against the wall, arms folded. "Maybe she did identify it."
Whisper blinked. "Pardon?"
"You don't make general on technical brilliance alone, Evangeline." Valentina's voice carried the quiet certainty of someone who had spent years navigating institutional hierarchies considerably more treacherous than enemy territory. "Especially not as the youngest general in the Empire. That kind of ascent requires more than the ability to find answers."
She let the observation hang for a moment.
"It requires knowing when to find them. How to present them. And sometimes..." Her eyes held Whisper's. "Sometimes, it requires knowing when to look the other way. That's a skill most people never learn, and it's harder than any detection technique in the manual. Any competent investigator can spot an anomaly. It takes a political mind to recognize that some anomalies are best left unspotted."
Whisper was quiet for several seconds.
"You're suggesting Dugu identified the Familiar, or at minimum suspects, and chose career preservation over professional obligation."
"I'm suggesting that a woman with no pedigree to speak of comprehends something born aristocrats never bother to learn. The fastest route to an early retirement, or an early grave, is unearthing truths that powerful people have spent considerable fortunes keeping buried. The Redwood family is shielded by a duchess who shares the Empress's bath. General Dugu has a uniform and a service record." Valentina's smile thinned to a blade's edge. "One is an instrument, however finely honed. The other owns the forge that makes every instrument in the Empire."
"A depressing assessment."
"A realistic one."
Whisper shifted to the matter that had been occupying her analytical capacity for the past forty-eight hours.
"By keeping silent on the Arussian bombing plot and leveraging its aftermath, Josh successfully engineered this martial law situation. But I still don't quite understand his broader objective."
"Well, the immediate objective was global headlines. Markets panic, capital flight from Avalondian securities into Republican treasuries." Valentina's voice carried a note of professional pride. "The thirty-day treasury auction last week was oversubscribed by forty-three percent. First time in fourteen months."
"Yes. And that's precisely my concern."
Whisper rose and began pacing. Three steps, pivot, three steps back.
"We're only treating symptoms. Not the deeper illness. Foreign holders of our treasury securities have been pulling back for months."
"That's precisely why..."
"Because the entire global system is hemorrhaging liquidity. The Arussians are liquidating our treasuries to fund their war. The Osgorreich coalition members are selling to finance military procurement. The UES are dumping our bonds to redirect capital into their domestic summoning infrastructure. They've committed billions to their Familiar industrialization program, and the funding has to come from somewhere."
Valentina's jaw tightened. "So foreign governments are selling our debt to pay for their own priorities."
"And it's structural, not cyclical. Not something a few headlines can fix."
Valentina exhaled slowly. She saw where this was heading.
"The Republic needs foreign capital flowing into our treasuries," Whisper continued. "The conventional tool, raising rates to attract buyers, would devastate our domestic economy. Mortgage rates are already crushing the middle class. Small business lending has contracted for three consecutive quarters."
"So instead," Valentina said slowly, "we never let a good crisis go to waste. Fully capitalize on our reputation as a safe haven."
"Avalondian martial law achieved precisely that. The moment Arthur's broadcast hit every mana-mirror in the Empire, global institutional investors repositioned. Capital doesn't require moral justification; it follows perceived safety." Valentina straightened with renewed enthusiasm. "Our thirty-day, sixty-day, and six-month auctions were all oversubscribed. Yields stabilized. Debt service trajectory improved significantly."
"But that doesn't solve the structural issue," Whisper murmured. "It's like putting a bandage on a stab wound."
The fluorescent light hummed.
"And I haven't even addressed the core contradiction," Whisper added.
Valentina raised an eyebrow.
"The summoning inflation paradox. Everyone, the markets, the Senate, our own Treasury, priced in the assumption that mass Familiar deployment would be deflationary. Familiars don't eat. Don't need housing. Don't demand wages. Productivity gains should reduce costs across every sector. That was the thesis. That was why we invested so heavily."
"But?"
"But we forgot what powers them." Something sharp entered Whisper's voice. "Every summoned entity operates on blue mana. Industrial-scale deployment means industrial-scale energy consumption. Our countless licensed summoning facilities already consume eleven percent of national grid output. Global blue mana demand has surged fifteen percent in eighteen months. Energy prices spike. Utility bills surge. The supposed deflationary revolution becomes inflationary, precisely when working families are losing jobs to the very entities consuming the energy."
She let the cascade complete itself in the silence.
"Which is why the immigration legislation is being fast-tracked," Valentina said quietly.
"Of course. Citizens simultaneously losing jobs and paying higher utility bills won't tolerate explanations about why foreign workers should still be welcome. Close the borders. Deport the overstays. Then redirect the displaced populations toward resource-rich nations that Angelica has turned into friendly regimes, boost the potential workforce for future development of intensive resource extraction." She paused.
"And all of it requires distraction," Valentina murmured. "Noise. Headlines that keep attention anywhere other than the ledger books."
"But wasn't this what the Empire used to do?" Whisper's voice remained level, but the words carried an edge. "We engineered imperial martial law to solve a treasury auction. We're manufacturing regime changes to secure mineral rights. What, then, is the difference between us and the Empire?"
Valentina was quiet for a long moment.
Then she smiled. It was small, weighted with conviction rather than humor.
"You must have faith, Evangeline."
"Faith?"
"In Josh." Valentina straightened to her full height with the absolute certainty of someone who had placed her bet and refused to flinch. "Josh is the chosen one. He sees the whole pattern when we can only see the threads. He understood the treasury crisis before the Treasury did. He predicted the summoning inflation paradox two years before the energy reports confirmed it. He identified the Redwood Familiar before anyone thought to throw a walnut shell."
"That's not faith," Whisper said carefully. "That's track record."
"Is there a difference?" Valentina's smile widened. "We follow Josh because his judgment has proven sound. We trust his vision because his predictions have been validated. We execute his directives because outcomes have consistently justified the methods." She tilted her head. "So let's leave the heavy thinking to those who know better... like Josh. After all, we are just following orders."
Whisper's expression shifted through several configurations, from analysis to objection to reluctant recognition, before settling on something resembling discomfort.
"Does the Senate know? The full scope of what we're doing?"
Valentina's expression didn't flicker, but something in her eyes closed. Gently, completely.
"I'm sure Josh will take care of that." Her voice carried the particular lightness of a sentence that would not be reopened. "He is... Josh, after all."
Part 3
The letter arrived at half past eight, delivered by a War Office courier whose posture suggested he would rather be anywhere else.
Philip read it twice, convinced the first reading had been a concussion-induced hallucination.
Dear Captain Redwood,
I wish to formally notify you that the investigative inquiry pertaining to the events of 14th August has concluded its preliminary phase with respect to your household. No further interviews or evidentiary requests are anticipated at this time.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the cooperation extended by yourself, Miss Natalia, and the members of your household during what I understand was a period of considerable personal difficulty. Your willingness to accommodate the investigation despite your injuries reflects a commendable civic spirit that I do not take for granted.
I wish you a swift and complete recovery.
With respectful regards,
Beatrice Dugu
Philip looked up from the letter. Lydia stood in the doorway, reading his expression with the practiced efficiency of someone who had been interpreting Redwood faces for decades.
"General Dugu is closing the investigation," Philip said. "On us, at least."
"So I've been informed."
"She was... polite. Genuinely polite. Not formally polite. Warm polite."
"General Dugu is a woman of considerable professional courtesy," Lydia replied evenly.
"No, Lydia. This is different. She thanked us. She wished me a swift recovery. She used the word sincere." Philip turned the letter over, as if expecting to find hidden text on the reverse. "This is the same woman who spent three hours testing whether Natalia could identify herringbone patterns on marble steps. Why is she suddenly being... kind?"
Lydia adjusted her spectacles. "Perhaps because the investigation genuinely yielded nothing actionable against us. Or perhaps she realized that a graceful withdrawal preserves future options better than a hostile retreat."
Philip considered this. "You think she's keeping the door open."
"I think she's keeping many doors open, Master Philip. That is what intelligent people do."
Before Philip could respond, Margaret's voice drifted from the corridor with the unhurried authority of someone who expected hallways to arrange themselves around her schedule rather than the reverse.
"If the two of you are quite finished analyzing the emotional subtext of military correspondence, the motorcar is waiting. And I should very much like to leave before your grandfather discovers another reason to deliver a speech."
The departure from the ducal townhouse unfolded with the ceremonial gravity the Duke considered appropriate for any occasion involving more than two Redwoods and a piece of luggage.
The household staff had been arranged in two precise columns flanking the front steps. Not the full complement, Lydia had explained, merely the senior staff and those whose duties permitted a brief interruption. This still amounted to twenty-three people standing at rigid attention in matching livery, their expressions calibrated to that particular blend of respectful sorrow and professional composure that aristocratic training demanded for any family departure, however temporary.
The Duke stood at the top of the steps in a morning coat of charcoal wool, his silver hair immaculate, his bearing suggesting that the act of seeing off his grandson was an affair of state requiring the full weight of ducal dignity. Behind him, his steward maintained his customary position: close enough to be useful, far enough to be invisible.
"Philip." The Duke extended his hand with the formal precision of a man greeting a foreign dignitary. "I trust the country air will restore what the city has taken from you."
"Thank you, Grandfather." Philip clasped the offered hand, feeling the brief squeeze that conveyed everything the Duke's public persona would not permit him to say aloud.
"Miss Natalia." The Duke inclined his head toward the wheelchair where Natalia sat wrapped in blankets, her arm in a sling that Lydia had fashioned with theatrical conviction. "I am told the estate gardens are particularly restorative this time of year. Do take advantage of them."
"Your Grace is most kind," Natalia replied, her voice carrying just the right tremor of lingering fragility. Philip marveled, not for the first time, at how convincingly she inhabited the fiction of her injuries. The woman who could catch a walnut shell mid-flight without shifting her weight was currently performing convalescent invalid with the commitment of a seasoned stage actress.
The Duke turned to Margaret, and something softened almost imperceptibly behind his eyes. "My dear."
"Gerald." Margaret accepted his formal kiss on the hand with the ease of years of practice. "Do try not to start any wars while I'm away."
"I shall endeavour to postpone all wars until your return." The ghost of a smile. "After all, someone must approve the catering."
Margaret patted his arm once, the gesture carrying more affection than any embrace. Then, without further ceremony, she descended the steps with the measured pace of a woman who had outlived the need to hurry for anyone.
Lydia appeared at the base of the steps, her expression suggesting she had been counting the seconds of this farewell against an internal schedule and finding it approximately ninety seconds over budget.
"The motorcar is prepared," she announced.
Philip had been expecting the usual vehicle: something modest, inconspicuous, appropriate for a family slipping quietly out of the capital under cover of an invalid's need for country air.
What waited at the curb was none of those things.
The motorcar was enormous. Long and low, with a sweeping bonnet that stretched nearly six feet before reaching a passenger compartment enclosed entirely in dark glass. The bodywork was finished in deep midnight blue, so dark it appeared black except where the morning light caught its curves. Chrome fittings gleamed along the running boards and wheel arches with restrained elegance. The overall silhouette reminded Philip, with a jolt of recognition, of the grand touring limousines he had seen in museum photographs back in Bortinto, those magnificent machines from the 1930s that industrialists and heads of state had used to project power through sheer automotive presence.
"This..." Philip stared. "This exists?"
"Limited edition," Lydia said, and the faintest trace of satisfaction entered her voice. "Two were commissioned by the Dukedom of Redwood during the last continental crisis. Enchanted steel reinforcement throughout the chassis and passenger compartment. The glass is layered crystal with embedded mana-absorption matrices capable of diffusing a direct hit from a military-grade mana-rifle. The engine is a dual-configuration system: primary mana drive supplemented by conventional fuel reserves should the mana supply be disrupted."
"It's bulletproof," Philip translated.
"It is rated to withstand sustained small-arms fire, fragmentation munitions, and up to three simultaneous mana-discharge strikes of moderate intensity." Lydia paused. "So yes. Bulletproof."
"Grandfather sent this?"
"His Grace felt that given recent events, discretion was less important than survival." Lydia opened the rear door, revealing an interior of cream leather, polished walnut panelling, and a compartment spacious enough that Philip could have stretched out fully without touching either wall. "Besides, the vehicle technically belongs to the Dukedom rather than the Redwood family. It is maintained by the state as part of the ducal security infrastructure. His Grace is merely... exercising a state asset for its intended purpose."
Margaret was already settling into the rear-facing seat opposite the main bench, arranging her travelling shawl with the practised economy of someone who had ridden in such vehicles before and found them perfectly ordinary.
"Your grandfather," she remarked to Philip as Lydia helped Natalia transition from the wheelchair to the limousine's interior with choreographed care, "has spent forty years pretending in public that you are a mild inconvenience he tolerates out of dynastic obligation. Today he sent you off in a vehicle that cost a fortune." She smoothed a crease in her shawl. "I believe the intelligence community would call that a blown cover."
Lydia took the driver's seat.
The limousine pulled away from the curb with a whisper of power so smooth that the transition from stillness to motion was almost imperceptible. Through the dark glass, Philip watched the townhouse recede, the staff already dispersing back to their duties, the Duke's silver-haired figure lingering on the top step for a moment longer than protocol required before turning and disappearing inside.
Then the gates closed behind them, and Albecaster opened up.
Philip had not been outside the townhouse grounds since the bombing. The city he remembered had transformed.
The first checkpoint appeared within four blocks.
A barricade of enchanted iron bollards stretched across the intersection, their surfaces humming with defensive wards that shimmered faintly in the grey morning light. Four soldiers in field grey stood at intervals, each carrying standard-issue mana-rifles, the crystalline focusing chambers along the barrels glowing a soft, steady blue that indicated active charge. A fifth soldier, an officer judging by the braid on his cap, stood beside a portable mana-scanner mounted on a wheeled brass tripod, the kind of device Philip recognized from newsreels about border security but had never expected to see on a residential street in the imperial capital.
The limousine slowed. The officer approached, one hand raised. His eyes moved across the vehicle's exterior, noting the ducal crest on the bonnet, the state registration plates, the quality of the engineering. His posture shifted from professional suspicion to professional deference in the span of two seconds.
A brief exchange with Lydia. Papers presented, examined, returned. The officer stepped back and signalled his men. The bollards retracted into the cobblestone with a grinding hum, and the limousine glided through.
"How many checkpoints between here and the city limits?" Philip asked quietly.
"Seven on the primary route," Lydia replied from the front. "Twelve if we take the secondary."
Beyond the glass, Albecaster revealed itself in fragments.
A bakery Philip remembered passing weeks ago, its windows now crossed with boards and a handwritten sign reading CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. A newsstand still operating, its proprietor handing papers to customers with the furtive efficiency of someone conducting transactions best completed quickly. Two women hurrying along the pavement with shopping baskets, their pace just slightly too fast for casual errands, their eyes just slightly too attentive to the soldiers posted at the corner.
Propaganda posters had appeared on every available surface. UNITY IS STRENGTH above an image of clasped hands, one civilian, one military. REPORT SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY beside a stylized eye radiating mana-blue light. YOUR EMPIRE PROTECTS YOU in bold serif lettering over a photograph of the imperial flag catching wind above the Parliamentary spire.
A patrol of six soldiers marched in formation along the opposite pavement, their boots striking cobblestone in synchronized rhythm. They moved with the particular deliberateness of men who understood that their presence was the message: that the state occupied these streets now, and the ordinary rhythms of civilian life existed only at the state's continued permission.
Philip watched a shopkeeper emerge to sweep his doorstep, glance at the passing patrol, and retreat inside with the broom still in his hand.
"It's worse than I expected," Philip said softly.
"It's considerably more restrained than it could be," Margaret replied from her seat, her voice carrying the measured perspective of someone who had lived through enough crises to calibrate them against each other. "Arthur's conduct guidelines are holding, for the most part. The checkpoints are procedural rather than aggressive. The soldiers are under orders to be courteous. No curfew has been imposed on essential commerce." She paused. "In another era, under different leadership, this would involve house-to-house searches and detention without documentation."
"That doesn't make it acceptable."
"No. It makes it survivable. There is an important distinction, though I suspect the shopkeepers who just watched armed men march past their livelihoods would find the distinction less comforting than I intend it."
Natalia had been watching the streets with intense curiosity. Her sling-bound arm rested in her lap, perfectly still, but her eyes tracked everything: the soldiers' equipment, their patrol spacing, the scanner frequencies at each checkpoint, the placement of the bollards, the sight lines from rooftop positions she was almost certainly cataloguing out of professional habit.
"Master," she said quietly, "the soldiers at the last checkpoint were carrying Model 7 mana-rifles. Those are standard garrison issue, rated for crowd suppression at reduced intensity. But the officer's sidearm was a Model 12, which is a field combat weapon." She tilted her head slightly. "The equipment mix suggests they are prepared for civil unrest but authorized for lethal response if necessary."
"Thank you, Natalia," Philip said dryly. "That's very reassuring."
"I did not intend it to be reassuring. I intended it to be informative." She turned to him, and despite the clinical precision of her words, her expression carried something warmer. "I also intended to demonstrate that even while maintaining this." She lifted her sling-bound arm fractionally. "I remain fully aware of our tactical environment. You are safe."
Philip felt something tighten in his chest. Not fear. Something else entirely.
He reached across and took her free hand. She allowed it, her fingers curling around his with the particular gentleness she reserved for moments when she was conscious of her own strength.
"You know," he murmured, low enough that only she could hear, "most people would find it unsettling that their companion catalogues weapons systems while pretending to be injured."
"Most people do not have companions capable of intercepting projectiles in mid-air." The corner of her mouth curved upward. "I would argue that your situation, while unusual, is objectively preferable."
"Objectively."
"Measurably." Her thumb traced a slow circle on the back of his hand. "Your survival probability is significantly enhanced by my presence. That is a quantifiable advantage."
Philip laughed softly. "Is that what this is? A quantifiable advantage?"
Something shifted in Natalia's expression. The analytical precision remained, but beneath it, like light visible through deep water, was something less clinical.
"No," she said. "That is what it began as. What it is now..." She paused, and for the first time since he had known her, the pause seemed born not from processing speed but from the genuine difficulty of translating internal experience into language. "What it is now does not reduce to quantities."
Margaret, who had been studying her correspondence with deliberate absorption, did not look up. But Philip caught the faintest smile at the corner of her mouth.
They cleared the third checkpoint without incident. The limousine turned onto the broad avenue that served as Albecaster's primary artery toward the western highway, and for the first time since leaving the townhouse, Philip felt some of the tension in his shoulders begin to ease.
The avenue was wider here, lined with the government buildings and institutional facades that formed the administrative heart of the empire. The Imperial Treasury. The Ministry of Colonial Affairs. The High Court of Justice, its columned portico draped with the imperial standard. These buildings stood unchanged, their stone facades impervious to the anxieties playing out at street level, monuments to the comforting fiction that institutions endured regardless of the crises swirling around them.
"Master." Natalia's voice had changed. Quiet. Alert. "We are slowing."
She was right. The limousine had decelerated to a crawl, then stopped entirely. Through the dark glass, Philip could see the reason: a military convoy occupying the intersection ahead. Three armoured transports and an escort vehicle, their enchanted steel hulls gleaming dully, were turning from a side street into the avenue with the ponderous deliberation of vehicles that expected all other traffic to yield.
Civilian motorcars and horse-drawn carriages had pulled to the kerb, their occupants waiting with the resigned patience of people who had learned, over the past week, that military convoys had absolute right of way and that the wait could last anywhere from two minutes to twenty.
Philip leaned back, preparing to wait.
Then Natalia spoke again.
"Master. Eleven o'clock. The building with the Gillyrian columns."
Philip followed her gaze through the tinted glass to the grand facade of what he recognized as the Foreign Office, its entrance flanked by carved stone griffins and guarded by soldiers in dress uniform. A pair of heavy oak doors stood open, and from the shadowed interior, a small entourage was emerging into the grey morning light.
The woman at the center walked with the contained precision of someone whose body had been trained to communicate authority through motion alone. She was in full dress uniform, the dark fabric impeccably tailored, medals catching what little light the overcast sky offered. Even at this distance, perhaps sixty metres, Philip recognized the posture, the economy of movement, the way her subordinates arranged themselves around her like planets orbiting a particularly intense star.
General Dugu.
"She sent that letter this morning," Philip murmured. "And now she's... here. At the Foreign Office."
"The timing is notable," Natalia observed, her eyes narrowing.
Philip watched as Dugu paused at the top of the Office steps, turning to address someone behind her. An aide, perhaps, or a subordinate receiving final instructions. The general's expression was unreadable at this distance, but her bearing radiated the focused intensity of someone between consequential meetings rather than someone whose workday was winding down.
Then a second figure emerged from the building doors.
The figure moved with a different quality of grace altogether. Where Dugu's movement was military precision distilled to its essence, this woman moved the way music moves: fluid, unhurried, each step landing with the assurance of someone who was born to be admired.
She was dressed in a tailored coat of deep burgundy velvet with luxurious fox fur at the collar and cuffs, cut with the geometric precision fashionable in Osgorreich's imperial circles. Beneath it, a dove-gray dress in the modern drop-waist style skimmed her figure with sophisticated restraint, its hem dancing just below her calves as she moved. A string of lustrous pearls lay against her throat, and her cloche hat—burgundy silk adorned with a single jeweled brooch—sat at a rakish angle that somehow managed to be both fashionable and commanding.
Dark hair, waves of it, fell past her shoulders in artful curls that seemed to capture the morning light and transform it into something richer, deeper.
Philip's breath stopped.
Not in his lungs. In his chest. Something deeper than respiration seized, a physical contraction behind his sternum that had nothing to do with his concussion and everything to do with a memory his mind could not access but his body had never forgotten.
His hands began to tremble.
"Master?" Natalia's voice, suddenly distant. "Your heart rate has increased by forty-two percent. Your pupils are dilated. You are exhibiting signs of acute emotional distress. What is—"
He couldn't hear her. The world had narrowed to the woman descending the Ministry steps, one gloved hand resting lightly on the stone balustrade, her chin lifted at an angle that stirred something so deep in Philip's chest that it felt like drowning.
She turned.
Her profile caught the light, and the full force of her face struck him like an arrow. Delicate features, almost doll-like in their precision. A jaw that balanced softness with quiet defiance. Eyes he couldn't see clearly at this distance but somehow, impossibly, knew were the colour of dark winter skies.
And that hair. Those raven waves, catching the wind, framing a face that existed in a part of his memory he had never been able to reach.
Philip's vision blurred. Not from his concussion. His eyes were burning.
I know her.
The certainty was absolute and entirely irrational. He had never seen this woman before. He had no memory of her name, her voice, her touch. His mind was blank, an empty room where portraits should have hung.
But his body knew. His chest knew. The ache spreading through him like ink through water knew. Every cell that had once belonged to the man who had drowned himself in a pond rather than live without this woman's love was screaming her name in a language his transplanted consciousness could not translate.
Who is she?
The woman paused beside a waiting limousine, its military escort indicating someone of considerable importance. She exchanged a few words with Dugu. A handshake, formal but not cold. Then she turned toward her vehicle, and for one impossible instant, her gaze swept across the avenue, across the stalled traffic, across the dark glass of the ducal limousine behind which Philip sat with tears he could not explain sliding down his cheeks.
She could not have seen him. The glass was tinted. The distance was too great. And yet something flickered across her expression, a hesitation so brief it might have been imagined, before she disappeared into the limousine and the door closed behind her.
Natalia sat perfectly still beside him, her hand still clasped in his, her expression unreadable. But Philip, even through the storm raging behind his ribs, felt her fingers tighten around his.
Not possessively. Not fearfully.
Protectively.