He returned to the boarding house, swaying slightly as he climbed the stairs. Behind one door a couple were arguing, another making love; both done loudly and both making Alexsander pause. He spent his remaining few hours taking care of his instruments: oiling, dusting, polishing in a kind of mindless rhythm. The rhythm I could understand, even if the intricacies of his care were lost.

When the time came, he chewed the right amount of dried ettiene leaves to ease our transition and fell asleep.

Arriving at the station I was told the chief had been called away. I pressed the desk clerk for more, which was apparently the only encouragement he needed. He leaned over his high desk, so only an inch from my nose, and whispered, ‘The palace.’ He glanced left and right conspiratorially. ‘All day and, so far, all night.’

I shared some of the clerk’s surprise at that, though I did know the chief held his office on both sides of the ettiene.

‘I’m expecting a letter,’ I said.

‘Letter, Inspector? Letter, letter, yes,’ the clerk said, finding it eventually.

I started for the back of the station.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ the clerk said. I was, but not before such a gossip as he.

I made for the station’s stables, pushing through the heavy wooden doors and into the labyrinthine corridors of the station. There, I met no fellow officers of the law, and the cold stone floor left me to my correspondence. In truth I opened it reluctantly; more than a wish for privacy, I did not want my assignment to be made real, irrefutable. And what could be more binding than the signature of the King?

I read the letter twice, seeking some hidden meaning or instruction in the mundane orders. I was to travel south to Drekenford with the King’s Dragoon Guards, as a civilian attaché. The regiment was mustering outside the city and would not wait for me should I delay. Once in Drekenford I was to ‘investigate the interference to Jan and Gregory Harsson’.

Interference. As empty and as telling as my own title of Special Inspector: to many there were things in the Kingdom of Reikova best left unnamed.

I briefly entertained the idea of refusing to travel with an army regiment but, though the company would be odious, I was not taking a summer night’s ride across the capital. The roads to the south were reputedly so dangerous they were the favourite setting for Esteberg’s more bloody tragedies. I hadn’t seen many such plays myself, but I recalled red-spattered highways and the roaring applause they produced from Alexsander and his drunken friends. One ignored the theatre’s lessons at one’s own peril.

Despite the danger of such a journey, I had packed as lightly as possible. I expected the weather in the south to be as changeable as the region’s fortunes and as unwelcoming as its people. One of the bags slung over my shoulder held warm layers and extra woollen breeches. I had no way of knowing what would be required of me or my equipment during this investigation, no idea of the length or extent of what lay before me, so I carried nothing more specialist than a pistol, a long knife, and my simple wooden crucifix worn around my neck. I had to hope Drekenford would provide.