Walden gave the door a baleful look. If it was an emergency—at a boarding school you expected the occasional late-night emergency—her colleagues all knew to come straight in. Only one person would have the temerity to come to Walden’s office at this time and knock.

She sighed, pushed the risk assessment form to one side, and arranged her face into an expression of inquiring courtesy. “Come in!”

And—of course—it was Laura Kenning. “Good evening, Ms Walden,” she said.

Every other bloody adult on the school site would have said Sorry to bother you, Saffy. But Kenning had chosen her rules of engagement and Walden would stick to them. “Good evening, Marshal Kenning,” she said. “It’s Doctor Walden, if you don’t mind.”

“Apologies, Doctor,” said Kenning blandly, which Walden, a connoisseur of passive-aggression after a career spent with teenagers, interpreted as You can take your DThau and shove it up your arse.

Kenning, like Walden herself, was young for her post, certainly younger than Walden; perhaps thirty-two or thirty-three. She looked irritatingly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It was possible she was on a night patrol and only just starting her shift. Her short fair hair was neatly combed, her silver-chased armguards polished to a mirror shine and strapped precisely in place over the white sleeves of her uniform shirt. Her black leather boots shone almost as bright, and her shortsword hung neatly at her hip. Walden glanced at it with displeasure. It rubbed her the wrong way, seeing the Marshals wander around the school fully armed. There was no need for it, and it sent the wrong message. This place was safe. Walden worked extremely hard to make it safe and keep it safe. No one was going to get eaten by demons here, so Laura Kenning had no need to swagger around the place looking like she was about to go on the hunt.

Marshals were demon hunters and demon killers. The enchanted shortswords were an ancient, traditional part of their official kit. Other traditional accoutrements had been discarded in the last two hundred years. Religious symbols were now felt to be an emotional rather than practical support against demons. Full suits of rune-engraved plate armour were both difficult to make and not noticeably more effective than just making the runes smaller and putting them all on the armguards. But Marshals had other resources besides the swords. Walden had written a paper during her MThau on the unique sets of physically defined spells that they employed in combat. No member of the Order of Marshals would ever call themselves a ‘magician’—that word belonged to the academic tradition—but they were certainly, in the inelegant phrasing of modern generalist accounts of magical practice, magic-users.