“Funny how marching off to a battlefield to get shot at can seem like an improvement—”

They were interrupted by shouting from outside the door. Winter could hear Bobby, telling someone to calm down, but she was mostly drowned under a rising voice with a heavy Hamveltai accent.

“—I will not, sir! I have been waiting an hour and a quarter and I will not wait a moment longer. Now you open that door at once or—”

“Bobby!” Winter shouted. “Who is it?”

Silence fell. A moment later, Bobby said, “It’s the Baron di Wallach, sir. And his wife. He says it’s important.”

“Important!” someone, presumably the baron, sputtered. “I should say—”

“Let him in,” Winter says. “I’ve been . . . expecting him.”

The door opened, and a tall, thin man in late middle age stormed in. He was impeccably dressed in what must have been Hamveltai fashion—high, flop-brimmed boots, gray tights, a long belted doublet, and a light wool coat, with a big wide-brimmed hat tied up on both sides and topped by a long white plume. Behind him came a plump woman swathed in so many layers of velvet and lace that the outline of her body was difficult to discern. She wore heavy makeup around her eyes, but it had run down her cheeks in streaks, as though she’d been crying.

“My lord.” Winter got to her feet and bowed. Di Wallach looked at her as a man might regard a roach that had crawled out onto the table during a fancy dinner party.

“You are Colonel Ihernglass?” he said. His Vordanai was good, in spite of his accent.

“I am.”

“Then your ruffians have kidnapped my daughter, and I demand her release at once. And I swear to you, if they’ve laid a finger on her—”

The Baroness di Wallach burst into tears at the mere suggestion of this, pressing her hands to her face and heaving huge, racking sobs. Winter resisted an urge to pat her on the shoulder and offer her a handkerchief, which she suspected would have gone over poorly. Instead she sat down behind her desk, which seemed to incite new heights of rage in the already apoplectic baron.

“This would be Anne-Marie Gertrude di Wallach, I take it?” she said.

“Of course it would,” the baron said. “Have you got many other daughters of nobility locked in your dungeons?”

“I don’t have anybody locked in my dungeons, but there are at least three daughters of nobility in the regiment at the moment. They all came here of their own free will and asked to enlist.”