If she needed any proof of the credentials of Lieutenant Aurelia Belisarius, she got in when there was not a whiff of consequence for the brawl in the bar.

Beyond a bandaged up hand, Brackenshaw didn't have anything to show for their altercation with the saboteur's squad mates. Normally there would have been whole hearings and a stint in the cells over a bust-up like that, particularly since the leader or Parsher's friends would be taking an extended stay in the infirmary.

But not this time.

After the altercation, she'd been given a set of instructions from Aurelia, with a not-so-subtle threat that if she didn't cooperate, Stamm Basin's cells were still very much an option. No-one in her command chain questioned it when she requested three days of personal leave, in spite of the fact that every other soldier in the city was busy mobilising for war.

So Aurelia definitely had connections that ran high up the chain of command in Brekka. Walking through the corridors of Stamm Basin's command headquarters, she wasn't sure if she should be happy about it, or terrified.

She marched on, following the set of memorised directions until she reached an unassuming office in the north quarter of the command building. There weren't a lot of people around – a handful of analysts and administrative staff, and the occasional patrolling guard that only paid her a cursory glance.

There wasn't even a guard on the door. Brackenshaw hesitated for a moment, double checking the office number and corridor, but this seemed to be the place. With unease niggling at the back of her mind, she closed her fingers around the handle and pushed the door open.

Stepping into the room, she found Aurelia waiting for her, along with a woman in the garb of a commissariat minister. She was middle-aged with short curls of black hair and skin the colour of burnished brass – something about her struck a chord in Brackenshaw's mind, but she couldn't quite place it.

But she knew where she stood in the order of things, and saluted smartly, letting the door swing shut behind her.

"Lieutenant Brackenshaw, reporting as ordered," she said.

"At ease, Lieutenant," the minister told her with a wry smile. She glanced at Aurelia. "You didn't mention me?"

Aurelia frowned. "I felt it was more secure."

"Well you can introduce me now."

"Lieutenant, this is Minister Yanfoukis," Aurelia said matter-of-factly. "She's been assisting me with my investigations."

"Minister." Brackenshaw gave the woman a respectful nod.

"Take a seat, Ms. Brackenshaw," Yanfoukis told her. "We've got a lot to talk about."

Brackenshaw did as she was bidden, sitting down at the small round table opposite from the other women. She tried to relax a little, leaning back and crossing her legs. There room was a sparse, utilitarian affair, with a few computer consoles built into the far wall and a dormant display screen in the centre of the table. The only thing that looked out of place was the jet black folder between Aurelia's hands.

"Thank you for meeting us," Yanfoukis began.

"Didn't think I had much of a choice," she replied blithely, allowing a thin smile to creep across her face.

"Yes. Well, it took a few well-greased palms and more than one threat to keep your little altercation off the books. I'd rather not have that be for nothing."

"Me too," Brackenshaw agreed, flexing the fingers of her right hand gingerly. "I'm here, Minister, and if this is about stopping Parsher's friends from pulling off any more of their little stunts, I'm all yours."

"Glad to hear it." Yanfoukis smiled warmly. "So, to clear up some questions you undoubtedly have, Lanto Numitor and I have known each other for a long time. He asked if I would help his, special attaché to try and get to the bottom of this bombing, because there are bigger things in motion right now."

"Bigger things than a war with the Scraegans?"

"Quite possibly."

"Oh." Brackenshaw blinked. "Like what?"

"The Crawlers. The team at the Scraegar labyrinth have uncovered something that your security clearance doesn't officially qualify you to know about." Yanfoukis cleared her throat mischievously. "But what the Commissariat don't know won't hurt them. There's a structure down there – we didn't build it and neither did the Scraegans."

The implications quickly barrelled through Brackenshaw's mind and she leaned back in her chair, letting out a low whistle.

"Everflowing," she cursed quietly.

"You understand the problem."

"Yeah, I think I do."

"And in Rubicon, there are a lot of people who are still spoiling for a fight," Aurelia put in. "They think we've got the Scraegans reeling. They think that the peace was never going to last anyway, so we might as well finish it."

Yanfoukis nodded grimly. "Understand that many of my colleagues in Brekka's commissariat are aware of the risks of going to war again with so many unknowns still hanging over us, but if people like Parsher can tip us over the edge, they're won't have a choice. If it comes down to saving this city, or preserving some mystery we've barely scratched the surface of, they'll pick war every time."

"Sounds like one piss-drowned mess," Brackenshaw agreed. "So, we're trying to keep Parsher and his buddies from kicking all hell loose, long enough to get to the bottom of this ... mystery of yours?"

"That's about the size of it."

Watching Lords, give me strength, she thought, feeling a sense of just plain annoyance. How she wished the Scraegans were their biggest problem. How she wished it that if it came to it, it could just be a stand up fight, winner takes all. She couldn't really make her brain go down the cascade of thoughts about some unknown third party building bases beneath the Scraegar Labyrinth.

She just needed to deal with what was in front of her. Exhaling a gently breath, she rubbed the back of her neck with one hand and nodded.

"Alright. So what's our plan?"

The minister nodded to Aurelia. "Show her."

"Good to have you on board, Lieutenant. This is Parsher's file." Aurelia slid the black folder across the table. "But a real one – warts and all. Everything we could dig up from every commissariat and military database."

Brackenshaw looked at it for a moment, then raised an eyebrow at her companion. "Don't you have a data slate?"

"Of course I do. But no-one can hack this." She tapped the folder with one finger. "Now are you going to look at it or do I need to read the damned thing out loud for you?"

"Everflowing, would you relax?" Shaking her head, Brackenshaw slid the black sheathe towards her and flicked it open. Several sheets of synthetic paper greeted her, the feel of them smooth and cold under her fingertips.

The first page had a photo of Nallas Parsher in his full military fatigues, along with a service record – nothing she didn't already know so far. Nothing in there that marked him out as an extremist. A hothead, perhaps, with a few run-ins with his superiors, but that didn't make him special. Brackenshaw had plenty of bumps in the road on her own climb through the ranks.

Turning it over, her brows furrowed. The report branched away from Parsher's military life, giving her a point by point account of pretty much every step the man had taken on the way to joining Brekka's military. Born locally, moved out to the border outpost of Umber Haul with his parents when he was five years old.

Lost those parents two years later in a Scraegan attack.

So the guy had a sob story. Him along with most of the city. Brackenshaw's parents had mercifully seen themselves out with natural causes, but she'd seen plenty of good friends die at the hands of the Scraegans without turning into an irrational militant. War needed rules; it needed a framework of rigid rules and an ironclad hierarchy. Otherwise all you had was anarchy.

She scanned the page, seeing several names from Parsher's platoon were listed there. She recognised a female corporal named Bastigane – the woman who she'd put in the infirmary just a couple of days ago – and a couple of the grunts who'd been along for the ride.

It also listed Nallas Parsher's lone surviving family, a younger brother named Weldon who ran industrial rigs in Brekka's irrigation zones – not exactly the sort of person you'd expect to get snarled up in sedition, but looks could be deceiving.

"What do you have on the brother?" she asked as she read.

"He seems clean so far." Aurelia sounded more than a little disgruntled. "Parsher was smart enough not to rope in his only living relative. He – or at least, the people he was working for – knew that's the first place anyone would look." She nodded to the file. "We're looking more closely at the protestors. We know that Nallas attended one of their rallies in person."

Doing as she was bidden, Brackenshaw flipped the page. There she found blurry images of some of the more well-attended protest marches against the peace with the Scraegans, and red circles picked Parsher out from the sea of faces.

"Fell in with the wrong crowd, eh?"

"Something like that," Yanfoukis said.

"You know," Brackenshaw murmured as she examined the photos, "there is already an official investigation going on into what Parsher did. I wrote up a shiny official report and everything."

"Oh, yes. I read it." The minister smirked. "Very thorough."

"So what do we have that my superiors don't already?"

"Brackenshaw, all we know for sure is that Parsher couldn't have done this on his own," Aurelia replied, her tone hardening. "He's a private in the Scout Cadre. He doesn't have influence of his own, but given his history with the Scraegans he makes for a convenient fall guy when things go south. Somebody else is yanking the strings, and we can't afford to discount anyone."

"So we're investigating ourselves?"

"With an outside eye." Aurelia spread her hands and shrugged. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm the only person in this city who's not a suspect."

"Well, isn't that nice?"

"She's right," Yanfoukis said. "No stone unturned, Lieutenant." She pointed to that file. "All we've got right now is that file. We have Nallas Parsher's life and we've got to use it to find out how he managed to plant that bomb."

"And I put a damned bullet in him," Brackenshaw muttered, shaking her head in frustration.

"If it makes you feel better, Lieutenant, I doubt he would have let you take him alive."

"I'd have like the chance to test that." She blew out her cheeks with a sigh and looked up at her companions. "So what do you want me to do?"

"We need to trace the explosive," Aurelia told her. "They weren't stupid enough to actually take something from the armouries – it would be too easy to trace – but the gear you'd need to make a home-made bomb of that yield will leave a trail that I can follow."

"And he would have had to smuggle the damn thing halfway across the badlands too," Brackenshaw muttered, flicking back through the file. "There's got to be someone working this in the engineers – the technicians. Someone who had access to the Mammoth cargo manifests and could add something without suspicion."

"And that's where you come in." Aurelia grinned.

Brackenshaw gave her a withering look. "Yeah, I can get Parsher's deployment orders and check his rotation schedule at the Liaison post. I was in charge of that damn unit. And I can find out who signed off on the Mammoth's cargo load when they shipped out."

"Riverlords, if only everyone I worked with could get with the programme so quickly."

"Yeah, yeah." She raked her fingers through her hair and sighed. "And when I've got someone to point a finger at?"

"Make a requisition request for Braedian Twice-Distilled Whisky with your quartermaster. When they log it, it'll be routed straight to me." An impish smile played on Yanfoukis' lips. "Being Minister for Customs and Export Development has its uses."

"You two've got this all figured out don't you?"

Aurelia sighed heavily. "I wish. This is just the start, Lieutenant. We've got a long way to go before we can start patting ourselves on the back."

Brackenshaw gripped the arms of her chair. "No arguments there. Let's get to work."

"Wait a moment, Lieutenant."

Brackenshaw paused, halfway up out of the chair, and lowered herself slowly back down again at Yanfoukis' brisk tone. Throughout the meeting the minister had kept a vague sense of brevity about the whole affair, but now her demeanour had changed, her expression as serious as a funeral.

Yanfoukis leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and clasping her hands together as she looked Brackenshaw in the eye.

"This should go without saying, but I'm going to say it anyway," she began. "Speak to no-one about what we talked about here. If anyone finds out that we're running our own investigation, I won't be able to stop that ton of bricks from falling on you. I've read your file. I know how close you are with your soldiers, but you are going to have to lie to them. I need to know you're okay with that."

"Okay with it?" Brackenshaw felt her jaw tighten with unease. "I would trust those people to take a bullet for me, you know."

"I'm aware. And that trust is entirely justified, but right here, right now, they cannot know about any of this. The wrong word over a bottle of scorch beer in the mess could be enough to tip someone off. We simply don't know who might be listening."

For a moment she just looked at Yanfoukis, letting her mind chew over those words. Paranoia was the only concept that came to her mind, and she felt a creeping nausea turning her stomach.

This was all so wrong. For as long as she'd been a soldier, the strength of the human race had been its unity. You didn't have to look for traitors in the ranks when you were united in the face of extinction. Now everything was all twisted upside down and back to front. How in the Everflowing River had they gotten here, where traitors were the ones who wanted to fight the Scraegans?

"I understand," she said eventually, the words falling off her tongue like ash. Then she stood up and marched from the room, suddenly feeling like she needed to take a shower.