When Natalia Long heard the voice outside, her face turned white as paper.
She had been in a good mood that day. The furor over the assassinated Lords had more or less died down. Until they knew why the killer had struck, no one wanted to take over the work of the dead deputy director of the Suppression Bureau, Viscount Fresswater. Anyone who could become a Lord was already a person of noble blood and high standing. They had no pressing need for another measure of power.
If gaining that power meant risking their lives, someone like Wakefield might take the gamble, but the Lords would hang back and let someone else do the fighting.
Their lives were far too precious!
With no one taking the deputy director's post, anyone trying to pressure the Suppression Bureau lacked a proper claim to authority. The bureau might, at heart, be a lapdog of high society, but it had a living saint above it as its figurehead. Unless someone was willing to take the deputy director's seat, they would have to bypass Saint Isaac to order the bureau around... and Assistant Director Wakefield's answer to that was: ha.
Over the past few days, he had bluntly rebuffed several powerful figures who wanted a hand in the bureau's authority.
"The Suppression Bureau welcomes guidance from its deputy director," he always said. His meaning could hardly have been clearer.
Those powerful figures understood him, of course, but what could they say?
"Does it matter who runs it?"
Ha. Wakefield's meaning was clear: he could not stop them from trying to run the Suppression Bureau. But the moment they reached out a hand, he would put them in the deputy director's seat!
Saint Isaac had laid down that rule. If they wanted to give orders without