Lavin’s safehouse was a small apartment not half an hour’s walk from the city center. We circled the block until I was content that no one was following us and even after that, we went in through an unlocked window, not the front door. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a Hunter, it’s that paranoia pays.

The apartment wasn’t at all what I expected from an old money-safehouse. It was simple, even a bit austere, and looked like a bachelor’s apartment. There were a few, generic paintings hung on the wall, and the furniture wasn’t expensive, but also wasn’t cheap. It seemed functional, if nothing else.

“I take my mistress here sometimes,” Lavin said. She looked at me as if daring me to say something, but I didn’t. “I made sure no one, including my security team, knows about it.”

I opened the icebox and began to root around the kitchen.

“No food?” I asked.

“No,” she said, “I haven’t been here in a while. Couple weeks. I had the maids throw out anything that might’ve spoiled.”

“Maids?”

“They don’t know who they work for,” she said.

“Hm.” I continued to look around the apartment. It had one bedroom, a small kitchen, a living and dining room, and a bathroom. The shower inside the bathroom was the only hint that this was a rich person’s hideaway. Most people wouldn’t spring for that kind of expense unless they were enthusiasts.

“I’m surprised you have to hide your mistress,” I said, returning to the kitchen to find Lavin putting the tea kettle on the stove. “Is your first spouse that strict?”

Lavin frowned and shook her head.

“We’re not here to gossip about my home life. Why don’t you tell me what you need to know before I start telling you what I need?”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, sitting down in a lounge chair. “Tell me about your brother.”

“What, just generally?”

“Well, tell me about…why your parents kicked him out of the family.” I could tell Lavin was uncomfortable with my question, as she shifted awkwardly on her feet for a second, but I didn’t particularly care. This case was complicated enough without me having to care about the feelings of some noblewoman.

“My parents were…” Lavin said, “unkind people. Gerry was my older brother. We were the only children. It was just the two of us. The family hit an economically bad spot. They wanted him to marry the eldest daughter of another powerful family and become her sire. The dowry would have been massive. He refused.”

“What, he didn’t fancy the idea of being a breedinghorse?” I asked. Sires were marriage partners chosen specifically to have children with, for the forging of political alliances. They were typical loveless and low-commitment marriages, with the more powerful spouse keeping control of the kid.

“No,” Lavin said, “he didn’t. I was young then, but I remember him arguing with my parents a lot. Then, they exiled him. They said a son who wouldn’t sire was of no use to them.

“I only saw him once after that. It was ten years ago when my father was sick. I tracked him down and begged him to come and see our father, but he refused. He was angry with me and I got angry with him. I said some cruel things I regret.

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“So, when my mother died last year, I tried to track him down again, but this time, I sent him a letter inviting him back into the family and apologizing. For everything. To my surprise, he replied. He was supposed to meet me at my house tomorrow.”

To me, it seemed likely that Gerry would have harbored a grudge against his sister and the Teralt family.

“Tell me about the Pacifist Constitution. Was that your idea?”

“You don’t follow politics much,” Lavin said, “do you?”

I shrugged.

“I’m busy killing monsters most of the time.”

“The idea is old, but my parents were some of the first to push for it. My mother and father were both MPs. The Pacifist Constitution was a dream of theirs. They worked tirelessly for their entire lives to build the foundation I stand on. When my mother died, the resulting outpouring of sympathy and attention is what allowed me to get the Constitution to a floor vote. The speaker is still against it, but there’s so much support that he’s had to allow it. This will be their legacy. I am merely trying to fulfill it for them.”

Was it possible that Gerry was trying to sink the Pacifist Constitution? If he’d harbored a grudge against the family, what better way to do it than ruin the life’s work of his father, mother, and sister?

“And your family, no connections to weapons manufacturers? Nothing that Gerry might have been able to use for a career?”

Lavin shook her head.

“My parents were very opposed to the weapons industry. Any connections he had to that would have been in spite of my parents, not because of them.”

“Did you trust Gerry?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, did you think he’d actually forgiven you, or were you worried he’d try something?”

“Was I worried he’d try to hurt me?” Lavin said. She stood up a bit straighter and nodded. “Yes, of course. But that’s why we were meeting in my house, with all my guards around, first. And then if he seemed fine, I’d bring him with me to Parliament to see the vote on the Pacifist Constitution.”

It was starting to come together in my head, at least partially.

First, Gerry Teralt is exiled from the family and holds a grudge. To act out, he begins to work with weapons manufacturers, the very people his parents hated. Then, one day, an opportunity presents itself. The weapons manufacturers and Gerry realize they have the same enemy: the Pacifist Constitution. And somehow, through buying an illegal gun on the black market and meeting with his sister, an MP, he was going to sabotage the Pacifist Constitution.

But there was still a lot that didn’t make sense. How was Gerry planning to stop the Pacifist Constitution? It couldn’t be by killing his sister, that would just increase support for it and he knew it. His mother’s death had proved that. Killing a person was easy, but an idea? Harder. Much harder.

And there was still a military connection I had no idea about. Why would the military try to kill Gerry if he was trying to stop the Pacifist Constitution? They’d been pretty clear about their opposition to the Constitution. And what was up with the Kurtadams? I was pretty sure that they’d been used to kill Gerry and his bodyguards, but as far as I knew, they weren’t real, so how did the military have them? I pushed that all to the side for now.

“Okay,” I said, rubbing my temples. “Well, while I figure this out, stay here.”

“I can’t,” Lavin said.

“What?”

“I am a member of parliament and the matriarch of the Teralt family,” she said with a huff, “I have responsibilities.”

“And those involve going outside in public places where a lot of people can kill you?”

“Worse,” she said. “Do you have any nicer clothes than that? Like, a suit? And do you know how to dance?”

I glared at her and then it dawned on me what she was talking about.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“Deadly,” she said.

“I’m not risking my life so you can go to a ball.”

“Yes, you will,” Lavin said frankly, “because I’m going and you need to keep me alive to figure out this case. So you’ll protect me.”

Damn. I hated when they were smart.