Martel chuckles - low, deep, a sound reminiscent of good whiskey at the bottom of the glass - but whatever opinion he holds on that assessment he keeps to himself, for now. He's not kidding when he says learning how the political structure here functions is something that needs to be experienced; the situation is unique, similar-but-different to what many of them are accustomed to, and it's not the similarities that are most important.

“I consider myself retired,” he says, with the dry edge of some private gallows humour, “so I'm afraid I leave most of the present-day noticing to Princess Nuala and her attaches.” One day he might get to murder a lobbyist for Sir Integra, won't that be lovely. “Historically, though, cohorts have been getting fewer and further apart over the course of the past five centuries. It was quite a thing, ours--” an assumption, but an educated one, “--beginning last year.”