An interview with Zarina from A Memory for Love #characterinterview #fantasy #books

A Memory for Love

by

Linzé Brandon

Zarina sa'Der is a category one memory witness trained to work with the most vulnerable victims of violent crimes. Her last court case left her with nightmares, which required her to take a break to focus on clearing her special memory banks before she went insane. As a Treasure of the Magicians' Order, the Grandmaster arranges for her to take her vacation at the High Order retreat for the ideal peace and quiet she needs.

It has been three suns since Aidan Crea lost his mate and youngest daughter in the Wa'raki war that devastated Xa'an. When his best friend accuses him of becoming a grump, he agrees to take a break before the Grandmaster orders him to. After some soul-searching, he realizes that he needs to get back to living instead of purely existing after the loss he has suffered.

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Zarina and Aidan form an unusual friendship that soon grows into something deeper until Aidan is tasked with protecting her after a contract is given out to assassinate her. Although her job exposes her to the worst criminals in society, things take a turn for the worse when they finally find out who is behind the attempts on her life.

They find themselves pawns in a larger plot and risk their hearts and lives to finally get a chance at a happily ever after.

Interview with the character from A Memory for Love

What is your full name? Do you have a nickname?

My name is Zarina Elri sa'Der, and I don't have a nickname, sorry.

What is your background? What makes you you?
I was born a magician, and from a young age, I knew that my path was not going to follow the traditional route because of my ancestry. This did not limit my choices at all, and I am fortunate that my parents supported my choice to study at the Xa'anian School of Magic and Knowledge to become a memory witness. Our training starts at an early age; I was about seven, and involved rigorous and disciplined training in magic control. I am the only category one witness, and my teachers learned early on that I needed to develop my skills my way. Memory witness teachers are used to this and provided me with the guidance I needed to hone my skillset.

Can you explain what a memory witness is? It sounds intriguing.

A memory witness is a magician who can record someone's memories by copying their brain patterns. This information is relayed during a court case, where the victim is either incapable or too traumatised to testify.

Where do you live?
I live in the capital city of Xa'an, Ikea. Xa'an is located in the third solar system. It is my dream, however, to retire in the village of Akan, because it is situated on the edge of a beautiful forest. I love the forest, and often go there to hike amongst the trees and waterfalls.

Who are your parents? Are they still alive?
They are Aaron and Liz'aBe sa'Der and they live in the second solar system where I was born. They are very much alive and in good health. 

How do you travel from solar system to solar system? Do you use magic?

It depends on the person travelling. Magicians travel with spaceships, but other humanoid beings travel by other means. And no one can travel that distance using magic! 

How would you describe your childhood?
I had a happy childhood despite the history of my people. My extended family is small, but we are all close despite the distance between us. 

How old are you? Do you worry about getting older?
I am 29. Since I was born with magic power, I will age much slower than non-magic folk. This requires me to look after myself so that my source of magic remains active and productive, which will help slow down my ageing process. The typical life expectancy of a magician is around 300 suns (or years, as you would call it here on Earth).

So your magic can slow the ageing process but not send you around the galaxies!

Do you have a job/hobby?

I work as an officer in the security service of Xa'an. I work with victims of violent crime who cannot speak for themselves. If I had a hobby, it would be hiking. I love being outside in nature.

Me too! So, Zarina, what would you say is your biggest wish/desire?

It may sound weird, but I would love to live in a world where my job is superfluous. My skills can then be utilised to help people in a more positive environment. But until that happens, I will speak for the victims because their voices need to be heard for justice to be served.

Who is the person you respect the most, and why?

Grandmaster Géra Ville and his 2IC, Lord Aidan Crea, are the two people who lead the Xa'anian Magician's Order. Along with the rest of the Members of the High Order, they work hard to establish an order with members who contribute their skills to the benefit of everyone on Xa'an: humans, magicians, shape-shifters, and others. They enforce the magic rules and work together with human authorities and the king to create a society of equality and respect for everyone.

Do you have a secret? Does anyone else know the secret? What would happen if you told someone this secret?
Yes, I have a secret or two. Aside from my family, no one knows who and what I am. I share my secret with a small circle of trusted people, but they are also aware of the dangers of sharing that knowledge. It was necessary to share the knowledge for their own sakes.

Do you own a gun (or any other weapon)? Killed anyone (either purposely or not)? 
Officers in the Xa'anian security service do not carry weapons, as a rule. A few select officers do, but they are only called into duty for very specific tasks, which I am not at liberty to discuss. My magical ability allows me to incapacitate someone, but I am not trained in offensive or defensive magic. I can, however, share power with a warrior if he or she needs more power to use in a magic battle.

Are you happy now your story has been told? Is there more to come?
Yes, for sure. I have been bugging my author for years to tell my story, and even I was surprised at some things that happened. Since my book is part of a series, readers will meet me again in future stories, as has been the case for many of the friends I have made along the way. (Note for the author: Zarina will be around again in Tarryn's Vampire, a future Grandmaster novel in the series.)

What, if anything, would you like to change about your life?
Something horrible happens in my story as a result of a choice I make. I will continue to feel guilty for that for the rest of my life, even though everyone assures me that the tragedy wasn't my fault. It is the one thing that if I could have predicted the future, I would have done differently.

Who is the person you despise the most?
The person I despise the most is the one behind all the tragedies, death threats, and deaths in my story. I hate him for putting the lives of innocents and good people in danger for his own cowardly and nefarious plans. 

If you knew you were going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do in the time you had left.

I would contact my parents and blood relations to tell them how much I love them. I would also talk to my new friends to tell them how much their support and friendships mean to me, and lastly, I would spend the whole time with the man I love...without sleeping a wink.

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Excerpt from A Memory for Love, Book 7 in the Nations of Peace series.

 Aidan ignored the cold stones numbing his ass and the rigid bricks biting into his back. They were of no consequence. The true pain had been inside of him so long that he hardly recognised himself. Had grief done this? That didn’t feel right, so he must have been doing it to himself. Albeit subconsciously. Until now, he had not been ready to move forward. Someone once said that life was for the living, and tonight, he finally felt ready to take that first painful step.

With a groan, he got to his feet. Damn, the cold had made his muscles stiffer than he realised. Stretching his arms, he paused.

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“What was that?”

He moved to the end of the balcony. There it was again. It sounded like...

Ignoring his bare feet and the cold, he jumped over the balcony railing and took a moment to find his balance before he ran. As he came closer, his anger cleared the fog from his mind. No one hurt a woman. Seconds later, he was over the balcony railing and bursting through the flimsy balcony door.

Just as the light came on.

The door panels, fortunately not made of glass, crashed. The impetus drove him to the bed. He almost fell on top of her.

Shrinking back on the bed, Zarina watched it all with wide eyes.

Feeling undignified, Aidan managed to control his body enough to stop at her bedside. He looked around the room. Everything looked fine, but he was sure she had screamed earlier.

“Where is he?”

She frowned at him. “Who?”

“The man who attacked you.” Then he saw traces of tears on her face. He sat down on the bed. “Are you alright?”

Wiping her eyes with the sheet, she turned her head away. “I am fine. There is no one here. I have nightmares sometimes, that’s all.”

It was his turn to frown. She looked so young with her hair down and wearing a white nightgown. Then his brain clicked.

“Your last court case?”

Her head snapped back to his. “You know who I am?”

“Yes. I finally remembered why you looked so familiar. Didn’t you learn how to purge your memories so that you don’t have nightmares?”

She shrugged. “The case was long, and I didn’t do all my meditations as I should have. It just caught up with me. I will be fine after I start working at it tomorrow.”

Confident that there was no real threat, he got up.

She grabbed his wrist. “I am sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to remind you of painful things.”

🗡If you like nothing better than to lose yourself in an epic fantasy, this should certainly tick all your boxes! #epic #fantasy #books

Vengeance of Hope:

Can freedom ever be for all?

by 

P.J. Berman

Can freedom ever be for all? How do you save a nation from tyranny?

When the King of Bennvika dies in suspicious circumstances and a foreign usurper named Jostan Kazabrus seizes the throne, ruthlessly imposing his will on the population, a disunited triumvirate of leaders and their followers must attempt to resist him.

The first is Silrith, the ousted philanthropic Princess who had been expected to take the throne. The second is Ezrina, a vengeful rebel who is desperate to overturn the years of ethnic oppression of her people, the Hentani. The third is Zethun, a minor noble who believes the only way to fight for the common people is to abolish the monarchy altogether.

As the various factions fight the threat of tyranny and religious persecution, each must be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause.

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A sassy author interview, prizes, a fab book... what more do you want! .@jennifermacaire .@rararesources #historical #timetravel #funbooks

Jennifer Macaire is a brave author who has agreed to be interviewed in a style that many authors shy away from—derogatory. The sassier the answers to WWBB’s rude questioning method the better!

So welcome, Jennifer, and let’s get the ball rolling, shall we? In your book, the protagonist, Ashley Riveraine (what kind of name is that, Jeeze!), gets pitched back in time some 300 years BC (before chocolate) and meets Alexander the Great—her hero.

Hero? Oh, come on! Okay, I’ll go with it for now. So, is Ashley Riveraine happy now their story has been told or is there more to come (God help us!)?

The funny thing is, this was going to be a short story. I started out as a journalist writing articles for magazines, and at the same time, I wrote a few short stories and published them. One was nominated for the Push Cart Prize, and I'm afraid it went straight to my head.

I set about writing a short story about Alexander the Great not dying and going on to conquer the world (you see how things can get out of hand – one mosquito gets squashed, and we're speaking Greek instead of English and the Romans never got to build their straight roads anywhere. Much less paperwork too, and we'd still be offering sacrifices to Zeus.

We could always offer this book!

We could, but as my neighbour’s rooster wakes me up every morning at the ass-crack of dawn… anyhow, I was going to send The Road to Alexander to a Sci-fi magazine as a time travel tale and things got out of hand.

I didn't realize Alexander would kidnap Ashley – I forgot how omnipresent gods and goddesses were at that time. And I didn't realize how crazy Alexander's mother was, and, to make a long story short, there are 7 books in the series.

Seven! Jeeze… you get less for murder! Okay, so give me the best one-liner from your poor excuse of a book.  

I realized I was now over three-thousand years older than my own mother.

Do I have to elaborate?

Please don’t.

The instructions say a 'one-liner', so to go on and explain would be a clear indication of my inability to follow the simplest instructions, which is why I did so badly at school, and why my husband has given up trying to tell me what to do…)

Yawn, so basically, you're the same as all the rest of the authors on Amazon, and you’re the Next Best Thing. I don’t think so. Come on, tell me why I should spend time reading YOUR book over more well-received authors?

Oh, come on – who likes best sellers, I mean, besides the teeming masses. But you know the teeming masses yearning to be free – it says so on the Statue of Liberty (written in Gothic Script somewhere around her big toe, I think). So, feel free to try something different – the hero and heroine don't hate each other on sight! The hero is Alexander the Great, and how much more heroic can you get? There is action and adventure! It's based on real history (at least part of it is – it's time-travel, so there is a slight wobble in reality. Be prepared!).

It’s a mad, tongue-in-cheek romp across mixed genres of Sci-fi, romance, adventure, and history. It’ll make you laugh and cry. Oh, and there's lots of hot, bouncy sex. (If you like that sort of thing. Otherwise, just skip those parts!) But most of all, just relax, sit back, and enjoy your trip back in time. You can always close the book and come back to the present – but Ashley is stuck in the past!

Hang on, there, lady. Bouncy sex? Sex that’s bouncy? I may just have to read this malarkey of a book! So, spill, as an author have you ever regretted anything, i.e. written your own review (or written a bad review on a competitor's novel), argued online, copied someone else's idea? Any juicy naughtiness at all?

Mark Twain once said, ‘The kernel, the soul, let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances is plagiarism.’

In a way, he was correct. We, the people of the present, are standing on the shoulders of those who went before us. Our stories, our art, our science – it’s all based on work that our ancestors did. We simply keep it growing, expanding on it – but we invent nothing brand new. (And stop screaming, ‘The Internet!’ that's just another way of communicating, and there are more ways of doing that than stars in the sky… I exaggerate, but you get my gist).

I wrote The Road to Alexander after falling in love with ‘Outlander’, so the time travel element was copied from the fantastic Ms Gabaldon. She may have gotten it from H.G. Wells – who in turn, got it from somewhere else.

Time is an interesting subject. I'd like to say I was the only one who ever wrote about Alexander the Great, but Mary Renault did a fabulous job with her series of historical fiction novels – if you haven't read them, you've missed a rare treat.

As for arguing or regretting, or writing bad reviews, I've only written two bad reviews, and both were for novels that featured super-alpha-male-control-freaks, and I'm a staunch feminist. 

I have argued online, but that was then. Nowadays I just refer people to PubMed (peer-reviewed scientific publications) or Snopes and let them learn for themselves. I never wrote my own review, but I encouraged my daughter to read one of my children's books and write her own review. It was awful, but this proud mama didn't mind – I fixed up the spelling, changed a few words (terrible to great, boring to amazing,) and had it published…. well, not really, but it's an idea. Probably not an original idea – those are all taken!

Describe your writing style in ten words or less. I’ll begin with the first two: Crap, dull…

Pedantic springs to mind. That's what my editor kept saying. ‘Jennifer, you're being pedantic again. No one needs to know where the army's food came from, just tell them what they ate and be quick about it.’ Or, ‘Jennifer, three pages on oral hygiene in ancient times is going to put readers to sleep. I barely got through it without dozing off. Scratch that. I dozed off twice.’

Otherwise, my style has been variously described as fluid, engaging, easy-to-read (not my fault – my editor keeps correcting my spelling and grammar!), and one reviewer—who said the book had way to too much sex in it—admitted it was 'well-crafted and proficient'. Hmm. Was he talking about my writing or about the sex scenes?

Fuck knows! He certainly wasn’t my husband! All right, just for a laugh, share with us one of the WORSE reviews you’ve had.

I’ve had so many – where to begin? Let's see – one said (1 star): ‘Why, oh why must the 'heroine' of these sort of time travel books be so smug, so captivating to their target and so unreal. No-one in their right mind is like this. Go away Ms Macaire, and think real. I suppose I have been spoiled by Diana Gabaldon whose heroine at least shows some reticence towards the hero or Jodie Taylor who is constantly amusing and deep by turns.’

 I like this review on so many levels – it perfectly describes Ashley, who arrives from the future feeling smug and superior to the ancients (Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, Ashley!). It compares the book to Outlander and the St Mary's series, both of which I adore – (thank you, terrible review, for at least hitching my book to their star for a brief instant before you demolished it).

It is confusing in that it acknowledges the book as being time travel, then beseeches me to 'get real'. That's where I'm not sure if she doesn't like the alacrity Ashley and Alexander (trying to think of another word starting with 'A' and failing here…) fell in love, or was it the improbability of Ashley being a real person?

At any rate, I enjoyed having my book in the same paragraph as my two favourite writers! (There are other, more brutal reviews, but they actually had more stars, so the readers must have liked the cover art or something.)

What qualifications do you have for writing in your genre? (Apart from waking up in the morning, that is).

I was afraid someone would ask me this one day. Can I take the fifth? No? Well, #1: The book is science fiction (I love science and work with scientists as an information researcher – I know, it doesn't count, sorry!) with a #2: time travel element (I have the worst case of left/right, before/after, letters, and numbers, dyslexia. So time has no meaning for me. It's a miracle every time I show up at work or to an appointment. #3: It's in English (I was born in the USA and grew up in the Caribbean, which accounts for that part, anyway). #4: It's set in Ancient Greece, and my mother is a history teacher. She gave me lots of hints about where to look for information on Alexander the Great. No, she didn't help me – how many of your teachers wrote your assignments?

Many authors use their qualifications to show off their so-called talents, i.e. crime writers are often coppers (or police, for the non-Brits present) and the book becomes boringly technical. How have you managed to keep your knowledge low key? Or haven’t you bothered?

When I was a kid, I was skinny, had glasses, big teeth, and was dyslexic. I was also clumsy because my glasses didn't correct my huge astigmatism, which meant I could not catch a ball, no matter how gently it was tossed to me.

I was the last to be chosen in gym for the teams, and, on one sad Valentine's day, at a party, the boy I had a gigantic crush on threw chocolate kisses at me, telling me I could only keep the ones I caught. I caught none.

Sobbing, I went into the house, collided with his father, and made him drop his finest bottle of wine that he'd been keeping for a special occasion. I stared at the mess, listening to the howls of rage, wishing I could become invisible or at least grow some sort of backbone and stop snivelling (I was nine years old at this time, so excuse the melodrama).

At dinner, the grown-ups drank their not-so-nice wine and glared at me. The other kids snickered. And I decided I'd show them – I'd become so knowledgeable about dinosaurs I'd write and illustrate a fabulous book, and they would come begging for an autograph. This has nothing to do with the question – or everything, depending on how you look at it. I'm actually quite knowledgeable about dinosaurs but have managed to keep all that info out of my books.

Sorry, I asked! Jeeze… whinge, whinge, whinge, me, me, me… If your book disappeared forever, do you think it’ll be missed?

Honestly? No, I don't think it will be missed at all unless you've somehow time-travelled to read all the series and missed the first one and decided you had to read from the beginning. Then it might be missed. Maybe. I'm not sure anything on this earth is irreplaceable except maybe chocolate. I would definitely miss that. And coffee.

Don’t forget the wine. Not expensive wine, obviously, as you drop that! Describe your perfect death (in case I must kill you. Touch my wine and I will!)

Need you ask? Death by chocolate – of course!

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and now...

The Road to Alexander

by

Jennifer Macaire

What do you do when the past becomes your future?

The year is 2089, and time-travelling journalist Ashley Riveraine gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to interview her childhood hero, Alexander the Great. She expects to come out with an award-winning article, but doesn’t count on Fate intervening.

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Alexander mistakes Ashley for Persephone, goddess of the dead, and kidnaps her, stranding her in his own time. Being stuck 3000 years in the past with the man of her dreams wouldn’t be so bad if the scientists of the Time Institute hadn’t threatened to erase Ashley from existence if she changes history.

Ashley must now walk a tightrope, caught up in the cataclysmic events of the time, knowing what the future holds for the people she comes to love but powerless to do anything to influence it.

Join Ashley on her hilarious, bumpy journey into the past as she discovers where her place in history truly is…

Jennifer Macaire is an American living in Paris. She likes to read, eat chocolate, and plays a mean game of golf. She grew up in upstate New York, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands. 

She graduated from St Peter and Paul High School in St Thomas and moved to NYC where she modelled for five years for Elite. 

She went to France and met her husband at the polo club. All that is true. But she mostly likes to make up stories

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Historical coming of age fiction! An explorer and a downtrodden circus acrobat in a hot air balloon in search of an artifact have an adventure of a lifetime! #historical #books #fantasy #raiders

Research can be taken from real-life situation!

by

Patrick Canning

The word ‘research’ probably conjures up images of dusty library archives, meticulously sourced bibliographies, and maybe even microfiche (if you’re of a certain age). But research for The Colonel and the Bee was some of the most fun I’ve had in writing a book.

Once I had my idea: a destitute acrobat and a flower-obsessed adventurer explore the world of the early 19th Century in a fantastically large hot air balloon, I needed some help filling in the details. The story wouldn’t be beholden to reality at every turn, but I’ve always thought a measure of science makes even the most outlandish fantasy that much better. It was time to do some research.

While I admit going to the Wikipedia well more than I should, I quickly found many other amazing sources of information. Ballooning by C. H. Gibbs-Smith, an antiquated look at the world of hot air ballooning before 1946, provided some great aeronautical theory and history of ballooning. In an ill-visited corner of the upper floor of The Last Bookstore in Downtown Los Angeles (a great place to check out if you’re ever in LA), I discovered Forty Favorite Flowers by Beverly Nichols, a 1970s guide to curious flowers and how they fare in an English garden. Aside from having a great old book smell, Forty Favorite Flowers helped bring the Colonel’s extensive horticultural knowledge into focus. A dictionary of Victorian slang delivered gems like “enthuzimuzzy” (much ado about nothing) and “butter upon bacon” (excessive extravagance), but it was Lina Rivera, The Colonel and the Bee’s editor, who contributed what is probably my favorite bit of Victorian wordage: “chuckaboo” (friend).

By far the most thrilling and enjoyable bit of research was a trip in a real hot air balloon. I took note of all the sensations and emotions that came with the unique way of flying, and paid close attention to the charismatic British pilot’s manner of speaking (“The crown line’s in a bit of a state!” and “A woman can understand a compliment in any language, can’t they?”). The difficulty in controlling a craft as unwieldy as a hot air balloon was made clear with our unscheduled landing on a golf course. Luckily, the irate owner was placated with a handy bottle of champagne.

Imagination might do most of the leg work when it comes to fiction, but I hope all these real-world details help further color the world Beatrix and the Colonel explore, and make for a more engaging and exciting read.

Introducing...

The Colonel and the Bee

Beatrix, a spirited but abused acrobat in a traveling circus, seeks more than her prison-like employment offers. More than anything, she wants to know her place in the world of the halcyon 19th century, a time when the last dark corners of the map were being sketched out and travel still possessed a kind of magic.

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One night in Switzerland, the mysterious Colonel James Bacchus attends Beatrix’s show. This larger-than-life English gentleman, reputed to have a voracious appetite for female conquests, is most notable for traveling the world in a four-story hot air balloon called The Ox.

Beatrix flees that night to join the Colonel, and the two of them make a narrow escape—Beatrix from her abusive ringleader, the Colonel from a freshly-made cuckold. Beatrix, feeling the Colonel may have the answers to her problems, pledges to help him catch the criminal he seeks in exchange for passage on his magnificent balloon.

The criminal seeks a precious figurine, The Blue Star Sphinx, but he’s not alone. The Sphinx’s immense value has also drawn the attention of the world’s most deadly treasure hunters. A murder in Antwerp begins a path of mystery that leads all the way to the most isolated island on Earth.

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Patrick Canning spends as much time as possible turning coffee into collections of words that look like books, shorts, and screenplays.

Most of his stories attempt to look for the meaning of life in an adventurous way, and often employ humor, important since the search usually doesn’t turn up much. He lives in Los Angeles with his dog, Hank.

An extract from The Colonel and the Bee

“Flying the Ox is much more akin to playing an instrument than operating a machine. Approach the challenge less formally, do so with confidence, and the craft’s perfect obedience will be your reward.”

I lost sight of the burner strap and by accident pulled a vent on the main balloon. We began to rotate and descend with great rapidity. The Colonel allowed me to find the correct cord on my own, and I did so just in time as the Ox nearly scraped a rolling pasture hill, startling a herd of brown Belgian cows enough to sour their milk.

Taking care to avoid the ripping line, I continued to bring the Ox up, searching for the northwest wind. To my chagrin, I sent us southeast, and it took a deft intervention from the Colonel to set us right. Applying the correct pressure on the correct combination of cords in the correct sequence did indeed give him the appearance of an accomplished maestro.

“Skill comes with practice, and northwest can be elusive. Northeast can be downright tempestuous,” he said as if recalling a talented snooker rival.

I readied another question, but the Colonel anticipated me. He held up a gentle hand to stay the incoming query, motioned with both hands downward, indicating I should relax, then gestured to the edge of the Ox.

So worried I’d been about that morning’s lesson, I’d hardly taken a moment to observe our environment. I joined the Colonel at the railing, and became lightheaded with wonder. The full effect of flight had been disguised by darkness the previous night, and now, in the maturing light of dawn, I beheld a world transformed by perspective: rivers and mountains were maps come to life, trees were seas of leaves that shimmered emerald in the breeze, even birds flew at a height far below the Ox, moving like schools of fish in currents of wind.

“Toast my bloomin’ eyebrows,” I mumbled, forgoing any attempt at eloquence. “I didn’t know... I couldn’t have imagined...”

“Wonderful, isn’t it? From this height, we’re permitted to see plainly the orchestrations of daily life, rank with crisscrossing motives and the clutter of needless haste. Up here in the rarefied air we are weightless in cool æther, unspoiled by the odour and noise of man’s desires far below.”

We stood side by side, watching the scene in silence, until something in the distance stole the Colonel’s gaze.

“There. Antwerp on the horizon. Drink your leaf juice if you must.”

By now, all of the Manx were flying in a loose halo about the Ox, gently displacing the Belgian mist we floated in as they dove and twisted as birds in play.

“They have such charm and spirit,” I said.

“They detect my excitement. This visit could prove fruitful in our search for the criminal. He’s been most elusive thus far.”

“Do you know the murdered party?”

The Colonel’s face fell a note, but he recovered quickly.

“I’m interested in the criminal.”

“To bring him to justice?” I gulped my tea. “For this or a past transgression?”

“There is plenty to choose from. It is enough for you to know I seek an audience with the man.”

“He has committed other crimes?”

“Certainly.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Most certainly.”

I finished my tea as the green vegetation and black soil of tilled fields shifted to the red brick and grey stone of buildings. Antwerp’s harbour introduced itself to the nose long before the eyes.

The Colonel inhaled deeply.

“Have you been?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“A bastion of crime and seafood, how I adore this city. I apologise as it’s unlikely we’ll have time for a proper tour. Perhaps a return under less harried circumstances. Unfurl those ropes there, won’t you?”

The spiderweb of roadways below passed ever faster as we descended. I let drop a collection of heavy ropes over the side of the Ox as the Colonel set her down in a rather regal park. Despite the posh surroundings, there was an air of danger. Apparently, the Colonel felt it too.

“No chance we’re deflating here,” he said. “Down the steps with you. Help secure us.”

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