Myfanwy Thomas meets Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen

Myfanwy Thomas’s first meeting with Graaf Gerd de Leeuwen exposes both the return of the Grafters as an active threat and the dangerous mistake at the heart of their approach: de Leeuwen believes she can produce Ernst von Suchtlen, while she has no knowledge of the man’s disappearance or the Grafters’ renewed operations. What begins as a carefully framed encounter becomes a three-day ultimatum, and Myfanwy’s effort to protect her family draws a new line between her official role and her private loyalties.

The Meeting and Its Participants

De Leeuwen arranges to meet Myfanwy when she is unattended. He introduces himself as a member of the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen and explains that he has come despite his current appearance because he does not want to wait for a new skin to be grown. The meeting thus begins with an unusual show of restraint: he says that neither he nor his people will touch Myfanwy or her friends that night, and presents the promise as a courtesy rather than a condition. He adds that he wants something from her and has heard she possesses power.

Myfanwy responds cautiously. She does not trust herself to speak at first, and keeps her powers withdrawn as she faces him. When she does answer, she stresses that her companions are civilians and that any harm, pursuit, or investigation directed at them would make productive discussion difficult. Her diplomatic language is also a warning: she wants the meeting judged by what happens to people beyond the car, not merely by the formal assurances offered inside it.

A Dispute About the Past

The conversation turns sharply when de Leeuwen says that circumstances have brought him to the country and that he resents having to speak with a Checquy member. He has not forgotten the Isle of Wight. Myfanwy recognizes that he was present during the Grafters’ invasion there, more than three centuries earlier, and realizes that she is facing someone who has survived across that span of time. The revelation unsettles her, but she tries to move the discussion away from grievance and toward the matter at hand.

De Leeuwen rejects her attempt to set the tone. He insists that she knows what he wants, while Myfanwy genuinely does not understand. His demand is for Ernst von Suchtlen, whom he identifies as the other leader of the Wetenschappelijk Broederschap van Natuurkundigen. Myfanwy’s bewilderment is significant: she is not concealing a known answer but encountering information absent from her understanding of the situation. Her previous self, she realizes, had not even known that the Grafters were active; had a Grafter appeared at her door, she thinks, that fact would have been prominent in the first letter left for her.

The Missing Partner and the Ultimatum

De Leeuwen explains that Ernst vanished from their factory months earlier after leaving instructions to continue the strategy and conceal his absence. Because the instructions worked, de Leeuwen says, he did not discover the disappearance until weeks later. He then traced Ernst through a record of mail sent to Myfanwy Thomas, a Rook of the Checquy. The letter is the only indication he has found of Ernst’s destination. De Leeuwen further says that his personal agent went to investigate and was taken and tortured by the Checquy. He treats those events as grounds for Myfanwy to answer for Ernst’s whereabouts, although she says she has no idea where he is.

The encounter’s initial assurance that Myfanwy’s companions would be left alone proves unstable. De Leeuwen threatens to begin killing if she does not cooperate, then gives her three days to produce Ernst. If she fails, he says, he will unleash a wave of horror against her people and devastate the country. His threat turns a demand for information into an impending crisis, even though Myfanwy cannot provide what he wants. The exchange ends with de Leeuwen still raging as she leaves the vehicle; the confrontation has also left her belongings and phone in the spilled contents of his tank.

Bronwyn and the Breakdown of Diplomacy

The danger becomes more personal when de Leeuwen later insists that neither Myfanwy nor anyone else in the Checquy Court should discuss the matter with other Court members. He argues that Ernst sent something to Myfanwy, a Rook and general of his enemy, and uses that connection to justify his suspicion. He threatens to have Myfanwy flayed, kill her sister, and use troops grown in Mechelen in a spectacle of violence in Trafalgar Square. The threat contradicts his earlier assurance that her friends would not be touched, and Myfanwy immediately invokes that contradiction.

Myfanwy’s response abandons the appearance of negotiation. She threatens to have de Leeuwen’s country carpet-bombed if he moves against Bronwyn, and invokes her ability to seize control of his body as a warning of what she could do to him. Her threats are not proof that she knows where Ernst is; they are a countermeasure aimed at deterring an attack on her sister. She then gives de Leeuwen a concrete condition: he may call again in three days, but if Bronwyn experiences even the slightest discomfort before then, he will receive his partner as a set of matched luggage. Myfanwy ends the call with shaking hands, and Ingrid, returning to the room, observes that Myfanwy is no expert in diplomacy. Myfanwy answers that she needs a drink.

Significance

The meeting is a collision between two incompatible assumptions. De Leeuwen treats the letter to Myfanwy as evidence that she can lead him to Ernst; Myfanwy’s memory and knowledge offer no such connection. His account nevertheless establishes that the Grafters have maintained a strategy, concealed Ernst’s absence, and traced him through correspondence addressed to her. The demand therefore links a missing leader, a Checquy Rook, and a renewed Grafter threat without resolving where Ernst has gone.

The encounter also changes the practical meaning of de Leeuwen’s promise of restraint. He begins by assuring Myfanwy that her friends will not be harmed, then later threatens Bronwyn directly. Myfanwy answers not with a claim to possess Ernst but with a reciprocal threat and a deadline of her own. The meeting ends without its central demand being met: Ernst remains missing, while the three-day interval becomes a test of whether either side will honor the limits it has declared.