Trust and betrayal

Trust and betrayal shape both the Checquy’s promise to its members and its fraught dealings with the Grafters. Within the organization, the expectation that colleagues can be trusted is broken by a Court insider’s conspiracy against Myfanwy; between the two secret powers, generations of hostility give way to a proposed alliance only after each side recognizes that secrecy, survival, and restraint are mutual necessities.

The Checquy’s Promise and Its Limits

The Checquy does not offer its members the comfort of family. Its work sends them into danger, and those who die may be reduced to catalogued remains and a name in a file. What it is supposed to offer instead is the reliability of a team: respect, loyalty, and the assurance taught at the Estate that those around a member can be trusted. This promise matters precisely because the institution is not tender or safe. It is a practical bond offered in place of familial protection.

At a Court gathering, Myfanwy sees that promise contradicted by the scene around her. The members smile and discuss the weather, but the cordiality feels like an outright lie because one of her colleagues is planning to destroy her. The contrast is not simply between private dislike and public manners; it is between the Checquy’s stated standard of mutual loyalty and the concealed threat operating within its highest ranks. The ordinary pleasantries become evidence of how betrayal can inhabit the institution’s respectable surface.

Myfanwy initially has reason to suspect more than one possible colleague. Lady Linda Farrier can enter another person’s mind and alter it, making her a plausible candidate for the power to erase Myfanwy’s memories. Yet Myfanwy’s investigation into Farrier’s life has uncovered vulnerable loose ends, and Myfanwy recently protected Farrier’s family from enemies by illegally unleashing the Barghests. Farrier has acknowledged that debt. That history does not prove her innocence, but it complicates suspicion: personal obligation and recent assistance offer grounds for trust even as Farrier’s ability makes her appear dangerous.

Betrayal Inside the Court

The threat proves larger than an attack on Myfanwy alone. She identifies the culprit as a traitor to both the Checquy and the country, someone who embezzled substantial funds and, with the Scientific Brotherhood of Scientists, established a private army inside the organization. The scheme involved abducting British children without powers and turning them into troops. Betrayal here is institutional and political: a senior insider has used the Checquy’s resources and authority to build a force concealed within it.

The conspirator can also tell the Court that Myfanwy’s memories were stolen. That fact binds the immediate danger to the destruction of her former life. As Myfanwy recalls the letters her predecessor wrote for her, she recognizes both the effort and hope invested in them and the fact that the traitor can destroy what she has managed to rebuild. The letters make the betrayal personal across a divide in memory: the earlier Myfanwy’s life has already been damaged, and the successor now understands that the same enemy can threaten her emerging identity.

Myfanwy prepares to accuse a Court member without the ordinary support of the organization. She warns Emily and her bodyguard that the accusation may bring violence and that she cannot be certain she can trust them. Because they possess sensitive information, she also says she cannot safely call in anyone else. Her decision shows trust becoming a matter of constrained judgment rather than confidence: she proceeds with only the people present, while openly acknowledging both the risk of relying on them and the risk of allowing them to contact others.

When Myfanwy asks how the traitor knew she intended to expose him, the answer reveals that her office and her assistant’s office have been bugged. The listening devices had been installed when the traitor occupied the office and were put back into continuous use after recent events. He then used a contact in the Rookery to stop Myfanwy’s assistant and a young Pawn, ordering that they be shot. The episode exposes betrayal as a system of surveillance and compromised personnel, not merely a hidden intention: the conspirator can exploit access, communications, and the chain of command to frustrate Myfanwy’s moves.

The Old Conflict Behind the New Alliance

The Checquy–Grafter relationship gives the theme a longer historical scale. In 1677, the Grafters’ incursion brought war to British soil. The Checquy deployed Pawns under the Rooks, and the fighting lasted three weeks, with hundreds of civilians killed. The Checquy’s response depended on costly resistance, including the coordinated action of twelve troops who destroyed seventeen of the invading creatures. The conflict ended only when Crimson Rook John Perry linked his mind to the Grafter general’s and killed both of them. In such a history, neither side has reason to treat the other’s power as harmless or its intentions as self-evident.

After the fighting, the Checquy’s leaders resisted Charles II’s wish to use the apparent victory as a pretext for an invasion of Belgium. Their forces had been devastated and their most capable generals were dead. The Checquy entered negotiations instead, while concealing how precarious its position had become. The treaty required the Belgian ruler to dissolve the Grafters: funds were withdrawn, experiments ended, estates and possessions confiscated, and the project dismantled under Checquy supervision. The arrangement depended on a managed impression of strength. The Checquy did not reveal its weakness; the Belgian side accepted severe concessions because it believed the Checquy might bring overwhelming force to bear.

The supposed end of the Grafters did not produce lasting trust. Centuries later, Graaf Ernst von Suchtlen explains that the Grafters were never interested in conquering England. Their earlier attack had been a feint, with the visible threat masking another purpose. In his account, the Checquy’s control of a hidden supernatural world made open conquest an unsuitable strategy: a public invasion would expose the very existence both organizations needed to keep secret. He describes a conflict in which each side’s ability to survive depends not just on force, but on keeping its existence and intentions within limits.

From Suspicion to Conditional Cooperation

Von Suchtlen admits that the Grafters’ initial aim after their destruction was to hide from the Checquy and inflict pain on it. He had watched his homes destroyed and his associates killed, and survived through an act of bodily concealment. His account makes clear why a peace offer could not simply erase the history of betrayal and violence. For a long time, the two organizations approached one another as enemies, and each had reason to interpret the other’s preparations as a threat.

Over time, Von Suchtlen says, his own judgment changed. He came to see his spite as petty and the Checquy, despite its flaws, as a governing body with noble aims. He raised the prospect of rapprochement with his cousin, who eventually became more receptive. Yet Von Suchtlen continued to infiltrate the Checquy and cultivate collaborators. He presents this not as a wish to harm it but as preparation for persuading a wary organization that joining the Grafters served its interests. The distinction is consequential but not reassuring: the same covert network that he frames as leverage for cooperation has placed double agents within the Court, one of whom welcomes violent revolution.

When Myfanwy asks whether the Grafters are making their case through threat, Von Suchtlen recasts their approach as demonstrating mutual advantage—the stick as well as the carrot. He acknowledges the underlying condition plainly: if the Grafters reveal themselves and the Checquy refuses to accept their existence, they do not intend to die. His proposal therefore does not rest on trust alone. It rests on a balance of risks, with the possibility of cooperation set against the likelihood that renewed hostility would endanger both sides.

Myfanwy articulates the corresponding danger for the Checquy. It would not surrender, even with traitors within the Court; a war might be winnable, but England would be changed, and an international conflict would be difficult to conceal. The Checquy’s mandate, to protect in secrecy, makes open victory costly rather than decisive. Von Suchtlen’s secret approach, hidden even from his own partner, reinforces her reading that he has come to negotiate an alliance rather than demand surrender. The ending of this conflictual exchange does not establish that trust has been restored. It shows instead that both sides understand the limits imposed by secrecy, and that their shared need to survive may create a basis for cooperation where confidence alone cannot.