Matteus

Age shows plainly on Matteus, whose face carries a permanently weary cast beneath brown hair of medium length. A bolo tie is the one personal touch he adds to the regulation Military Police Brigade uniform.

Little of his inner life reaches the page directly, so his record speaks instead. Slipping into the Dissidence Movement without raising alarm points to genuine skill in espionage, and talking the movement's leader into accepting a serving Military Police officer as a comrade suggests a persuasive tongue. Beneath the professional surface sits resentment; the elitist attitude of highborn officers like Xavi grates on him until it curdles into contempt.

Captain Gloria Bernhart plants Matteus inside a dissident network taking root in the Industrial City. When she dispatches Xavi Inocencio to crush that movement, Matteus rides along as his escort, and Xavi privately reads him as a minder who might kill him should the mission require it. In the city, Matteus brings Xavi before the movement's assembled leadership and vouches for him as a Military Police recruit who shares their aims. The leader, August, asks after the weapons promised for the coming revolt; Matteus reports securing nearly everything apart from some explosives, shipped in through routes chosen to keep the authorities blind. He also steers Xavi toward keeping a dinner engagement with Captain Dafner so that no suspicion attaches to the young officer, and the two separate with plans to reunite the following night.

When the uprising begins, both men move with Juli's group against the Military Police head office. Matteus notes Xavi's surprise on learning that Xenophon Harkimo's workshop ranks among the targets alongside the mint, and admits some surprise of his own. Once Xavi breaks away toward the workshops, Matteus intercepts him and drops the pretense. His role supplying the movement's arms will surface after the revolt is crushed, so he intends to kill Xavi and hang the blame on a dead man; years of enduring the young noble's arrogance make the prospect easy to relish. Their swords cross, and experience gradually tells, leaving Xavi beaten on the ground. Before the killing stroke lands, Xavi's agent Fuchs wounds Matteus from behind. The lapse costs everything: Xavi's counter puts him down, and the young officer finishes him by driving Matteus's own blade through his chest.