<strong>Nellens Daga</strong><br/><br/>It didn't betray much that Daga displayed no particular measure of comfort at the thought of the Empress' daughter's ascension, given that House Nellens would find itself a touch vulnerable with<em>anyone</em>on the Scarlet Throne save for the woman who'd named it. If he favored anyone to replace her, it stood to reason he would likely "favor" that candidate only in the weakest of senses: the least terrible of uniformly miserable options.<br/>It wasn't true, but it stood to reason.<br/><br/>"To cover my back, certainly. As should every law-abiding citizen of the Realm, to say nothing of those that enforce those laws, but my trust does not relieve my responsibility." He emptied what remained in his glass and set it back down on the table, offering a smile that belied the struggle to draw lines without offering a meaningful refusal. "I certainly don't expect I'd need more than a chance to review the details -- you're not mistaken that my attention is taxed as it is, and I'd hardly wish to make more work for myself than that -- but investigations are a magisterial concern, however well they may have been conducted, be it by Legion or Scale. If I'm to lend my voice and so implicitly involve the Magistracy, my duty demands at least that much of me."<br/><br/>He let his eyes stray briefly over the room as he spoke, taking in the House and consequently allowing a hint that there might be matters he'd prefer to give his attentions to even beyond whatever other investigations might demand them. There was a line between men whose diligence sprung from a sense of responsibility to their work and those whose diligence was a consequence of a more consuming marriage to their labor.<br/>As his gaze settled onto a particularly fetching young woman across the room for a moment longer than normal for a cursory scan, it reinforced the message offered by the very fact that it was in a brothel that she'd found him: Nellens Daga was likely the former.