Even though the crew was still in mourning for little Kristov, Inspector Sarnai didn’t respect our grief. In Brightstone, she pushed ahead so diligently with her investigation that Ash and I were forced to throw more suspicion on our scapegoat, Timoth Bowmore. Disguised as nobles, we snuck into a party and whispered about how we’d overheard a shouting match between Timoth and another aristocrat. “It was the week before Lord Strangford’s murder…,” we murmured. Passionate for any gossip about their “friends,” the nobles leaped on the rumor and embellished it so enthusiastically that by the time Ash and I left, everybody knew that Timoth had been slighted by a junior Strangford and stormed out vowing revenge on the whole house.

That, we thought, should keep Sarnai in Brightstone just a little longer.

One of the crew’s many fires put out – or at least temporarily smothered – Ash went off to collect our share of Hive proceeds from his sister, while I changed into merchant-class attire and strolled over to Silkshore to check on Ian Templeton.

By this point, I’d visited the playwright so many times that he wasn’t surprised to find me on his front step. “Miss Hakar! Come in! Come in!” he cried, waving and flapping his bathrobe sleeves like a giant bird. “I finally finished revising the third act! The ending just wasn’t working – I’ve been thinking about it for days – but then I thought of tweaking the part about Serekh and now it works much better, and I changed the title too….” Practically dragging me into his sanctum, which looked like it had been ravaged by a storm of ghosts, he seized a sheaf of messy handwritten pages and thrust them at me.

“A Rose Blooms in Betuat?” I read the title out loud. (At least, I assumed it was the title. It was the first line, at any rate.)

“Yes!” Templeton declared. “It took me ages to come up with the right phrasing, but then one evening I was taking a walk and happened to pass the Moon’s Embrace Spa exactly when they were getting a shipment of rose petals….” Suppressing a groan, I let him ramble on while I starting skimmed the first act.

After careful cultural consultation with Sigmund, Templeton had selected an old Iruvian folk tale about a young woman who lived in Betuat, the U’Duashan district for miners, laborers, and craftspeople. Born into a family of street vendors, she showed considerable artistic talent from a young age and yearned to become a painter. However, her parents could not afford to buy her paints and brushes, nor spare her from the family trade, and so she languished until she caught the eye of the young scion of House Anserekh.

At this point, A Rose Blooms in Betuat deviated from the original plot, which involved a deus ex machina intervention from Demon Prince Serekh himself, and concluded with the Anserekh scion taking the young woman as a junior concubine so she could paint full time. Aware that no Doskvolian audience would appreciate polygamy unless it was that kind of play, which it distinctly was not because Templeton respected Iruvian culture too much, the playwright had converted the story into a classic Akorosian triumph of love. Still, the lyricism of the language elevated what might otherwise have been a rather pedestrian finale to something sublime.

“I love it,” I breathed at last, setting down the pages reverently. Even though I’d only meant to skim the play so I could analyze how well it would quell the flames of war, I’d ended up reading every word. “When will it open?”

Templeton’s excitement crumbled. His shoulders sagged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “With the curfew, we can’t do any evening shows, and the Lord Governor isn’t saying anything about how long the curfew will last.”

Oops. I had no one but myself (and Faith and Ash and the Reconciled) to blame for that. “But the theaters can open in the daytime, right? They can still do matinees?”

“Yeeees.” The playwright showed no enthusiasm for that option whatsoever.

The intricacies of Akorosian theater politics were no specialty of mine, but I was vaguely aware that the art world considered evening performances to be much more prestigious. “Ummm, maybe some of the nobles have a private theater in their mansions?” I suggested. “Obviously, it’s not Spiregarden Theater, and it won’t be as spectacular a premiere as your work deserves, but it’s still something….”

Templeton looked even more crestfallen. “But – ”

I hastened to reassure him. “Or it could be a matinee at Spiregarden. Is there any reason it couldn’t be a matinee?” (Besides the weight of tradition and cultural snobbery, that was?)

The playwright grumbled something unintelligible about performance times and discerning audiences but yielded. “No, it could be a matinee.” He dragged out the words. “It just seems so sad to have a world premiere be a matinee. But I suppose that’s better than no premiere at all….”

“Well,” I pointed out the obvious silver lining, “nothing else is playing, so people will be excited about any play to attend.”

A short pause, while he considered and forgave the accidental insult. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll talk to Maestro Helleren.”

Before he could change his mind, I pretended to remember something. “Oh! I keep meaning to ask: Have you considered printing A Requiem for Aldric?”

The non sequitur (and the threat of fresh sedition charges) jarred him out of his gloom. “Oh! Oh…. I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I don’t want to go back to jail….”

From his sober expression, I could tell that he was already envisioning a second stint in Ironhook Prison. “I don’t think it will come to that,” I soothed. “And if it does, I know people who might be able to help you.”

After all, I could stash him in our railcar or persuade the Lampblacks to hide him. Come to think of it, the Grinders, Skovlander revolutionaries that they were, would leap at the chance to shelter a champion of their cause.

“Are you sure?” Templeton asked, torn. “But it’s been so long…I’m sure people have forgotten all about A Requiem for Aldric by now….”

“No,” I declared, “a copy of A Requiem for Aldric is just the sort of thing the nobility would love to get their hands on – ” if only for the bragging rights of owning a subversive book – “and it would be such a shame if we never found out how it ended.”

“Well, everyone knows how it ended.” I winced at the implicit rebuke, but Templeton continued, “But you’re right. I should stop being such a coward.” Wistfully, he mused, “I was proud of the second act. It was good.”

“I’m sure it was,” I told him with absolute sincerity.

“You’re right. I should have it printed. Maybe…a limited run? Distributed limitedly,” he stressed, mostly addressing himself.

“I know Odrienne Keel for one would be very excited,” I hinted.

“Oh, Odrienne.” He pronounced her name with fondness, then promised, “I’ll talk to my printer.”

Well, that saved me the trouble of volunteering Ash to find and haggle with a Charterhall printer. It also reminded me of something else I wanted from the playwright. Switching on the charm, I wheedled, “Do I have to wait? Can I read it first? Pleeeease?”

By that point, he didn’t need much convincing, and he willingly excavated his personal copy, which I read on the spot. As I’d expected, the second act fulfilled all the promise of the first with a heartrending beauty that was only enhanced by the inevitable ending.

Shortly thereafter, A Rose Blooms in Betuat premiered at Spiregarden Theater as a matinee and immediately became the buzz of the town. Within days of its opening, popular sentiment towards Iruvia shifted. Whereas before hotheaded young nobles slung racial slurs and agitated for war to “bring those sand dogs to heel” or “crush those sand lice,” now they sported “U’Duashan” turbans and affected incomprehensible “Hadrathi” accents. Even the North Hook Gazette ran a series of editorials about how bad war was for inter-isle commerce and business in general. Since Doskvol was the financial heart of the Imperium, no war could last very long without its backing.

At our next meeting, Sigmund told me that our spies in Imperial City had reported to the Patriarch that the Immortal Emperor was hesitating. Dunvil, naturally, wasn’t going to accept defeat quite so readily, but once we removed him, all impetus for an Iruvian invasion would peter out.

“Excellent,” I pronounced. “You should start thinking about what you really want, then.”

Sigmund actually laughed.

Back in the railcar, Ash finally broached the subject of his conversation with Nyryx. “Should we kill the next Ascendent, or should we deal with our exploding heat?” he asked as a more or less rhetorical introduction to a long speech. “The Inspectors assume that they are incorruptible because they are always on the lookout for ghostly possession and refuse to acknowledge that they can be bribed or otherwise succumb to mortal reality. That said, they are clearly not incorruptible – ” I didn’t know where that conclusion came from, because it was not at all clear to me – “and Nyryx and I are convinced that we can hide a ghost inside the Inspector’s soul, which will be very important – ”

“Oooh,” yawned Faith, slowly hauling herself upright in her chair and stretching to take up as much space as possible. “Am I going to need to wake up for this?”

Ash let her indulge her theatrics before he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “This extra score will sidetrack us a bit, but we will be really, really sidetracked if she learns that it was we specifically who dealt with Strangford. Fixing this problem now will be much easier than waiting until the Inspectors send the army to, I don’t know, burn down the Old Rail Yard and the orphanage and generally do whatever they want to do, because they’re a lot bigger and more powerful than we are! We don’t have to do this now – we can rush ahead with our plans, but can you imagine the heat after the next Ascendent? I am all for impatience and haste and everything along those lines, but we need to do a better job at covering our tracks.” To my relief, he finally wound down, breathing hard.

After giving him a minute to make sure he’d finished, I said, “Unfortunately, I think you’re right. Just when I finally calmed this city down too…. Ugh.”

“If we wait another week, she’s going to find us,” Ash pronounced. “A lot of people know what we did.”

And whose fault was it that Hutton and all of his Grinders knew our faces? “Yes. That they do.”

To reclaim our attention, Faith stretched and yawned loudly. “I suppose I’ve never tangled with an Inspector before. It might be interesting to see how they operate.”

It worked. Turning to face her, Ash addressed her with all his customary dryness. “Can you disambiguate your use of the word ‘tangled,’ Faith?”

She just yawned again, showing off more of her tonsils than anyone not her barber should have to see.

I retorted, “I’m not sure I want her to.”

“Never mind,” agreed Ash.

Sounding more bored than ever, Faith informed me, “I’m hurt, Isha.”

Her perfunctoriness actually made Ash laugh. “Still…we should find a way to get paid.”

“You don’t think the Reconciled would be willing to pay us?” I asked.

“They should be – but, I don’t know, we’ve asked a lot of Nyryx already.”

That was true, and Ash had a better sense of Reconciled finances than I did. An idea struck and I exclaimed, “The Bowmores! They’ve endured a lot of harassment from this Inspector. They might appreciate her being neutralized.”

“Especially since their son is her primary suspect!” Faith jumped in. “I imagine they must be distressed and disturbed and dismayed, and want to stop her before she finishes the job!”

“I love it,” announced Ash, relishing the words. “This will be slightly tricky, but in the best of ways. We can be a…special interest group that looks out for nobles in dicey circumstances.” (Personally, I thought that nobles were the group who both needed lobbying the least and were most likely to believe that they did.) Switching into salesman mode, Ash declared, “Our services are guaranteed, and we are paid after the job. From the Bowmores’ perspective, we are bribing and politicking to keep their house as un-disgraced as possible – ”

“A tragic tale!” Faith broke in. “A terrible choice made by the elites of the Bowmore family!” Lowering her voice, she inserted a quaver. “They know, deep inside their hearts, that their son has committed an atrocious crime: treason against the Church, treason against the throne…. And so, they are forced to choose between fealty to the Emperor and the life of their son. Stricken with doubt, burdened by their consciences, they conclude that their only option is to hire assassins so they can wash their hands of this affair and appear as the noble, loyal, glorious house that they truly are!” Faith wrung her hands, mimicking the desperate parents. “All the while saving their poor, murderous son. He just stepped out of line once, and it was for such a good cause. They’ll keep him in line from now on!”

After taking a moment to extract the gist of that soliloquy, Ash proclaimed, “I love it,” which prompted her to leap up and sweep a bow to each corner of the railcar common room. “But a minor addendum is that from the Bowmores’ perspective, we’re not planning to murder the Inspector. We’re just using…other means to point all the blame away from them.”

Faith instantly embraced this correction. “That’s an excellent idea! With heavy hearts, believing that Inspectors can never be subverted, the Bowmores reach out to assassins. But the assassins, exceeding all their expectations, succeed at what was once deemed impossible. They convince the un-convincible, bribe the un-bribable, corrupt the un-corruptible, and lo! The Inspector leaves the Doskvol! Thus, even though they made a terrible choice, they did not end up having to pay the consequences!”

“Sounds beautiful, Faith,” Ash said. “Shall we arrange this meeting?”

And we did – easily.

Pretending to be a crew of “problem solvers” from Imperial City, we sent Lord and Lady Bowmore a letter explaining that we had uncovered incontrovertible evidence of Timoth’s guilt. However, we understood the importance of stability on the City Council – that touch was Ash’s, of course – and hence we had decided to bring such a delicate matter to the Bowmores’ attention first so that they could help us help them (that wording was Faith’s).

Swayed by the flowery language, Lord and Lady Bowmore met us at their spare townhouse in Brightstone (just because they required our services didn’t meant that they had to invite us home to Whitecrown). There, we presented our “proof” with such authority that by the time we finished, they were absolutely convinced that Timoth had helped murder Lord Strangford and that we could keep the Inspector from naming him in her report.

“As long as she doesn’t implicate any of the Bowmores, we will pay you eight coin,” Lord Bowmore pronounced, somehow making a straightforward commercial transaction sound like noblesse oblige.

“Of course, we will be able to influence the things that go into that report, things that might keep the City Council operating smoothly…,” Ash hinted. Fearing that the nobles were too dense to grasp his meaning, he spelled it out: “If you provide any guidance there, we will take it into account.”

“We certainly don’t have a very high opinion of the Penderyns,” Lady Bowmore told us, which was a massive understatement considering that she was suggesting the eradication of that entire line.

Ash nodded soberly, probably because Nyryx had just revealed that Lord Penderyn was one of the Reconciled’s “fancy recruits.”

“However,” Lady Bowmore finished, “we do not care how you accomplish this, so long as it is accomplished.”

That blank check suited us just fine.