In the end, it took a professional Slide to extract Inspector Sarnai’s tea habits. After developing a rapport with the shop girls at her usual purveyor, Ash found out that Sarnai was quite knowledgeable about tea. She always walked through the door knowing exactly what she wanted, purchased it, and left, politely but firmly declining any recommendations. Although she wasn’t consistent about the type, she did seem to favor high-quality Dagger Isles black tea.

“Ugh!” Ash complained to Faith and me. “She’s so…delightful.” Lips curled with disgust, he spat out the word like moldy eel pie.

The more I learned about Candra Sarnai, the more I respected her as the one truly decent human being I’d met in U’Duasha or Doskvol. To test his resolve, I hinted, “Are you sure we have to do this?”

“Yes!” Any doubts Ash harbored about the score concerned the difficulty of preying on the vices of someone who didn’t have any. “Despite all the nice novels she reads, she’s not going to say, ‘Oh, these Poets are such kind people, and even though they murdered Admiral Strangford, we should lightly pat them on the wrist and tell them, please don’t do it again’.” Then, as if afraid that I might actually believe that, he shook his head emphatically. “No, Isha, she’s not going to do that!”

“I know,” I admitted. “It just seems like such a waste….”

“We could try to convert her, but I don’t think that’s realistic.”

Regrettably, I agreed. “It seems unlikely given what we know of her and the Inspectors in general.”

“Yes,” pronounced Ash, putting his own unique spin on things, “I have yet to hear of a single Inspector who has suddenly developed a conscience and rejected the cruelty of the Imperium. Although I suppose if there were such examples, the Emperor would suppress them.”

He was probably right, but I was still thinking about our Inspector – our poor, innocent, honorable Inspector who was going to die for her integrity. “I hate this,” I announced, somewhat at random, to the room at large. “I’m going to state for the record: I hate this.”

Interrupting his rant against the culpability of everyone who played a role, however miniscule, in upholding the Imperial system, Ash told me, “I’ll have the scribe add it to the meeting minutes.”

I gave him a sarcastic, “Thank you, Ash,” which was all that his promise deserved.

Turning to our other crewmate, who’d spent the duration of this meeting staring blankly at the stack of romance novels on the common room table, Ash inquired, “Faith, I don’t suppose you’ve read any of these?”

Faith jolted upright, her eyes refocusing on the spines. “Oh!” she exclaimed, as if shocked by the coincidence. “That was all required reading for the orphans!”

“What?” Ash yelped, toppling headfirst into her trap. “What’s so special about this book?” He held up the top one, whose cover featured a pair of lovers gazing earnestly into each other’s eyes while roses bloomed in the background.

“It’s a classic!” Faith snatched the book so she could flip through it and quote illustrative passages, and started raving about the author’s profound impact on Akorosian literature. Although the first five minutes might have been plausible, the rest sounded preposterous. At last, she tired of her own voice and our glassy eyes and wrapped up with a wry, “I’ve read a couple romance novels in my day. I had lots of time and very little responsibility.”

Somehow, I doubted that of someone who’d risen so high in the Church of Ecstasy that she’d Ascended, and Ash didn’t bother to acknowledge it. “Any ideas for how to proceed?” he asked instead.

If we wanted to indulge our penchant for targeting vices, we would have to attack Candra Sarnai through either tea or romance novels, both of which would be challenging and unconventional avenues, to say the least. Perhaps the unconventional challenge attracted Faith’s interest, because for the next couple hours, the three of us sat around the table, peacefully skimming through romance novels and occasionally summarizing scenes for one another.

The more I read, the more repulsive I found the whole affair. At last, I snapped my book shut, shoved it away from me, and declared, “I can’t see this working. I never found any hints that Sarnai has a lover or even a romantic interest.”

Laying his own book aside, Ash mused, “True, and she might get suspicious if we set up one of these sentimental scenarios anyway.”

Head still bent over her book, Faith pointed out, “She doesn’t get out much. It’s possible that she will be overwhelmed by the sentimentality, given that she spends so much time suppressing it.”

For once, her opinion actually made sense, and we mulled over a few ideas: “replacing” her Bluecoat detail with ourselves (Ash), sending her letters from a secret admirer (me), or arranging for her to stumble across Ash tending a tiny tea garden tucked away in a secluded corner (Faith).

“Ash, upon seeing her, blushes and runs away!” Faith cried, then stopped short and mimicked deep thought. “Oh, wait, how does that work in a classic love story? Is the guy supposed to be coy?”

As a highly-literate Akorosian, she knew perfectly well that that was not the case in classic Akorosian love stories. As far as I could tell, all the novels followed the same basic formula: The male protagonist acted like a snobby jerk at first, then he and the female protagonist started to like each other, then social pressure in various guises tore them apart, but finally, in the end, love conquered all and they got married and all of that fluff.

I answered Faith anyway, mostly for Ash’s benefit. “Generally, the girl is the coy one.”

Ash breathed a sigh of relief that whatever sentimental scene we devised wouldn’t require him to flee from the embodiment of Imperial tyranny. He offered our favorite scapegoat for the sacrifice: “We could set this up as happening to Timoth Bowmore! Sarnai could intercept love letters to or from him that excite her. A secret tryst, a spurned lover – ”

“An elopement,” I suggested facetiously, but he jumped on that.

“Yes! Oh, but Timoth is currently under house arrest….”

“He could be planning to elope,” I played along. “And the Inspector gets wind of it.”

“She goes to Gaddoc Rail to watch it happen in person, and we kidnap her there?” Ash tested the words, trying to determine whether they made sense in the same sentence. “I could get behind this…. It’s not my usual cup of narrative tea, but we do have a lot of samples to read.” Haphazardly, he flipped through a sappy romance about a flower seller from Six Towers and a leviathan hunter officer from Whitecrown.

“I like the idea of Ash seducing her,” put in Faith, propping her elbows on a book and her chin in her hands. “People do tend to be slightly less suspicious when they encounter romantic prospects involving themselves. And it might be advantageous if we don’t attach our actions to her work, so she doesn’t start from an analytic mindset.” She shrugged elaborately and helplessly, and dimpled, “It’s all innocent happenstance!”

I winced inwardly, picturing how we were going to raise Sarnai’s naïve hopes and shatter them before murdering her. It seemed so much crueler than our usual modus operandi.

“The tea shop might be the best place to engineer innocent happenstance,” said Ash, who was determined to work in as many of Sarnai’s almost-vices as he could.

Faith tugged on my sleeve to reclaim my attention and demanded, “Isha, does she like tragic love stories? Or action-packed ones? Or dark and gloomy ones? Is Ash buying his sister’s favorite tea to put on her grave? Or his ex-wife’s? Or his mother’s?”

Pulling away, I shrugged. Sarnai’s bookseller had categorically refused to divulge any specific titles – and I was not inclined to initiate further reconnaissance.

However, my lack of cooperation deterred my crewmates not one whit. Somewhat to my surprise, it was Faith who dispatched the orphans to steal the bookseller’s receipts. This mission went much more smoothly, and they proudly presented her with a complete list of the romance novels Sarnai had bought recently. Ash, Faith, and I (after some prodding) proceeded to purchase them from bookshops across Nightmarket and Charterhall to avoid suspicion and set to work reading them.

Naturally, Faith couldn’t let any educational opportunity escape unscathed, and she commanded the orphans to read the novels too and write book reports.

Moth was ecstatic, Spider and Azael much less so.

Meanwhile, after mining Sarnai’s favorite books for inspiration, Ash collared me to roleplay the tea seller in some scenarios he’d developed. As I soon discovered, most of said scenarios involved him yelling at me about not stocking the tea he wanted, and barely restraining himself from threatening me at knifepoint.

At last, I reminded him, “You’re supposed to be acting depressed and angsty.”

“Yes!” he shouted. “I’m depressed and angsty because you don’t the tea that I have to have!”

Exasperated out of my lethargy, I snapped back, “No, people don’t act like that when they’re depressed. Maybe in real life – ” in Tycheros – “but not in romance novels, Ash!”

That knocked the wind out of his sails (another of my old Crow friend Noggs’ nautical expressions). “Oh.”

Squashing the memory of happy evenings chatting with the Crows on the steps of our boardinghouse, I lectured, “You need to act pathetic. You need to make her want to comfort you.”

“Oh….” He frowned, obviously struggling to wrap his mind around this concept of needing comfort. “Let’s try again.”

So we roleplayed Faith’s idea for a scene, in which Ash was buying tea for an ex-fiancée who had spitefully spurned him.

Playing an officious shop girl, I admonished him, “That’s such a bad idea!” I looked to the side, at an imaginary Sarnai. “Inspector, back me up here. This is such a bad idea!”

Ash immediately broke character to complain, “This conceptual person is making really terrible decisions.”

Faking a sympathetic expression, Faith soothed, “Ash, it’s entirely okay. I’m sure that with a little bit of acting and a little bit of practice, you can pretend that anyone has ever loved you.”

I, too, broke character to burst out laughing.

Doggedly, Ash proposed a different and, in his opinion, much more reasonable persona: “Whatever this ex-lover may have done, her mother is such a delightful person and so afflicted in this time of stress and grief – ” over losing Ash as a son-in-law? – “that it is my duty to see to her well-being. Maybe I can hint that it may help me get back together with my ex-fiancée, but that’s incidental, and let’s focus on the fact that I’m trying to help her mother, who simply cannot take care of herself, and someone must look after her, and I couldn’t bear to see her go one more day without this tea, so you had better bring it in tomorrow or you will be held accountable!”

Faith goggled at him – and then applauded rapturously.

I was the one who had to point out, “That doesn’t seem very hangdog.”

Ash considered that for a moment.

“You could walk into the tea shop with a satchel of books that you’re reading. It might attract the Inspector,” Faith suggested.

“Do we really have to go down the spurned-lover route?” Ash asked, not offended or rebellious, but genuinely confused.

I, too, was having a lot of second and third and even fourth thoughts, especially after witnessing his performances. “Is it really more assured to do it this way,” I asked both of them, “than to stage the elopement of Timoth Bowmore with an imaginary girl?”

“I think this route will be pretty entertaining,” Faith informed me. When I opened my mouth to retort that we did not design our scores for her personal entertainment, she talked over me. “Also, I want to see one of our crew – who doesn’t have to be Ash – seduce, and by ‘seduce’ I mean ‘lure this poor Inspector somewhere’.”

Ash himself provided a more sensible justification: “We can control more of the variables if it’s one of us, and not this Bowmore buffoon.”

“We really just want to get her alone somewhere,” Faith wheedled.

“Yes, first dates are an excellent way to do that,” Ash agreed.

“We can send Isha on the date instead!”

I groaned, but Ash leaped on this chance to worm out of playing the incompetent lover. “Yes, Isha, would you prefer that? You’re welcome to, although most of the romance novels Sarnai reads are male-female.”

“But Isha can dress as a gentleman!” Faith protested, which was indeed something I did from time to time – although I immediately resolved to stop, at least when Faith could see me. “She and Sarnai fall in love, but they can’t be together because she’s secretly a girl!” Slyly, observing my reactions closely, she added, “Or maybe Isha’s very traditional family forbids it because they want children.”

I stared back, stone-faced. The part about family-forbidden romance struck a little too close to home.

With fake innocence, Ash chipped in, “Children are important, Isha.”

I turned to stare at him.

Chortling, he told us, “All right, well, I’m fine with doing this. It does seem very poetic.”

Heaven forbid we carry out a score that wasn’t perfectly poetic down to the last, trivial detail. All of a sudden, I thought I would suffocate if I spent another second with my crewmates. “So we’re decided? We’re done here?”

“Yes – ” began Ash.

“Good.”

And even though it was sleeting, I grabbed my cloak and slammed out of the railcar.

Sigmund would only scold me if I showed up seeking comfort, so I went to Crow’s Foot.

As soon as he saw me on his front stoop, Bazso let me in, poured me a bracing shot of whiskey, and held me until I felt ready to face Faith and Ash again.

Meanwhile, back in the railcar, Ash, too, was having second thoughts. “We’re really doing this to someone on her first date?” he asked. “On what is perhaps her first first date ever?”

Faith met his eyes soberly. “For you, Ash, we can wait until the second.”