The next time Inspector Sarnai showed up at the tea shop to replenish her stock of Dagger Isles black tea, we were waiting. Although I’d argued that it would be much safer to send Ash in alone, Faith had declared, “We can play customers. Come on, there’s no way I will give up an opportunity to watch this!” and tried to haul me into her compartment to pick out the perfect bored-unemployed-middle-class-lady-with-social-aspirations outfit. So now, wearing matching, frilly, pastel day dresses with giant, beflowered hats obscuring our faces, Faith and I were wandering around the tea shop, sniffing tea samples and tittering at teapot designs. The star of our show, a heavily costumed and made-up Ash, had already enlisted the shop girl’s aid by playing on her sense of romance. They were commiserating over dating woes when the young woman cleared her throat.

“She’s coming!” she squealed, before forcibly composing herself.

Drifting idly to a side so I could see through the window, I noted two Bluecoats shuffling into place on either side of the door. Any potential customers who’d been admiring the window display immediately remembered more urgent shopping and hurried away.

The bells on the door jingled, and Inspector Sarnai walked in.

Over the past week, Ash had rehearsed this scene so many times that he could spew his sob story in his sleep. “No, no, there must be some way that you can find some! You don’t understand what this tea meant to her,” he pleaded with the shop girl, leaving it ambiguous whether he was talking about his ailing mother or an ex-lover. “She always drank – I mean drinks – Dagger Isles Winding Clouds black tea! If I can’t find it – ” he shook his head in despair and slumped over the counter – “was I ever a worthy son? How could you do this?”

“I’m so sorry, sir,” apologized the shop girl, “but we sold out a few days ago – ” because we’d bought all of their Dagger Isles Winding Clouds black tea, which was actually quite good – “and we’re not expecting the next shipment for another week.”

Ash’s head jerked up. “What?” he cried. “No! She might not last that long!” His voice started to rise and shade towards anger. “I don’t think you understand. Who is this buyer? Who is this supplier?” From a briefcase, he whipped out a notebook with a beautifully tooled leather cover from the finest stationery store in Nightmarket. Laying it on the counter, he deliberately flipped through it to find the first blank page, letting the Inspector see his beautiful longhand. “I want to know every detail about this supplier,” he snapped, sounding much more like his usual self. “Who are they? Where are they from? Who else do they service in the area? What are the other local tea shops?”

Oh dear. Ambling over to a display of tea cozies, I picked one up and inspected it, our prearranged signal for Take it down a notch. Just to be safe, I repeated it with a few more tea cozies.

Catching himself, Ash turned his next demand into a gusty sigh.

Throughout the charade, the Inspector had been standing to a side, monitoring everyone and everything in the shop while she waited patiently for the shop girl to finish Ash’s order.

Sidling up to Faith, I stage-whispered into her ear, “I heard his fiancée left him at the altar for a minor noble from out of town. I heard that she was the one who introduced him to this type of tea.” Then I darted a quick glance in the Inspector’s direction, feigning guilt that she might have overheard me.

The sympathy on her face made me look away again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her take a few tentative steps towards the counter. In a quiet, almost breathy voice, she said, “Uh, pardon me, sir, but if that particular brand is sold out throughout the city, which it might be, because it’s not easy to come by – ”

Ash emitted a dying whimper. “No, that can’t be. That can’t happen.” He looked at her hopefully. “Could it?”

“It could, it sometimes does,” she affirmed, still in that timid tone. “It’s one of my favorites too. Might I suggest Severosian black tea grown at the Keogh Estate? It’s slightly less astringent, but it is very nuanced. It has subtle floral notes over a backdrop of cinnamon and cardamom. Your mother might appreciate it?”

Another mournful sigh whooshed out of Ash. “She might. She’s very discriminating…. I wouldn’t be a good son if I didn’t get exactly what she wants, though. What if she can tell? What if she knows?”

The Inspector stepped back. “It was just a thought….”

“It was a kind one,” Ash assured her.

Frantically, giving up on the subtle, tea-shop-paraphernalia-related signals, I hand-signed, Yes! Take her advice! Buy the tea!

Injecting a note of warmth into his voice, Ash continued without a break, “I so appreciate moments of kindness like these. I haven’t seen even a glimmer of brightness in weeks.” (Well, of course he hadn’t. This was Doskvol.) “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t taking notes.” He opened the notebook again, making sure she saw his reading list, which of course included many (but not all, because that would be too suspicious) of her favorite romance novels, and uncapped a polished fountain pen. “Sorry, could you tell me the type of tea again?”

“Oh, yes.” She gave him all the specifications, which he wrote down in Copperplate script as she watched. I could tell that she was admiring both his penmanship and his taste in stationery supplies.

“It’s so good to find someone else who understands fine tea,” Ash remarked as he blotted the ink dry. “Good tea is so hard to come by, but I can’t understand why anyone would drink anything else – ”

Oh no. Urgently, I hand-signed, You’re going overboard! Buy the tea and leave!

“ – But I don’t want to burden you with any of this,” Ash apologized.

Turning back to the shop girl, he bought the tea, bade the Inspector good day, and exited. I, on the other hand, lingered to watch Sarnai make her own purchase, of the same type of replacement tea that she’d recommended to Ash.

The whole time, a tiny smile hovered on her lips.

Back in the railcar, we conducted a comprehensive postmortem of Ash’s performance, the same way we had for Spider and Azael after they got caught filching sweet buns. Afterwards, Faith instructed Ash, “Now you should write a missive to the Inspector thanking her for her suggestion. You can leave it with the tea seller.”

“Oooh, that’s a good idea,” he replied appreciatively. “You always have to show off your handwriting. It’s the most attractive part of somebody.”

Of Ash, maybe.

And, to be honest, probably of Faith as well. She burst into such a long fit of giggles that I could not tell how she found the breath to keep giggling for that long. (Maybe the Ascendent needed less air?)

Still cackling away, she drafted a thank-you letter that mashed together bits and pieces from all of the Inspector’s favorite romance novels, while Ash and I read over her shoulder and reined her in. At the end, Ash copied out a short, sweet, grateful note in his very best Copperplate handwriting and entrusted it to the very excited shop girl.

She soon reported that the Inspector had taken it and gone away smiling.

Ash’s second encounter with Inspector Sarnai was even more carefully orchestrated than the first – and had an even more contentious lead-up.

While we were brainstorming ideas, Faith proposed, “Ash steps out of the alley just as she’s passing and collides with her! Scattering all his books on the ground!” She flung open her arms to demonstrate, knocked a stack of novels onto the floor, and modeled a piteous, distraught expression for Ash. She did not, however, make a single move towards picking up the books herself.

I certainly wasn’t going to clean up after her. “Sarnai’s an Imperial Inspector,” I objected. “Plus she’s accompanied by Bluecoats everywhere.” No one so oblivious as to run into people could have become an Inspector – and no one so inattentive as to let that happen would be been chosen for a bodyguard.

“Hmmm, but still, it’s a good general idea,” mused Ash. “Would it be very sentimental for me to – no, surely it wouldn’t be sentimental for me to have a child, but perhaps…I could be…caring for a niece or nephew?”

What could possibly be less romantic than playing stepmother to your lover’s ex-lover’s offspring? “How would you make it obvious at a glance that it’s not your child?” I asked.

Ash considered for a moment. “I would call to them as my niece or nephew after they run into the Inspector after they dodge a…particularly aggressive wagon driver or something like that. Horribly embarrassed, they collide with the Inspector or the Bluecoats and get mud all over them – ” the Inspector, the Bluecoats, the child, or all of the above? – “I chide them, and oh my, who is this?” He feigned having his face light up with recognition.

There was a long, unimpressed silence.

Unoffended, Ash asked, “Thoughts? Proposals for a third date?”

If he counted the two previous interactions with the Inspector as “dates,” then he was as woefully inexperienced as she.

“She’s been spending a lot of time in Six Towers,” I told him. My agents had reported that Sarnai was questioning beggars who lived near the bridge to Nightmarket.

“Six Towers,” commented Faith. “Hmmm, I wonder why.”

Well, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the assassination of a certain prominent citizen in that district.

“Other people could have done it,” protested Ash. “It didn’t have to be us. People die all the time.” (Which, while true, didn’t exactly absolve us.)

Obviously unconcerned by the Inspector’s competence, Faith chirped, “I love the image of the hapless Ash running into her and forcing her to save him from his own self-inflicted misfortunes!”

The latter part did match the sort of romance novels Sarnai favored. “Maybe Ash could be the one dodging a carriage?” I suggested. “Or he’s about to get run over by one, and she pulls him out of the way?”

“Right,” groused Ash, “because I’m supposed to be distracted and distraught and depressed. This is not – why do women find this attractive?” he demanded.

Now it was my turn to giggle while Faith explained with a perfectly straight face, “We like saving people, Ash.”

“Wouldn’t she be more impressed if I demonstrated how efficient I was at my job?” he complained, then reconsidered. “She might be more interested, but maybe not in the way I want.”

No, no, she really wouldn’t be.

“Ash, dear?” Faith made sure she had his full attention before she said, emphasizing the words, “Nobody wants a partner who’s efficient in bed.”

And I did not need to know that about her and Irimina.

“Are you sure?” protested Ash, who had probably hoped to show off his time-management prowess. “This Inspector might beg to differ.”

“That is not what I’ve seen in those books I’ve read,” Faith retorted.

He had to defer to her expertise.

And so it was that one afternoon, while she was making her rounds of Six Towers, Inspector Sarnai saw a man leap out of the way of a speeding carriage. His books flew out of his arms and plopped into the mud, and with a cry of distress, he scrambled around on his hands and knees to scoop them up. She rushed forward to help, they both reached for the last book at the same time, he looked up, and she found herself face to face with the melancholy young man from the tea shop.

She blinked in recognition and smiled.

Ash and I had rehearsed the next, crucial bit over and over and over, ad nauseam (at least for Ash and me; definitely not for Faith, who relished every bumbling, inefficient second of it), until he could approximate an embarrassed blush.

“Oh!” he cried, feigning humiliation. “I’ve been so clumsy lately! I don’t understand what’s happening. Oh, no, no, you don’t need to help. I can handle this on my own.”

“It’s no trouble,” Sarnai assured him at once. “I’m sure you must have a lot on your mind right now.”

She let go of the book, they stood at the same time, and Ash brushed futilely at the mud on his coat. “It is…a trying time,” he sighed. “I imagine we all have trying problems, though.”

As she handed him the books she’d retrieved for him, her Bluecoats regarded him with uniform, bored expressions.

“You have such…imposing attendants at all times!” Ash remarked, pretending to register their presence all of a sudden. “I don’t want to impose upon anyone so important to the workings of the Imperium!”

(In the shadows of the alley where Faith and I were watching, I suppressed a groan.)

“It really is no trouble, sir,” Sarnai replied warmly.

“Perhaps I can repay you for all the help you’ve given me,” Ash said. “My mother did indeed like the tea you recommended.”

(Beside me, Faith facepalmed and moaned, “No, this is the second encounter. You ask for her name! We can save the actual date for Encounter Number Forty-Seven, in appropriate Doskvolian fashion!”

For once, we were entirely in accord.)

Even though he couldn’t hear either of us, Ash finally recalled some of our roleplayed scenes and got himself back on track. “I feel like I’ve imposed on you so much already,” he explained earnestly, “but you just have such an air about you.” He slid his eyes in the direction of our alley, seeking feedback, even though he couldn’t see us.

“It really is no trouble at all,” the Inspector stressed, sounding just the faintest bit impatient. She patted the top book. “It’s a good read. I hope you enjoy it.”

“Oh, I – I’ve had my eye on it for some time,” Ash stammered. “I wouldn’t mind – if it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition – I’d be happy to talk about it sometime, after I read it – I have so few people to talk to about these books – ”

(I groaned again. Now he was making himself sound like some sort of pathetic, socially impaired loser.)

The Inspector hesitated for a very long moment. Then she replied, “I would like that.”

“That’s such an honor!” Ash gushed. “There’s a cute café in Charterhall that I’ve been meaning to try, Comber’s Coffee House.” (Which was controlled by the Reconciled, of course.) “How about meeting there next week? Dinner – ” He suddenly remembered that the city was still under curfew and amended himself, “Lunch, perhaps?”

Again, Sarnai hesitated. Then she agreed, “Yes, I would like that.”

And, mercifully, Ash let her go on her way before he ruined our meticulous setup.