He was late only by five minutes, but late is late. Now, every shop or store on the street was closing; the owners or the staff were pulling down the shutters, some closing themselves inside the store, some rushing away as fast as they could. On the cobblestones, panic had taken over the animals, the alley cats were running out, the pigeons were taking refuge on the heights, dogs were frantically barking, trying to get back in the yards or buildings from which they had eloped in search of food or lured by some bitch in heat.

“The Wave is coming. Do you need shelter, young man?” asked an old gentleman who was preparing to lower the shutter on his shoemaking business.

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” he replied, searching refuge in a gang, behind a concrete column.

Daaaang! The Big Belle bell rang the first toll, announcing five o’clock. A vague rumor started after the clapper hit. Before the second toll, it became the sound of an ominous, furious sea. The third, fourth, and fifth bell tolls were lost to his ears because the Wave was there. A tsunami of people, shouting, swearing, shoving each other, erupted on the street. In the thousands, the employees of the Protocol and Safeness Ministry were leaving their duty.

Ten minutes later, the Wave had subsided to a certain degree, and he dared leave his hiding spot to make his way against the current, putting to fair use his elbows. After another five minutes, he had shown his legitimation to a doorman who didn’t give a damn about it, then ran on the couloirs at his full speed to reach the Chores Bureau just in time.

“Good… evening…” he said, taking a breath between words. “Do you… still, have… something open?”

The clerk frowned. He was putting his coat on, ready to leave.

“Is this a reasonable hour to make such a demand? Why didn’t you come earlier?”

“The Wave caught me; I had to wait,” he excused himself. “Please, sir, I would appreciate your help. I really need chore points!”

“Let’s see what I can do,” sighed the clerk, opening a monumental registry.

It was a critical moment. The younger man bent and pretended to raise an envelope from the floor.

“It felt from the desk!”

The clerk took the envelope and looked inside. There were two coupons, each worth a full meal at the Rhits during Festival time. At an auction, now, a month before the festival, they could sell for the price of a horse. No sane individual, though, would have preferred a horse to the glory to have eaten at the Rhits during the Festival, it was a once in a lifetime occasion.

“Oh. My. Goodness!” exclaimed the older man. “You’re well connected, young man!”

“Not so much well, but connected,” he replied.

Suddenly, the browsing of the register became much more enthusiastic.

“So, I see you already did sixteen chores this month… preparing for the Festival, I presume?”

He acknowledged with a nod. Chores meant free days later, and young people liked better to dance and revel than to sit in a bureau during the Festival Month.

“I think I can offer you something special!” smiled the clerk. “The External Correspondence Receiving Bureau needs a night shift. There is almost no activity there during the night, but it’s an important job; it will count as four days of work; with this added to your other chores, you can be free during all the Middle Month and dance until your shoes melt.”

“Perfect! Thank you!”

“No, thank you!” replied the other. “If you ever need another favor, come to me. Avoid my colleague, he has a stiff carrot up his ass, and the haulm is reaching to the Triumphal Arch.”

“Understood!” he smiled.

“So, what’s your name?” asked the clerk, his pen at the ready.

“Quevedo. Istaìnn Quevedo. Reference number S five five four. Please write only the number.”

“Interesting. Secret Service! Well, happy festival, Mister Spy!”

“Nah!” he replied with a dismissive hand wave. “I’m just… logistics. Passing by in between missions.”

Paff! sounded the humongous register, closing.

“I’ll show you the way; it’s near my exit gate.”

The couloirs were almost empty, only a few cleaning personnel mopping the terrazzo as fast as they could, so they could leave too. In front of the bureau, they shook hands and parted ways.

Inside the room, a big ruckus welcomed him. Three clerks were arguing on whose turn was to take the night shift.

“A gentleman would stay!” was saying a girl in her early twenties.

“How could I be so misogynistic to deny a lady the right to work the night shift?” argued back a young man of a similar age. A third clerk, another young male, approved by vigorously shaking his head.

“You can all go; I’ll take the shift!” Istaìnn announced.

“Thanks, Providence!” exclaimed all three in unison, vacating the premise in a hurry. “You have all you need around here,” said the young woman, vaguely waving her index before exiting. All three had used another door that opened directly into a small street.

Post offices need direct access, that’s true, he thought. Go, younglings, fly toward whatever party awaits you. Age will catch up, and you’ll be mature before you know.

Despite his self-professed maturity, he was barely twenty-five.

He started his shift with a nap, leaning a chair back and putting his feet on the desk. Waking up two hours later, he walked back and forth in the bureau, looking in all drawers and cabinets, just to kill time. Another hour later, he sat again in the chair, looking on the walls and letting his thoughts err wherever. A few maps hung here and there, and three portraits. The current monarch’s image, by law, took the center. On its sides, two famous characters: The First King, the legendary hero who had saved the City from its darkest hour, and The Fiddler, his right hand and the first head of the Protocol and Safeness Ministry.

That’s a real child prodigy, thought the young spy, remembering that The Fiddler had been fifteen years old when he had started the most successful spying and diplomatic enterprise on the Realm.

And then he yawned and went to sleep again because his body felt exhausted. He had a lot of physical exercises that day, learning ballroom dances for four hours. For his own sake, to impress the ladies during the Festival, but for his next mission, too, the country of Balirbar, his next destination, was obsessed with dance.

He was smiling in his sleep, dreaming of his dance instructor and her most shapely legs, when a brutal noise made him leap up, and that made him fall on the floor because of the poor balance of the chair.

“What the heck!” he exclaimed, rising painfully.

The exterior door was wide open; its slamming on the wall had been the noise. A soldier, no, a Royal Guard officer, was looking at him severely.

“Lieutenant blah blah blah…” thundered the officer, his name disappearing instantly into the fog of the spy mind, still dazed by the sudden wake-up.

“You will send this ASAP,” continued the military, throwing a package of sealed letters on the desk. “One for each member of the General Council, it has to reach them in less than an hour.”

The commanding tone raised the hair on the spy’s head. Suddenly, an invisible wall appeared in the room, between the two, the hate, the mutual disdain, the class struggle between the bureaucratic proletariat and the military nobles.

The spy stretched and yawned, taking his time, then said:

“I’ll send them tomorrow morning, no can do now! We don’t have night couriers.”

He had no idea if they weren’t night couriers somewhere, but he didn’t intend at all to find out.

“This IS tomorrow morning; it’s well past midnight.” stated the officer. “We have an emergency, the King drowned, the Council must meet to vote the Regency. Move your ass and get to work!”

His knees faltered.

“What? The King? How so?”

“So. Less than two hours ago, at a party on a yacht, either apoplexy or he was… well-disposed, you know. He fell overboard. I was there; he was gone in a sec. Heavy clothes, mink mantle, the usual… They’ll try to search him with scaphanders at daylight, but the Gulf is an endless pit in that spot.”

Istaìnn was left speechless. The happening was not extraordinary; kings, old ones most of all, had apoplexy as a professional disease, caused by the everyday banquets and all sort of excesses, and this king, in particular, was a notoriously heavy drinker since he had lost his wife. But somehow, he had kept all the love the people had given him when he was younger. This was a heavy blow to take in even for a spy.

“Hey, are you dreaming?” said the lieutenant. “Get to work. If you don’t have couriers, go yourself, do something!”

He took a deep breath, feeling like a traitor, but despite his sympathy toward the king, it was not the day or night in which he would abandon all principles and jump when a noble would say jump. He looked the military straight in the eyes and talked with a mature person's tone when explaining something serious to a child.

“Look! There are no emergencies in the administration. The police or the firefighters are the ones doing emergencies. I’ll not make undrawn the king if I’m leaving my post now, but for sure, I’ll lose my job. And by the way, how do you think I could distribute twenty letters in an hour by myself?”

The officer’s face had reached boiled lobster red levels.

“Goodness, you bureaucrats are useless! Get me the list of addresses, and I’ll send my men!”

He searched the drawers and found the address list, four copies of it. He took one and gave it to the lieutenant, who stormed out of the room, slamming the door back.

Hysterical idiot! he complimented the soldier in his thoughts and sat back on the chair.

For a minute, the drunkenness of success took over his mind. Victory over a class enemy was a feat to be enjoyed. Gone the minute, his thoughts began to spin and whirl. Something bugged him. Why was the Council meeting in the middle of the night? As he had said, there were no emergencies in the administration; procedures for interregnum situations were well known and established. Ohst was a well-oiled engine; it had functioned by itself for centuries. Why hurry? Why not vote the Regency on daylight, or even a few days later? His instinct was shouting loud that something was fishy. Very, very suspicious.

During his studies, some teachers had told him to always follow his instinct, others precisely the opposite, to follow common sense and judgment. And judgment said to stay put and mind his business.

So he took his jacket from the hanger and went out into the night.