The witty remark in the face of threats is, of course, an artform practiced by protagonists everywhere, but detectives in particular have long been associated with the form. There is much speculation as to why this is the case, though we have largely eliminated the notion that it is a heritable trait; cracking wise to someone ready and willing to beat you up is not, normally, a trait one passes down to one’s descendants, as it rather reduces the chance that one will survive to have any.

(Some may argue that it’s a linked trait connected to the much more survivable “Hero gene”, but there is only limited evidence for genetic protagonism at this time.)

--Quote from an internally circulated employee email at Mystery Play LLC, presumably not for public consumption.

I had forgotten a basic rule of the mystery play, and really shouldn’t have, considering how often I’ve been on the other side of this; at some point, the detective is going to get caught and worked over by thugs. Things had been going smoothly and the plot seemed mostly wrapped up and we’d never actually done this part.

I took stock of my surroundings. It was your basic shady basement torture chamber, I’ve threatened hundreds of guys in places like this. You’ve got your medical tray of pointedly unsterile tools, your single bare lightbulb overhead, your uncommunicative grunt at the stairs leading to who knows where. The usual.

I knew how this scene went, but it also depended slightly on whether the boss was doing the interrogation or the Heavy. This was going to hurt either way, but whether I was supposed to escape during or if I’d have to get back to a cell to plan a getaway was still up in the air.

Simone stalked into the room, greeting me breezily.

“Mr. Criss. Hello again! Thank you for the excellent bout. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

Simone was smiling. That’s not a great sign. She’d changed clothes again; white suit, short skirt, heels. Which suggested either she wasn’t planning to bleed me because she didn’t want to get it stained, or, slightly more terrifying, she wanted to dye it red. Either way, this wasn’t expected to be a fight scene.

‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather we did in a proper arena, maybe with a referee.”

She smirked. “Of course. Well, assuming you survive this, anyway. Which you may not.”

She picked up a bloodstained hooked knife from the tray. “Tell me, do you know what this one is for?”

“It’s something they used in the 1800s as part of the embalming process, I think? Hardly used now. It’s just on the tray for effect.”

She frowned. “You’re right. Also, ick. Why hasn’t anyone sterilized these anyway? It wouldn’t do for you to get an infection.”

“It’s nice that you care about my health.”

“Well, orders are orders. I do have to hurt you, but there’s no need to be uncivil about it. And besides, Laura would be upset if I returned you too badly damaged.”

“You really do care about her opinion, don’t you. What’s the story there, anyway?”

“I was at that school as a punishment, you see. My family is one of the old warrior clans, but they’ve been trying to modernize. Adapt, and in order to do so they figured they needed to adopt the ways of the highborn mages. We had to marry for bloodline, attend their schools, and not be so willing to fight our way out of every situation. Laura was adept at navigating that system, having grown up in it. I had...trouble adapting.” She ran a hand down my chest, and I realized I’d been stripped to the waist. “Laura taught me how to navigate the school. How to survive. She saved me.”

I was quiet, taking her answer in. “So how did you go from “Set to be married off to a wizard family” to ‘right hand woman for a crime boss?”

She shrugged. “I killed my husband. I was eighteen, he was 63. Spider helped me dispose of the body and make it look as though he’d died normally. And so I started working for him.”

She paused, turned, and walked back towards me. “But we’re not here to talk about me.”

Part of the reason we have such comprehensive medical waivers is for situations like this. The pain’s usually toned down from what it would be in reality, but most of our clients aren’t exactly familiar with physical injury, so for them it can feel like the worst thing in the world. But hey, they paid for it.

Besides her whole wind and storm schtick, Simone’s got a few spells in her arsenal that just inflict pain with no actual external wounds. I never asked whether she picked them up in her previous job, and after being on the receiving end, still don’t want to know.

They work surprisingly well on troll-bloods, for example, because it bypasses the whole ‘mostly impervious to mortal weapons’ thing and just focuses on triggering your nerve endings.

So I didn’t answer or really process what questions she was asking me because I was too busy screaming.

I realize I probably let down the ‘keep up a bold front and never let them see they’ve gotten to you side by being a smartass during torture, but to be honest I was running out of material for that anyway.

After a while, I got carried to a side room with a cot to rest until it was time for another go, and I spent the time convalescing. Theoretically, I could try to escape on my own now. Hell, if I could manage to stand up, I could probably kick the door down and walk out. But there was still one piece of the puzzle I was missing. Namely, the identity of who’d hired Spider for all this in the first place. I was hoping that in the interrogation that’d come up.

So I needed to get Simone to maybe tone down the pain spells, get the info, then get out, and hope that the killer hadn’t snuck in and planned to kill me while incapacitated. It’d be the smart thing, but so far our boy in the tarnhelm hadn’t exactly been prone to try the smart thing.

I’d finally recovered enough to sit up when they came for me again. I let them escort me to Simone, since it was the only way I was going to get answers.

She was waiting for me with a smile, and I was handcuffed to the chair again.

“So, is the point of this just the torture or are you trying to get answers out of me? Because if it’s the first one, fair enough, but if it’s the second one, you may want to tone it down a little, maybe.”

Simone patted me on the cheek. “It can be both, can’t it? But fair point. We’ll...take breaks. And you can tell me what I want to hear.”

“You know, it’d help if you told me what that was.”

She leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Well, I would like you to beg for mercy for a start.”

“I should have seen that line coming.”

“You really should have,” she agreed. “But also I’d like to know why you’re so determined to stop us. It doesn’t have anything to do with you or why you were hired.”

“Actually it kind of does. Hugo Delacourt died because he saw that whatever ritual you’re prepping for was going to kill a lot of people. Maybe wreck the entire neighborhood. He was trying to stop you, and that’s what got him killed. So I figure I’d better carry on his last wishes.”

Simone frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous, our client wouldn’t want anything of the sort.”

I snorted. “Really? You sure about that? One of my sources said it might be an immortality ritual. I mean those never require any kind of mass sacrifice of the same order of being as the subject.”

Simone eyed me. She hadn’t actually moved away, and her hand was still on my chest. “I suppose you’d be an expert on the subject, little stage magician.”

I shrugged. “I did some reading when I started this line of work. The snakes are just a catalyst, I expect; it’s the whole “They stole the secret before Gilgamesh could use himself” thing. So he’s collecting the magic snakes in hopes he can get them to cough up immortality. But even once he gets the secret, he’ll still need something to jump-start him to living forever, and that usually requires a whole lotta death to pay for it, unless you’re going the “Kicked out of the afterlife” route. And if that was the plan, he wouldn’t need the snakes.”

Simone shook her head. “We’re not talking about this anymore. It’s time for your next session.”

“Do you really need to torture me? I mean, I did tell you what you wanted to hear.”

She smirked. “You forgot the begging.”

Ahh, right. Shit.

To her credit, she did go easier on me this time; not being coherent enough for speech meant that I couldn’t possibly beg.

I still screamed a lot though, because frankly I didn’t feel like giving her the satisfaction of begging.

Eventually, I was sent away again. I didn’t have long before that ritual would need to be done, and I still had no idea if our principal had enough snakes to do what they wanted.

But I at least had a pretty good guess as to who it was. All I needed was to figure out which ritual site was the one being used and to be in good enough shape to get out of here when the time came.

Simone actually visited me while I was recovering this time,wiping down all the sweat and grime from the torture, whispering gentle reassurances. I’m guessing the idea was to play both good cop and bad cop at the same time. It also, not coincidentally, served to renew the glamour.

I’m still not sure how long I was down- no windows, and only indirect lighting in the cell, but someone decided to bring me food, shoved it through a slot in the bottom of the door. I picked up the plateful of slop, and saw a note scratched into the tin. “10 minutes. B Ready.”

Apparently I had a friend on the inside. Now all I needed was a reliable way of telling time. I started counting elephants.

I was at around 570 when the door was sliced into several pieces and Johnny Zats walked in, sliding the sword back into his cane. He didn’t look around; just spoke into the room. “Come with me if you want to live.” Beat. “Always wanted to say that line.”

I’d ask Johnny to stay on standby until we knew what was up with the final ritual, since he’d wanted in, so it wasn’t entirely a surprise to see him, but I admit I hadn’t been expecting it as a given.

“Tracked you down by the smell,” he explained. “Your friend that smells like a cop’s got the motor running, let’s get going. We think we know where they’re all headed. Damn fools seem like they’re going to try the spell without all the pieces anyhow.”

He led me past several knocked out guards. No sign of Simone- perhaps she’d left to report to Spider Bonaparte already. I found my stuff all haphazardly dumped in a bin and Johnny waited impatiently for me to get dressed. I checked my phone.

12 missed messages, all from Andy. I tried to call him as we headed outside, but the number wasn’t in service. All I could do was hope he was okay. Which...well, he probably was, out of character.

“Or maybe they’ve found a big enough snake that they think they don’t need the others.” I explained about the steed of Aim that was being held in that warehouse summoning circle. Johnny gave a low whistle. “That’d definitely summon up a mess”

“Right? And if Aim’s serpent is involved, it may not be too long before Aim himself shows up angry, which could be why Delacourt started having his visions of disaster.”

Johnny shook his head. “Only one of the Goetics I ever much trucked with was Buer, and his only thing is looking like a wheel made of a lion and lecturing people on herbalism. Demon that governs over arson? Bad times.” He opened the front seat and climbed in next to Henry, I got in the back, and immediately had to hunch over as far as possible. Henry’s car was -not- a convertible.

“I know it’s a close fit, but buckle up. Won’t take long to get where we’re going.”

“Where are we going? There were two different possible sites, last I checked, what’d you find out?”

Charlie, as Henry, spoke up.

“So when you called me this morning, I told you that we'd been given orders to keep folks away from certain places, right?”

“Right.”

“Around the time you went radio silent there was a call for responders to get to the docks-something about explosions and a wrecked crane.” He gave me a side-eye, I didn’t meet his gaze. “And when they did that, they asked for everyone except for the folks at the Society gardens to report. So by process of elimination…”

“They’re cutting a deal for immortality in a significant liminal space inside a liminal space. This can only end well,” I concluded for him.

“Did you get any information on who’s behind it when you were getting roughed up?”

“Not yet. I have my suspicions. Top of the list is Martel, but I’m open to other possibilities. Let’s get to the maze, and see if I’m right.”

The police cordon around the Liminal Society was a lot tighter than the one around the docks. We got pulled over almost immediately.

“Is there a problem, Patrolman Douglas?” Charlie lowered his sunglasses and looked at the man’s badge, then to his face. Well, sir, they don’t want anyone going near the gardens today. Some sort of gas leak?”

Charlie took out his own badge. “Fortunately, they didn’t say we should stay away, did they. It’s relevant to a case I’m investigating. So I’ll be proceeding. And you’ll not worry about something above your pay grade, right?”

“Sir, no sir,” said Patrolman Douglas. A very wise man, patrolman Douglas, who’d doubtless go far in his career. We drove on.

I muttered to the boss in my headset, “So uh. Just for the record...how much damage can we do to the hedge maze? Purely out of academic interest, in case the assassin decides to attack with something heavy duty during all this, or like, if I get into a hurry and have to fight another giant snake.”

“Our permission from the Liminal society is grudging. Very grudging. So try not to wreck things? And maybe don’t punch the snake out. Follow Johnny. He’ll guide you through the maze on the fastest route.”

I shrugged, and looked at the other two. Johnny said, as we got out of the car and approached the maze, “Follow my lead. The confusion glamour they’ve got on the place is keyed to vision, so I can navigate the thing just fine.” He took the lead, and Henry and I both shrugged and followed after the blind swordsman.

There were, of course, people waiting to intercept intruders in the maze. Johnny didn’t even bother to draw his sword for most of them, and the ones who made it past him, I handled.

Henry snorted. “Not sure why I’m even here, to be honest?”

“You get to make it all nice and legal and send them to jail when this is over. Hell, I’ll even let you take the credit for the bust. Though I’m not sure about Zats.”

“I don’t give a shit,” replied Johnny Zats.

After a moment’s consideration, Henry shrugged. “Works for me.”