3: Chaotic Potential

“What are you thinking about?” Jon asked.

For a moment Anna said nothing, and Jon thought that she had not heard him. She gazed out at the wheat that flowed endlessly past the windows of their train car, her brow slightly furrowed, her mouth slightly bent, as if concerned about something far away.

It was harvest time. Dozens of autoreapers were mowing in the fields. The smoke that chuffed from their engines stood over them like black umbrellas.

Jon opened his mouth to repeat himself, but Anna spoke.

“I was thinking how suddenly things can change,” she said. “There used to be hundreds of farming villages in the Low Plains. It wasn’t that long ago. Forty years. This line used to pass a hundred villages, with a hundred families in each one. But five machines can do as much work as all the men in a village. After the Technological Revolution there wasn’t any reason to have villages.”

Anna pointed. Jon looked and saw a cluster of decaying houses in the distance. Half of their roofs had collapsed. All of them were covered in ivy, so that they might be mistaken for green hillocks.

“That village might have been older than the Empire,” she said. “Some of them were that old. Fifty generations of history in one place, and then in two generations, abandoned.”

“You sound sad about it,” Jon said. “But things are better now, aren’t they?”

Anna shrugged.

Jon frowned. He was bored. The trip from Nordarosso to Norbus was almost sixteen hours long: seven hours by carriage from Norarosso to the train station in Mezunko, then nine hours to Norbus by rail. They were two hours into the train ride, and Anna’s lament for abandoned villages was the most she had said all day.

“There used to be famines,” Jon continued. “The famine of 667 killed a quarter of the people in those villages. Nothing like that could happen now. No one starves now. Before you worked for me, when you lived in Argintarbo, you never actually went hungry, did you? You were as poor as anyone, and you always ate something. You and Simon probably would have starved back before the Revolution. That means the Revolution made things better. Yes? Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And all those men who used to plant and harvest the fields, they’re free to do other things now. They can have more leisure time, and more variety. They can live in cities, where there are theaters and museums. Their children can go to school. So it’s better for them now too. It’s better for everyone.”

Anna said nothing. Jon sighed.

Jon touched his watch and felt the time. He glanced up at the prohibition ward bolted to the ceiling of the car. The Prohibition Bureau had been installing wards in passenger trains throughout the last year, but until today he had always been able to find a car without one. The function of a ward was simple: if a dam holding chaotic potential came within a ward’s influence, the dam would fail. The kao it contained would be released at random, and anyone close to it would be affected.

It was kao that triggered wards, not dams themselves. An empty dam could be near a ward and nothing would happen. But once a dam was activated, it charged constantly, so keeping an active dam empty meant constant draining.

Jon reached into his tunic and drew a ten gil coin from an inner pocket. He flipped the coin, caught it, looked at it sitting on his palm. The face of Divine Emperor Loftis looked up from it: heads.

Jon hooked the thumb of his other hand under his sash, where it touched the surface of the spheroid dam he had concealed there. He formed an intention, felt for the chaotic potential locked in the dam, and used the intention as a channel for its release.

Suddenly, without any sort of transition, the coin was half an inch forward on his palm. The side facing up now showed the image of a dragon emerging from the sea: tails.

Jon put the coin back in his pocket. In twenty minutes he would flip it again.

He looked up and found that Anna was watching him. She met his eyes, but he could not read them. She was worried, maybe, but if so it was a distant, pensive worry, like that she had shown for the abandoned villages.

Jon had told her to dress as his wife for this trip, not as his secretary, a wealthy woman going on vacation, not an employee shadowing her boss. She wore a deep green kimono with a light pink sash. Silver glimmered at her ears and neck. Jon had been surprised that she owned such clothing: he rarely saw her in anything other than shapeless tunics, and he had never seen her wear jewelry. She had her hair down. When they had met that morning to begin their journey, he had realized what seemed obvious in retrospect: she kept her hair up, not for practicality, but to hide her beauty. In that auburn frame, her black eyes glowed like smoky gems.

“Is that easy to do?” Anna asked.

“The coin flip?”

Jon glanced around the car, checking for eavesdroppers. He and Anna were seated in the rearmost booth. The adjacent booth was empty, and the next was occupied by four men having a loud conversation about automobile racing. Jon leaned toward Anna and whispered, more for effect than for privacy.

“Yes, it’s easy,” he said, “if you know how to do it. A mistake amateurs make is they try to control the outcome of the flip. They try to make it land head or tails. That’s tricky. Instead, you want to make the outcome a different random. That’s easy.”

“I mean, it works every time? And it keeps wards from triggering?”

“Yup. It uses an amount of kao that’s just under the wards’ threshold. So if I flip a coin as soon as enough kao builds up to do it, no problem. But of course you don’t actually know what the threshold is until you exceed it!” Jon laughed. “But so far so good!”

Anna did not laugh. Her look of worry faded, moved closer to blankness. She returned her gaze to the passing landscape.

“Something funny about prohibition wards,” Jon said, hoping to continue the conversation, “is you can use magic to disable them. If you’ve studied how they’re constructed, they’re actually really easy to break. But you have to do it from outside their range. If I’d known this one would be here,” he said, gesturing to the ward in the ceiling, “I’d have disabled it from outside the train before we got on. I’ll do that next time.”

Jon grimaced. He should not have mentioned “next time.” But then he realized that Anna would misinterpret “next time” as the return journey to Mezunko.

“So what’s the point of prohibition wards,” Anna asked, “if magicians can just turn them off?”

“They make using magic hazardous,” Jon said. “If you’re always worried that you might run into a ward, you probably aren’t going to carry a dam around.”

“You carry a dam around.”

“I’m very observant. I always notice wards.”

“Of course,” Anna said. “You see everything.” She spoke this sentence with an odd cadence, putting the emphasis on see, not on everything.

What’s the supposed to mean? Jon thought. Anna was acting strangely today, cryptic and coy instead of her usual dignified servility. But of course from her perspective he was acting strangely. He was always strange to people during these practice runs. People were used to dealing with the Great Detective, not with… this. But Jon could not be the Great Detective until he had researched and tested and planned through many iterations. Being normal took rehearsal.

Silence lengthened. Jon wanted to nap, but he had to stay awake to flip the coin. He would ask the steward for coffee…

Jon flipped the coin. Tails. This time it stayed tails, although it rotated a quarter turn: a different tails. When he looked up, he found that Anna was again watching him.

“May I ask you a question, sir?” she asked.

“Please!”

”Am I on this trip just so I can be seen traveling with you? Is there any other reason you brought me?”

“No. Not really. I told Cynd my wife wanted to visit Norbus, so I need a wife to visit Norbus.”

“What do you want me to do in Norbus?”

“You don’t need do anything except just visit. See the sights. Shop. Do whatever you want.”

“Do whatever I want? As Anna en Alder?”

“Right.”

“Aren’t you concerned that I’ll be noticed?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re very famous, sir,” Anna said, “and no one has ever heard of you having a wife. If a Mrs. Alder suddenly appears in public, it will be noticed. It will become known.”

“Oh!”

“There are lots of people in Nordarosso who know that I don’t live with you,” she continued, urgency creeping into her voice, “and that I have a son, and that he isn’t yours. Why would you… What I mean to say, sir, is I’m wondering if you’ve considered all the ramifications of this pretense.”

“Ramifications? Um, yes, I have considered the ramifications and…”

Jon had considered no ramifications because none had occurred to him. He had been thinking only of securing Cynd’s cooperation with his matrimonial ruse, and even though what Anna said was very obvious, he simply had not thought of it. This made him feel foolish, and therefore annoyed.

It didn’t actually matter, of course. Nothing in this iteration would matter except for the knowledge he gained in it. Everything would be erased and reset when he fell back again. None of this would be real.

“…and everything will be fine!” Jon finished. “Don’t worry about it.”

Anna nodded calmly, like a person accepting bad news.

“Can I ask you another question, sir?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“How will you start your investigation? I’m just… I’ve never actually seen you work. You always know so much so quickly, and I’m curious about how… You must have sophisticated methods…”

“My methods are my own business, Anna en Koldom.”

“Of course, sir. I’m sorry.”

* * *

Jon strolled down Archer Street, glad to stretch his legs. The breeze was from the sea, and the evening was cool. He had left Anna at the train station with their luggage and instructions to rent a room at whatever hotel was nearest. After the long and awkward trip, he was eager to get on with the case. It was late, but the Joyful Hart might still be open.

Norbus was an old city, so old that there was no historical record of a time before it existed. It had been conquered, reconquered, destroyed, rebuilt, and renovated dozens of times, but it had never been unoccupied. On a bay on a river on the northernmost point of the Continent, it was a location too strategic to ever be abandoned. Its age was evident in the surface of its streets. The cobblestones changed color and size at random intervals, and these changes in material were often accompanied by changes in elevation, where a newer street had been built on top of an older one. The buildings were similarly variegated. Most were stone. None were tall. But their footprints, colors, and embellishments were as varied as seashells.

Over top of these historical strata was imposed the crust of the Technological Revolution. Telegraph cables hung from the buildings like black vines. The ancient streets were scored with the tracks of electric trollies. Incandescent lights glared down from high poles like insomniac suns.

The Joyful Hart was a half-mile from the docks, on the edge of the transitional band where warehouses and shipwrights gave way to hotels and taverns. It was built in the ancient Antua style, itself inspired by the yurts in which the Antua had dwelt in still more ancient times. It was not an actual Antua building (it was not nearly old enough to be), but the pattern had been fashionable in the mid five hundreds, during the reign of the eccentric Emperor Euhorn, and there were many buildings in Norbus that used it.

The Hart was comprised of three round, slightly conical buildings, like tea bowls turned upside down. They formed an isosceles triangle: there was a wide space between the two outer buildings, but both of them nearly touched the third. A huge red awning stretched between them, sheltering a paved courtyard in which a score of tables were set up. About half of the tables were occupied by patrons finishing late suppers. Inviting lights glowed from windows in the side buildings. Delicious aromas wafted from the middle.

Archer Street touched the courtyard at a tangent, at which point a reception desk stood. Jon approached cautiously, his eyes scanning for prohibition wards. By law, a gathering place of this size would have a ward at each entrance, but Jon was not certain if the desk would qualify as an entrance.

There it was: bolted to one side of the desk was a yellow metal pyramid about the size of a shoebox. From directly in front of the desk, it would have been obscured, but Jon was across the street, and from there he had a clear view of it.

An electric trolley rolled by at that moment, its bell ringing a warning as it moved slowly but inexorably down the center of the street. The trolley momentarily blocked Jon’s view of the ward, but that made no difference. Now that he knew exactly where it was, he could form a clear intention toward it.

Jon stuck a thumb under his sash and touched his dam. The walk to the Hart had taken over an hour, and some kao had built up in the dam, more than enough to trigger a ward, but also more than enough to disable one.

Jon imagined the ward’s intricate inner workings, its arrays of springs, its rosettes of crystals, and, at its center, the tiny ampoule filled with mercury. In the factory, when that ampoule was being sealed, if there had been an impurity in the glass, then, as it was heated, a tiny crack might have formed in it, invisible and unnoticed. The ward would still function, and it would enter service, but if it were very hot one summer, unusually hot, and the ward were in the sun, then the mercury might expand and push against the crack. And if the ward had been struck or shaken while the crack was under stress, then the ampoule might have shattered. The mercury might have drained out…

Jon felt kao leave the dam, and he knew that the ward had been broken. Inside it, the ampoule of mercury had shattered, stressed by a heat it had never actually experienced, struck by a blow it had never actually felt. Possibility realized.

Jon strode confidently up to the reception desk.

“Good evening, sir,” said the man behind the desk. He wore a red uwagi with yellow piping that Jon assumed was a uniform. He was young, with a thin beard that Jon thought he would have been better off shaving. “I’m afraid we’re about to close for the night,” the man said apologetically. “We will be selling packaged meats for the next half-hour if you’d like to take something home.”

“Actually, I’d like to speak to the owner.”

“The owner? Mr. Klampf isn’t here.”

“Get me your manager, then. Whoever’s in charge.”

“Um… Why?”

“Tell him that Johannes de Alder wants to talk to him.”

“Johannes de Alder? Are you… Oh. Oh! Um, yes, Mr. Alder, right away.”

The man turned and ran toward the main door of the central building, then realized he was running, checked himself, and walked. Jon chuckled.

Jon walked around the reception desk and seated himself at one of the empty tables, drawing curious glances from a few of the patrons. The food smelled delicious. An oil lamp was sitting on the table. Jon produced a box of matches from a pocket and lit the lamp.

A few minutes later the receptionist reemerged with a second man. This man was rather short, rather fat, and rather bald. He also wore a red uwagi, but with black piping instead of yellow. The receptionist pointed Jon out, and they approached his table.

“Mr. Alder?” the man said. “Hello! I’m Jorcyn de Liist, the head manager.”

“Please have a seat, Jorcyn,” Jon said, gesturing to the empty chair across from him. The manager hesitated, awkward at being offered a seat at his own table, then acquiesced.

“You can go,” Jon said to the receptionist, waving his hand dismissively. The receptionist glanced at Jorcyn, who nodded. He returned to his desk with slumped shoulders.

“So,” Jorcyn said, “I was told that you’re Johannes de Alder, the famous detective?”

“I am,” Jon said. “I need to ask you some questions about a former employee.” Jon reached into his tunic and withdrew a photograph of Beatrace that Lowdous had given him the previous evening. “Do you recognize this woman?”

Jorcyn took the photograph and turned it toward the lamplight. “Yeah, I recognize her,” he said. “Can’t recall her name.”

“Her name is Beatrace en Cynd,” Jon said. “When you knew her, she went by Beatrace de Ministo.”

“Beatrace de Ministo… Yeah, she worked here, briefly. Quit about a year ago. She’s in a wedding dress here.” Jorcyn tapped the photograph.

“That photo is from her wedding, last Zero Day.”

“Fancy dress. Who’d she marry?”

“Lowdous de Cynd.”

“Oh that Cynd? Really? I saw in the paper that Lowdous had gotten married. It was a big deal because he doesn’t have any children, so his new wife is going to inherit his businesses. Lowdous owns all the factories on the East Side, so people are really interested in that.”

“Lowdous is a regular customer here, isn’t he?”

“Pretty regular,” Jorcyn said. “We don’t do anything special for him, so I don’t always know when he comes. Most people that rich want a private dining room, but Lowdous likes to eat out here. Humble origins, I guess.”

“You said Beatrace worked here ‘briefly.’ How long was it?”

“Now, hold on a minute. Why do you want to know this? What’s this about?”

“I’m working a missing person case.”

“Who’s missing?”

“Beatrace.”

“Oh? Well, she didn’t disappear from the Hart.”

“I suspect that her employment here may be related to her disappearance.”

“Related how?”

“Mr. Liist, I cannot explain the details of my case to you. Mrs. Cynd is missing, and I have been entrusted with finding her. If you help me do that, both she and I will be grateful.”

“Are you working with the Police?”

“The Police are aware of the situation.”

“But, I mean, is this investigation… um… official? Authorized?”

“If you’re worried that you might be in legal trouble if you talk to me, you won’t be. I promise.”

“I’m not worried about that. Well, I am, but– I don’t think I should be telling employee histories to someone just because he claims to be Johannes de Alder. Actually, I don’t know that you really are Johannes de Alder.”

Jon groaned. It had seemed like this was going to be easy. He would announce his famous name, leverage it to get quick answers to a few questions, then try the Hart’s famous smoked-then-fried venison before enjoying a stroll back to the hotel. But it seemed that this manager was going to be tedious.

“I am not working with the Police,” Jon said, “but I am authorized to offer incentives to people who help my investigation.” Jon reached down and gave the wallet that hung from his sash a firm shake. Coins clinked.

Jorcyn’s eyes widened. He leaned forward and spoke in a whisper, “You’re bribing me for information about a waitress?” He did not seem offended or avaricious, but actually astonished. “What’s this really about?”

Wrong tactic, Jon thought. Jorcyn was both too ethical and too curious for a bribe to be effective. Jon should have lied and said he was with the Police. He could fall back now and try lying, but that would mean the tedium of repeating two whole days. Not worthwhile. Better to press on.

“Look, Jorcyn,” Jon said. “Beatrace en Cynd really has disappeared, I really am looking for her, and I really will pay you to tell me about her time working here. That’s what’s really happening. Understand?”

“I don’t think you are Johannes de Alder.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think. You’re going to answer my questions. You can choose how that happens.”

“You need to leave,” Jorcyn said. He stood. “I don’t know who you are, but you can’t just walk in here and demand information about my employees and customers.”

“I can,” Jon said, “because I have a bomb, and I’m going to blow this place up if you don’t tell me what I want to know.”

Jorcyn’s eyes became perfect circles. “What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean that if you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’m going to kill you and all of these employees and customers whose privacy you’re so worried about. Now that this has become unpleasant, let’s go someplace private. I assume you have an office?”

“I have an office.”

“Good. Let’s go there. Quick and quiet.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“No talking. Just walking. You first.”

Jorcyn turned and started toward the middle building with a gait so stiff he looked like a tin soldier being marched by some giant child. Jon grinned. A busboy cast a curious glance at them as they passed. Jon turned his grin on the young man. He grinned back and returned to clearing tables.

The Joyful Hart’s kitchen took up the entire first floor of the middle building. It was mostly open, with an enormous stone oven in the center, its thick chimney merging into the ceiling. Several cooks were busy preparing meat to smoke. They threw curious glances at Jon and Jorcyn as they entered, but said nothing. Jon took mental note of several large pots of oil sitting near one of the oven’s hearths. They were cooling now, but they would have been boiling for most of the day.

Typical of Antua-inspired design, all of the walls and pillars of the building were stone, while all of the floors and ceilings were wood. A broad spiral staircase wound around the building’s circumference, connecting its three floors. The foot of this staircase was immediately to the left of the main entrance. Jorcyn paused at the foot, perhaps hoping that one of the cooks would notice his distress. At a prod from Jon, he started climbing.

The manager’s office was on the third floor. A short hallway connected the staircase to a round antechamber in the building’s center, through which the kitchen chimney pierced floor to ceiling. Jorcyn led Jon to one of the half-dozen doors in the antechamber wall.

“I’ll answer your questions,” Jorcyn said. He fiddled with the doorknob. “You don’t have to do anything crazy.”

“This isn’t crazy,” Jon said. “This is entirely rational.”

Jorcyn opened the door. He stepped inside, then paused, as though something had just occurred to him. He turned to Jon with puzzlement. “Do you really have a bomb?” he asked.

“No,” Jon said, “but I really have a gun.” Jon drew the gun and pointed it at Jorcyn. Jorcyn gasped and backed away. Jon followed him into the office.

Jon felt an odd coldness in his right arm. The cold seemed to push out into the room, making everything in it slow and distant. Something heavy thumped to the floor at his feet, and at the same time he noticed his sleeve was wet. Jorcyn started screaming.

Jon looked down. His right arm had been severed just above the elbow. Blood spurted out of the shredded flesh around the splintered humerus, soaking the floor, soaking his clothes. The forearm lay at his feet, its hand still gripping the gun. What should have been the elbow was a pulped mass without recognizable anatomy.

“There’s a ward in here,” Jon said quietly. Then loudy: “There’s a ward in here! Where is it?”

Jorcyn screamed.

“Where’s the ward, you idiot?” Jon shouted. “You flayed moron, where’s the ward?”

Jon lunged at Jorcyn. He intended to grab the shorter man by the collar, but he didn’t account for his missing arm. He brought the stump up, spraying blood into Jorcyn’s face. Jorcyn shoved Jon aside and stumbled out of the room. His screams became muffled as he sprinted down the stairs.

The pain began as a burning sensation in the skin around Jon’s wound, then grew, and grew. It grew in both directions, piercing up into his neck, and impossibly down into his absent fingers. He slumped to his knees in what was now a pool of blood, reflexively clutching at the stump. His vision blurred. He was losing too much blood. He was going to pass out.

A prohibition ward had done this. He had blundered into its radius, and the chaotic potential in his dam had been released randomly. But there had been little kao in the dam. He had used most of it disabling the ward outside. How could so little kao have done so much damage?

Jon squeezed the stump, trying to slow the bleeding. The pain was agonizing now, maddening, blinding. He crawled forward on his knees: he had to find the ward.

The office was dominated by an oak desk. Jon crawled around it, got behind. He used his left shoulder to knock a chair over so he could peer underneath. There was the ward, in the most obvious hiding place, glued to the underside of the desk.

Jon swayed. His vision darkened. He punched his head to force it clear. He must remember this building, this room, this desk. He must remember exactly where this ward was. He must be able to picture it precisely from outside the room.

He crawled back toward the door, where his severed arm lay. He could not allow himself to pass out. If he passed out, he might not die. He might wake up in a hospital, or in a prison. He might wake up helpless.

He crawled to the arm. With this left hand he grasped the gun by its barrel and shook it until his right hand fell away. He dropped the gun on the floor to switch his grip, picked it up again. He put the barrel in his mouth and fired.

3 Pluvo 712, 7:13 a.m. (III)

Jon opened his eyes and stared into the soft darkness of his curtained four-poster. He held his right arm up before his eyes. He flexed the hand. He snapped the fingers. He rubbed it across the soft sheets.

One of the few things that still surprised him about leaping back was which aspects of his experience were physical, and which were mental. His arm was perfectly whole and healthy, but it was numb. He rapped his knuckles against the bedpost and felt nothing. The knowledge of the arm’s destruction was so fresh and urgent that his mind could accept no sensation from it other than pain. Nothing else made sense.

Jon knew this would be temporary. He relaxed his muscles, breathed deeply, and set his mind to thinking about something other than the horror he had just experienced.

How had it happened?

Magic was limited by possibility. It realized what could be. It could not realize the impossible. That held just as true for a random release of kao as for one directed by a magician’s intent. There had been little kao in Jon’s dam when Jorcyn’s ward had released it. That meant that whatever possible event had severed Jon’s arm must have been something very likely to have happened on its own.

Jon went over his memories of the day, trying to think of what event could have severed his arm. He had spent most of the day in vehicles. A crash of the carriage or a derailment of the train could certainly have done it. But he had spent over an hour walking after leaving the train: distance from the possible event, in time or space, made it less likely to be realized by a random release. There had not been enough kao in his dam to realize the effects of a carriage crash miles away and hours earlier.

He rolled his memories over until he became frustrated at his failure to understand. Frustration became anger. Why had that idiot manager had a prohibition ward in his office? This was his fault. Jon had been going to pay Jorcyn an enormous bribe for trivial information. He had been doing Jorcyn a favor! And for that Jorcyn had lured him into a trap. That was what prohibition wards were, really: traps. Traps for the unwary. Traps for people who–

The other ward! The ward outside the restaurant. Jon had seen it because he had been walking on the side of the street opposite the Joyful Hart. But he had not known which side of the street the Hart was on. It was only luck that he had been on the opposite side. If he had been on the same side of the street, then he might have blundered into that ward’s radius, and his dam would have failed with much more kao inside. And if that had happened… The trolley! An electric trolley had passed by at the same time when he would have entered that ward’s radius. The random release could have… Derailed the trolley? Caused him to trip and fall under it? Caused someone to push him?

If he had blundered into the ward outside the Hart, then, somehow, he could have ended up under that trolley, and that could have severed his arm. All that was needed for it to have happened was for Jon to have been walking on the other side of the street. That had to be it. That was the possibility that had been realized.

Jon flexed his right hand. The feeling had returned.

He got up and did his stretches while he made a plan for the next twenty-four hours. He had two goals to accomplish: get the information he wanted from Jorcyn de Liist, and get revenge. He didn’t need to talk to Lowdous to accomplish either of those goals: he could leave for Norbus immediately.

He stood up and strode to the speaking tube.

“Bitali!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Pack me a suitcase with three outfits, one formal, one casual, one tactical. You choose. Then bring me number twelve to wear today.”

“Yes, sir.”

The bureau that stood across from the wardrobe had six drawers. Jon opened the top right drawer and lifted out his cuboid dam. The cuboid was the largest and heaviest of his dams, crude, a block of tin almost eight inches on a side. It was unwieldy, requiring a suitcase or backpack to carry, and it held the least kao per weight of any dam type. But the same simplicity of design that made it unwieldy also made it quick to fill.

He turned the knob that was its only external feature. Within, a tiny piston withdrew from one its millions of subdivisions, removing the sole imperfection in its self-similarity. Within, all variability ceased, and chaotic potential began building. It would take about twenty hours for the dam to reach capacity. He intended to be in Norbus before then.

* * *

Jon was sitting at Jorcyn’s desk when the manager arrived the next morning. Fiddling with his keys, Jorcyn did not notice Jon as he entered the office and closed the door behind him.

Jorcyn looked up. He saw his prohibition ward, disassembled, scattered across his desk in a hundred pieces. Jon sat behind the desk, his hands tented, a scowl on his face.

“Who are you?” Jorcyn asked, not quite afraid yet.

“I am Johannes de Alder.”

“The detective?”

“The detective.”

“Why are you in my chair?”

“To ask you questions. Why else? First question: why did you have this here?” Jon spread his hands, indicating the scattered pieces of the ward.

“For protection…”

“Protection from evil magicians? Well, it didn’t work. All it did was make an evil magician very angry.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, and you’re not going to, which is disappointing, but I’ll have to make do.”

Jon reached down into the leather backpack that lay on the floor at his feet. His dam was inside. He touched its surface.

Jorcyn gasped. He stared at his hands as weeping red burns suddenly covered them, burns that might have been caused by boiling oil spilled from a pot in the kitchen. He turned to the door and frantically twisted the knob. It came off in his hand.

“Now,” Jon said, “the second question: about a year ago–”

Jorcyn heaved his shoulder against the door. He bounced off. He tried again. “Help!” he screamed. “Help me!”

“Go ahead and scream,” Jon said. “No one will hear you. I am in control here, Jorcyn de Liist. No one can help you except me.”

“Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

“Just a little information. Second question: do you remember a woman named Beatrace de Ministo who worked here about a year ago?”

“I don’t remember any Beatrace.”

“Yes you do, Jorcyn. Think harder. She was in her mid thirties. Average height. Slender. Dark brown hair. She kept it short. Light eyes. Dainty jaw. Small breasts, but a nice waistline. Remember?”

“Maybe. I don’t know!” Jorcyn gasped again as new burns appeared further up his arms. Fluid seeping from them made wet patches on his sleeves. “Stop!” he sobbed “Please!”

“You make it stop,” Jon said. His voice was quiet and slow. “You remember Beatrace because she worked here for a very short time, and then quit suddenly. It must have annoyed you. Then a few months after she quit, you saw her picture in the paper. She was in the paper because she’d gotten married to Lowdous de Cynd. You didn’t recognize her in the photo at the time, but it was her.”

“Lowdous de Cynd?”

“Yes. He is a regular customer here. You noticed Beatrace paying special attention to him, didn’t you?”

“Yes! Yes, I remember that! A waitress who only worked here a few weeks! She always wanted to wait Lowdous’s table. She would take his table even if she wasn’t assigned to it. Short hair. Nice waist. Like you said.”

“There, see? I told you you remembered. Third question: was there anything unusual about the circumstances of Beatrace’s hiring?”

“Yes, there was,” Jorcyn said. He tried to continue, but words collapsed into a sob. He fumbled with his wounded hands, trying to somehow cradle them without them touching anything.

“Go on?” Jon said.

“She replaced another girl,” Jorcyn said, his voice quavered. ”The other girl had worked here for… a long time… but she had to quit suddenly, and then Beatrace showed up the same day asking for a waitress job.”

“That’s interesting,” said Jon. “What was this other girl’s name?”

“Her name was Anniisa. Anniisa de… Minsk? Mounce? I don’t remember. Please don’t hurt me any more. She wasn’t married. She was young. Twenty, maybe.”

“Why did she quit?”

“She was injured. She lost a foot. She couldn’t work after that.”

Jon laughed. “How did she lose a foot?”

“She was attacked. Someone threw her in front of a trolley.”

Jon laughed harder. “One of your employees… was run over… by a trolley!” He doubled over laughing. He pounded his fist on the desk. “And she lost a foot!”

“I don’t understand,” Jorcyn said.

“No, you don’t.” Jon took a few deep breaths to compose himself, then said, “Fourth question: where can I find Anniisa?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t really know her. I don’t know where she lives.”

“Yes, you do. You have a record here somewhere that has her address on it.”

“No, I don’t! Truly, I don’t. We pay our staff cash, so we don’t need to know where they live. We don’t even ask.”

“You know something. Which direction did she come from when she came to work? Which way did she go when she left?”

“She went… She came from the trolley station on Iron Street. She rode the trolley to there and then walked the rest of the way.”

“Is that the same trolley that ran her over?”

“I think so.”

“You said she was thrown in front of it.”

“Yes. She visited here to say goodbye to everyone, after she’d healed–she was walking with crutches–and she told us about it.”

“Was Beatrace here when Anniisa visited?”

“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I think… I think Beatrace had already quit before then.”

“Did Anniisa mention any particular details about the attack?”

“She said she didn’t get a good look at the person who did it. And… and she was thrown off a bridge. There was a footbridge over the trolley track, and she was thrown off it, down onto the tracks.”

“So, Anniisa lives near a pedestrian bridge that goes over the Iron Street trolley. See? I told you you knew.”

Jon stood. He shouldered his backpack. The heavy dam made the leather creek.

“Alright,” Jon said. “That’s all I need from you. Now, we’re going to walk out of here together. I snuck up in the middle of the night when no one was around, but I can’t really sneak out now with all the staff here. So, we walk out together, and you act like everything is normal. No one questions me. Understand?”

Jorcyn nodded frantically. “Yes!” he said. “But…” He held out his hands. They were more burn than skin. The fluid oozing from them had soaked his sleeves and smeared the front of his uniform.

“Shove them in your pockets,” Jon said, shrugging.

Jorcyn led the way down the spiral staircase. With his hands in his pockets, his wounds were not conspicuous, but he was breathing hard, and he was pale. He shivered.

Reaching the bottom, Jorcyn turned toward the main door, but Jon stopped him. “Let’s go out the back,” Jon said.

Jorycn trudged into the kitchen, which was bustling in preparation for the day. A dozen cooks swarmed about, chopping vegetables, seasoning meat, and stoking fires.

“Mr. Liist!” a gray-haired cook exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Torval. Everything is fine.”

They emerged from a back door into an alley between the Hart and two other round buildings. The morning sun lit the sky, but it had not risen high enough to shine down into the alley.

Jon had planned to kill Jorcyn. There was enough kao left in his dam to finish the job that he had started, to inflict the damage that could have been caused by falling headlong into a vat of boiling oil. Jon had planned to leave Jorcyn burned from head to toe, to suffer for hours or days before finally dying. That had seemed a fitting vengeance when the horror of his own dismemberment had still been fresh. But now as he looked at Jorcyn slumped against a dumpster, shaking and sobbing, it seemed pointless. Jorcyn had no idea why Jon was hurting him, and his only wrongdoing had been to fear the very scenario that had just unfolded.

Torturing Jorcyn further would not be revenge. It would merely be sadism. Jon sighed, feeling suddenly depressed. He could not take revenge, just like he could not have his time wasted, just like he could not be married. These common things were beyond his grasp.

Jon walked away without saying anything. Jorcyn’s sobs had already faded behind him before he left the alley.

He dropped the dam in a rubbish heap, not wanting to risk it triggering a prohibition ward as he walked unfamiliar streets. He asked a stranger the way to Iron Street. As he walked, a deep weariness came over him. He had left Nordarosso yesterday morning and arrived in Norbus late in the evening. He had then walked straight to the Joyful Hart, where he had lurked until the staff had gone for the night. Then he had broken in to wait for Jorcyn. He had not slept in over twenty-four hours. Now that his anger was gone, the weight of those hours fell on him like a heavy blanket.

He stumbled into an inn on Iron Street. He bought bread and beer and rented a cheap room. He would look for Anniisa “de M” after a long sleep.