14: Systems of Oppression

The woman stared at Jon with bulging eyes that were further magnified by her glasses. She wore a rumpled pink kimono that was far too close to her skin tone, and that clashed with her handbag, which was a dull green twill. She looked young, less than thirty. Her clothes were not cheap, and her features were not unattractive, but she presented herself carelessly, as if her body were a parcel she happened to be in custody of, not something durably related to her identity.

The woman’s mouth opened and closed several times, reminding Jon of a pink koi. He suppressed an amused smile.

She spoke eventually: “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have bothered you like that yesterday. I should’ve known you wouldn’t want to be recognized. I hope I didn’t… um… didn’t disrupt what you’re working on… what you’re investigating… I’m not used to… um–”

Sensing that she would continue to speak until he cut her off, Jon did so. “It’s fine,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “You caused no disruption. The truth is I was simply in a hurry to get to my room. I was rude to you. I apologize.”

“Oh!” the woman said. “Thank you! For apologizing to me! Um…” She blushed suddenly and looked down at the table. The book she had been reading was sitting there, open. She brushed it into her lap.

“Let’s start fresh,” Jon said. “My name is Johannes de Alder. I am a consulting detective based in Nordaroso.”

“I’m Varence de Cyncaid. I’m a courier for Serfita.”

“Serfita? That’s the courier service for sensitive messages? ‘Secure your secrets with Serfita?’”

“That’s right. I mostly work here in Argintarbo. They send me to Norbus sometimes.”

“That’s very interesting, Varence. Now that I have time to talk — if you have time as well — I am curious how you recognized me yesterday. You knew my face from across the street?”

“Oh!” Varence’s blush renewed. “I recognized you because… I’ve seen you before… In Nordarosso.”

Jon frowned, confused. This woman had never been a prospective client, had she? He had never met with her? Then he remembered the tourists, those annoying groups of out-of-towners who had recently begun lurking near his house. He shunned them, but they had nonetheless become common as his celebrity grew. Varence must be one of those. That was excellent: if she was already so enamoured with Jon that she had travelled to Nordaroso just to look at him, then manipulating her should be easy.

“You signed my book,” she continued, sheepishly.

Varence put her book back on the table and opened it to the title page. The History of Nordarosso, Home of the Great Detective, the title read. Beneath this, in Jon’s hand, were the words “J Alder — to Varence.”

Jon had no memory of signing this book, or any book, and he was surprised that he would have done so: he was careful to avoid casual associations in his “real” life, precisely because he knew that he could not track them, could not control them. He wanted to deny that the signature was his, but he had no basis for such denial. It could be his. It was possible that he had done something very out of his “real” character and forgotten about it, and he had no way to verify. Loathing spiked in his chest, a sharp mixture of fear and disgust that seemed to project from the signature into his body.

“Of course, I remember now,” Jon said, smiling. “You are the only person who ever asked me to sign that particular book.”

“It’s my favorite book about you,” Varence said, more confident after Jon’s validation, “because it shows how you help people. Not just your clients: everyone. In the whole Empire, Nordarosso is the only village that has electricity! Everywhere else, the villages are either isolated and forgotten, or they’re abandoned because everyone’s jobs were mechanized. But you brought technology to Nordarosso without ruining it. You found a balance.”

Jon was surprised, both by the content of Vanernce remarks and by their earnestness. He was aware that his base in Nordarosso was a boon to the local economy, but he had never thought that this made him virtuous, and or that others might perceive him as a good man because of it. All he had done in Nordarosso he had done for himself.

“Well, we all help people with our work, don’t we?” Jon said. “Your work for Serfita must help people?”

“No,” Varence said, suddenly cold. “Serfita is just part of the machine.”

“Machine?”

“The corporations, the beehives, the regulators.” She gestured vaguely out the window. “This society.”

“Ah,” Jon said, politely dismissing the topic. “What exactly do you do for Serfita, if you don’t mind my asking? It seems odd that a lone woman would be a courier for valuable messages?”

“That’s actually part of Serfita’s marketing,” Varence said. “They say their method is so secure that messages don’t need to be guarded.” She pointed at herself. “Not a guard! All the couriers are women.

“I don’t know how it works,” she continued, “but the messages are divided into at least two fragments — usually it’s three — and a different courier will get each fragment. But the message isn’t just cut into pieces. It’s scrambled up in a mathematical way so that you need all of the fragments for any of them to make sense. If there are ten fragments and you have nine, then you have nothing.”

“So there’s no point stealing one fragment unless you can steal all of them?”

“Right. And there are hundreds of Serfita couriers running around the Continent at any given time, and no way for anyone to know who has which fragment of which message, so…”

“Fascinating. What’s a typical day like for you? What have you done so far today?”

Jon expected resistance to such specific questioning, but Varence seemed eager to tell him about herself, and pleased that he would ask. She sat up straighter, and she began gesturing with her hands, which had been idle.

“There isn’t really a typical day,” she said, “because I’m always on call. As soon as I make a delivery, I have to wire the Serfita office and give them a telegraph address where they can contact me. Then I have to check for messages every four hours until they tell me where to go next. I actually have a lot of free time. But it’s random. I can’t make any plans. Yesterday I didn’t have anything to do until ten at night. Then I got a wire — I have a telegraph receiver in my apartment — that told me to go to the Kompusen campus in the Industrial District and pick up a message fragment. So I did.”

“What is a fragment like, physically?”

“It’s a ceramic disk. Like a phonograph. It’s in a sealed case, so I don’t see it, but that’s what’s in there. This fragment was supposed to go to the Bureau of Forest Management in the City, but Imperial offices were closed for the night, so I just kept it in my apartment until morning. I took the fragment there first thing, and dropped it off, and… I haven’t had anything else to do today. Except be in my apartment in case Serfita wires.”

“What time did you drop off the fragment?”

“Eight o’clock, when the Imperial offices open.”

“And when is your next check in with Serfita?”

“Six tonight.”

“So you’re free for ten hours today — at least ten hours — aside from having to check in?”

Varence hesitated. Caution hardened her eyes for the first time.

“Yes…” she said. “Why are you so interested in my schedule?”

“No reason. I just get started on a train of questions, and the train keeps rolling. Because I’m a detective, probably.”

“Right! Of course!”

“Well, I shouldn’t keep you from your tea.”

“No, it’s fine!” Varence protested. She raised her hands placatingly. “I’m just surprised you’re interested… in me…”

“One more question, then,” Jon said. He smiled warmly. Varence’s eyes brightened, anticipating a deep or personal query. “When you crossed the Park this morning on the way to the Bureau of Forest Management,” Jon asked, “what path did you use?”

7 Pluvo 712, 5:58 a.m. (XIV)

Jon rose and ate quickly, then made his way to the Park. While it was possible to cross the Park at any point, doing so ran a risk of damaging clothes on water, rocks, and branches. For people who did not want to linger but simply pass through, there were a number of paved footpaths, spread out along the Park’s length. At seven o’clock, Jon arrived at the path Varence had indicated.

He sat on a bench on the path’s south end and watched for Varence. The path carried a steady stream of people traveling from the Merchant District to appointments in the Imperial City, but it was not crowded: Varence would be easy to spot.

At seven twenty he saw her coming from the east, looking remarkably unremarkable in a baggy black coat over her baggy pink kimono. She was pulling a wheeled trunk that Jon assumed must contain the message fragment. He averted his face until she had passed him, then rose and followed her into the Park. He came up behind her and spoke in a loud whisper: “Varence!”

Varence froze, nearly causing Jon to trip over her bag. She turned on her heel like a weathervane to stare at him with her bulging eyes.

“It was you!” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” Jon replied. He moved closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I couldn’t talk to you yesterday because I was being watched, but I need to talk to you now. Keep walking. Don’t look at me.”

Varence complied, resuming her walk and looking straight ahead.

“I know you have a delivery to make,” Jon said. “Make it as usual, then meet me here.” He slipped a note into her hand. “It’s a cafe near the Temple. I’ll be waiting.”

“Why do you want to talk to me?”

“I’ll explain at the cafe. Will you be there?”

“Yes!”

Jon turned and began walking in the opposite direction, back toward the Merchant District. He smiled, pleased with his good fortune. It might take two or three iterations to discover all of her levers, but with a little experimentation he would probably be able to manipulate Varence de Cyncaid into doing whatever he wanted.

He wondered why leveraging his celebrity in this way never occurred to him before. There were thousands of people throughout the Empire who were fascinated by the Great Detective; he should have allies everywhere, if he looked for them. Maybe Anna was not irreplaceable. Maybe he could find an assistant who would serve him out of admiration rather than fear, someone who actually enjoyed being near him…

But no. He could only be admired from a distance. Anyone who knew him would sense the eldritch void within the gilded shell.

* * *

Jon had chosen the cafe — an extravagantly-priced pastry shop called Kukajo’s — for its proximity to the Bureau of Forest Management, thinking to meet with Verance as early in the day as possible so that she would have plenty of time for the errands he would assign her. It was eight o’clock. Jon had no idea what time Verance would arrive, although nine seemed likely.

As he neared the cafe, he felt an odd apprehension. He felt reluctant to move forward, as if the air held some repulsive energy. And he realized that this route would take him past his old house. He stopped. He did not want to walk past his old house.

There was no rational reason for this, he told himself. It was unlikely that Katerine would see him walking past, and if she did see him, she could do nothing to harm him. Even if he had been a normal man, she could do nothing to harm him. And he had no reason to believe that she wanted to. He did not know if she held any grudge against him; she might actually be glad that his physical presence had been replaced by a reliable flow of money.

There were things Jon did not know because they had no bearing on him. He did not know how to fish. He did not know musical scales. He did not know the Pliigist liturgical calendar. He did not know these things because they were not important. Could that causality work in reverse? Could ignorance of a thing make it unimportant? If he did not see Katerine, then she was like those mythical islands that may or may not exist at the Continent’s antipode. But if he saw her, then he would know, and then his mental maps would have to change to account for his knowledge.

He did not want to know.

If he walked past the house, then he would be faced with the choice of whether or not to knock on the door. He did not want to make that choice. But it was already too late to avoid making it: turning aside now would be choosing not to knock: falling back and meeting Varence in a different place would be choosing not to knock. His carelessness had pointed his feet toward the house, so now he must choose.

After a minute silently cursing himself, Jon resolved that he would knock, not because he wanted to see Katerine, but because his fear embarrassed him, and he would feel foolish if he yielded to it.

The house was not as he remembered it. The ivy that had once covered its wall had been cut down, and the bricks on its front had been covered in wood panelling. It looked newer. But Jon did not know how old the house was, so this was an irrelevant observation.

Jon stood on the doorstep and stared at the iron knocker. It was shaped like the Hunting Moon, a sphere with a smooth right half, and a left half etched with a pattern of round craters: a symbol of karma, of inescapable justice.

He procrastinated, and then the door opened without his knocking, and Katerine was there. She said nothing, only looked at him with a sort of passive disdain, as if he were a salesman coming to offer a product she did not want, waiting for him to make the offer so that she could politely refuse.

He was surprised by how plain she was. In his memory she was beautiful, but the woman before him was not someone he would remember. She did not look older; her hair was still black, and wrinkles had only just started in the corners of her eyes. She had not grown fat, and she wore a kimono that complimented her figure. But when he saw her, his first thought was that she was no taller than Anna, so perhaps Anna was not so short…

“Hello, Katerine,” he said. He flashed a brilliant smile, the smile that women usually found charming.

“Hello, Jon,” she replied.

He expected her to start the conversation, perhaps by screaming at him, or hitting him, perhaps by falling into his arms, or inviting him in, or simply by asking where had been for eight years. He expected her to react. She did not react. She stood in the center of the entrance, one hand still on the doorknob, wearing a frown of annoyance.

“I was just… in town,” Jon said, “and I thought I’d come… see you…”

“You’re the ‘Great Detective?’” Katerine said. “That is you, not some other man with the same name?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“So you’re rich, and you make your own schedule.”

Unspoken implications hung in the air, some obvious, some obscure. Jon did not want to address the obvious or clarify the obscure. He tried to push forward with a vague non-apology.

“I don’t want to be intrusive,” he said.

“This is your house.”

“Yes… Um… Do you still like this house?”

“The house is perfect, and it’s in the best spot in the city.”

“And you have enough money? I can send more, if you need more. I am rich!” Jon smiled, trying to make the comment playful.

“I can’t spend all the money you send me. It just piles up in the bank.”

This surprised Jon. He had instructed Anna to send Katerine “enough to live on” every month, but he had forgotten how much was actually sent, and he had never done his own calculation to confirm its appropriateness. He did not care about losing money, but sending too much seemed careless, ignorant. He searched his mind for an excuse for the excess. And he remembered his children. In his anxiety about seeing Katerine, the fact that they lived here too has slipped his mind.

“It’s for the children,” Jon said. “Liira will be old enough for university soon. With that money she’ll be able to go wherever she wants, and not be indentured to a corporation. Or she can get her own house. Or travel. Whatever she wants.”

“I don’t know where Liira is,” Katerine said. An edge of bitterness came into her voice, the first real emotion she had shown. “She met a boy last year who’s in one of those atheist gangs. She hangs around with them now. Some nights she comes home. Usually she doesn’t. She doesn’t tell me where she’s going when she leaves.”

“Why don’t you stop her?” Jon asked, too surprised to be really accusing.

“Why don’t you stop her?” Katerine retorted. For a moment she was angry, but anger seemed to cost her more energy than she was willing to spend. Her mood cooled as quickly as it had heated. Somehow it hurt Jon that she was not more angry: her indifference was a heavier blow than accusations or curses would have been. She looked at his face, but with an unfocussed gaze, as if watching something just behind his head. He averted his eyes, looked at the doorpost.

“What about Erik?” Jon asked.

“He goes to school at the Temple. He left a few minutes ago.”

“Is that expensive?”

Katerine shrugged. Another silence.

“So what do you do?” Jon asked. “What are you doing today?”

Katerine’s eyes narrowed skeptically, as if trying to decide if Jon’s question was earnest or mocking. “Aren’t you supposed to be brilliant?” she said. “‘The Great Detective?’ What do you think I do?”

“Well, I suppose you…” Jon fumbled, expecting words that did not come. What did Katerine do? When he had imagined her, she was thinking about him, or talking about him, or talking to him. He had never imagined what her days without him might actually be like.

She was not employed, surely. She did not need money, and she lacked the education for anything other than low-paying service jobs, should she want to work for recreation. He imagined her at the cafe across from Vivdauro, rubbing elbows with younger women worried about paying rent. She could not be friends with them: she could not tell them about her life without earning their envy, their suspicion, their incredulity. But neither could she enter the society of the idle rich: she had no husband to connect her to any social circle, no explanation for her money, and no refined manners. She could not marry again, because she was already married, and dependent on her husband for income. She might abandon the house and move to a village, but she knew nothing of village life; as far as Jon knew, she had never left Argintarbo. And she was sending Erik to school, which meant she no longer trusted herself to educate him.

“I suppose you…” Jon thought the word drink but did not say it. “I suppose you read? You always liked stories…”

Katerine averted her eyes, looked past Jon into the street. Her gaze seemed tired, as if the sight of him were a burden, and she needed rest.

There were a hundred questions in Jon’s mind, but none of them felt necessary. He felt concern for Liira, and he wanted to ask about her associations, but he would not do anything about them, so there was no real purpose in asking. And Katerine was obviously uninterested in telling him. Drawing the information out of her would be a waste of both their efforts.

For a time they stood there, not looking at each other. Then Katerine asked, in a voice so empty of emotion that it must be concealing emotion: “What do you want, Jon?”

She meant it in the immediate sense: what did he want here, now, on this doorstep, on this morning? But the question cut deeper, and he was suddenly angry. Why was she asking a question that he dedicated himself to avoiding? Why was she opaque instead of giving him the simplicity of anger or tears? Why was she doing this to him?

Jon moved toward her aggressively. Instead of trying to slam the door, Katerine released the knob and moved backward, making just enough space for Jon to enter. If he chose to enter. And he could: it was his house, and she was his wife. He could do whatever he wanted here, and no one would resist him. Her acquiescence repelled him: if she had tried to slam the door, then he could have reacted, but she had yielded, and so he was confronted with another choice he did not want to make.

Again, they stood with their eyes averted from each other, Jon now in the doorway where Katerine had been, her just inside the house.

Finally Jon spoke. He needed to speak, but he could think of nothing to say, so he simply returned Katerine’s question to her: “What do you want, Katerine?”

She said nothing. She closed her eyes and bowed her head. Jon thought that she might be crying, but he could not see her face, and he was not certain.

“I’ll divorce you,” Jon said, “I’ll put the house in your name, and I’ll send you a million gil. Then you can do what you want.”

Jon closed the door, shutting Katerine inside. He walked away.

* * *

Jon told himself that the encounter had gone well. He had overcome his anxiety about seeing Katerine, and he had learned something useful. If Katerine felt burdened by the strings that still connected them, then he would cut those strings. He would make her rich, and he would let her go. If that was not what she wanted, it was surely what was good for her.

He repeated this to himself as he walked toward Kukajo’s, trying to make himself feel that it was true. It would feel true after the divorce. He would initiate that process (tell Anna to initiate that process) as soon as he returned to Nordarosso. Katerine would have no memory of their meeting today, of course, and so the divorce would seem spontaneous to her, but that was for the best too. She hadn’t wanted to talk to him, had she? His presence made her uncomfortable. Well, then, he would not impose himself.

It was after nine o’clock when he arrived at Kukajo’s. Varence was already there, standing rigidly a few feet from the entrance, eyes scanning the street like a rabbit watching for dogs.

“Relax,” Jon said, coming up beside her, “we aren’t being watched here.”

“Who would be watching us?” she whispered.

Jon ignored the question and led her into the cafe, guiding her gently by the elbow. He tossed a platinum ten-gil to the host and instructed the man to bring water but otherwise not disturb them. They took a table in a back corner and sat facing each other.

Jon looked into Varence’s eyes, and she looked back with a fierce expectancy that startled him. She had no idea what he was going to say, but she was already enthralled by it. She looked like a starving waif watching for a morsel, or a soldier listening for the order to charge. She expected that whatever Jon was about to say would be the most important words she had ever heard.

How did this happen? Jon thought. How did this person I didn’t even know existed become… What was Varence? Obsessed? Entrapped? Subjugated?

He thought of Anna, whom he had told himself had a pleasant and stable life, but who really lived in terror. He thought of Katerine, whom he had told himself was carefree and fulfilled, but who was really trapped in a limbo of pseudo-widowhood. Now here was Verance, about whom he had never thought at all, but whose happiness was somehow contingent upon his validation. He did not mean to affect people the way he did. He did not mean to be what he was to them.

Jon had planned to tell Varence a half-truth — that he needed her help setting a trap for a group of kidnappers — and invent just enough detail to impel her cooperation. But under the pressure of her gaze, this seemed inadequate. He did not want to disappoint her. He wanted to say something worthy of her anticipation.

Without really planning to, he opened his mouth and said the phrase that was still lingering in his mind: “What do you want, Varence?”

Her eyes widened and then narrowed, surprise and then concentration. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Jon said nothing. He looked at her with a sagacious expression and folded his hands, as if interpreting his question were a test she might fail.

“I want to do something that matters,” Varence said, hesitantly. She paused, expecting Jon to reply, but he only inclined head, prompting her to continue. “Like you do. You’re… above… this.” She made a gesture that encompassed the world. “You’re changing things. You’re not just caught up in them.”

“That’s why you wanted me to sign The History of Nordarosso,” Jon said. “Because it isn’t just about me. It’s about how I changed the village.”

Varence gasped. “You remember that?”

“People ask for my autograph all the time, but you are the only person who ever asked me to sign that book.”

“But that means you must have recognized me yesterday! Is that why you pretended you weren’t you? Because you recognized me?”

Jon had not expected her to make this association, and so he had no answer to this question. He ignored it.

“Would you like to help me change things?” Jon asked.

“Yes! What do you need?” Jon opened his mouth to answer, but Varence continued, her cadence accelerating: “You said someone was watching you– Or were they watching me? That must be why you didn’t talk to me yesterday! Because I was being watched, and you knew it! But you wouldn’t know that unless I was already involved in something you’re investigating…” 

“Who do you think could be watching you?” Jon asked.

“The Inquisition?” Varence said uncertainty. “There are alway spies from the corporations watching Serfita messengers — you know I work for Serfita? — to try and see which of their competitors are collaborating. But that’s not unusual.”

“Why would the Inquisition be watching you?”

Varence glanced around. Their table was in a corner, and she was facing the cafe’s doors so that she would see anyone coming in, but it seemed she was one of those people who had to ritualistically scan for eavesdroppers before revealing a secret. Jon leaned forward to receive the secret.

“I think I might have been delivering messages for an atheist group,” Varence whispered, excitement making the whisper loud.

Jon suppressed a laugh. That was just the sort of vainglorious fantasy a frustrated courier would invent, a mental trick to make mundane work feel adventurous.

“Might have?” Jon asked.

“I don’t know for sure. She never said it outright…”

Jon fixed Varence with a stare that was stern and expectant. She began speaking rapidly, anxious at first, then gradually more confident as Jon’s interest increased.

“Working for Serfita, I take messages to and from most of the corporate headquarters. It’s random, but our biggest customer is Vivdauro, because Vivdauro makes blueprints for all of the other corporations. You know that… Um… When I would go to Vivdauro, I would go to this waiting room in the middle of the building–”

“In the middle of the building?”

“Yes.”

“Serfita employees can go inside the security perimeter?”

“Yes, with a temporary key.”

“Of course. Go on.”

“I would go to the waiting room… and wait… and eventually someone would come out to take the package I’d brought, or give me a package to deliver somewhere. That’s very normal. All the corporations have waiting rooms like that. But then about two years ago there was a new worker there, a woman, who started bringing out the packages. She was chatty. The other employees didn’t talk to me at all, but she asked me about my job, and my time at university, just made conversation whenever I saw her. And then one day she invited me to go down into the basement with her. They call the basement the ‘Operations Center,’ but I’m not sure why.”

“What’s down there?”

“A lot of machines. Electric machines. Not many people. I was surprised how few people, since there are so many in the above-ground part of the building. I didn’t get a good look at any of that though, because the only place we went to was Larisa’s office.”

“Larisa?”

“Yes. That was her name.”

“What was her last name?”

“Lulia. Larisa de Lulia. Why? What’s wrong?”

“Did she look like this?” Jon produced the photograph of Beatrace en Cynd and slid it across the table.

“Yes!” Varence gasped. “That’s Larisa! But she’s in a wedding dress here! Where did you get this picture? When was this taken?”

“Finish your story,” Jon commanded. “Larisa started taking you down to her office in the Operations Center. Why?”

“It just seemed like she wanted to someplace private to talk. We seemed to have a lot in common. We were… unhappy… about a lot of the same things.”

“Why was Larisa unhappy?”

“Because the Emperor is dead,” Varence said, her voice suddenly becoming both quieter and more intense. 

“That’s an atheist slogan,” Jon said. His tone that implied he knew much more about atheists than he did. “Did Larisa say that?”

“Yes. And it’s true. You know it’s true. The Emperor is supposed to be the foundation everything is built on, but he’s not. There’s no foundation.  This system, this society, it’s falling apart. We all feel it, but nobody can process it because we’re too busy with…” She gestured at the world again.

“Why do you say society is falling apart? We seem to be in an age of progress.”

“Progress toward what?”

Jon did not know what to say to this, so he resumed his sagacious look, challenging Varence to answer herself.

“Nobody knows what we’re doing anymore,” Varence said. “It used to be — back before the Technological Revolution — everyone understood their work. Everyone knew the purpose of their work. Now everyone just follows orders they don’t understand. I’m twenty-six. A hundred years ago, I would have been married for ten years, and I’d have five kids, and everything I did would be for my family. I’d be working for my own blood: there’d be parts of myself out in the world, and I’d be working for them. But nobody cares about their work now. I don’t care about Serfita. I spend all day thinking about what’s good for Serfita, being available for Serfita, but Serfita doesn’t care about me. I’m a replaceable part in a machine that I don’t value.”

“What stops you from getting married?”

“Nothing stops me, but there isn’t any reason to. You don’t need a family when you can have everything you want by flipping a switch. And you don’t want a family when you have no control over what happens to them.” Varence gestured southward, toward the slums. “Half the population is stacked up in beehives, like… bees, like animals in a barn. They’re controlled every moment of the day. There’s no place for a family in that. There’s no place for humanity, for self. Everyone’s just a gear that eventually wears out. Why have children? To make more gears for the machine?

“On the other side…” She gestured north. “Families used to be known for the work they did. Families had jobs. You taught your kids to do what you did, so they could help with the family’s work and take it over someday. Now all the jobs are made up by corporations, and they change all the time, and no one understands what they’re doing. When I’m not following Serfita’s orders, I’m buying things with the money they pay me. I obey and buy things. Where does family fit into that? I don’t have any skills to teach a child. I don’t have any legacy to leave a child. If I had children, they’d just get in my way, and I’d send them off to a school as soon as they could walk. Being a mother used to be a job, but now women work for money and pay strangers to raise their children…

“The Divine Emperor is supposed to be ‘the mediator between the Immutable and the cycles of time.’ That’s what we’re taught. That’s what the law requires us to believe. Maybe it was true once, but the Emperor isn’t in control of any of this now, and none of this is tied to anything immutable. Everyone feels it. Everyone feels that they don’t have any place in this way of life, any stake. We’re all just going through motions, and trying not to think about how none of it matters.”

“Is that how Larisa felt?” Jon asked.

Varence nodded. “When Larisa asked me to deliver extra messages,” she said, “I assumed they were illegal. Subversive. She never said, and I didn’t ask. We’d just talk about how the world is broken, and then she’d give me the Vivdauro message — the one Serfita sent me to get — and then an extra one to deliver to somewhere nearby.”

“Who received those extra messages?”

“I don’t know. I left them at dead drops. I never saw who was getting them. And that was fine. I didn’t really want to know. I think… I felt like if I knew too much, then I’d be disappointed. If I didn’t know, then I could assume they were important… I hope they were important…”

“But then Larisa disappeared? When was that?”

“It was… It was in the middle of winter. I remember there was ice on my shoes the first time she wasn’t there. The first week of Malvarma, maybe? Sometime in Malvarma of last year. Larisa just wasn’t there, and I met someone else instead, and I never went down to the basement again.

“Why is all of this important? Did something happen to Larisa? Where did you get that picture?”

“Yes, something happened to Larisa,” Jon said. “She’s in danger, and I am trying to help her. Will you help me help her?”

“Of course! What can I do?”

“I need to know what you are willing to do.”

“Okay…”

“Would you break the law to help Larisa?” Jon asked.

“Yes. I mean, probably. What law?”

“Would you kill to help her?”

“I don’t know. Kill who?”

She didn’t say “no,” Jon thought. He suppressed a smile. He could see that these questions frightened Varence, but also that she was excited by the prospect of righteous rebellion. She would be willing to kill if he convinced her that it served a noble purpose.

“I need you to do something for me,” Jon said. “Call it a test. I need to know that I can rely on you before I tell you more about Larisa.”

Jon stood. He took Varence’s elbow and gently guided her out of the cafe and into the alley behind. When they were out of sight of the street, he produced a gun and pressed it into her hand. She held it awkwardly, as if it were very heavy.

“I need to know that you trust me, Varence,” Jon said. “I can’t let you help unless I know that you will believe what I say.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked. Her voice quavered. There was no excitement in her eyes now, only fear.

“Shoot me,” Jon said. “Right here.” He pressed a finger to his forehead. “Put the barrel here and pull the trigger.”

“Why?”

“To show that you trust me.”

“Is it loaded?”

“Yes.”

“But… You’ll die…”

“I will not die. I promise. Believe me.”

“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand,” Jon said. “You need to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“I…”

Varence raised the gun with trembling hands and pressed it to Jon’s forehead. He could feel her rapid breathing through the steel.

“Do it,” Jon said. “I promise it won’t hurt me. You can believe–”

7 Pluvo 712, 5:58 a.m. (XV)

Jon sat up in his bed at the Albrook. His meeting with Varence had gone very well, better than he had dared to expect. But he did not feel satisfied. He felt anxious about Liira.

Varence’s disenchantment had pushed her to foolish ideas and dangerous people. She considered Larisa a close friend, when Larisa had obviously been manipulating her for some partisan agenda. She idolized Jon, when Jon was… Was Liira caught up with men like him? Was Liira like Varence, captivated by illusions of wisdom and courage that masked greed and cynicism?

To Varence, a book signed by the Great Detective was like the relic of a Sage. But it meant nothing to Jon. It contained nothing of him. He was like a hunter, and his insincere words were like baits for hungry deer.

Jon had told himself ten thousand times that he was not hurting anyone. Not really. Those people at the Three Rests had not really burned. Jorcyn de Liist was not really maimed. Jon had never really murdered, or raped, or extorted. Just the opposite: the world was better because of his actions. But…

There was no “but.” The world was better because of his actions. If Varence was inspired by a false idol, that was better than her not being inspired. If Liira fell in with a bad crowd because of his absence, that was better than living in the slums, which is what his presence would have brought her. Varence was right: he was making the world better, and that meant he was a good man.

Jon rose, found paper, and began planning what lies he would tell Varence that day.