The next day's front page of The Kandel Evening Bell Gazette read: Boiler Explodes at Golden Iris Opera House; Celebrated Singer Killed; Aftermath Orderly.
The report was watertight. It gave the location of the boiler room, the time of the explosion, and the fire brigade's arrival record, all in full. Principal soprano Juliet Orlando had "tragically lost her life while evacuating the audience," and every theatre in the city flew its flag at half-mast. As for why not one of the two thousand spectators had suffered a burn, while several hundred claimed to have "recovered something they had forgotten," the newspaper offered this explanation: a collective emotional release brought on by shock.
"A boiler." Sharlo slapped the newspaper onto Grey's desk. "A theatre with twelve hundred candles, and your clerks tell me it was a boiler."
"Boilers are useful things." Without looking up, Grey signed a document. "They cause a third of the strange events in this city. Twenty years from now, they'll still be causing them. Sit. Three reports, then you can collect what you're owed."
Sharlo already knew all three, but regulations required that he hear them in person.
First, casualties. Four hundred faded souls; three hundred ninety-one restored. The remaining nine love debts had been burned as ritual kindling before the return began.
They could not be recovered. The nine names were listed on a sheet of paper, and Grey made Sharlo read them once. "Remembering the cost is a rule of this trade."
Second, Bassoon. He had escaped with a fragment of the crown. His background had been uncovered: true name unknown; he had been involved in the capital's love-debt case twenty years ago, then using the alias "the Grand Organist."
He was wanted throughout the realm, though Grey put it plainly: "The warrant is for the newspapers. A man like that will surface only when the curtain bell rings on the next play."
Third, the Church. The Order of the Sacred Flame had issued a solemn protest against the Vesper Bureau for "wantonly permitting a civilian to mount the stage and disrupt the scene of a sacred rite." At the same time, the Church of the Daystar had volunteered to bear all compensation and relief costs. The two matters appeared in the same official letter, written in ink from the same pen.
"Translated," Grey said, dropping the letter into a drawer, "they're furious they didn't get the crown; relieved when they discovered it shattered; and now that they know an unidentified young man shattered it, the Church has opened a file on you as of today. Congratulations, Consultant. You've made your debut."
"Should I feel honoured?"
"You should feel a chill between your shoulder blades," Grey said. "But that is not today's subject."
He rose from behind the desk, opened the safe, and removed two things. The first was a pay envelope, heavier than the stipulated weekly wage of four silver candles. Inside lay one gold crown, with a note reading "Special-case allowance. Tax paid." In his head, Sharlo silently arranged the rent, Cheryl's final payment, and a new coffee grinder into a table.
The second was a parchment copy.
The complete Seventeen Dirges, including the solitary line at the end. The Vesper Bureau's bell-shaped seal was stamped beneath the text, followed by Grey's handwritten authorization: Approved to read. Approved to possess. Not approved to transmit.
"You earned another merit and came to trade with me. This is what you bought." Grey pushed the copy across.
"Ask three questions. My mood is not bad tonight. I may even answer ones beyond your grade."
Sharlo folded the copy and tucked it inside his coat. He did indeed have a bellyful of questions: how all the gods had died, what the Church was concealing, why the Dawn Tower's fire fell under the Church of the Daystar. But what came from his mouth was something else.
"Does Juliet count as having been 'unmade by love'? Did that line of the dirge come true or not?"
Grey's hand paused as he cleaned his spectacles.
"The postmortem will say ritual backlash and organ failure," he said slowly. "But that isn't what you're asking. You're asking whether she died according to the script or made the choice herself."
He put his spectacles back on. "I've done this work forty years, Vane. I have seen the Seventeen Dirges fulfilled hundreds of times, each more exact than the last. Opening night was the first time I saw the person onstage smiling at the moment of fulfillment while the ghosts below came away empty-handed. Not one word of the dirge was wrong—Love unmakes the Scarlet Queen—yet the meaning changed completely."
The old inspector regarded him, his gaze darkening behind the lenses.
"You did not defeat fate, young man. Don't grow conceited. You proved only one thing: the same doom sentence can be read in two ways."
He paused. "For this world, that is the best news in twenty years."
"Second question," Sharlo said. "My uncle, August Vane. I requisitioned his file. He disappeared six months ago, with the finding 'departed the country of his own accord.' Chief, the Daydream Agency takes 'the cases no one else will touch.' What was the last case he accepted before he disappeared?"
This time, Grey's silence lasted much longer.
"Beyond your grade," he said at last. "But I promised an answer. Three months before old Vane disappeared, he came to see me. Drank half a bottle and asked one question."
Grey lowered his voice. "He asked: If this world is a play, who do you think it's being performed for?"
The lampwick in the office popped and spat a bright spark.
"I threw him out," Grey said. "Questions like that are called veil-seeking in our trade. The Veilseeker's last secret is death—the tenth dirge. Vane, let me advise you as an old man: stop following your uncle's road here. Not forever. Stop until your bones are hard enough."
Sharlo neither agreed nor refused. He rose and took his leave. As he reached the door, Grey spoke again behind him.
"One last reminder. You have credit for one question remaining. Save it. In this trade, a question still owed is worth more than one already asked."
As Sharlo opened the door to leave, he glanced back.
After the spark, the lamplight wavered. Within its shifting light and shadow, the old inspector returned to his desk and laid out the chess game he always played alone. Above his head, Sharlo saw it.
Ordinarily, Grey's "script" was tangled into an impenetrable mass, like locked snarls of thread. Tonight—perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps because of the old story about half a bottle—the corner of the tangle loosened, revealing a line buried at the very bottom.
Amber, ancient, as though written many years ago:
【He will betray everything he has ever been loyal to—in the name of loyalty.】
Sharlo stood at the door, unable to move.
"Something else?" Grey asked without looking up.
"... No." Sharlo gently closed the door.
The corridor was long. He walked for a very long time, his palms slick with sweat. He did not understand a single word of that line.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Grey—the old man forever telling them to "remember the cost," the old man who gave him coffee, work, and the copy of the dirges—betrayal? Loyalty? Either word was absurd beside this man.
But the words above Thomas's head had come true. The words above Juliet's head had come true.
He copied the line onto the final page of his black notebook. Beneath it he drew a rule and wrote: Foreshadowing for Act Two. I will not let it play out as written.
* * *
Viola waited in the ground-floor lobby, her left arm in a sling—a blow she had taken while cutting the fuse-wicks above the chandelier. Leaning against a column, she watched him come down and tossed him a folder.
"Final report. Rewrite your section," she said. "'I went onstage and said a few things, after which the matter was resolved'—Consultant, do you call that a report?"
"A masterful précis."
"The Bureau's compensation regulations calculate allowances by report length." Viola's face remained blank. "At your word count, Accounts cannot justify that gold crown. I added six pages reconstructing the scene's timeline for you. Copy them out and sign."
Sharlo opened the folder. Six pages in her lean, upright hand, the timing precise to the minute. Every piece of nonsense he had uttered onstage had been recorded in deadly earnest, including: "Witness statement: the Consultant publicly removed an opposing operative's belt, an act which objectively disrupted the encirclement."
He looked up. Viola had already turned away.
"Raven," he called after her. "Thank you."
"Procedural matter. No thanks required." She did not turn, only lifted the hand in its sling.
"New case next Monday. Nine o'clock. Don't be late."
* * *
Juliet Orlando's funeral took place on the third day.
In accordance with an old clause in her management contract that no one had ever noticed, the funeral was to be simple: no lying in state, no mourners received, and direct passage of her spirit by the Stillwater Society. Yet on the morning of the procession, the four streets between the Golden Iris and Stillwater Pier were packed with people.
Respectable people stood in front: colleagues from the theatre, musicians, critics, several regular boxholders. Behind them were the people who bought standing tickets: apprentices, factory girls, dock labourers, the ones who saved half a month's wages for a single performance. The crowd was unnaturally quiet. Only the Stillwater Society's blue-green lanterns kindled one by one in the fog.
The change came when the hearse turned onto Canal Bridge. Somewhere in the back of the crowd, someone began to hum a little tune. It was out of key, thick with the South Ward accent, and its words were painfully clumsy—The day you left, I didn't see you away.
I wove my farewell into your scarf—The two thousand people present on opening night had carried the song out of the theatre, and in three days it had travelled through every street and lane in the city. It had no name. Music publishers could not print it.
Critics called it crude beyond endurance. But for the three minutes it took the hearse to cross the bridge, all four streets hummed it, their voices gathering in the fog like a rising tide.
Sharlo stood among the crowd at the foot of the bridge and did not hum. He could not carry a tune in either life. When the hearse passed, he merely made the same formal bow he had made onstage that night: the bow of a theatrical apprentice.
As he straightened, he heard a flower girl beside him whisper to her companion, "Did Miss Nightingale ever love anyone in her life?"
Her companion thought for a moment. "She must have. Otherwise she couldn't have sung so well."
Sharlo pulled his scarf up over half his face. Some closing arguments could not be delivered in the street.
* * *
On the fourth day, Cheryl and Thomas came to the agency together.
Thomas had grown markedly thinner, with dark bruises beneath his eyes. Since the return of his love debt, the ten blank days had to be filled in night by night, and overdue pain arrived with interest. But his eyes were alive.
Their brown shone from deep within the pupils, warm as bread fresh from an oven. The first thing he did upon entering was place an envelope on the desk and push it across with meticulous care.
"Final payment," he said. "Miss Hart paid a retainer of twelve copper tinder. Under the agency's customary rates, the remaining fee upon conclusion should be one silver candle. In addition—" He withdrew a second envelope from his coat, much thicker than the first.
"This is a small personal token of gratitude, unrelated to the commission. I insist you—"
"I'll take the final payment. Take the gratuity home." Sharlo pushed the thick envelope back untouched.
"Mr. Ophir, I've seen the figures on that pit of debt. Pay it down before we discuss gifts. Don't worry—the Vesper Bureau followed the Wick Mercantile's ledgers and swept up the moneylenders, too. Your creditor is now the Royal Treasury, whose rates are legal enough to make a man weep. Pay it slowly. You can manage it."
Thomas tried to argue, but Cheryl gave his sleeve a little tug. The motion was tiny and perfectly natural. Thomas immediately stopped arguing. Watching them, Sharlo suddenly felt that the twelve copper tinder and one silver candle were the best money he had earned in either of his lives.
"We've changed the wedding date," Cheryl said at the door. "We're not waiting for the winter solstice. Next month. Come drink to us, Mr. Vane. Don't bring money—if you dare, I'll enter it in my ledger and repay you with compound interest."
Their footsteps receded down the stairs. Sharlo listened from behind his desk, heard the street door open and close, and then Mrs. Porter's great voice came thundering through the floorboards.
"Mr. Vane! Rent!"
Sharlo smiled and counted six silver candles from his pay envelope before going downstairs—three for the arrears, three to pay the next week in advance. Mrs. Porter accepted the coins and bit each one. Then she abruptly produced a cloth-covered plate of griddle cakes from her apron pocket and thrust it into his arms without permitting argument.
"Read the newspaper," she said fiercely. "Boiler explosion. Good thing you can run. Stay away from places like that. What's worth hearing about singing?"
She paused, her voice dropping half a degree. "... If your uncle were here, he'd say you'd made something of yourself."
She clattered downstairs. Sharlo stood on the landing holding the plate of still-warm griddle cakes for quite some time.
The sun in this world was dim, the sky was low, and the gods were dead. But the griddle cakes were warm.
He decided to put that in his notebook as well. On the reverse of his List of Things Wrong, he opened a fresh page and gave it the title Things Right With This World.
* * *
Midnight. The grey-white theatre.
The applause had already begun when Sharlo stepped onto the stage.
Dozens of grey figures occupied rows three through nine, applauding quietly. The sound was not loud, but it had weight, like a real audience at the end of a performance heard through a wall. Above the stage, the scarlet play placard for Death of the Scarlet Queen slowly rose out of sight. The announcing voice sounded through the theatre, dry and courteous as ever.
"Act One, ended."
"Thank you for performing."
Sharlo took his bow. As he straightened, his gaze swept across the centre of the front row—and fixed there.
Tonight, something rested on the chair that was always clean.
Not a person. A card, standing upright against the backrest like the calling card of an audience member who had bought a ticket but failed to attend.
He jumped down from the stage. This time the front row did not retreat. Three paces brought him there. The card was made of stiff brown stock, bearing an image: a young man with a pack on his back, one foot stepping beyond the edge of a cliff.
He had no features, only a blank face. Above his head was the number 0. Beneath the image, a line of small print read:
Hail the Curtainbreaker.
Sharlo picked up the card and turned it over.
A handwritten line was on the back. His breath stopped. He knew that hand.
He had known it for twenty-two years. An entire cabinet of case files at the agency was written in it.
Old Vane's hand.
Only three words:
Don't take your bow.
Sharlo stood clutching the card for a very long time. Then he jolted awake—truly awake, sitting up in bed with the night still black beyond the window. The card lay beside his pillow. Its stiff edge pressed into his fingers, solid and real, carrying the dry chill of the theatre.
Something from the dream had followed him out.
He threw on a coat, lit a candle, and went downstairs to stand before the bank of archive cabinets that stretched from floor to ceiling. At the very top, the brass padlock with no keyhole gleamed dully in the candlelight. For three months it had not stirred, like a mouth clamped shut upon a sentence.
Sharlo raised the Curtainbreaker card and pressed it against the lock.
Nothing happened. No click, no golden radiance, no hidden compartment springing open. The padlock remained a padlock, perfectly still.
He tried drawing the card along the seam between the cabinet doors. Still nothing. After wrestling with it for a quarter of an hour, he gave up and returned the card to his pocket.
As he did, his fingertip brushed the body of the lock.
It was warm.
In the cold before dawn in late autumn, in a room with no fire lit, amid a cabinetful of icy iron plate and brass fittings—the padlock was warm, like a hand another hand had only just released.
Sharlo stood in the candlelight, watching the lock. "You knew all along I'd get this card, didn't you, Uncle?" he said softly.
The lock did not answer. Yet somehow he felt that the temperature of this silence differed from the silence of the past three months.
* * *
At seven in the morning, Sharlo stood before the agency window with the card that had followed him from his dream in his pocket.
The fire atop the Dawn Tower kindled precisely on time. Gold-red flame climbed an invisible path toward the dark-red, exhausted sun.
The flame connected. The sun brightened—
—then dimmed again.
Brightened. Dimmed. Like someone coughing in thick smoke. It happened twice before the third attempt finally held and dark-red light poured down across the roofs of Kandelburg.
The people at morning prayer in the streets noticed nothing. Newsboys began shouting the latest on the boiler explosion. Barges sounded their horns upon the canal as always.
Only from the direction of the Dawn Tower came, faintly, half a toll more than usual—as though someone's hand in the tower had trembled.
Sharlo remained at the window for a long time. Then he returned to his desk, opened the black notebook, and added a new entry to the List of Things Wrong. When he had finished, he tucked the Curtainbreaker card between its pages, closed the book, and raised his cup of brown hot water to the empty room—which might not have been empty after all.
Item Four: This morning, the sun coughed twice.
The sun in this world is running out of oil.
(Volume I · Case One — End)