The ground beneath the mortuary cosmetics parlor went much deeper than the building above it.
That was the result of two weeks of covert investigation. The deed to the House of Repose showed that it had been built on the foundations of an old church from the previous dynasty, and the old church had possessed a crypt. Lowtown's elderly stonemasons all remembered it. In its day, the crypt had stored coffins, forty of them laid side by side.
"It isn't storing coffins now." Grey spread a stack of photographs across the conference table.
Before they could confirm that the crypt existed, the covert team had spent ten full days grinding away at the problem.
By daylight, the House of Repose conducted an impeccable business: accepting commissions, preparing faces, conducting funerals, and collecting fees. The artist's skill was celebrated throughout Lowtown. Even the spirit-ferrymen of the Stillwater Society gladly worked alongside him.
Bereaved families asked specifically for "the gentleman from the House of Repose," saying the faces he prepared "looked merely asleep—sleeping more soundly than they ever had in life." The covert team examined six years of his accounts and found them clean enough to set upon an altar: fair prices, no cheating old or young, half fees for the solitary poor, and free restoration for unidentified bodies on the seventh, seventeenth, and twenty-seventh of every month.
"A man this accomplished at being good." The operations captain leafed through the ledgers, his expression dark. "If the neighbours in Lowtown knew we were investigating him, they'd smash every window in the district office."
"Only a man this accomplished at being good could keep that crypt hidden," Grey said. "Remember the method. The oldest roots of the Dirge Society are never buried in sewers. We dredge sewers every day. They hide in good works, in sterling reputations, in places you feel ashamed to suspect. Investigate a wicked man and evidence sprouts by itself. Investigate a good man and every step strips a layer of skin from your own back."
In the end, the breakthrough came from the smell. Lowtown's old stonemasons smoked cheap pipes and had ruined most of their noses, but one master who had made coffins for forty years retained a keen sense of smell. A covert officer drank with him on three separate evenings before the master smacked his lips and said the wax at the House of Repose smelled wrong. Of course a funeral parlor used wax, but beneath the wax there was a sweet, warm scent, as though someone had kept a pot of honey simmering underground for years.
"The smell of love-debt," Viola said. Forty-nine portions of pawned love, simmering in the crypt.
The photographs had been taken at great risk through a crypt air vent, from an awkward angle and with poor exposure. Even so, they silenced the entire conference room for half a minute.
The crypt had been arranged as a small theatre.
A genuine theatre: stage, curtain, boxlike niches, even a tiny crystal chandelier. And every seat in the auditorium was occupied by a human figure—
Wax figures.
Forty-nine wax figures sat in orderly rows, facing the stage. The photograph was blurred and showed little detail, but each figure held a different pose. Some leaned forward.
Some rested a hand on the back of the neighbouring chair. Some tilted their heads slightly, as though waiting for the curtain to rise.
"The number of effigies matches our estimate of the 'merchandise.' Forty-nine." Viola's voice sounded through the silent conference room. "He no longer needs a living audience."
"More precisely, he doesn't dare use one," Sharlo said, staring at the photograph, his throat dry. "He lost on the night of the premiere because the audience was alive—and living people laugh. Once the laughter began, the ritual's Stage shattered. So this time, he has learned his lesson. He pours the forty-nine portions of pawned love into forty-nine wax effigies and makes 'love' itself the audience. Wax cannot laugh, lose focus, or be disrupted by me. It will watch the whole performance with perfect faith from beginning to end."
"A performance of what?" the operations captain asked.
Sharlo looked at one corner of the photograph. A small play plaque hung above the wax theatre's stage. Its lettering was blurred, barely legible beneath a magnifying glass:
Return of the Scarlet Queen.
"A play to feed the seed," he said. "Mrs. Margot—the fragment's host—takes the stage. Forty-nine portions of love provide the fuel, and forty-nine wax effigies bear witness. When the performance ends, the fragment is fed and the seed sprouts. Kandelburg will have a 'Scarlet Queen' once more—not a candidate, not a host, but divinity grown in living flesh and brought back to life."
Grey rolled a chess piece between two fingers for a long time.
"The date is set for the end of the month. Seven days remain," he said. "We know the location, scale, and method. Now, who can answer the final question?"
The old inspector surveyed the conference room. "What does he want? Twenty years ago, he served the Dirge Society. On the night of the premiere, he served the Dirge Society. But for this performance of Return of the Scarlet Queen, the Stage Announcer has not appeared, and no 'voice' of the Dirge Society has made contact. He is working alone. A man who spent half his life running errands for a cult suddenly saves up for a production of his own. Why?"
No one in the conference room answered.
Sharlo spoke slowly. "Chief, my guess is that he wants to buy his freedom."
Everyone looked at him.
"When Bassoon died, the final line above his head was, 'He will take his bow in gratitude,'" Sharlo said. "Grateful even as he died. This organization does not allow its people to retire. It permits only final bows. The Grand Organist has spent twenty years running and changed more faces than anyone can count. He knows better than anyone that sooner or later, he too will become one more line reading, 'Thank you for performing.' So he is preparing a magnificent gift—a living Scarlet Queen. He'll use Her to bargain with the Stage Announcer: either to buy back his freedom, or..."
He paused.
"To buy a seat. To rise from actor to audience."
Grey stared at him for several seconds, then pressed the chess piece flat against the table.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
"Reschedule the operation," he said. "We don't wait for the performance to end, but we cannot strike too early. We move when the effigies are half filled, with the fragment and all forty-nine pieces of 'merchandise' present. One net, one catch. The operation will take place on the sixth night, the eve of the performance. I want plans from every team by morning."
* * *
On the night after the meeting, Sharlo returned to the Agency. Before going to bed, he did something he had been saving for a long time.
At midnight, his pocket watch stopped, and the grey-white theatre received him. He took one of the last two ticket stubs from his pocket—In Broad Daylight—and laid it on the little stage of the wooden model.
"Replay," he said. "Scene: the Magpie Pawnshop, the day Agent Raven and I entered."
The spotlight died and rose again. The Magpie Pawnshop's interior formed onstage inch by inch: the mahogany counter, the wall of pigeonholes, the embroidered tree crowded with magpies. The "Sharlo" onstage was playing a fastidious customer, but the Sharlo in the audience did not glance at himself. He circled to the side of the stage, leaned close to the embroidery, and examined it inch by inch.
On his first visit, all his attention had been fixed on the two sets of script above Mrs. Margot's head. He had given the embroidery only a glance, remembering nothing beyond "needlework fine enough to make one's scalp prickle." Now, by the light of the stage, he finally saw the tree clearly.
Five fine golden lines ran horizontally across its trunk. Five, equally spaced.
The magpies perched along those golden lines, one by one, at varying heights—but not at random. Sharlo stared for more than ten seconds before a familiar sensation prickled across his scalp. In his previous life, when the drama club rehearsed musicals, he had looked at this sort of thing every day—
A musical staff.
The embroidery was a page of music. Every magpie was a note, and the little object in its beak—ring, key, teardrop—marked dynamics and duration. Sharlo could not read music, but his memory was good.
He memorized the position of every bird, returned beneath the spotlight, and hummed it into the air. Badly and out of tune, but well enough to identify.
He had heard the melody before. It was the tune drifting from the crypt vent at the House of Repose.
The full score of Return of the Scarlet Queen had been embroidered brazenly on the pawnshop wall for six weeks, awaiting the inspection of every customer and covert officer who walked in.
"Showing off." Sharlo put away the ticket stub as it burned to ash and addressed the audience in the dark. "You see? This is the trouble with old-fashioned artists. They can bear to leave a work unsigned, but never unexhibited."
Early the next morning, he drew the memorized "magpie score" for the Bureau's music clerk. After half a day's examination, the clerk reached two conclusions. First, it was indeed an organ composition written in a lost ecclesiastical dirge form.
Second, and more importantly, the score was incomplete. The work had seven movements. The embroidery contained only six.
"The seventh movement is not on the wall," the clerk said. "By the rules of the dirge form, the final movement can be performed only by the chief celebrant's own hands. It is never committed to paper."
After hearing the report, Grey added one line to the plan: The ritual can be completed only if the Grand Organist performs in person. The man will be present.
* * *
The final preparation for the operation was to turn the "merchandise" back into "people."
The operation plan referred to the forty-nine love-debts as "target materials." Sharlo detested the phrase. Under the pretext of checking the files, he pulled Viola into reviewing the original records for all forty-nine pawn tickets from beginning to end—copied transaction by transaction from the pawnshop's running ledgers by the covert team over the past several weeks.
When they finished, the two of them sat in the archive room for a long time without speaking.
It was not an inventory of materials. It was a casualty report copied in the city's most beautiful copperplate:
An old deep-sea sailor had pawned his homesickness. Note on ticket: The routes grow longer and home feels smaller. Better to sail with an empty heart than ache on deck.
A retired judge of the public-order court had pawned his remorse over an old case. Note: Wrongly convicted a man thirty years ago. Subject deceased. No restitution possible. Remorse serves no purpose.
A young midwife had pawned the memory of the first child she failed to catch. Note: Hands must be steady. Remembering that night makes steady hands impossible.
A mother had pawned her disappointment in her deserter son. She kept the love and surrendered only the disappointment. In the remarks field, Mrs. Margot had added a rare line in her own hand: Interest halved on this ticket. This old woman cannot bring herself to charge the full rate.
"Do you see it?" Sharlo returned the last page, his throat dry. "Not one of the forty-nine is a 'bad thing.' They are all the ragged edges of love. Homesickness is love of home. Remorse is love of justice. Disappointment is love of a son. The Grand Organist chooses his stock more carefully than the Wick Mercantile. He takes only pieces veined with blood. To feed the fragment, he needs living flesh."
"There is something else worth recording." Viola pointed to the dates in the running ledger. "Of the forty-nine transactions, thirty-one were completed after the Night of Repayment."
Sharlo started. Then he understood, and cold washed through his stomach.
On the Night of Repayment, everyone in the city had suddenly remembered what they had set aside, what they owed, and what they had never dared say. The flower shops sold out three times. That was the half the newspapers were willing to print.
The other half was this: some of the things people remembered were too heavy to carry. Those who could not bear them turned straight toward Riverbend Street. The hunting ground for the Scarlet Queen's fragment had been opened by the victory Sharlo himself won in the previous battle.
"Record it," he told Viola, his voice hoarse. "Remind me. From now on, whenever we solve a case, we have to remember this: giving something back is only the first half. In the second half, someone has to teach people how to carry it."
* * *
It was deep night when the meeting ended. Sharlo remained in the conference room to copy the photographic record. Halfway through, he noticed Viola still seated at the far end of the long table, utterly motionless before the photograph of the wax theatre.
"Raven?"
She did not answer.
"Viola."
Still no answer. Sharlo rose and went to her—then saw clearly. Viola's eyes were open, but her pupils were faintly unfocused.
Her breathing was long and even. The hand holding her pen hovered an inch above the paper, while a drop of ink gathered at the nib, fell, and spread into a small stain.
She was asleep. Sitting straight-backed with her eyes open, asleep.
It lasted only two or three seconds. She jerked awake, her pupils snapping into focus. Her first reaction was to look at the ink stain.
Her second was to look up at Sharlo. For the first time, in those eyes that had not closed in six years, he saw something resembling fear.
"Just now," she said. Her voice was steady, steady as ice. "How long?"
"Three seconds."
"Which time is this that you've seen?"
"The first." Sharlo did not ask how many times there had been in all. He could see above her head. Beneath the faint line 【She has not slept in six years】, a second line had quietly appeared at some unknown moment, one shade darker than the first:
【Collection on her sleep debt has begun.】
Viola followed his gaze toward the space above her own head, where of course she could see nothing. She looked away, wiped the ink from the paper, dipped her pen again, and completed the unfinished record one deliberate stroke at a time. Then she closed the file and said calmly:
"The supplemental clause to the third of our three rules is now in force: 'You'll tell me when it's about to kill me.'" She looked at him. "Has it reached that point?"
Sharlo studied the two lines. The second was dark, but not yet red.
"No," he said. "But Raven, it is coming closer."
"Understood." Viola rose and took up her coat. Her movements were no different from usual. At the door, she paused with her back to him.
"Six years, and my first doze. Do you know the most absurd part? In those three seconds, I had a dream." Her voice was very soft.
"I dreamed I was asleep. A sleeping woman dreamed herself sleeping. Even my dreams have been accumulating debts for six years."
The door closed softly.
Sharlo stood for a long time in the empty conference room. Then he opened his black notebook to a fresh page and wrote:
Collection on the sleep debt has begun. Look at the moment it chose—the photograph of the wax theatre, forty-nine tireless spectators. She spent an entire evening looking at "things that never sleep," and her own script moved forward by one step.
Fate-lines salute one another. The malice of this world comes in matched sets.
When he finished, he closed the notebook and spoke quietly to the night fog outside the window.
"The Wakebound sleeps without end. Listen, lyricist. I'm reserving that line. Don't blame me when I rewrite it."