Only a few of the lights were on. Saeger was embedded at the same table where Lillian had met with her before, a thousand years ago. No beer this time. She sat with her arms crossed, staring nakedly.

“Good morning,” Lillian said. “May I introduce Daoud Qassan?”

“A pleasure to meet you,” said Daoud, extending a hand to shake.

Saeger took it—her hand was bigger than his, but he didn’t flinch. Lillian wondered if her grip was gentle, or his mask was on.

“I’m getting the strangest visitors lately,” Saeger said, and looked at Lillian like they shared some kind of joke. Lillian experienced an emotion that only usually arose in her nightmares. She had no idea what she was supposed to say or do, or why.

“Eli,” said Saeger. “Watch the door? From the outside, if you don’t mind.”

The heavy made himself scarce. Saeger sighed and settled back into her chair. “So. You know who blew the warehouse.”

“I do,” said Lillian. She and Daoud took the seats opposite. All the other chairs in the place were up on tables, legs in the air.

Saeger opened her hands, inviting the rest of it. Lillian remembered she had been a gaffer in the theatres before the Ospies, and imagined her turning a spotlight to catch someone at center stage.

“Frye’s people.” Lillian eschewed elegance for brevity. “She did it herself.”

That elicited a grunt and half a smile. “You got proof?”

Lillian looked to Daoud.

“Not precisely,” he said, and Saeger’s face closed up. “Not in the manner that police will ask for. But testimony is evidence, and there is my word as an employee of Cross-Costa, as well as boxes and boxes of paperwork that tells the truth of what was in Frye’s warehouse. Or rather, that tells a lie, which becomes apparent if one knows how to read it. To be plain: poppy tar. A great deal of it.”

“And she lit it all up because?”

“Wouldn’t you?” asked Lillian. “If you wanted to eliminate two problems at a stroke?”

“She wanted me out of the race, all right. But nobody was sniffing around about a drug deal. And anyway—” Saeger inclined her head toward Daoud, “—I’m asking him.”

Pausing before he answered, Daoud put one finger on the edge of the table in a splintered chip some more restless person would have picked at. “My direct supervisor at Cross-Costa is—was—Aristide Makricosta. Who had some personal stake in the tribunals Frye proposed. He used the leverage he had, and she was not pleased.”

“That poxy rotten sculler.” Saeger’s laugh sounded like a blow to the gut. “I ought to ring up Horkova right now, tell her to scratch him at the border and toss him back to the hounds.”

“What?” asked Lillian. “What border? Who’s Horkova?”

Saeger raised an eyebrow. “You really didn’t know?” Then, to Daoud, “She didn’t know?”