When the boy had quite recovered, he straightened his coat and asked, ‘Special Inspector Christophor Morden?’

‘The same,’ I said.

‘At the King’s pleasure,’ he said. With great care he produced a sealed letter, the paper pristine despite the boy’s own rumpled appearance.

‘We live to serve,’ I said. Something in the boy’s eyes echoed my feelings on that particular matter. At least I was nearing the end of my service; he had a lifetime at the King’s pleasure. One more small charge complete, he braved the descent back to the streets of Esteberg.

My own charge rested heavily in my hand. I closed the door and placed the letter on my writing desk. Doing so, I passed my day-brother’s modest collection of instruments which, after all our years together, he had finally agreed to keep tidily. As much as they frustrated me, with their strange echoing and phantom notes that would sound as I went about my business, I understood they were not the easiest items to keep in order. It was as if they actively resisted it. Those bulbous stringed ones, and the flutes and trumpets with more cranks and knobs and moving parts than a water mill. Our low, sloping eaves didn’t allow him to hang them. Hang them all, I said, but of course he was deaf to my poor pun.

I broke the King’s seal and read the summons. It was as functional and bereft of detail as they typically were: I was to present myself to the warden of St Leonars prison at my earliest convenience. There was nothing convenient about St Leonars, not least it being at the other end of the city.

Before I left, I remembered to water and mist our small ettiene plant. Alexsander had forgotten to do so for as long as I could remember. Or perhaps he simply remembered that it was part of my nightly ritual: one more little, vital excuse to avoid the city. The ettiene’s leaves immediately rose, its summer flowers doing their best to add some colour to the room. I mostly saw them by candlelight.

There was such a plant in every room, in every house all across the Kingdom of Reikova – and likely beyond. It was not entirely understood why, but chewing ettiene aided the transition from day to night, and from night to day, for every man, woman, and child.

Ettiene was not the cause of the change. Just an aid.

The transition was inescapable for everyone. But it could be disorientating, uncomfortable, a fracturing rather than a smooth slide from night-brother to day.

There were children, fools, and worse who tested the change – those that tried to forgo sleep. But who could escape such a thing as sleep? And no one can escape themselves. Those that did try found their way, one way or another, to places like St Leonars prison more often than not.

I gathered my hat and cloak, mindful of the gathering clouds to the south. My notebook and pencil were already in my pocket, to which I added the summons. I closed the window and spared a glance at the mirror before fleeing the old man that looked back.