Iona’s intention had been to finish the marking she’d started earlier, but as she sat down she noted another colleague had left a copy of the newspaper on her desk, presumably unaware she’d already seen it. She was about to toss it in the wastebasket but stopped herself and opened it instead. She stared at the third page, reading the king’s column again, lingering over that fourth paragraph. It was strange to think of the king knowing who she was, because she had always felt like she knew him. But probably everyone felt like that.

Alyssa entered the office without knocking and Iona hastily set aside the newspaper. “Sorry, got lost again. I read what you said about your friend,” Alyssa said, her manner easy and open and betraying none of the edginess of last night. “It was lovely.” She didn’t sit down. “While I was busy getting lost I had an idea of where we could go today, if you don’t mind.”

* * *

Iona hadn’t intended every tutorial to take the form of a field trip but she was amenable to whatever Alyssa wanted to do. She was thinking less about the content of the tutorials and more about using this time to puzzle Alyssa out.

Together they walked to a half-completed building, the skeleton of which reached a height of eight stories. The ground floor was much taller than the rest and had been designed to accommodate printing presses. The floors above it had been intended as offices. An ornate entranceway gave access to both spaces—you could either take the stairs up to the offices or walk through to the print shop floor. However, the site had been emptied of all tools and materials and cordoned off with a temporary fence. This was because the entire structure listed 9 degrees to the right and 5 degrees forward. Part of the building had collapsed and supports had been put up. The rubble of the collapsed section had been cleared away. The sign on the fence read UNSTABLE—KEEP OUT.

This was going to be the new newspaper offices. Iona had been surprised when Alyssa had suggested coming here—the young woman had asked if she felt okay about it. But Iona gave it some thought and decided it would do her good to see.

Iona stepped over to the fence and found a plank that hadn’t been properly fixed into the ground, betraying the speed with which the fence had been erected. She lifted the plank aside, making a gap large enough to squeeze through. “Come on,” she said to Alyssa.

Alyssa glanced around herself, then followed Iona inside.

Together they proceeded around the perimeter between the fence and the building. “Mind your head,” Iona said as they reached the corner, where the building’s tilt was at its most extreme and the gap between building and fence was narrowest. When they reached the right-hand side of the building Iona crouched down and indicated where the wall had fractured. “So you read the report about the collapse in the newspaper?”