* * *

It was almost the end of the school day when Carter left, but Iona stayed in her office anyway, pretending to work, waiting until the building was empty so she could leave without having to talk to anyone.

Only when she was preparing to go home did it occur to Iona that Alyssa was supposed to be here right now for another tutorial. This morning Iona had been torn on whether or not to send that message over to the planning department telling her not to come. She wasn’t sure which would draw more attention to the connection between them—sending the message, or not sending the message and having Alyssa turn up here. She’d come to no conclusions and after the interview at the bureau she’d forgotten about it entirely. But Alyssa hadn’t turned up anyway. Iona wondered where she was.

* * *

The king had spent much of his day at the window looking down at the blackened hole that had been punched into the surface of his city. The investigation team from the bureau was examining the site, looking for evidence. The king wished they’d hurry up so the cleaners could come and sweep it away.

The king dreamed of the day when the city was finished. He wanted to look out from his windows onto an unblemished view, with everything looking as it had been designed to look, and he could feel satisfied at having overseen it, and the citizens would be happy with what he’d done for them. He tolerated the constant presence of building sites across the landscape because they were stages toward achieving this aim. But looking out on the remains of a destroyed building upset him deeply. Everyone else talked about catching who was responsible, and that was fine and important, but the king would rather be talking about what they were going to put in that blackened hole. Would they start again using the same plans, finish the newspaper offices as originally intended? Or should they come up with a new design, push themselves to put an even better and bigger building in that space? He was anxious for these questions to be settled, and for the answers to not derail his plans for a newspaper archive. He was very keen on that.

The king had been called away from the window a few times for consultations and updates, but kept returning to fixate on the scorch mark on his landscape. In the late afternoon he had gone to his armchair to rest. Overwrought and emotionally exhausted, he’d fallen asleep.

When he awoke the room was dark: one of his attendants must have come in and closed the shutters. The king stood and marched to the window, hoping the day he’d just experienced had been a dream.

He opened the shutters: the building was still gone. Of course it was.

Clarence trotted in, carrying a letter. He dropped it onto the floor and said, “Ah, you’re awake.”

“Yeah, sorry, I fell asleep,” the king replied, closing the shutters and turning away from the window.