From the lower branch indeed, I would one day be feared and exalted for this warpath that I’d undertook. I kicked the door open and pulled the clerk in by her hair. In a dark corner serving only as a residence for spiders and scrolls, I uncupped my hand from her mouth and put one finger to my lips.

The Nilghorde Hall of Records was monstrous. The main doors towered green with midsections of stained glass, but deep in its catacombs the door swinging shut behind me peeled three layers of different paint. The central corridor had been a murmuring hive of footsteps. Moving about, this way and that, irate merchants and disputing tenants slammed doors and stamped down stairs.

Now only flickers of their shadows made way to me. I was at the Residency Office; used only by the Ward and magistrate’s apprentices, and maybe that was why it was at the end of such a long tunnel. To my good fortune, only one clerk toiled in lamplight behind the reception desk. To my bad fortune, I’d spent the last of my Ghorlaxium on the potion I’d made for her.

When boiled in small doses and cut with Leaves of Luka, Ghorlaxium makes the living spew out all they know. I knelt above the clerk in dual dismay. I needed another batch; if all went well, this woman who’d gulped the potion past the edge of my blade would lead me forward. But, more pressing, an overdose didn’t kill—that would at least give me some options. If only I had the time. But rather than death, my miscalculation had resulted in a rolling blabber.

“Kornard kept on,” she said, looking past me with bulging eyes. “My sister couldn’t pla…please him after having her baby. The baby that woulda been ours coulda never have been.” I considered killing her. “Mother woulda never…” She trailed off into a string of inaudibles. I gazed around. Somewhere in this mess of boxes, scrolls, drawers, wobbling towers of books there was a name, and with it an address. “Mother woulda killed all four of us!”

After an eternity, the abortion confession ceased.

“Are you scared?”

“Terrified” the clerk said, her voice as flat as her hair matting the floorboards. She lay like an open-casket funeral, even when I took my hands off her wrists.

“Are barristers designated by duty?” Her mouth opened but said nothing. “Here, in this office?” I added.

“Why…yes, by specialty you could say.”

“Good,” I said, petting her head. Then, spacing my words out to eliminate any more blunders,“Where can I find magistrates in charge of probate? In charge of wills?”

“I don’t know.”

I pressed down on her wrists. “Then who does?”

“Yodïor, my boss.”

“And he comes?”

“Soon.”

I’d heard of a trick back at the lyceum for keeping them quiet. “Make a noise now only if you’ve never lied.”

It worked.

—