Not a one, not a larval lawyer or single member of the Ward, approached the reception desk. Having deprived the clerk of her apron, I sat behind the slab and watched the lamp oil burn. The central corridor’s shadows weakened, fading down from what was once a stamping march to a few furtive slinks and far calls. The lamp smoke grew thicker, my back began to ache, and then a silhouette grew as it approached. A black dot soon emerged in lamplight, turning into a lumpy man whose glasses reflected shifts of yellow and orange.

“You must be my supervisor,” I said, putting down the sheet of parchment I’d been pretending to read. “Yoddy, Yodi.”

“Who—where is Loona?”

“That was her name, Loona. She went home, sick.” The little man’s face glistened with sweat he’d worked up while walking down the hall. But that wasn’t the only reason he was sweating. Looks over his shoulder and nervous scratches to his crotch and ass told me everything. “I’m a temp.”

“A temp? We don’t—”

His attempt to flee was as muffled as his screams. The sheet of parchment balled and shoved in his mouth, my blade separating his chins, Yodïor kicked as I lifted his feet off the stones. The little door with the awful paint swung open for a second time.

“No!” Yodïor screamed before I kicked him in the gut. Gasping to regain his breath, he lay in Loona’s blood, which by way of an unfortunate slip, I too felt: cooled and congealing. I’d slit her throat when the potion had worn off. A means to an end no driven man has time to worry over. Though she was on her stomach and this Yodïor lay on his back, I mused for but a moment how they lay locked in a stare, unifying two on opposing sides of the grave.

“As you wish to live,” I crawled on top of him, “cease your whimpering and answer me.” He nodded, emitting squeaks that sounded like a girl’s. “Where can I find magistrates in charge of probate? In charge of wills?”

—

Given the room’s vastness and the excrement indicating hidden routes from the sewers, they’d be gnawed bones by the time anyone found them. But my thoughts were elsewhere. The will reading was only a day old; I clutched the top half of a municipal parchment. The top was all I needed. The choices were an insult, almost arbitrary, as if the barrister had written the will the day of, just to see the crowd’s reaction.

I found the barrister. In his bedchambers the lawman frantically swore that he’d merely read the will as it had been written, a conviction that remained unwavering up to the last dagger slash.

—