“Ladrian,” he said, looking up from a corpse. “Good. You’re here.” He crossed the room and gave a glance to Marasi, who saluted. He didn’t dismiss her.

“Aw,” Wayne said, peeking in, “the fun is already over.”

Waxillium stepped into the room, taking Aradel’s proffered hand. “That’s Chip Erikell, isn’t it?” Waxillium asked, nodding to the nearest corpse. “Thought to run smuggling in the Third Octant?”

“Yes,” Aradel said.

“And Isabaline Frellia,” Marasi said. “Rusts! We have a file on her as tall as Wayne, but the prosecutors have never been able to charge her.”

“Seven of these bodies belong to people of equivalent notoriety,” Aradel said, pointing to several corpses among the fallen. “Most from crime syndicates, though a few were members of noble houses with… dubious reputations. The rest were high-ranking representatives from other important factions. We have near thirty notable stiffs, along with a handful of guards each.”

“That’s half of the city’s criminal elite,” Waxillium said softly, crouching down beside a body. “At least.”

“All people we’ve never been able to touch,” Aradel said. “Not for lack of trying, mind you.”

“So why is everyone so grim?” Wayne asked. “We should be throwing a bloomin’ party, shouldn’t we? Someone went and did our work for us! We can take the month off.”

Marasi shook her head. “A violent change in power in the underworld can be dangerous, Wayne. This was a hit of huge ambition, someone eliminating rivals wholesale.”

Aradel glanced at her, then nodded in agreement. She felt a surge of satisfaction. The constable-general was the one who had hired her, picking her application out of a dozen others. Every other person in the pile had had years of constable experience. Instead, he’d chosen a recently graduated law student. He saw something promising in her, obviously, and she intended to prove him right.

“I can’t fathom someone doing this,” Waxillium said. “Toppling so many of the city’s underworld powers at once won’t favor the perpetrators; that’s a myth from penny novels. Murders on this scale will just draw attention and unify opposition from every other surviving gang and faction as soon as word gets out.”

“Unless it was done by an outsider,” Marasi said. “An uncertain element from the start, someone who stands to gain if the entire system crumbles.”

Aradel grunted, and Waxillium nodded in agreement.

“But how,” Waxillium whispered. “How did someone achieve this? Surely their security must have rivaled any in the city.” He began moving about, pacing off distances, looking at certain bodies, then at others, whispering to himself as he periodically knelt down.

“Reddi said that the governor’s brother was involved, sir?” Marasi asked Aradel.

“Lord Winsting Innate.”

Lord Winsting, head of House Innate. He had a vote in the Elendel Senate, a position he gained once his brother was elevated to governor. He had been corrupt. Marasi and the rest of the constables knew it. In retrospect, she wasn’t surprised to find him in the middle of something like this. The thing was, Winsting had always seemed a small catch to Marasi.