Her shuffling earned a curse of annoyance from one of the reporters, and she finally got a sight of Innate on his podium. He moved into a longer rant against the press. Perhaps that was why the reporter had been so testy. She certainly would be…

Marasi frowned. That guardsman who had been moving and shuffling and blocking her view had turned, and she could see a very odd expression on his face, like a grimace of pain. And he was whispering—at least his mouth was moving. Nobody else seemed to notice him, as they were focused on the speech.

So Marasi was the first one to scream as the guardsman pulled a revolver from underneath his coat and leveled it at the governor.

Wayne prowled around the dead woman’s room. It was too clean. A room where people lived should have a healthy amount of clutter. Miss Steelrunner hadn’t spent much time here.

In the other room, Wax inspected the body. Wayne left him to that; he had no interest in poking at a corpse’s insides, even if Wax claimed it was important. Wayne, instead, went looking for more interesting bits of life. His first discovery was a small cache of bottles in the cabinet under the bathroom washbasin. Various forms of alcohol, the harder stuff, each a little gone. All save one, which was empty. Wayne gave it a sniff. Port.

Not surprising, he thought. He took the whiskey and gave it a good swig. Bleh. Too much bite, and far too warm. He took another swig as he spun about in the main room. These fancy neighborhoods were too quiet. People should be shouting outside. That was right for the city. He checked the trunk beside her sleeping pallet and found it contained three outfits, each clean and carefully folded. The Terris robes were on the bottom. Creases had set; these weren’t worn often. The other two were modern designs, the one on top more daring than the one below.

He took another swig of whiskey and wandered back into the room with the corpse. Wax had removed his hat and coat, and knelt beside the body in his vest and slacks.

“You found the alcohol, I see,” Wax said. “How uncharacteristic.”

Wayne grinned, offering the bottle to Wax, who took a small swig. “Ugh,” he noted, handing it back. “This murder is troubling, Wayne.”

“I’m sure she felt so.”

“Too many questions. Why did she leave the Village, and why choose to live here? It doesn’t feel very Terris.”

“Oh, I can tell you why she was here,” Wayne said.

“Well?”

“Think of yourself as a sheltered Terriswoman in her forties,” Wayne said. “Old enough to have missed the chance to be a wild youth, and starting to wish you’d done something more daring.”