Reader: “Forgiven, my friend, forgotten. Now let Mycroft press on, and show both of us the famous Blacklaw capital.”

“Straight forward, TM.” Chagatai glowed with pride as she stepped down from the car after our Master. Chagatai was still wearing her neat housekeeper’s uniform, formal enough for the grandest occasion. Over its crisp darkness she wore a coat, heavy, sweeping, the kind of cut that reminds us how coats evolved from cloaks and robes of office, with the blue-edged gray armband of a Tribune’s Escort pale on her sleeve in slightly silver silk. Her tasseled Blacklaw Hiveless sash—with our Master’s Tribunary crest in gray upon it—frisked about her right thigh, while at her left her cutlass bounced, plump in its scabbard, a heavy blade which rarely gets to play. If under this regalia Chagatai’s frame was a little over-heavy, her belly rounded out by cheerful dinners, the extra girth just made her so many pounds of force more fearsome. “Do keep up, Mycroft,” she chided.

Wert thou there too, Mycroft? Did not thy Emperor keep thee cloistered still in Alexandria?

At all other hours, yes, and his Son with me, but for this one journey it was easy to secure Caesar’s blessing. Hobbestown is, after all, the safest place in the world. Are you surprised? Two Blacklaws might duel to the death by daylight in her streets, but one who would break a law in Hobbestown, or harm a visitor guarded by some foreign law, reaps punishment unmatched in any court. A Blacklaw who did so would face real and lethal tortures from his fierce Lawfellows, vengeance for angering the Leviathans, while a Hive Member who dared break the peace in Hobbestown would face, first the repercussions of his native law, and then the eternal hatred of posterity, who would never forget the criminal who turned all culture to hypocrisy by proving civilized man more barbaric than barbarians. Not even Tully would dare.