All these finished and unfinished tales, with neither krik nor krak to bookend them, make a story and, more than a story, a history.

Paama took up the teapot, poured for herself, and offered with a gesture to refresh his half-full, cooling cup. He answered with a shake of the head and his hand over the rim. “I must stay awake. I have somewhere to be later tonight.”

“Vague again,” his mother chided. “Don’t act as if I don’t know you. Give me something. A name.”

Chance pondered. He knew that his mother worried about him, perhaps even more than she worried about his brother, although she would never say so. She had the same concerns as other ordinary parents. Was he happy? Was he prospering? Was there someone to take care of him when she was gone?

“A name?” he mused. “Very well. Her name is Miranda.”

—

It was three in the afternoon at the Crossing Bar, a watering hole famed for its proximity to the Courts of Justice, and Miranda Ecouvo was discovering, to her deep dismay, that the day was not improving.

“Murder by numbers,” said Khabir Lucknor, her boss.

“Playing doctor,” countered Fernando Cavel, her colleague.

“Reverse hangman,” Khabir riposted cheerfully.

They looked at her with anticipation, waiting for her to add to the game. She gave a blank stare in reply and drained her drink. Bad enough to be depressed without dealing with their dubious, macabre humor as well.

“Well,” said Fernando, huffing the word out on a big breath to break the tense silence. “We all have our ways of dealing with the stress. Bartender? Another one of these right here.” He leaned over, his body one long, skinny curve sheltering a neat arrangement of empty shot glasses, and waved a finger to get the man’s attention.

“Smoke?” Khabir said hopefully, but Miranda stayed silent. “Another drink?” He was the opposite of Fernando—not fat, but slightly rounded with affluence. He had no favorite drink but kept to a varied range of mood-altering chemicals, used in moderation. He was the consummate professional. In time Fernando would match up to him.

“No,” she said at last. “I should go.”

—