“Drop the pipe, Servicer,” Chowdhury ordered again. “Now.”
My knuckles where I gripped the pipe turned white. “Where’s Papa?” I asked.
Unhappy glances turned to full-on winces.
“I won’t ask again.” The Deputy Inspector General drew their stun gun, and at their nod two others did as well, but the fourth cop took a step toward me, smiling, reaching gently for the pipe. I recognized them, vaguely: red-haired and strong-boned like a caryatid. I had made them coffee more than once, and the trust bond born of breaking bread—or cookies—together calmed me enough that I was able to unbend my fingers as they took the pipe. I fell back, relieved, into Foster-Kaye’s waiting arms.
“[Anonymous] is in shock.” Foster-Kraye squeezed my shoulder. “They were at the harbor front all night. They lost—”
“Their Beggar King?” Chowdhury caught my wince. “Did you imagine Papa hasn’t been watching? That we don’t know who the other leaders are in Mycroft Canner’s private army?” They nodded to the other officers. “Take them both to the cells, I’ll see them when things are calmer.”
All at once I was in a web of grabbing hands.
“Stop!” Foster-Kraye cried. “You can’t—”
“You’re a Blacklaw,” the Whitelaw reminded us, “I can lock you in a trunk and throw away the key.”
Foster-Kraye had no leg to stand on there. “You have no reason—”
“You’re both spies.”
‘No’ was on my lips before I fact-checked myself. We were spies, both of us. We always had been. I’ve spied for the Prince, Mycroft, Achilles, Vivien, Martin, while Foster-Kraye had spied for Julia in earlier days, then Papa, Dominic, the Prince too. Thoughts too complex to congeal into sentences buzzed through me, held me mute. We were bustled, hands on my arms, a hand on my head pushing me down and forward, toward the door, toward useless cells, inertia, waste of hours, waste of me, capture, so pointlessly, and on the first day of the war. The dreamlike absurdity of it made it impossible to resist, as my stunned brain insisted the solution should be to wake up. Help?
“Stop. Arrest Deputy Chowdhury.”
The hands that held me slackened. Royal purple filled the door before us with its brilliant authority. Or should I say republican purple? That deep red-purple only the very rarest, highest officers of old Rome could wear back in the days of togas, and which only one office wears now. The Censor. My heart leapt at the thought of Vivien, but of course the calm, small, slightly panting figure was Jung Su-Hyeon Ancelet Kosala, bright in their new Censor’s uniform, flanked by their Censor’s Guard. Su-Hyeon smiled, caught my eye, and in that smile lay all the glow of hope and home. I felt the prickle of fresh tears in my relief. And there was more. The Pillars of the Earth had followed Su-Hyeon here to save me, two of them, trailing prudently close, just in case the young and fresh-in-office Censor was too green yet to command obedience: to Su-Hyeon’s left, the tiny Senate Speaker Jin Im-Jin stared up at the towering cops with all the righteous condescension of a great-great-grandba’pa, while, to Su-Hyeon’s right, broad and calm and bearded like a bushy oak, stood Senator Charlemagne Guildbreaker Senior. Their silent gazes dared the stunned and slack-jawed cops to refuse the order, which the Censor repeated now: “You heard me. Arrest Deputy Chowdhury.”
“But . . .”
“They work for Joyce Faust D’Arouet.” Su-Hyeon said it so flatly, so simply, six words, done, but it all came together then: Chowdhury’s strange hostility, their odd knowledge of me, of Mycroft and the Myrmidons, their scorn of Carlyle Foster-Kraye, this purposeless arrest. They’d nearly captured both of us. For Madame.
Chowdhury’s gasp gave the lie to their protest even before they voiced it: “What? No, I . . . no, it . . .”
Su-Hyeon didn’t need to raise their voice. “You’ve been to the Parisian brothel called ‘Madame’s’ seventy-six times this year. I believe your customary partner there is one Dolmancé?”
My heart cheered as Chowdhury stared dumbly, and I imagined Madame off somewhere staring dumbly too. What would the Tyrant-Queen have done with me, I wondered? Tried to break the Anonymous to their command? Or use me as a hostage against Vivien? And Foster-Kraye, could the “bastard love child” card still work against Danaë? Or had that hand been played out, leaving the ex-Cousin useful only as a goad for Dominic, or a prize for the pleasure of whatever servant best pleased the mistress any given day? The young Censor didn’t even have to nod for the others to release us and seize the Deputy.
“No, you don’t understand!” Chowdhury sputtered. “It isn’t what you think! Those visits aren’t . . . You have no authority to do this! In Papa’s absence I’m . . .”
I hardly heard the lies. It was over. It had been over since those first six words, as surely as if with “They work for Joyce Faust D’Arouet,” Su-Hyeon had drawn a knife across Chowdhury’s guilty throat. The others dragged the sputtering Whitelaw away through the sea of desks in the outer office, where the jungle of screens and voices froze in a triumphant hush as we watched one victory at least come easily on Day Two of the war.
“You, third from the left,” Speaker Jin Im-Jin called suddenly into the silence, “yes, you in the yellow wrap. What’s the desk say? O’Callaghan. Are you O’Callaghan?”
“Yes?” The pale, fidgeting Cousin rose from one of the larger desks.
“Think of a number between one and seven.”
“Wha—what? Uh . . . three?”
Before the syllable was finished, Speaker Jin slapped a tablet against a desk, simulating a clap, which Jin’s skeleton fingers were too frail to produce themselves. Many jumped at the noise, but only O’Callaghan yelped aloud. “Arrest that one too,” Speaker Jin pointed. “They’re in on it. Oh, and that one in the corner also? In green, the Mexican Humanist. Yes, that one. You all really shouldn’t glance at your co-conspirators quite so much, most unsubtle. All three with low digits in the fourth and fifth, that’s interesting . . . 3–7–7 . . . very marked . . .”
We all stared as the smiling Speaker drifted off into some incomprehensible Brillist reverie, all except Senator Charlemagne Guildbreaker, who, I suppose, had grown accustomed to it, serving beside Jin Im-Jin for however many decades. “Do you want them to arrest those two as well, Censor?” the Mason prompted, gently.
“Uh, yes!” Su-Hyeon answered, shaking off the hush. “Yes, arrest those two. Take all three to the cells. No, wait, first . . .” The guards and prisoners froze. “Chowdhury, any of you, if you want any mercy, tell me what you’ve done with Papadelias.”
The looks the prisoners exchanged were blank, not guilty. “I don’t know anything more than anyone else, I swear! Papa got in a car at 05:54 this morning and hasn’t checked in since. That’s all I know!”
The fact stabbed slowly. It wasn’t possible. We’d been together, me and Papa, after the disaster, mourning Mycroft in each other’s arms, here in this room, after the tsunami aftermath when things were fine again, the calm after the storm. They were safe, fine, here. How could they be gone? Papa who understood, Papa who, like me . . . if any other human being had loved Mycroft . . . gone?