Oh, one thing.

I feel as though I’ve already touched on some concepts that might be confusing to you, and I don’t want to get in the way of your task by forcing you to keep account of a bunch of irrelevant trivia. So I’m going to draw attention to a Glossary that I’ve created, in which I’ll store basic information about anything regarding the world that I discuss while giving my accounts.

Don’t worry. I’m still going to convey all of this to you directly, at one point or another, so this isn’t some sort of cheap attempt to avoid difficult explanations. Just think of this as a small aid in case you get a bit lost. We all have a lot of things on our minds, you know?

Well, we better get back to it. Please pardon me for the interruption.

17 Days Hence

The conversation had left me restless. I hated this stage of an investigation, where you knew just enough to speculate, but not enough to speculate meaningfully. I felt like a wild animal with a piece of meat being dangled over my head, out of reach by only a couple inches.

The Whitevale Memorial University was one of the oldest institutions of the city. It sat at the very base of the central hill, on the side further away from the ocean. The area had originally been a swamp in the early days of the Sanctuary, and signs of this had lingered. The sunken elevation – even compared to the surrounding area – left it humid prone to flooding, and mold was quick to take root, resulting in a distinctly musty, organic odor that was omnipresent all through the grounds. Frankly, it was dire, especially in contrast to the more prestigious Archivists Academy, which stood tall and noble on a high perch off in the distance overhead, just visible enough to taunt the students suffering on warm days.

I didn’t mind it, personally. But then, I’d always had an affinity for grim locales.

I was outside the natural philosophy building, the largest of the campus’s structures. It was the only of the originals that still stood, and saying it looked old would have been an understatement. It looked primeval, ancient if not for the fact it had been, to a point, decently maintained. Though there was some marble, most of it had been built from blocks of limestone that used to be mined within the city, and the windows were few and tall, resulting in an appearance comparable to a castle, were it not for the tiled roof. The administrators appeared to be leaning into the antiquine aesthetic, and vines had been permitted to grow along its walls, reaching up as high as several meters. It looked more like a place you’d go to slay a vampire than a school.

The gardens, on the other hand, were a fairly modern addition. A circle of fenced-off flowers, divided into four segments, surrounded a pleasant little grove of manicured grass and trees. I sat in the center, on one of several benches that encircled the memorial for which the university was named; a rectangular spire, maybe a couple meters high, densely covered in tiny silver names, alongside a statue of a man holding up a spear. A hero from the First Schism, though the the plaque that must have once borne the name seemed to have been removed, leaving only a rectangular-shaped indenture behind.

Since I’d left my apartment, the weather had further improved, with the clouds now broken and half dispersed. Looking up, I could see the Great Lamps on their distant perch a hundred-thousand miles overhead, and the Spine – the column of unearthly bone to which they were affixed – streaking across the skyline. The one nearest to us had just begun to dim from gold to pale orange, entering the first stages of its evening phase.

A few minutes later than it had been yesterday, I noticed, since we’d just passed the seasonal realignment for the week. I remembered that when I was younger, picking up on that pattern that had been what had started to damage the illusion for me. What begun to expose the artificiality, and subsequently, the arbitrariness of it all. Later, I’d learned that it was an engineering concern that kept it from being adjusted on a daily basis – that meddling with something originally meant to be static to satisfy a human concern caused a stress on the system that caused a need for repair. The result was a strange compromise that felt almost like it failed on both fronts, in emulation and efficiency, satisfying neither concern.

But then, so much of our world seemed to be built on strange compromises.

With the day getting more pleasant, the gardens had started to fill up with students, so I’d immersed myself in a book again, trying to shut out my noisy surroundings. This time was different than before, though, since what I was reading was actually relevant to my quote-unquote job rather than to something personal. I was a pretty fast reader when I wasn’t consuming something emotionally loaded, and I’d already made it through a decent chunk in the thirty odd minutes since I’d arrived.

When the bells rang out, I set it aside for a moment and kept my eyes on the front doors as people begun to file out of the building. Sure enough, I soon spotted her, bag slung over her shoulder, wearing a typically moody expression. My “partner”, though that word still felt like it conveyed too much professionalism onto our relationship.

Sidney Lusskner.

I don’t think that this is particularly nice language to use about someone who was supposed to be my friend, but the only way I can think to describe Sidney’s appearance is indistinct. She had the sort of plain, typically pretty face that could have belonged to anyone, bare of features that stood out in any regard save for a slightly wider-than-average jaw. I’d known her for a few years, and I still sometimes struggled to find her in crowds. She could have made a spectacular spy, if the idea of that didn’t run counter to her personality in more or less every respect.

Her hair, brown, was cut short and notably roughly at about ear length, and her eyes, also brown, were sharp and attentive. She he was dressed androgynously, in a plain white shirt and brown jeans, with a loose blue jacket. I waved to her, and she caught my eye, heading over towards the garden.

“Hey, Alex,” she said flatly, as she approached. (Though since she wasn’t a very emotive speaker, I could probably describe most of what she said as flat.)

“Hey,” I replied.

“Geez,” she said, furrowing her brow, looking a little concerned. “You look tired.”

“Ahh, is it really that obvious?” I chuckled once, looking away for a moment as I brushed some hair away from my eyes. “I’ve been having kind of a long week. And a bit of a long day so far, too.”

“Is it anything you’d want to talk about…?”

I hesitated for just a moment. Then, I smiled, and made a dismissive gesture. “No, don’t worry about it. It’s not worth explaining.”

I hadn’t told her about any of the personal affairs on my mind. Not because I didn’t trust her, exactly, but just because I didn’t want to infect a different part of my life with unwholesome things. That was how I’d learned to keep myself sane, when things had been difficult. Through that sort of sequestering, like quarantining a disease.

She narrowed her eyes a bit, then sighed. “Well… If you say so.” She leaned down, taking a seat next to me. “What happened this morning? I was expecting to hear from you after you went to speak with, uh, the ex-detective, what’s-his-name–”

“Russel,” I interjected. “And yeah, the canals were are clogged up from the work they’re doing for the parade, so I was stuck traveling for about an hour and a half. Sorry about that.”

She clicked her tongue. “Shit, I should have figured. It was annoying to get here this morning…” She sighed to herself. “Well, no ones fault, I guess. You made some notes?”

“Yep,” I said, reaching into my bag. I produced a notebook, which I handed over to her.

“Thanks,” she said, taking it. “I’ll have a look at it later. How’d it go, overall?”

“Good,” I said. “Well… Sort of good. Not bad, at least.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure he told me that much about the case itself that we didn’t know already, just from your background research. Most of what he said was just going over the details of the case that we’d already read in the papers.”

She snorted. “Well, I guess that’s not too surprising, considering how much leaked to the press.” She leaned back against the side of the monument. “Still, good to hear it from the horses mouth, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “And I did learn some funny bits of trivia about the whole affair. Like, apparently the body that was dug up that we saw talked about in so many articles didn’t actually have anything to do with the murder. It turned out to have been related to one of the homes previous owners.”

“Hah. So the only lead the press thought they had towards the end, wasn’t actually a lead at all?”

“Seems that way.”

“Doesn’t speak super well of our chances, then,” she said, her tone sarcastic.

“Not so much, no.” I scratched a little at the side of my cheek. “I also contacted Michael about the copies of the letters I mentioned when I got home. I, uh, scribbled down a few of them at the end of my notes for posterity once we were done, if you’re curious.”

She flipped open booklet. I leaned over, to see which one she had picked. The message, short and blunt, read:

Disgusting creature

Your judgement approaches on the day when your false accomplishments will be celebrated

I will strip you bare before the world and reveal your disgusting nature before I make you suffer as you deserve

TRAITOR

OATHBREAKER

“Wow. Uh, Yep. That sure does seem like a death threat. ” Sidney said, her eyebrows raised. “Not sure what I was expecting….”

“A couple things sort of got lost in transcription, since I couldn’t copy them faithfully,” I said. “The originals are written in this messy, discordant handwriting that flows up and down the page in a really uneven way. Presumably to mask the identity of the sender.” Though that’s actually a really unreliable way to do it, so if that’s the case they were probably incompetent, I thought to myself.

“Or just to creep the person they were meant for out,” Sidney suggested.

“Two birds, one stone,” I said. “I also tried to ask him a few things about his sister – personal stuff, I mean – but it didn’t go very well. He was… Strangely hostile, actually.”

“Weird.” She frowned. “What do you mean when you say hostile? Didn’t you already say he seemed like an impatient prick, the first time you met him?”

“Well, yeah, but…” bit my lip. “This was different. He did give me the name of a person he thought would be able to answer my questions better, but also seemed like he wasn’t especially fond of the idea of me focusing on anything other than the letters at all. He seemed concerned that we’d stir up trouble for him, attract attention from the press… He acted like the case was unsolvable, and when I pointed out that if that were the case, the same would be true could very well be true in regard to who sent the letters, he seemed thrown off. Then he said that he had a ‘hunch that would be different’ and cut the conversation short.”

“Hm. Sounds pretty suspicious.” She made a flippant smirk. “You think he did it?”

“That would be an overly reductive conclusion,” I said, dryly. “He’s hiding something, but I doubt he’d have hired us to poke around in the affair freely if he were the culprit.”

“Could be playing some kind of mind game,” she suggested. “Like, the last person you’d expect to have committed the crime would be the guy who suddenly decided to pay someone to look into it a decade later, right?” She tapped the side of her head. “That’s what we call criminal genius, Alex. Four dimensional thinking.”

I gave her a flat look. “Uh huh.”

My relationship with Sidney was one of those ones that felt difficult to describe, like many… Well, let’s call them affiliations of circumstance. I felt like I simultaneously had a lot, and very little, in common with her. We were both introverted. We were both logical thinkers (which is to say, we both framed ourselves as logical thinkers, because no human is actually a logical thinker). We were both curious in nature, which is to say we liked to shamelessly pry into other peoples affairs.

Perhaps foremostly, we were both stubborn.

But compared to me, she had a profoundly different personality and way of thinking. She was down-to-earth, sensible almost to a fault, and disliked overly-abstract ways of thinking. She was the sort who distrusted anything that came across as pretentious or self-involved. She liked concrete things. Facts. Statistics. She was studying to become a financial attorney, which seemed so mature that I felt vaguely uncomfortable when I thought about it.

Her greatest virtue was probably that she was patient, much more so than I was. For this reason, she performed most of the information gathering aspects of our endeavors, sifting through mountains of garbage to find useful leads or information that seemed to contradict what we thought we understood, a a task that I found utterly impossible. She also had an affinity for making obvious conclusions that would slip under my radar. I liked puzzles, and when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

As for her persona, she was dry, blunt, and prone to a little vulgarity. Our differences complimented each other, though in another sense, clashed in a way that pushed us apart. We probably wouldn’t have been friends, had it not been for our work.

Still. She was one of the few people left in my life who I felt comfortable not putting up a front around.

At least, in some regards.

“I’m just goofing around, Alex.” She smiled. “You should at least try to humor me when I make shitty jokes, y’know?”

“I will consider your advice,” I said.

She rolled her eyes, then turned them towards to my lap, where I’d set down the book from earlier. “What’re you reading, there, anyway?” She pointed.

“Mm? Oh, this.” I lifted it up, flipping it around to show the front. Though a hardback, the cover sheet was incredibly generic, depicting a watercolour rendition of a vague, green landscape with a giant bird of some description flying overhead. The author’s name was three times the size of the title. “It’s a speculative fiction novel written by Michelle Corrick. ‘Shadow over Arteria.’ I picked it up when I was shopping a little bit ago.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The lady wrote novels?”

“Yep.” I nodded. “Among her many talents. You didn’t learn that through your research?”

“I probably didn’t think it was important enough to remember.” She leaned over a little. “What’s it about?”

“Not completely clear yet. I’m only fifty-five pages in. So far, it seems to be set in a loose fantasy setting, at least.” I furrowed my brow for a moment, trying to think about how to describe the plot. “It’s about a kingdom that sends some knights to wipe out this tribe because one of their members is a witch with dangerous magical powers. They kill her, but before she dies, she curses the realm to a horrible misfortune a thousand years in the future. In the present day, the effects are finally manifesting in the form of a disease that transforms people into monsters.”

“Sounds generic,” Sidney remarked. “But then, I guess it probably got published because of nepotism, huh?”

I glanced over to her. “That’s a harsh judgement. I wasn’t even done explaining.” A bunch of students around us stood up and wandered off together and once, so I lowered my voice a little as the garden became quieter.

“I mean, I’m just saying. I bet if you’re that famous, you can write any crap you want and find some company that’ll put it out there. And everyone with half a brain has got like, some fuckin’ idea for a fantasy story from when they were a kid, y’know?”

“Anyway,” I continued, “the main character is a knight – his name’s William Vardia, there’s a whole subplot about his family falling into disgrace because of his father having an affair with the kings sister, but that’s not important – who ends up on a quest to try to find the cure before society tears itself apart out of paranoia over the pandemic. So he heads north to the valley where the witch used to live, hoping to find some way to appease her vengeful spirit, or else banish it.”

“And?”

I gave her a side-eye. “There’s no “and”, yet. I told you I only just started the story.”

“I thought you said you were fifty five pages in.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a bit of a door-stopper.” I tapped the book, which was about as thick as the length of my thumb, against the side of the bench, resulting in a satisfying thump. “The whole thing is written with flowery prose and really detailed descriptions, so everything that happens takes like ten pages.”

“Geez.” She frowned curiously. “How come you’re even bothering with it? Doesn’t seem like it’d have much to do with the disappearance.”

“I’m not sure. Following a vague feeling.” I bit my lip. “I had some free time after speaking with Michael, and I wanted to do something productive while I waited for you to finish your classes. So I suppose I’ve been trying to get into Michelle’s head a little bit. This is the last thing she wrote before she disappeared – her first foray into the genre, after writing non-fiction and literary works.”

She scratched a little behind her ear. “Why do you want to get in her head?”

I frowned. “She’s the victim. Isn’t that obvious?”

“I mean, it’s usually the culprit’s head you want to get into. Knowing what was on her mind the day before she got grabbed by a crazy fan or whatever happened– Well, I dunno if it’d be much help.” She paused, then clicked her tongue. “Though, I guess that’s kind of simplistic thinking, now that I’m saying it out loud. It’s possible she got herself involved herself in something sketchy, and that’s part of what happened to her…”

“Russel said some interesting things about her mental state at the time that she vanished. This is sort of a follow-up on that.” I said, my expression thoughtful. “And more to the point, we don’t know yet if she even was a victim. She could have decided to vanish of her own accord.”

“What?” She raised her eyebrows. “Like, fake her own death, run off into the woods? That sorta thing?”

“Something like that. Maybe the pressure from being a public figure got to her.” I looked to her. “Look, my thoughts are still a jumbled-up mess right now. I don’t really know what I’m doing, other than following my gut.”

She smirked. “Hey, you’re the great detective, not me.”

“Don’t pick fun at me.” I said, frowning. “Jerk.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

From overhead at the Summit, at the center of the city, the bell towers began to ring out for five o’clock, and our conversation took a brief pause. Some golems that had been picking amongst the grass near us, meant to imitate pigeons, were stirred by the noise, fluttering up into the air.

“Alright,” I said, clapping my hands together. “That’s enough messing around. Can you tell me our situation on leads, right now?”

Sidney reached into her schoolbag, producing her own notebook. “Limited success so far. Biggest win was that I’ve managed to track down an employee at the observatory who was around when it all happened, who might be receptive to us. Still works there now, too.”

“How’d you manage that?” I asked, a little surprised.

“Oh, it was easy. I heard about an article from a couple years back in some cheap rag from Thousand Seeds that ran this special 30 page thing about a bunch of famous unsolved crimes, with a couple about the Corrick case in it. So I spent some of the morning tracking down old issues until I managed to find it. The guy they were interviewing seemed really eager to discuss what’d happened, but said he could barely find anyone in the press willing to pick up the story any more.”

This is what I was talking about. To me, this type of investigate work was essentially witchcraft. I wouldn’t even know where to go looking for old issues of an obscure magazine.

“His name’s Fahri Demir,” she continued. “Technician. I found his address, too.”

“What makes you think he’ll want to talk?” I hesitated. “Sorry, I don’t mean to play down your work. But wanting to speak to the press is pretty different from being willing to speak with some random person who’s just poking their nose around.”

“You’re with the press!” She said. “I mean. Technically.”

I snorted. “That’s flattering, but I’ve had two articles published in ten years of trying. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll be very compelled.”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I mean, maybe he’ll turn us down, but I kinda got the impression he’d be willing to talk anyone. In the article, he came across as really having an axe to grind.”

“With whom?”

“With Michelle,” she said, as if that were self-evident. “He seemed to really hate her guts. Said the rest of the staff did, too.”

“Really.” I lifted the side of a finger to my mouth, feeling a little surprised. “That’s funny. Russel made it sound like they’d been pretty accommodating to her.”

“Well, being accommodating is one thing, and liking someone is another,” she said. “If you have somebody famous working with you, you probably can’t be overtly shitty without it turning into a public stink. Give me a sec – I jotted down a few quotes.” She flipped through the pages of her notebook. “Let’s see… ‘I was united with most of the observatory team in finding Miss Corrick an insufferable colleague. She was self-obsessed and frustratingly blind to it, not only expecting the staff to work around her needs and uneven schedule on a regular basis, but quick to ascribe blame elsewhere when this led to dysfunction… I recall an astronomical survey in September of 882, she repeatedly failed to attend on nights when she was responsible for collecting the data, but when confronted by our head researcher, laid the blame for the missing data on my unavailability during her absences. Such frustrating events were common, and led me to believe she was kept on staff not due to her value as an employee, but out of fear that a dismissal would result in a media backlash…’ It goes on like this.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It does sound like he has an axe to grind.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of it is true,” she said, with a shrug. “I bet when you’re famous, your whole fuckin’ perspective on reality is warped. If you’re constantly going to places where people act like you piss spun gold, obviously you’re not going to think you’re at fault and not some plebeian.”

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure I quite agreed.

Russel said that the only viable theory he could still think of was that the other members of staff had conspired to kill her together, the voice at the back of my brain said, quietly. Hearing that, it seems more possible, but would people really conspire to commit murder over a simple workplace grudge?

But then, there were bound to be more layers to it. Envy, resentment, slow boiling over the months and years…

“Anyway,” she continued. “I sent a message to him over the Orator, but I’m not expecting much tonight. I also sent one to Ernest Lorrel, the head honcho of the place, but I doubt we’ll have much luck there. My impression reading about it was that he wanted to leave it all in the past.”

“Doctor Lorrel… Russel mentioned him, too,” I said, my eyes a little narrowed. “Did you learn anything about him, during your research?”

“Only bits and pieces. Young guy, was apparently sort of a prodigy in the astronomy community as a teen. Knew Michelle before the war. Wonder if he was the reason she stayed on…” She looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook her head. “Anyway, I’m also looking into some of Michelle’s old friends in the Council who might talk to us, but it’s still early days on that front. That aside, that’s all I have so far.”

“Oh,” I said, sounding a little disappointed. “…really?”

“Hey, don’t give me that,” she said, with a bit of a frown. “I’ve only been at this for like a day. I’m not a miracle worker.”

“I don’t mean to blame you,” I said, frowning a little to myself. “I was just sort of hoping for something we could follow up on today, I suppose.” I turned to look out over the campus for a bit. It was emptying more and more, now that the last classes for the normal day were ending, though I was starting to see some others wandering in for the evening ones. A bit of a chill was also returning to the air. “I’m feeling– I don’t know. Sort of restless.”

She quirked and eyebrow. “You sure you’re doing alright?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just want to do something. To make some progress, keep my mind occupied. Not feel clueless about the whole situation.” And to let my mind wander too much elsewhere.

“I dunno, it’s already sort of late…” She rubbed her arms together. “Didn’t you get anything from Russel?”

“Everything Russel offered was either something we already knew, like the address of the observatory, or something that’ll take time, like a contact of his in the Watch.” I turned to her with an intent expression. “You don’t have anything minor, even? Like something you put down as a maybe, or in case we ran out of other options.”

“Sheesh, this isn’t like you at all, y’know.” Sidney puffed up her cheeks and exhaled, leaning forward a bit. “I mean… If you’re really desperate for any sort of progress, I suppose there is one person I found out about who I could probably set us up to meet tonight. I dunno if speaking to them will really help, but I guess there’s a shot.”

I perked up. “Really?”

“Yeah.” She pushed her lips together. “I dunno if you’re like the idea much, though.”

Sidney was right. I hadn’t liked the idea. But I was starting to warm to it now. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a waste of time, after all.

It was seven-thirty, and we were now downtown, at the northern end of the Grand Market that bordered the somewhat less prestigious (but still pretty prestigious) Oldhalls district, where most of the larger temples stood, and where the young swore the Five Oaths and became full citizens. We weren’t anywhere so significant, though, instead finding ourselves at a table for three at a quasi-fancy restaurant named the Evenstead Traditional Pub and Grill, which was at the very upper end of the sort of places you could go without a reservation. It had a sort of rustic-as-imagined-by-rich-people aesthetic, with wooden walls and tastefully colorful decor, and served what felt like mediocre comfort food at a price so bafflingly ridiculous that I’d wondered if the menu’s had been misprinted.

I’d made it about half way through my slightly-too-rare steak and grilled peppers, and had begun to question my life choices. Sidney was doing a little better, having more or less finished off her peach, pancetta and cheese salad, though she’d slowed considerably at the last legs. (Sidney always ordered salads, which I felt somehow clashed with the rest of her personality.)

Our third, for whom the food had been the bait, had finished off her meal – lemon and garlic chicken with potatoes and various vegetables – alongside a glass of red wine, and was now talking happily, her seeming reservation and embarrassment from a little earlier having all but evaporated.

“It’s really peculiar to think about it all now, truly,” she said, her tone quick and eager, leaning forward on her leather chair. “I mean– I’m not at all a cynic, you know? You can probably tell, I’m the sort of person who gets excited about things easily, who always likes to focus on the good rather than the bad.”

“Mm,” I said, as I attempted to shovel another piece of virtually uncooked meat into my mouth. “Uh… Rather, yes. You do seem to have sort of an air like that.”

“Right. So, well, it’s not really like me to say, but in retrospect, there was something very… I don’t want to say creepy, about it. That feels like too strong a word. But– Well, it was very obviously propaganda at its core, you know? Very manufactured.”

“Mmm.”

“I’ve been a huge fan of a lot of authors and a part of lots of their communities, but the feel of it all was very strange with M.A… Uh, Michelle Corrick, rather. Not really like anything else I’d seen.” She begun pouring herself another glass from the bottle. “Usually, it all starts with people being excited about the work, and momentum slowly building over a long time as people find each other to discuss it, in turn attracting more attention.” She took a sip. “Mm, this wine is great! Thanks again for all this, really.”

“Ah, uh… It’s really nothing,” I murmured, smiling and holding up a hand weakly. “It’s the least I can do for you coming out and, um, giving your perspective.”

“Honestly, I’m really flattered. With this sort of treatment, I feel a little like a celebrity myself.” She laughed. “But no, with her, it sort of when the opposite way around? People got pulled in by the news stories after the armistice, and she did so many public appearances in the forum and over the Orator… Everyone felt familiar with who she was and who she stood for before she even published anything. So when people started talking about her books, well, there was none of that build up. The fan base literally sprung up almost overnight.”

“It fhelt fhake, you meanph?” Sidney said, then coughed as she swallowed the food in her mouth. “Like it was all kind of set up by the government, to be a hit and have lots of people into it.”

She leaned her head against the side of her hand, contemplative. “Hmm, I think I’d say engineered, rather than completely set up? Like, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. Her books are good, and she was obviously very talented, so it wasn’t like it was just a farce.” She pursed her lips, forehead wrinkling. “But if I look back at it, I can’t help but feel like I didn’t read them for their own sake, but just because I felt swept up in her whole story. And that was probably the way we were meant to feel, you know? What the council wanted.”

I nodded, taking a bite out of a length of red pepper. It, too, was undercooked.

This woman, as Sidney had told me in our conversation earlier, was Anna Seong, former president of the now-defunct Michelle Corrick Readers Association. She had a round and sunny face, was short and even skinnier than I was, and styled herself very youthfully, with ear-length black hair styled into a cute bob, and a colorful floral dress and cardigan.

It was not, I confess, quite the image I had held in mind when Sidney had told me we were going to speak to the leader of a fan club. Sidney said she’d found her name on an old literary newsletter discussing one of Corrick’s books, and convincing her to speak with us had apparently been incredibly easy. We probably could have got away without offering her dinner.

Sidney loved to get me to pay for the dinners of leads we had, though. I think it was her way of waging a subtle sort of class warfare against me, not that she was entirely unjustified in that.

“Why do you think you overlooked it, at the time?” I asked.

She thought about the question for a moment. “Well, I think the main reason was just the atmosphere back then. After the revolution. Rather, most of the time, you have this sort of… Line, between people in the public sphere for political reasons, and people in it for creating or contributing to art. And in a way, when someone crosses that line, it feels nasty, you know? For a art person to be doing politics things, or for a politics person to be doing art things.”

“Vulgar,” I said, half to myself.

“Yes! Vulgar. That’s a great word for it. Like, it almost feels like a bit of a violation.” She smiled, nodding a few times. “It’s okay for them to comment on the other, but actually immersing themselves in that world, without even disassociating from the other? It’s off-putting, a lot of the time.” Her eyes wandered for a moment. “But, well… Back then, right after the armistice, it all felt so muddled. The revolution had been everywhere. You couldn’t escape it, no matter what sphere you were in. And everyone was so emotional, so torn up…” She rolled her tongue around the inside of her cheek. “Sorry, I feel like I’m not phrasing this very well.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s still sort of a hard time to talk about.”

She nodded a few times. “Basically, though, I mean that the line between art and politics felt, for a little while, really blurred. So I think her ending up the way she did felt much more natural than it would today.”

“I think I understand what you mean.” I took a sip from my glass of water. Rule zero of detective work: Never get drunk.

“You said a primary reason,” Sidney said, jabbing her fork in her direction. “Was there another?”

“Well, the other reason was probably just how good Michelle was at dealing with her fans. For someone as famous as her, she had an unbelievable level of engagement.”

“You mean, like, book signings?” Sidney offered.

Anna laughed in a fashion that seemed to suggest she considered the question quaint. “Um, amongst other things, yes! She did rather a lot of those. I myself attended a total of… Six, I think? Seven?” She twisted her lip in thought for a moment, then shrugged. “But no, that’s that’s not quite what I was referring to. These days, most of what people expect goes on over the Orator lines. Holding simulated conferences, discussion sessions with fans, that sort of thing.”

Sidney looked a bit taken aback. “People do that?”

“It’s pretty common, yeah,” I said.

“Ahah, you must not much of a literary fan,” Anna said to Sidney, chuckling. “Yes, it’s more or less expected, nowadays. It’s the easiest way for a creator to get to know their fans, you know? Especially since traveling is so troublesome.”

“Why would they want to get to know their fans?” she asked, scratching her head and looking genuinely confused. “Or vice versa, even?”

I gave her a hesitant look. “Sid, I, uh, think that’s a bit beyond the scope of what we’re trying to learn…”

“I’m just saying, it seems pointless,” She continued. “You’re not going to be able to be buddies or whatever with someone you’ve got a commercial relationship with, ’cause it’s already about that to begin with, right? The whole dynamic is fucked.”

“I think that’s just a little closed minded, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Anna said, her tone still cheerful. “Just because you enjoy something someone makes doesn’t mean you can’t be friends, and I think a lot of creators appreciate that kind of enthusiasm about them and their work. In fact, if people are providing something for each other, I think it’s natural both sides would want to be closer.”

“I mean, you wouldn’t want to be friends with your butcher, would you?” Sidney asked, her eyes a little narrowed. “Or the guy who wrote your school textbook? It would just be weird.”

“I don’t think that’s a fair comparison–”

“I could half get it if it were an actor or an singer, since with mediums like that, you can kind trick yourself into thinking you already know them, but an author? It feels like it would ruin the magic, more than anything–”

“I think,” I said, raising my voice a notch, “That it’s okay, um, for people to have different opinions about this sort of thing. It’s not worth fussing over.”

Sidney frowned at me. “It’s not a bit deal, I was just…”

“It, uh, really doesn’t seem worth fussing over,” I said, my arms crossed.

This sort of thing was why Sidney generally didn’t do many of the interviews when we worked together, even though she was much less awkward around people than me. As a general rule, she was a person who found it very difficult not to speak her mind at any given moment.

She looked at me for a few moments, frowning, then sighed, looking down and making a dismissive gesture. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, in Anna’s direction. “I wasn’t trying to be shitty about your thing. It’s just… Y’know, I don’t get it.”

“It’s understandable!” Anna replied, smiling widely. “It’s like you said, miss Stadahl. People have different things they feel enthusiastic about, and that’s okay. It’s inarguable, though, that this sort of thing is very important to dedicated fans.” A waiter wandered by, and she caught his eye, holding up a finger. “Ah, excuse me!”

He turned, and approached us, a smile on his face. The waiters here were dressed casually, to match the aesthetic. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“I’d like to order dessert,” she said. A quiet cost enacted, I thought to myself. “I’ll have the chocolate mousse, please.”

“Uhh, I’ll have a strawberry tart, I guess,” Sidney said, then turned to me. “Alex?”

“I’m fine, I think,” I said. “Some more water.”

The man nodded. “Sure thing. We’re a little busy, so it’ll be about twenty minutes.”

“That sounds fine,” Anna said. “Thank you so much!”

“Thank you,” I echoed, quieter.

After he’d left, the table was silent for a few moments. I let the air clear a bit, taking a look out the window next to us. We were pretty high up on one of the spires, overlooking a bridge that ran across the forum, but the view wasn’t very good regardless; another of the stone monoliths was directly across the way, and it had started to get dark. At least the skies were clear, though, so I could see the stars.

“So,” I said, once I judged enough time had passed. “You were trying to say that Michelle had lot of those sessions?”

“Oh, yes!” Anna said, with renewed enthusiasm. “A ton! She was attending something over the link at least once every two weeks, at bare minimum. It was all very exciting – not many communities get that sort of investment. I think it was what inspired me to take a leadership role. That sense of energy, of her really caring…” She looked flushed at the memory, in a way that I’d almost describe as swooning. “That sort of thing is, well, very, very uncommon.”

“So you spoke to her, on a level beyond the superficial?” I asked, glancing over at Sidney for a moment. It looked like she was sulking a little bit, which I felt, quietly, was extremely funny.

“Several times, yes,” she said, nodding. “I wouldn’t have called us friends, or anything, but I had a decent amount of contact with her by virtue of my position. I even chatted with her not too long before her disappearance, actually!

Now that’s a surprise. “That’s… Very interesting, actually,” I said, pushing my plate away and reaching for my notepad. “Would you mind telling me a little, about it?”

“Of course!” she said. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, would I?”

I smiled eagerly.