“What will happen after you talk to the conzulate, ma’am?” I asked slowly.
“Well…he will likely give me a new assignment,” she said. “For I am an investigator, but I serve in a very…special division. I am given issues that are either sensitive, inordinately difficult to make sense of, or both. In other words, I do what many folk do in the grand and heavenly Empire of Khanum—I keep things running, in hopes of keeping the walls up. Once I speak to the conzulate, I shall be off to my next task, I suspect. The next crime, the next murder, the next treachery.”
I stared out the window, watching the countryside roll by.
“Yet before I go,” she said, “the conzulate will also likely want to speak to you, Din.”
I said nothing.
“For I will still be in need of an assistant investigator,” she said. “And you did a decent job in Talagray.” She thought for a moment. “Could have been cheerier and smiled a bit more, sure, but still, a good job. I would have you keep doing it, if you prefer.”
My gaze stayed fixed on the countryside. The shimmering veil of the jungle had embraced us once again, and all was dark. I thought of muddy little Daretana, and what few opportunities would await there.
I glanced down at my boots, now worn and stained from all my travels. They didn’t look quite so bad, I thought. Perhaps they would look even better with a bit more wear.
“I bought you something, ma’am,” I said. “A gift.”
“Really?” she said. “Why?”
I handed her a small wooden box. “Felt I owed it to you, after all this.”
She opened the box and sniffed it, then sat up, her body thrumming with elation.
“Moodies!” she said, delighted. “Mood grafts! And are they…”
“The hallucinogenic ones,” I said. “The ones you’re always asking about. I had to visit a very dodgy shop in Talagray to get them. Just please don’t consume one now, ma’am. I suspect that’d make this trip quite a bit less pleasant.”
She cackled with glee. “No, no, and it’d be unwise to attend my debriefing mooded clean out of my skull, Din. Thank you. I do very much appreciate this.”
I smiled wearily. “Perhaps an odd way to begin my duties as your formal assistant—breaking the law before I even start.”
She stowed the little box away. “Is it?” Then she grinned her horrid, predatorial smile: too many teeth, and all too white. “I find it full of good portents, myself.”
I pulled my straw cone hat down over my eyes, lay back with my sword at my side, and began to doze.
For my mom and nana,
who were the gateway to murder mysteries
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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I would like to thank my editor, Julian Pavia, for helping me crunch this sucker out. I’d had the idea of writing a fun murder mystery novel for a while, and then I sat down and pumped out something that was very decisively not a murder mystery novel, and Julian helped me realize that. I then had to go through the rather tempestuous process of chucking it in the garbage and starting over. That is an odd psychological dance to do, but a necessary one—it is better to throw away words you did not want to write than keep them, even when their total is very high—and I appreciate him for sitting through it.
I would also like to thank my family, as I often do in my books, but especially for this one. Writing murder mysteries is largely a process of logistics, I think, ensuring that the timelines work and the right evidence gets in the right place at the right time. You essentially become the Jeff Bezos of killing dudes you just made up. This takes up a pretty large amount of brain space at any given moment, so I would like to apologize to my family for asking very stupid questions like “Which child is playing soccer today?” or “Which trip are we packing for, again?” or even “How old am I turning this year?” I would like to apologize further because I actually really enjoyed writing this one, and plan to write more murder mysteries, so I will probably continue being a very stupid man. Tough nuggets, suckers.
I would also like to thank my mom for giving me the Nero Wolfe books that inspired so much of Ana, even if I eventually decided she was more like Hannibal Lecter than Wolfe. I would also like to thank my grandmother Marilyn Shaw, whose laundry room was overflowing with old paperbacks, with many of them being murder mysteries I read. I like to think she would have enjoyed this one, though maybe not the language. Sorry, Nana.
Two other folks I’d like to thank are Jesse Jenkins and Jerusalem Demsas, who both spend what must be somewhat frustrating careers cataloging how America is now terrified of building stuff. Their work exploring this and lobbying for change—along with many, many others—inspired a great deal of the Preservation Boards in this story. Regulations have their uses, but we cannot allow them to form the jar that will eventually be used to trap us and pickle us in our own brine. I wanted to write about civil servants and bold builders for that exact purpose. Keep up the fight!
Yours,
Robert