Dryden ordered in lunch, and now the entire team sat around one desk. Claire was quietly trying to figure out how far she could slide her chair out of the tight circle without it seeming strange.

“I don’t care what the sister thinks, my money’s on sex work,” Miller said. “Not illegal, but not something he’d share, tight community, and the killer would have good reason to try and hide what had happened. The guild’d have every person in the city hunting them down.”

Theo hummed.

“I might trust Flora. He doesn’t seem like the type who could take a stranger to bed once without showing some stress, let alone every night.”

Claire had her own thoughts, but she didn’t know the trades well enough here. What would a sensitive scholar be good for? Forgery? Back alley medicine?

“I mean, it’s got to be glass, hasn’t it?” Stephenson asked.

“James said he wasn’t a caster, and I can tell you he wasn’t hiding some secret muscle. Nobody  brings dead weight into the wastes,” Miller said.

“What exactly does the illegal glass trade entail?” Claire asked. “A black market still needs people balancing the accounts, right?”

She knew that purified glass was one of Saint’s Landing’s primary industries, and she’d heard people mention a black market, but she hadn’t learned much about it. 

If there were no desk jobs, if Caspian had gone into defiled lands, that changed everything.

“Officially, glass is harvested by the local military, but, as their priority is protecting the city from caliga, actually collecting it is usually busywork for new recruits. Really, only a small portion of our glass is harvested legally,” Dryden explained. “Illegal glass harvesting is quite dangerous work, as the safer zones have a military presence and it means going into defiled lands without a priest, but it’s possible to make a good deal of money on it. Glass processors don’t check ID’s too carefully, and since glass sales are important to the city, nobody cracks down on it. Technically, the harvesters are the only ones breaking the law. The buyers are legitimate businesses, no need for a full underground market.”

Claire would have felt it, if Caspian spent time in the wastes. The magic wouldn’t have left much of a trace, but even a small amount of defiled magic should have stood out.

Except… that wasn’t true. It would be, but the west wall of Saint’s Landing was right up against the defiled lands. Assuming she’d be able to sense the trace here was like assuming she could sniff out roadkill in the parking lot of a slaughterhouse.

She thought about the mark’s on Caspian’s chest, then about Tobias crying while she held his shirt to three similar gashes on his chest and tried to stem the bleeding. The purple smoke from the wound had curled around her fingers and stained the fabric.

“Miller,” she said slowly, “how far apart were the gashes on Caspian’s chest?”

“Around twenty centimeters.”

That would be just about right.  Absently, she traced a line across her collarbone, picturing the claw of black smoke.

“Miss James?” Theo asked, eyebrows furrowed, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking,” Claire said slowly, “that Caspian wasn’t murdered.”

There was a moment of silence, then Miller snorted.

“So, what then? Exsanguinated by natural causes?”

Stephenson and Campbell looked confused, but Dryden nodded understandingly.

“You think it was a caliga.”

Claire nodded.

“I’ve seen caliga wounds before. The spacing and depth are right, and it would explain trying to  cover the magical signature. Even without a tracer around, you could see the residue. Do you mind if I take a second look at the body? Now that I know what to look for, I might be able to tell if he’d been in the wastes.”

“Of course. Linn, would you take her downstairs?” Dryden said with a casual wave.

The walk down was quiet. Miller pulled Caspian’s body out and slid him onto a table.

“Do you mind if I borrow your chair?” Claire asked.

Miller shook her head and brought it over. Claire sat down and took a cold hand in hers. It was stranger to touch his corpse having gotten to know him. This was the hand that had drawn birds in the margins of land surveys.

“Feel free to go back upstairs. I might need a bit.”

“I’d rather supervise,” Miller said.

Claire nodded. She could respect the mistrust, the desire to protect Caspian from somebody she still saw as an intruder. If it made Miller feel better to keep watch, that didn’t change what Claire had to do.

The first step was blocking out the general magical noise of the city, as well as the other magical traces on Caspian. That was easy, one of the first things she’d learned to do. Next, she had to let information back in, but just the information she needed. It was like picking out the sound of a single instrument in an orchestra, and, as this instrument was particularly discordant, it should have been easy.

The proximity to the wastes, however, made it quite difficult. Claire was miles from the edge of wastes, but any trace on Caspian would be a whisper, far harder to pick up on than the distant scream to the west.

She closed her eyes and let her senses fall away further, forgetting the corpse in front of her and the suspicious coworker behind her. Her breathing slowed, and the smell of preservatives faded. The corruption was almost painful like this, a sense of wrongness that sent ice through her veins, but it was clear as a bell.

The trace of it was settled over Caspian like dust. Another day or two and it might have faded entirely, but it was there.

Still feeling a bit distant from her body, Claire stood up.

She walked upstairs, slower now, wincing as the light hit her eyes. The scan must not have taken too long, because the rest of the team was still finishing the last of the food. They’d left two plates aside for Claire and Miller.

Stephenson hurried forward and helped her to a chair. Claire rubbed her eyes, taking a minute to collect herself, then straightened her shoulders.

“I’ve confirmed it,” she told the group, “Caspian’s been in the wastes. It would explain the presence of a fire user too. If you don’t have somebody who can use purification, fire casting is the next best defense.”

“Then why not just dump him there?” Miller said. “If you’re not going to be honest and tell people you took some rich boy on a field trip and got him killed, why not just leave him out there. It would probably take years for somebody to find the body.”

It was Stephenson who answered this one, more subdued than Claire had seen her.

“But Theo said they were friends, right? Maybe they just didn’t want to leave him out there alone.”

Dryden had been quiet. Claire wondered if he was chewing on the same problem she was. Even though they put the body in town, there was no reason to hide how he’d died. They wouldn’t be held accountable for Caspian’s choices. If they were right, he’d gone into the wastes willingly and paid the price.

Trying to disguise his death as something else could get them in a lot more trouble. Whoever burnt over the original wounds functionally framed themselves for murder.

“I want to talk to them,” Dryden said.

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Miller asked, eyebrows raised.  She was confrontational with Dryden, but there was no bite to it like there was with Claire. Instead, it felt almost friendly.

“I don’t know yet, but there might be a starting place. You’re right that Caspian was no fighter, and James says he doesn’t have magic, but he did have a skill a group of glass harvesters might find useful.”

Claire was relieved to see the rest of the team looked similarly confused. Taking somebody who couldn’t fight into the wastes would only ever be a hindrance, and nothing they’d seen gave the impression Caspian could haggle.

Dryden looked around the room and laughed.

“You guys are overthinking it. Caspian was a mapmaker. The wastes are difficult to navigate. The glass hides most landmarks, and getting lost there means death. Even if you find a good site to harvest from, you can only take back what you can carry. He may have been dead weight in a fight, but a good navigator could get them further in, out faster, and help them return to the best sites.”

“If that’s right,” he continued, “we have two possible ins. First, we might be looking for a group that had a rapid increase in hauls about a year and a half ago. Second, if we’re lucky, they’ve been selling copies of whatever map he was making.”

“That’s a lot of leaps for not much of a lead,” Miller said. “The processors aren’t going to give us information on their sources. We could stake them out, but whoever we catch might not know anything about it, if we could get them to talk, which they wouldn’t, if you’re right, which you might not be. At which point, if you’re wrong and this is murder, they killer will be across the border and into Luvik.”

“That’s where I’m stuck,” Dryden admitted. “Give me some time to think.”

“They’d be in Glass Town, right? Do you want me to go there and ask around?”

The table was silent for a moment and, just as Miller was opening her mouth, Stephenson awkwardly cleared her throat.

“Uhm… the thing is, you can’t really go in Glass Town.”

What, did they think she was going to get mugged? There were worse slums than Glass Town.

“Why not?” Claire asked.

“Glass Town protects its own,” Dryden said. “Honestly, once an investigation hits there, there’s not much we can do. Since they’re not an official district, they don’t collect taxes, which means the payout for helping them is low.”

“So you don’t help if it doesn’t pay enough?” Claire asked. What had he said in the Old Church District, that he was lucky to live somewhere that didn’t force him to choose who to help? At least in Avairne, even if nobles were prioritized, districts weren’t ignored if they failed to collect enough taxes.

“Actually,” Stephenson said huffily, “Theo pays the difference from his personal funds so we can take every case.”

Claire was glad she was too dark to blush easily. She opened her mouth to apologize, but Dryden laughed awkwardly.

“It’s fine Abby. I phrased it badly. We do try and help, but they have good reason to be careful. Unless they’re seeking work and shelter, outsiders coming to Glass Town are usually just looking for somebody who can’t protect themselves. If you’re looking to hurt somebody for fun, or need to arrest somebody who can’t afford a lawyer, or need a test subject nobody will look too hard for, that’s where you go, which makes our job very hard. Nobody would believe we were looking for a team of illegal glass harvesters connected to a dead scion just to ask questions.”

Claire had to step carefully here. She hadn’t thought before she’d suggested going to Glass Town. There were certain things that weren’t hers to share.

“There are some Avairnian refugees there. I think I could at least get some information.”

She’d have to be delicate. If the traders got in trouble, Claire would lose the little good grace she did have in Glass Town, and that would be a disaster.

“If you think you can, I won’t stop you,” Dryden said, in the tone of voice that implied she needed to learn from experience.

“May I go now then?” she asked. 

Some conversations went over better when the sun was up.