Ignoring him, I went on. “The moment you break Her Magnificence's laws, nothing can protect you. Certainly not hiding behind a necromancer.”

The woman in the bed examined her fingernails. I didn’t buy her ostensible disinterest. As for Melibe, he was putting up a good show out of looking wounded and angry in equal measure. Naturally, he had no innocence worth defending; all that was in question was whether he’d hired the necromancer.

“I don't even know what you're talking about!”

“Why don’t you prove it by telling me what you know about Azul Mamani? That’d help convince me.”

“I don't have to tell you anything. What are you gonna do, attack an innocent man? You can’t do that. All bark and no bite.”

“Very well.”

Melibe briefly glanced down at his own body, as if he'd just remembered he was naked. “Aren't you going anywhere?”

“Of course.” I didn't move.

He let out a huff. “I know what this is all about. Harassing an innocent man! Tell your favorite starving peasant to quit this nonsense if he knows what’s good for him.”

I didn't show any reaction; Melibe could hardly have expected anything different. He stomped into the ensuite bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Soon enough the shower started pattering.

Petty as he was, he had power enough to do some damage. I wouldn't forget him.

I turned to the woman. “Sorry you had to see that.”

“It's fine.”

“Doubtlessly you’ve seen worse, but I can’t say that’s much of an excuse.” I gave her a hundred nureals, and she made a point to lower her knees down her breasts to gauge if I had any interest—with a tip like that I couldn’t blame her for trying. Hopefully I didn’t look away too late. I hate to give people hopes I can’t sustain. “If you find out anything that can be of interest to me, anything at all, you know what to do.”

She nodded. Every post office in every city of the Protectorate allowed for a message to be sent directly to the King of the Dying Sun. The ones posted in Vorsa would usually reach me in a few hours.

Melibe was a coward indeed, as was the entire lowest rung of the governors, a servile crowd that'd learned to keep their heads down and do the Megarchon's dirty work. What revenue they extracted from the poorer provinces wasn't quite worth the throat-cutting going on just a little bit above their heads. Or so we all assumed.

What if his position was now threatened, not merely by a peer, but one of the starving peasants? Would that be worth a few murders? After all, it was the privilege of the curs to die for the hand they fed. Of course, for this to hold any water, Melibe had to believe his position was at risk. Well, regardless of what he claimed, he certainly wouldn’t believe the Megarchon summoned her missing great-grandson just because she missed him. Suppose she wanted Azul to help prop up her favored successor’s position—not a bad guess. After all, Azul had both a good head on his shoulders and a much deeper connection with I Doronte—and perhaps most of northern Zalmuric—than anybody in the capital. Worth a province or two.

So far, nothing more than speculation.

A man in a secretary's plain black suit stood conspicuously by the elevator. As I approached, he turned to me and bowed from the waist. The attending hazard of accosting governors in the Starry is of course being accosted by someone else’s employee. The concierge sells information; his silence is considerably more expensive.

“Who?” I asked.

“Governor Cassel, Your Illustrious Highness.”

Unsurprisingly.

“Lead on.”

We rose ten floors. The higher you go, the larger and more luxurious the rooms, the more important their occupants. The metaphor is transparent, but no less effective for that. This floor was done in reds and yellows, florally scented, birdsong a faint echo in the air. The secretary knocked at a particular door and we were admitted at once.

Nobody inside had time for entertainment. The rule and administration of I Tabrul relied upon the work of many people—cousins, in-laws, friends. All of them had come together that night. This larger suite felt cramped. Trays of aperitifs had been propped up and forgotten on the most random of surfaces. I made a point of keeping my arms tucked close to my body. This time the crowd didn't split, but quietly slipped out of my way until I came to stand before Corrado Cassel in person.

He sat in a couch by the window, flanked by his favorite son and daughter. Both by different mothers, if I didn't recall wrong. The wives, current and former, must be among the crowd as well. Cassel wasn't prone to personal melodrama, which had served him well so far.

“What?” I asked.

Cassel looked at me under the tufted arches of his eyebrows. “You know what.”

A proximity to court requires a heightened tolerance for repetition.

“If you say so.” I had a suspicion, of course, but certainly wouldn't be the one to make the first move. He'd summoned me; let him show his cards first.

“Oh, so you’ll claim you don’t know?”

“Is this about the unrest in High Tomenedra? I wouldn’t call it advisable to discuss that with strangers.”

Cassel's fists closed on the knees of his blue merino pants. “Did you think I wouldn’t catch your stench all over it?”

Unfortunately for him, I hadn’t involved myself in High Tomenedra. This crowd believed, absent all evidence, that the Megarchon would turn a blind eye to my meddling into politics. Every movement I made drew me closer to the edge of her very short tolerance. Funding social upheaval could very well have me killed. Not that Cassel and his ilk would ever believe it.

“Naturally,” I put in, “you’ve found no proof of anything under this stench. I don’t know what you’re trying to do here. What I do know is I haven’t been offered a drink. Someone with such disregard for politeness can hardly complain about other people’s behavior.”

His daughter glared at me. It was only Corrado Cassel’s parent who’d earned the governorship—a negligible dynasty. It made them sensitive to remarks about their lack of propriety, especially coming from someone like me.

“Despite your better attempts, I can tell what’s going on,” Cassel said.

Someone presented me with a tray with a bottle of whisky and a couple of clean glass shots, so I poured myself a drink. “As for myself, I can’t.”

The son practically jumped on his seat. “I heard you threaten him! And so did dozens of others at the Palace!”

“Oh, not threaten. Simply explain the inevitable result of an action.”

“A violent death?” The daughter pointedly enunciated the last word.

“Hasn't Ms Cassel heard of blood calling for blood?”

“And that isn’t a threat?” the son hissed.

I shrugged. “No more than a doctor threatens you with an impending heart attack. What advice I'd give to Governor Cassel is to step down from his position, cut his losses, and let someone with a different approach handle I Tabrul from now on.”

Cassel stood up. Unfortunately, I still looked down on him. “You want to go back to the days when kingship was more than an empty title, pontifex. When your ilk held the threat of the Underworld over decent people’s heads.”

I downed my shot, bowed my head to the entire assembly and left, making a point to walk slowly.

Governors couldn't touch me, I couldn't touch them. A senseless circle. Worse, I’d have to look into Cassel’s ravings, just in case there was anything to them. Azul would be in High Tomenedra in a few days.

Not a coincidence in the slightest. I didn’t know yet what my Azul was planning, but he was already one of the people making my life harder.

Yet another person awaited for me by the elevator, leaning on the wall with her hands on her pockets and her legs stretched out before her. She sported a green feather on her cap and a green badge on her white-and-gold uniform. I couldn't say I knew her, but I'd met her. She was on Oriana Lemarezin's side.

She straightened up. “Shall we go?”

Shrugging again, I entered the elevator before her. This time, we were the only ones. We looked like echoes of each other, both pale and lean and almost monochrome.

I lacked a name for her. This didn't seem reasonable.

“Your name?”

“Who cares?”

“Me.”

She sighed, hinting at what an unreasonable request this was. It came close to making her sound like a surly teenager, though she had enough force of personality to avoid it.

I felt in the presence of a kindred soul.

“Major Hira.”

“Thank you.”

The door opened for us. We'd reached some truly rarified heights. Not only metaphorically, either; this floor was, if memory serves, meant to capture the atmosphere of the peaks of Gelkenon. The pristine mountain range from the ballads and paintings, showing not a trace of mining or sky travel. Why the Protectorate was so eager to hide the traces of something they'd worked so hard to achieve was beyond me. If you listened closely you could hear the distant whisper of the wind, and almost feel it in your skin—a product of suggestion, this. The sisters had conjured some hellishly good illusions for the inside of the building too. I didn’t want to know how much it costed to mantain them in pristine state.

Hira didn't bother to check if I followed, though follow I did. This floor, I think, was divided between only four rooms. Only one of them belonged to a Lemarezin. Until they become Megarchon, most of them aren't very influential. And when they fail to become Megarchon, they’re disposable.

The suite door unlocked and opened automatically for Hira. You can have that spell set in your house if you’d care to pay for it, but that was the first I'd seen of that particular perk afforded to a rental.