My scaled knuckles rap against the door to the rectory. It's a new sound, and a new experience— Ivy Crawford, willfully entering the Church rectory, led by nobody and recovering nothing. And for polite conversation, no less.

  Well, it might be polite, and maybe that's a step too far in qualifying it. Never too late to start a brawl.

  “I can lead.” Gelson says, or maybe offers. “Your reputation remains—”

  “Poor? Yes.” I chuckle, stepping back from the door. “I was just thinking about that. I would’ve preferred with start with the artificer, like I suggested.”

  “No, but Blackwood does not take customers before lunch, and you have dinner arrangements with Lord Craumont.” Gelson responds evenly, rolling her shoulders and taking my place. “Finding out the contents of the box is important, as we agreed, and we will perhaps find some information here. I have more questions and missed one of my interviews, so it serves two purposes.”

  “I remember, Gelson.” I punctuate my words with a of tail against stone. “Just don't want to waste time.”

  “Hm.”

  Silence settles— the false sort, a composition of clamor and chatter that fades dully into the back of my mind. Voices rise and fall, half-grasped words slip from my attention. We’ll do more than find out about the box, here; there remains the mystery of the Mage, and of how the vault was robbed.

  “And it's a bit late to change my mind, isn't it?” I remark dryly, flicking my tail from side to side. “Especially when it was my idea, too. As much as I'd like to lead, I think it'd be a bad look.”

  But I need to know. Leading is the impulse that leaps from within, fed with questions and frustration. If my father has schemes from beyond the grave, I intend to end them.

  Gelson hums, and we wait some more.

  “I won't steal the box when we get it back, you know.” Maybe it's obvious, but the obvious sometimes needs saying. Especially when I need some convincing of that fact, too.

  “I had hoped as much.” Gelson frowns. “I’m going to knock again.”

  She raps a gloved hand against the door, once, twice, three times.

  A sound strains against my senses— so I push back and open up with a trickle of magic. There's a twinge of strain that follows, a reminder of last night.

  “—” Thumping boots rise over the words, it's hard to pick anything out over it. “—”

  I release my magic, power flowing back into me. “They'll be here shortly.”

  “Hm?”

  The door rips open, unveiling one Helena Harkness. Not a hint of the Restoration's purple on her, so at least there's that.

  “Sorry, Celine, I—” She exhales sharply, nostrils flaring, wide eyes cutting across Gelson before landing on me. “Oh. Um, Detective! And Ivy.”

  I nod curtly. “Helena.”

  “Good morning. I am Detective Ruby Gelson. May we come inside?” Gelson says, looking over Helena's shoulder. “We have questions.”

  When does Gelson relax, I wonder? She's always uptight, even when I escorted her to a bedroom at some Gods-awful predawn hour.

  “Um?” Helena says, scrunching her nose and looking at Gelson. “I'm supposed to be waiting for Celine— the assistant at the Sharrow bakery? Um, Jordan!”

  She turns around to shout that last part, voice crackling awkwardly as she walks back inside. A fair feeling; this entire experience has been awkward so far.

  I lean toward Gelson, eyes trained on Helena. She's walking down one of the hallways now. “Is she one of the people you need to question still?”

  “Yes,” Gelson replies softly, sparing me only a brief glance. “Is this an issue, Dame?”

  Is it?

  I can't trust Helena, obviously. Whether she intends it or not, she'll try and me— drag me along like driftwood in a riptide. I'd rather not dip myself in the waters to begin with.

  “No,” I say, hopefully sounding relaxed, “She wants to earn my trust, if anything. We're fine.”

  “Hm.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “It's a convenient way to acknowledge statements without comment,” Gelson just shrugs. “Ah. There she is.”

  And sure enough, there Helena is, plus one person that looks vaguely familiar. Presumably, that's Jordan. Jordan, brown hair, tan skin, looks like a farmer... uh, the guy from the bakery, maybe?

  “Sorry! Um, Jordan, this is Detective Gelson, and that's Ivy, you know already. They're investigating the theft.” Helena runs a hand through her hair, gesturing to Gelson and myself. “I'm going to be answering some questions, so could you get the pastries over to the potting circles? We're making storage jars today, they'll... um, need the food.”

  “Sure. And yes, we've met,” Jordan says, arms crossed. Well, that answers my question. “Isn't it a bit suspicious to have you on the investigation, ?”

  Heh, Gelson's worries about my reputation are, unsurprisingly, founded. I mean, they were also my , and several members of the Church seem to have taken it upon themselves to antagonize me.

  I open my mouth to answer the question, and then snap it shut with a Yes, it suspicious, and maybe Chief Flint has lost her mind. But I need to know more about the box, and to get it back from the thief or thieves.

  More importantly... I'm the Dame.

  “Don't care. Can we get going?” I say bluntly, walking past him.

  “Yes,” Gelson says immediately, walking in behind me. “Helena Harkness, is there somewhere we can speak?”

  “Oh! Um, yes, right this way.”

  The frustration and confusion on his face is

  The door opens to a contradiction, and Helena walks right into it. She moves from the rectory to a library in a single step, from plaster walls to laden bookshelves. The stench of a thousand teas drowns in an ocean of ink and must, and Gods is that a relief to my senses.

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  “I'm, ah, sorry about Jordan.” Helena mumbles, wringing her hands. She moves to stand by a small table, eyes jumping around the room. “He doesn't... um. Some people think you stole it, Ivy.”

  I just shrug. Her overtures of politeness are wasted, honestly; I'm here for the box and the truth.

  “As I've heard.” Gelson agrees. “It is a reasonable assumption. Uninformed, though.”

  Helena manages a smile at that, looking away to pull a chair up to the table. “O-oh. So you're cleared? That's good!”

  Gods. Watching her now is almost painful, a needle of dragged against my soul. She’s an ambitious, manipulative fool, but at least ambition is .

  Shaking off the thought, I pull up two chairs— one for me, one for Gelson. I still have to spin mine around to sit, but that's nothing new.

  “I don't think I'm , Helena.” I sigh, crossing my arms over the back of the chair. “Clearly, given I’m working with Gelson.”

  Clearly, cleared. There's an awful joke there, but my good humor is snuffed before I can find it.

  “Um, that's good. So, Detective Gelson, you had, ah, questions?” Helena nods weakly. Her eyes go down to her lap, staring at something I can't see.

  “I do, yes. I intended to speak with you yesterday, but I had to follow up on a lead.” Gelson sets her journal down on the table, draws a pen and wrapped charcoal from her bag, and...

  Hums.

  “Helena.” Gelson says slowly, nose wrinkling.

  Helena looks up, running a hand through curly hair. “Yes?”

  “Would you prefer if Dame Crawford waited outside?”

  True silence follows. Her eyes find mine, and traitorous guilt cuts at my heart.

  I exhale slowly, tension flowing out with my breath. It was there from the moment I saw Helena, a blend of cynicism and anticipation that she doesn't deserve. She's lost my trust, certainly, but at arm's length there's little she can do for me. Pushing her further? That's not only unproductive, it's cruel.

  My breath ends in a rumbling growl, and my tail thumps hard against the carpeted floor. Silence won't get me anywhere.

  “I can get going,” I say, echoing Helena's own words from the day before.

  “It's fine,” Helena says, her voice soft yet firm. I catch a glimpse of heat in those green eyes. “ fine. I let my nerves get away from me.”

  “Much the same,” I reply steadily, my tail curling around my boot.

  Gelson coughs, glancing between us. “Good. Now, Helena, can you tell us your recollection of that morning?”

  “Of course!” Like the sun piercing through leaves, Helena brightens. She reaches down into her own bag... revealing what can only be a timetable. “I, um, took notes!”

  Oh, Adamantine protect me. She's done a .

  Gelson puts a finger on it, and after a silent exchange with Helena, she picks up the parchment.

  Gods, Helena even used a straightedge to draw up the table. I lean over to read it— once, twice, three times.

  Hm. I'm not really a detective, so none of this is very helpful for me. This isn't even about the contents of the box, yet.

  But, well, I'm cooperating with Gelson, not running the operation. She gets her answers, and I'll get mine.

  “I see,” Gelson says, and I definitely see. “Could you tell me the events as you saw them?”

  Huh. She's testing Helena's memory, or maybe her honesty? It's easy to make things line up on parchment, after all.

  “Sure!” Helena nods, curly hair bobbing. Her teeth peek out on one side, chewing on the corner of her lower lip.

  And, as she speaks, my eyes start to roam the shelves. If this is the rectory's library, well, maybe some old Crawford tomes are in here.

  “My morning started with tailoring. Um, t-that's my Service to the Restoration. I fix clothes and help, ah, make the robes.”

  Service, capital S, from the sounds of it. Gelson's pen glides across the parchment, and my eyes pick past the first few shelves.

  There, a book on basic Magecraft. This is a bit harder than I'd expected; while I can easily read text on the spines, most books don't anything on the spine. Bleh.

  “And after that?”

  “I was... working on something w-with the clerk. Here, actually, in the library. Oh, Ivy, what are you looking for?”

  “Just wondering where the books the Church took ended up.” I shrug, making brief eye contact with Helena. Why is she diverting from the questions? Curiosity? Distraction?

  “Something with clerk. Alain Hendrick, I presume?” Gelson hums, underlining something on her parchment.

  Why does Alain keep coming up? At this rate, he'll pop out of a Delve portal like that snake did. Heh, that’d be a sight.

  And I guess he's the clerk, or clerk. I suppose it makes sense he'd have a position related to the bureaucracy. But to represent the Church at dinners with Winston? That seems odd. I vaguely remember his title having more words in it, so that might be it.

  “Ah, yes. I-I... we're looking at uses for my Magecraft, since I'm learning. To, um, make it my Service. Most people don’t like that.” Helena's gaze sharpens as she speaks, and her voice follows suit. “Then he left to help with something up front at... the tenth hour of morning, more or less?”

  There's a guide on the archetypes— the one I'd studied, actually, when trying to draw on a second one. While I'd tried for Fire, it always resisted me... but Lightning? It still leaps at the chance, eager to answer my call.

  I glance over at the report Gelson's holding in one hand, taking my focus back to the present. Sure enough, Helena wrote on her table. helping Helena with uses for Magecraft comes as a surprise, but I suppose he has to have interests beyond throwing rocks at beehives.

  “And then he came back...” Helena's eyes cut across the room, fixing on a desk clock jammed onto a shelf. “I wrote about twenty minutes by that clock. Um, he was worried about the vault. So, when he had to go, he asked me to tell the guards to check the vault.”

  Hm? Now there's an answer that just makes more questions, doesn't it. My thoughts churn as I lean forward, pressing my chest into the seat back. Helena glances at me for a moment, brow furrowed, before looking away.

  Gelson hums, setting Helena's report down.

  “Go on. I will ask questions after.”

  Something in Helena shifts— barely there, utterly intangible, only felt as a tingling of my instincts. She nods slowly.

  “Ah, when they opened the vault, the puzzle box was missing!” Helena shakes her head, brow furrowed. “So I went to get Alain before he left, and he went to get the constables. Do you think they might have solved it? The box, I mean.”

  The way she speaks of it, she probably knew about the box before today. “Have you tried opening it?”

  Gelson looks up at my question, and Helena just shakes her head again. “Um, no. But I'd really like to!”

  Helena's eyes gleam, lit from within by a familiar blend of curiosity and enthusiasm. The same curiosity that outstripped caution, overtook her regard for others. I have to fight a grimace at the thought.

  “I'm not the one to ask. It's not mine anymore.” I deflect with a shrug, gesturing to Gelson. By law, it isn't mine, and until I know the contents, I won't contest that fact. My tail stretches, then curls around the chair. My hand strays to it, claws brushing along the surface of my scales. I'll get my answers soon... hopefully.

  “Indeed. Do you have anything else to add, Helena, or can I take that as your official testimony?” Gelson places her hands on the table, pushing herself out of her chair.

  “I’ll take your report,” Gelson adds suddenly, nodding to herself. “It is useful and well written. Do you know if Priest Dongbaek is in?”

  Helena blinks, parting her lips. Words are perched on the precipice, half-formed and hesitant to take shape.

  So I take a tiny risk. An apology, of sorts.

  “It is. Thank you.” I smile, hiding my teeth a moment later.

  A hand shoots up to her hair, fingers threading through the curls. Her eyes flicker away from me, fixed beyond my shoulder. “Um. Ah, y-you're welcome? And, yes, Detective, that's all. Priest Dongbaek is upstairs in his office.”

  Gelson . We exchange our goodbyes, Gelson scribbles out some notes, and Helena rushes off to attend to whatever tasks await her.

  "Well, that went well." As well as anything can, when the Church is involved. Well, well, well. That word's going to lose meaning, at the rate I'm saying it. Heh.

  "Her timeline of events matches up, right?"

  "No," Gelson says instantly, the sound crashing into the end of my question. "She's lying."

  I blink. "She ?"

  Gelson tilts her head to stare at me, one eyebrow rising ever so slightly.

  "Fair enough." I concede the point with a grunt, waving my hand as we walk down the hall. Just another reason to keep my distance, I suppose. "On to the next, right? And how was she lying?"

  “She likes you.” Gelson remarks, the same way one might comment on a strange carriage or a dog chasing its own tail.

  It's a thought that's occurred before— I'm not blind. “She likes that I'm a way out, Gelson. What does that have to do with anything?”

  Gelson just hums thoughtfully. “It may be more than that, but I have yet to ascertain it.”

  My lips curl back and a soft growl seeps through clenched teeth. I lash my tail, tapping it against the door we'd just closed. “Tell me once you figure it out, will you?”

  “Of course. Shall we...”

  “Yes, let's get going. We're asking about the box next,” I agree, taking the lead.

  If anyone’s going to know, it's the priest, and unless something has changed, his office and possibly his residence is right up the stairs.

  “The box’s contents— do you think they could be dangerous, Dame?”

  I stop suddenly, curling my tail so Gelson doesn't run into it.

  “Are they ” I repeat, frowning. Had my parents ever made something ? Ripping holes in the World with black-glass knives, pouring their lives into a path that devoured them, like mice winding their own trap.

  “By Adamantine's grace, Gelson, I hope not.”

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