Karolen tilted her head, trying—yet again—to get a read on the somewhat crumpled man issuing orders in front of her. In the unforgiving light of the earning morning sun, Lowe had the look of a man who had lived too many lives on too little sleep. He seemed to be the kind of man who generated his own cloud of weariness, like he’d been born tired and just kept going out of sheer spite. And, beyond that, he just looked liked he needed a good wash. Arebella always maintained that her boyfriend had "hidden depths," but Karolen had never seen it. Maybe it was because Arebella had a soft spot for men who looked like they might collapse under the weight of their melancholy, or perhaps it was a quirk of her friend’s unending optimism. After all, this was the same Arebella who had once believed in the redeeming qualities of a with "a lovely smile." For someone with a Class that could see unfailingly to the truth, her friend had terrible taste in men.

Ever since their first day together at school, Arebella had the reputation of taking home every waif and stray she’d encountered, like a walking Guild for Broken People. Their little friendship group had hoped she'd eventually outgrow it before getting her heartbroken. However, she'd graduated from lost kittens and birds with broken wings to full-grown men who seemed to attract trouble like flies to honey—case in point: Jana Lowe.

"And this was how it looked when you came into the Great Hall, was it?" Lowe said, turning to face her, eyebrows raised like punctuation marks at the end of a question he wasn’t sure he believed.

Karolen didn’t immediately answer. Not because she didn’t know what to say—oh, she had plenty to say—but because she was currently weighing the merits of slapping him versus just walking out and pretending this whole charade had never happened.

For one, her firm was less than thrilled she’d been pulled off her latest assignment to attend this little farce. Reliving a scene that had been, to say the least, a professional embarrassment wasn't high on her list of things to do today. Actually, it wasn’t even on the list. It wasn’t anywhere near the list. It was somewhere far beyond the horizon of lists, in the dark realm of "things best forgotten."

Whilst none of the Partners had been gauche enough to outright suggest accusing Director Nuroon of complicity in a massive cover-up was unwise, it was clear the prevailing opinion leaned towards not accusing one’s clients of murder if it could at all be helped. They hadn’t even let her finish her audit. The excuse? Trauma. Because apparently, when one witnesses something truly horrifying, the best course of action is to shove the inconvenient employee into a quiet corner and hope the problem sorts itself out. Especially if said witness was a terribly fragile member of the female persuasion. She’d been patronisingly replaced before she’d even had the chance to file her initial findings. As if that wasn’t insult enough, the Museum’s accounts had been accepted without alteration, and no further audit was scheduled.

To top it all off, Liando Verlan had blocked her Sending Stone. When the Chair of the Museum Trustees starts ghosting you, it’s a fairly solid sign that everyone involved wants to forget the whole sordid affair. It was the kind of thing that would give anyone the urge to throw in the towel—or, in Karolen’s case, the urge to throw a punch at a childhood friend's reignited flame.

So yes, she felt quite justified in not immediately answering Lowe’s question. Reliving the scene of not just a gruesome death, but a substantial professional embarrassment, was not high on her personal to-do list. She had a rapidly growing suspicion that whatever Lowe was up to here, it wasn’t going to end well for her. Or anyone, for that matter.

" Mehin?" Lowe prompted, his voice dry enough to suck the moisture from the air.

Karloen triggered one of her memory skills, pulling up a mental image of the layout of the Great Hall as it had been that day. The problem with memory skills, though, is they’re often too accurate. Every detail was etched in her mind: the smell of ancient stone, the cold draft that never quite left the room, the eerie silence just before everything went wrong.

As the only person present who hadn’t wiped their memory, she could understand why Arebella’s boyfriend had insisted she be here. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. Not at all. She scanned the room, her eyes flicking to the older man standing next to a sarcophagus, flanked by two Security Service personnel playing the parts of the dead . Although now she thought of it, maybe someone else could be more reliable in their recall . . .

"Not quite," Karloen said, pointing to the sarcophagus lid suspended in the air, covered in ropes that looked a bit too flimsy for the job. In fact, the whole thing looked more like an elaborate prank than a reenactment of a tragedy. "That wasn’t like that when we arrived. The had only just broken the seal."

Lowe frowned and turned to Felicitous Gral, performing the dual position of legal advisor and stand-in Grackle Nuroon in today’s “charade,” as the Director had called it earlier. Gral, true to form, was managing to play both roles with the minimum amount of effort. If there was a Threshold reward for looking bored while being professionally insufferable, Gral would’ve had more Progress Points than anyone in Soar.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"The report I have says the lid was already in the air when the Director and Mehin entered the Great Hall," Lowe said, his voice thick with the kind of patience only people deeply fed up could muster.

Gral barely moved, managing to shrug without disturbing even his tie. "I am working from the same report, Inspector. Let me remind you, I was not here. And—the young lady apart—no one who was present can remember what occurred. Whether the lid was already in the air or not seems a peculiarly pointless thing to become hung up on, as it were. Especially as, within moments, it will be crashing to the ground with . . . unfortunate side effects."

"Unfortunate side effects," Karolen muttered to herself. Right. That’s what they were calling it these days. The way Gral said it, you’d think someone had accidentally spilt tea on a carpet rather than . . . well, a violent death.

Lowe frowned and indicated that the lid should be lowered onto the sarcophagus. "This is a reenactment. The whole point is that we actually re-enact what took place, not just live out whatever version of the truth Nuroon sold to his insurers. So, the lid was in place?"

Karolen nodded. "Yes, the, erm, older gentleman there was just prising it open when the Director noticed. The other two were stood on either side. That’s when the Director, myself, Bard Kregg, and the arrived."

"And where was everyone else?" Lowe asked, pacing as if he wanted to shake the truth out of someone. Anyone.

Karoloen closed her eyes, getting a sense of the room as it had been. Unlike what she understood about Lowe’s Grid View, she didn’t have an instant visual recall of events, but more of a spatial awareness, a sense of how resources had been allocated. "Most of the others here were on the outskirts of the Hall. They were not really paying attention to the exhibit. At least, not until the Director began shouting."

"A rather loaded term, my dear," Gral interrupted, clearing his throat in an expensive way. "I think it would be better to note that the Director was eager to ensure Health and Safety protocols were followed. Indeed, had Director Nuroon arrived earlier, any loss of life might likely have been avoided."

"Even though the lid was down and only raised in his presence?" Lowe asked, eyes sparkling mischievously for the first time that morning. In that, Karolen caught a glimmer of wit there, the kind that made her understand what Arebella saw in him.

Gral smiled thinly in response. "A minor detail, Inspector."

"Okay," Lowe clapped his hands together, shooing the various to the edges of the Hall like a ringmaster herding reluctant circus animals. "So, this is the scene. We have you three attempting to open the sarcophagus, no one else is particularly interested, and then the big cheeses enter on their grand tour. What happened next?"

"The Director was... unhappy to see the seal being broken."

"Without appropriate safety procedures in place, no doubt," Gral muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

For some reason, the lawyer’s tone rubbed Karolen the wrong way, irritating her into saying more than she'd planned. "Actually, after his initial anger, he seemed more interested than annoyed. After bawling out the three , he wanted to see what they’d found. That was when the other woman—"

" Culloden, who is currently on the run from the Security Services on suspicion of the murder of Harker and Bard Kregg?" Gral asked, his tone mild, almost bored.

"Yes. Her. Well, she used a Skill to raise the lid, at which stage the ropes were used to secure it."

"Oh. Martha Culloden raised the stone, did she?" Gral raised an eyebrow. "Well, that is most interesting. Inspector, do you not find it intriguing that a woman now suspected of two murders was the one who raised the stone? A stone which, I should remind you, would soon crash down and crush a poor to her death. This doesn't sound like an accident to me."

Lowe’s frown deepened, clearly unimpressed with Gral’s theatrics. "Perhaps, but—"

"And," Gral continued as though Lowe hadn’t spoken, "was it not the who insisted all museum employees wipe their memories via Clean the Canvas, Ms Mehin?"

Karolen bit back her annoyance at his failure to use her title. "Yes, she was the one who told the it was expected, but she was only delivering the Director's orders."

"Although, of course, we only have her word for that, don’t we?" Gral’s smile was infuriatingly smug. "You didn’t hear the Director tell her that, did you?"

Karolen shook her head slightly, wishing she could disappear into the floor.

"My apologies for belabouring the point, Ms Mehin," Gral pressed on, "but can you confirm that it was Martha Culloden whose Skill raised the sarcophagus stone, that she ordered Delphina to climb inside, shortly before—what?—her Skill failed, bringing the lid crashing down on the poor girl, and then commanded all museum employees to wipe their memories to cover up her crime?"

It was at this point Karolen lost her temper. "I think you’re forgetting the part where the girl was melted to death before the lid fell!"

Things were quiet for a bit after that.