Latham was waiting outside Cuckoo House, the home of Soar's Security Services, when Lowe came down the stairway. The big man's face was as stern as Lowe had ever seen, which was saying something.

He walked towards Lowe, pointing his finger accusingly. "What the fuck have you done? I've been ordered back to the Temple!"

Lowe shrugged. "Nothing that didn't need doing. And it's not like I haven't been here before."

"They fired you?"

"To be fair, I think telling your boss to 'go fuck yourself' probably counts as a resignation. But I'll let HR figure that one out."

Although he was manfully pulling off a studied insouciance, in truth, Lowe was reeling a little. He had known that making Markian Ulton a person of interest in the case would be putting the wolverine amongst the pigeons. Still, he was a little taken aback at the considerable shitstorm it had started.

And he was more than a little disconcerted by Cenorth's reaction.

When the Commander had suspended him last time, he had been royally pissed off. But he hadn't been worried for him. There had been no 'as your friend' conversation after Lowe had lost his Class.

That the Commander seemed so worried made Lowe think that he'd properly fucked up this time.

Placing someone under a Red Notice was the legal equivalent of pinning a suspect to a display board and getting the microscope - and sometimes the scalpel - out. It meant that all of Markian's logs - financial, communication and geographical - were instantly transferred to a little room in the basement of the building Lowe and Latham were stood in front of. Even now, a team of hyper-focused - crucially under no one's jurisdiction whatsoever - would be pulling apart every tiny detail of Markian Ulton's life.

The of Soar were actually an interesting anomaly in the Security Services. After a series of corruption scandals, the Mayor had altered the nature of Red Notices so that only the investigator who activated the process could rescind them. The thinking was that this would stop senior officers from unilaterally choking off investigations. The upshot of this was that having refused to cancel the process and then being dismissed, the would continue with their work and deliver their report regardless of what Commander Cenorth tried to tell them.

He would have liked to have been there when they, ever so politely, told him to take a running jump.

However, as with so many things the Mayor fiddled with, the theory was much better than the practice. It turned out that linking a Red Notice so firmly to an individual had the unintended consequence of significantly reducing the life expectancy of officers who issued them.

No living investigator. No Red Notice.

Despite this, it meant that Red Notices were kind of a big deal. They were one of the primary reasons most people did their best not to fuck with Soar Investigators. The thinking being that it was infinitely preferable to seek to work with someone who was reasonably bribable than to embroil yourself in a tangle with the administrative equivalent of Stage 6 cancer.

Interestingly, and this was why Lowe assumed the hammer had been brought down on Cenorth quite so strongly, for as long as the Red Notice was active, all of Markian's subsequent actions would be added to the stream of data flowing into that busy little office.

So, for example, any panicked Sending Stone messages sent out since Lowe's visit or, gods forbid, compromising conversations with Council members insisting something was done about the investigator would all be added to the pile.

Lowe could see why that might have somewhat excited the Council, the Temple, and maybe even the Mayor.

Latham was shaking his head. "If Markian was the one who put Mr Law on you, I sense your sevenday deadline might be about to speed up."

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Lowe shrugged again. "Then all the more reason we needed a Red Notice on him. You'd be amazed at the speed at which the guys on that team can go through someone's logs. With any luck whatsoever, we'll have him on the hook for the murders before too long."

Latham drew close, lowering his voice. "Little man, this is a stupid risk. The bodies of four - all sliced into little, tiny pieces - have just been found in the park opposite your apartment. Rumour is that they were the ones supposed to be making your acquaintance last night. The Temple is . . . riled up."

"I had nothing to do with that, Latham."

"It ain't going to matter." The turned and punched the wall behind him, putting his fist straight through it. "You've got Mr Law, you've got Mr Temple. And now you've got everyone who works with me with enough free time to come down and lynch you for killing some of their own on your case. And that's without adding in Markian Ulton - and whoever is bankrolling him - being pissed off you've opened up their little pandora's box of secrets."

Latham hit the wall again, and Lowe winced. He was beginning to worry about the structural integrity of Cuckoo House. From the looks of the very concerned 'passers-by' who had been lingering around since Lowe had exited, the powers-that-be inside were getting worried, too.

"Even if I were still assigned to you, I'd only give you 50/50 of making it through the night. You are truly and utterly fucked!"

Lowe did his best to plaster on a smile and held out his hand. Latham shook it reluctantly, a look of dismay on his face.

"It's been a pleasure, . We'll always have the Forest of Iraklion."

And, with that, Lowe turned and walked for home.

*

It was hardly the first time Lowe had a clock ticking down on his lifespan, but he'd long ago made his peace with the fact that he needed to go all in to do his job properly.

He knew he was pretty unusual in this.

Even before his fall from grace, there was a distance between him and those he worked with at Cuckoo House that had nothing to do with personality. Cenorth had never insisted he worked with a partner - despite that being the norm - for that very reason.

It wasn't just that Lowe wasn't willing to do some of the things his fellows saw as 'the cost of doing business'. It was also that no one else was willing to be around Lowe when he took something . . . personally.

If there was any surprise when he was stripped of his Class, it was only that it had taken so long for the city to get around to it.

So, he understood that everything he had just put in motion was going to come with a cost. And, once again, he realised he was comfortable paying it. Some things just mattered.

If Markian Ulton - or his backers - were responsible for killing the High Priestess, then the Red Notice would reveal that. It would also clarify if Markian were involved in any of the threats against Lowe and Arebella.

Of course, should the turn up at his apartment this evening with an axe, a shovel and a determined expression, that would probably tell its own story, too.

However, Lowe felt there was much more to all this than just one rich, powerful man looking to become even richer.

There was a missing glove. And some seaweed in a candle. And a second murdered priest. And then whoever it was that ordered to do him over. And who, in turn, killed them.

There were a whole load of questions he did not think he was much closer to answering than he had been when he first stood on the Third Floor of the Celestial Temple and looked at the body of a murdered woman.

Unfortunately, in his reasonably broad experience, the only way he knew to unstick such a paper jam was to do something big and stupid and wait to see who took exception.

Arebella had often suggested to him that there were easier ways to solve a crime than to wait and see who turned up to kill you. Lowe had explained he just thought of it as cutting to the chase.

Making sure he refreshed every one of his cooldowns from Mylaf's best Perception-enhancing muffins, he approached the foreboding dark alley that cut through the park and to his street.

Every instinct he possessed told him this was the perfect place for an ambush. Anyone who wished him harm had had enough time - while Cenorth chewed him out - to set up something crudely effective in this alley. There were no Observation Hubs active in this part of town, and the chances of any witnesses coming forward - as four had found out to their cost - were pretty remote.

This was a part of Soar where bad things happened to good, bad and indifferent people. And no one would care.

Which was just how Lowe liked it.

He knew it was going to be an enormous act of self-harm to walk into the darkness of that alley. At best, he was going to be set upon by someone who wanted to monologue whilst kicking the shit out of him. At worst, they'd just kill him outright.

No quicker way to cancel a Red Notice than to cancel the investigator.

But he was out of ways to move the case on much further.

He would either come out of this experience enlightened, or he wouldn't come out of it at all. Lowe was okay with both.

Which, he realised as he stepped into the darkness, was probably not an especially healthy worldview.

*

A pair of eyes, in which spinning tempests burned, watched—unblinkingly—what occurred next. After the bloodied body of the Inspector was bundled through a portal, those eyes flared, and they, and their owner, quickly vanished.