Lowe had only once been on the First Floor of the Celestial Temple, and the memory of that encounter was not joyous.

It had been right at the start of his career when he was still bright-eyed and busy-tailed. He'd caught some bullshit Fraud case, mainly because there was no one more senior around to pick it up, and it didn't look like the sort of thing that could be fucked up too badly.

On the face of it, it was a tale as old as time: rich bloke who wanted to get richer had found a way to persuade people with neither enough money nor enough sense to give him cash in exchange for fairy dust and magic beans.

And that wasn't a metaphor.

This wanker - Kyrian Green - had been boxing up crates of literal crud, slapping a fancy label on it and flogging it to the unwary, promising all sorts of healing properties.

In next to no time, Lowe had gathered enough evidence for the guy to be looking at - at least - two to three years in a dark cell. Even to get away with as little punishment as that, he'd need to get lucky, and it be that none of the suckers he'd fleeced had a powerful enough patron god to make waves. Some deities took such things personally.

Lowe was preparing to make his move - he favoured three o'clock raids with plenty of heavies to back him up - when a had arrived at Cuckoo House with an urgent message that 'Arkola wants a word'.

At that stage, Lowe had been wet enough behind the ears to think this boded anything good. He had jogged along to the Temple, swaggered up to the portal stones, winking at the very unimpressed and activated the entry for Arkola's floor, fully expecting he was about to get a pat on the head for a job well done from the most powerful being in Soar.

Yeah, not so much.

Standing next to Arebella now, Lowe felt his pulse quicken at the memory and sweat flow down from his forehead.

"Are you okay?" she asked, gently taking his hand and pulling him down the long, thin corridor towards the closed door at the end.

"No worries," he managed, plastering on a sickly smile.

Arebella stopped and turned him around, pointing a finger up at her heart-shaped face. ", remember? And even if I wasn't, you were always the single worst liar in the whole city."

Lowe grimaced and rested a hand on the wall. His knees had gone weak, and there was the acrid tang of something metallic in his mouth. If he wasn't careful, he was going to pass out. "I'm just having flashbacks of the last time I was here. Not a nice memory."

She nodded sympathetically. "The Green case, right?"

He glanced at her in surprise. They had not been seeing each other for long when all of that had blown up. The cover-up had been so very thorough that he was astonished she remembered anything about it.

Arebella rolled her eyes at his bemused expression. "Jana, why do you always think that nothing that happens in your life will be of interest to those who care about you? Of course I knew that you'd been personally warned off an investigation by Arkola. Even without it being the hottest gossip in the Tower, you barely spoke, ate or slept for the rest of the sevenday. I practically had to move in with you to be on suicide watch!"

Lowe thought he'd kept his fear and terror at the encounter under wraps rather better than that. But, now he thought of it, he had started to see much more of Arebella around that time. He'd thought it was his winning personality and witty banter...

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But, standing here now, the full impact of that experience was on him again. It hadn't been anything as crude as being 'warned off' the case. He'd pranced down this corridor like a prizewinning pig, fully expecting to receive his latest ribbon - there were all sorts of positive noises coming out of Cuckoo House about the hotshot new detective blazing a trail through the criminal undercity - but instead of more kudos pouring down on him, when he'd pushed open that door at the end of the corridor . . .

Disappointment.

No, Lowe thought now, that didn't go quite far enough. The aura that had enveloped him the second he'd entered Arkola's receiving chamber had not been anything so mundane as 'disappointment.' His very soul had been picked up, examined and then put back on the shelf with the sort of disdain usually reserved for month-old egg mayonnaise.

The supreme being at the top of the Celestial Temple had been viscerally disgusted by his presence and wanted him to know that.

There'd been more to it, of course. But most of that experience, Lowe seemed to have buried under layer-upon-layer of critical self-protection against emotional trauma. Unfortunately, standing here right now had ripped off that scab, and mental puss was flying everywhere.

I would like you to drop your investigation into Kylian Green.

The strength of Arkola's suggestion had been so overwhelmingly potent that Lowe had turned around and was halfway back down the corridor towards the portal stone before his sense of professional pride had grabbed hold of his feet and dug his heels in.

"Why?" he had whispered back, not trusting himself to say anything much louder.

The worst thing was that his defiance seemed to cause the voice significant amusement. 'Why', Mr Lowe? You would want to know 'why?'

His body had suddenly twirled around, and he'd been marched - like a puppet whose strings were being worked by a malevolent toddler - back into the receiving chamber, the door slamming behind him.

There had been nothing to see in the pitch-black room, but the presence of Arkola was very . . . present. Lowe could not, even now, come up with a better way of describing it than that. The paucity of the quality of that description almost caused him more annoyance than anything.

Almost.

But as someone who had always prided himself on his powers of perception, not being able to recall anything more about the experience than an unlit room royally pissed him off.

The 'why', Mr Lowe, is because I ask it. That I ask it rather than order it shows you a measure of respect. For most, that would be enough. Please do not make me regret offering it to you.

Despite every survival instinct warning against it, Lowe had girded his loins and managed to bite back, "But he did it! Green conned those people out of their money. Why should he be able to get away with it?"

The pressure around Lowe had shifted slightly at that, the profound disaste and disappointment giving off tones of amused contempt.

You are no neophyte, Mr Lowe. There are wild currents in Soar that, even if you know nothing about them, you are nevertheless aware that they exist. That Mr Green allowed himself to come to the notice of Cuckoo House is regrettable and he will be suitably punished for that misstep. But, to be clear, not by you. You will take this case no further.

"So you protect your friends, do you? That's how all this works, is it?"

Looking back, Lowe couldn't believe he had the balls to say that. Pre-Classtration Lowe had been a badass, apparently. He wondered why he'd forgotten that.

Amused contempt moved into just plain amused. Not at all, Mr Lowe. I had not heard of Kylian Green until this morning. But he has friends, and those friends have friends, and one of those friends knows someone who has reached out and asked me for a favour.

"And this 'favour' was to warn me off?"

Actually, the favour was to lobotomise you and toss your gibbering body into a pen at Soar Zoo for it to be raped by monkeys. In that context, I rather feel you owe me a 'thank you' rather than whatever pathetic show of defiance this is.

Looking back, Lowe was sure there'd been further dialogue here, but his mind rebelled against recalling it. The next thing he had known, he was at Arebella's door, weeping uncontrollably and unable to explain why. Thinking about it now, it was hardly surprising it was an event she remembered.

Overnight, Cenorth burned all his notes on the Kylian Green case before Lowe could pull himself together enough to get back to his office. "Just looking out for you, Jana," he had said. "Sometimes, I don't think you always have your best interests at heart."

"Say that again, boss," Lowe muttered under his breath, looking down the corridor at the door to the receiving chamber.

"Jana?" Arebella asked, concerned.

"I'm all right," he said, taking a deep breath and - oddly - this time he meant it.

Giving her hand a reassuring pat, he strode forward and pushed open the door, Arebella hurrying behind to keep up with him.

"Arkola, I have a few questions concerning the death of Gianna d'Avec."

As the door shut behind them, they each pretended the portal stone behind them hadn't just flared into life.