Where’s Miri?

That was the question that’d sent Ari into this world. She watched Bleuet’s words tumble out of her lips, waiting for them to crystalise into a message from her mission, waiting for them to turn the steam above the bathhouse’s tub into icy letters, only to splash and melt back into water.

But steam remained steam, the other bathers remained oblivious, and the silence turned awkward.

‘Where’s Miri, you ask? She’s looking for you,’ said Ari, wincing at her own reply. If she’d been given an answer this lacklustre, she’d be tightening her linen towel around the windpipe that’d allowed such nonsense to escape, so that a more helpful one would await her when she asked again.

Bleuet merely glared at her through her single real, grey eye. Perhaps it was Ari’s reputation that stayed her hands. Perhaps it was the bread that a bathhouse attendant plopped onto the tray that separated the two halves of their tub, delivered with a sigh and an eye roll.

‘Just one roll for the three of you?’ The man stifled a yawn, and said, with boredom that could only be rivalled by the other attendant at the gate, ‘Bread’s fresh from the bakery next door. We recommend one roll per person. We offer a good price. A great price. A price you wouldn’t find anywhere else. No? Have a nice evening.'

‘Are you?’ said Bleuet, once he’d left. ‘Having a nice evening, Ari Lee?’

‘About the same as you, Mildred.’ She returned the favour, hoping that she’d hit Bleuet with the right name.

From the stony look on Bleuet’s face, she was right.

‘Are you here to tell me that’s my girl?’ Mildred flicked a finger at Natty. ‘Because she’s not.’

‘I’m here to tell you that you killed a man, and I need you to turn yourself in.’

Mildred scoffed. ‘I have killed many men, and I’ve already turned in and collected my star medal.’

‘The ribbon was red, white and blue,’ said Natty, as if reciting a fact from a distant past.

‘That it was.’ She took the bread and tore it into three pieces. When Ari and Natty didn’t take the offering, she chewed on them instead. ‘Since you’ve done nothing but deflect my question, you mustn’t know where Miri is after all. I should have known. If we can’t find her, then how could you? For a moment, I did hope, since you have quite the reputation… but I shouldn’t have come here after all.’

‘Tristram knew, didn’t he? You should have asked him before you killed him.’ It drew Mildred’s stony look again. Ari locked her glare on hers as she uttered the next words, searching for a truth within. ‘Did you ask one of the others at La Petite Mort to poison a man with pie too? I understand killing to protect your family, but to kill a witness for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time while you moved the body is different, isn’t it?’

This time, the look that Mildred returned was blank, so Ari believed it when she said, ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about an innocent bystander.’ People like Ari should hold no regards for lives like that, but Mildred was a winner of medals instead of a lurker in the shadows. It was one thing to fight an enemy to defend her people, her loved ones, but another to take the life of someone like Thos. It should be par for the course for Ari, but a tragedy for Mildred. ‘He was poisoned with a pie filled with deadly webcap not far from where you sat, playing the lute with the body of Tristram behind you. He saw your glass eye. The sparkling one right here, in fact. He had nothing to do with any of it. He should be alive and–’

Mildred leaned towards her, suddenly looking every bit like the Chief even with the cascade of wet hair and her deep cupid’s bow, tinted red. ‘What mission did you receive this time?’

‘I… The Chief asked me to find Miri.’

‘And have you?’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why did you summon me here today? Is it supposed to help you find her?’

Ari tried to say yes, because that was what Mildred would want, but the pause was a touch too long.

‘I see.’ Mildred stole her turn to speak.

‘No, I–’

‘Out with the truth. Otherwise, I’m leaving.’

‘I… It might all be linked. Right now, I’m here to talk about Tristram’s murder and your part in it.’ Ari tried to wrestle the conversation back to one she’d rehearsed in her head. ‘I hope we can come to an understanding, because the coroner on the case has his eyes on some other suspects. We’ve already lost Thos. I’d hate to see more innocent lives lost, when a word from you could save them.’

‘Thos? You’ve learned his name?’ Mildred studied her, mouth half-open, and nodded. ‘If that’s how it is, tell me what you’ve found.’

In return, Ari studied Mildred too, but what she saw wasn’t a cornered killer; she was acting every inch a scientist who’d discovered a new species of bird, taking mental notes of its beak length and preening rituals.

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Clearing her throat, she tried to channel her inner Sir Edwin, though she’d never seen him take on such an accusatorial tone with her, but the room wouldn’t darken for her in the way it’d done for so many others. The candles wouldn’t burn a little softer, and the water refused to fade into the dark. Instead, it seemed to glow brighter with the setting sun through the arched windows.

‘It all started two years ago,’ Ari said, echoing June’s words when the world was willing to grant her a darkened moment to reminisce. ‘Miri used to spend a lot of time with you. Not nearly as much with her own father. Still, she managed to find out about an artifact that his organisation had gathered. A book, in fact. When you…’ She tried to gloss over the gaps in the story she was painting. ‘When you grew unwell, she knew you’d never make a recovery back in your world, but there was a way out. She tested her idea on some girls from school. It hadn’t been perfected yet when your time ran out, but when the alternative was losing you forever, anything was worth trying. With the book she’d taken from her father, she sent you into this world. That’s how you ended up in Bleuet’s body.’

Mildred barked a laugh. ‘You really said it. And you don’t even know the half of it. Say, where did the book come from? Or are you going to say that Marcel wrote it?’

Ari flinched at the sound of the Chief’s name. It made him a man of flesh and blood instead of a role that needed playing, that was necessarily cruel. ‘He took it from Eternity,’ she said, throwing out the fact that Percy had given her, yet from the mocking smile that twisted on her lips, it failed to throw Mildred off balance. ‘Anyway, that has nothing to do with this story.’

‘No, no, of course not. Carry on. Let’s see where you get us this time.’

‘I… I think you ended up as Bleuet, and while you found an ally in Madame Lucretia, you didn’t know that Miri had also crossed over into the world of the book. You grabbed your second chance at youth and used your military training to make La Petite Mort a force to be reckoned with. La Petite Mort was bustling and blooming into a place you could call home when Tristram arrived. You heard Hesperus selling his conspiracies about parallel worlds to Tristram.’ She felt certain of the fact, but couldn’t picture Rose saying those words. ‘They discussed the North Sea Scrolls too. Tristram took to the idea, but decided to do something different from what Hesperus had planned. Perhaps he just wanted revenge because he believed that one of you had taken over his sister. Who did Tristram threaten that day? Madame Lucretia? Another attendant at La Petite Mort? Miri?’

‘Not me?’

‘You’re not the type…’

‘And you know me so well, don’t you?’ Half of her face was veiled in shadows now. The glow of the sunset had been replaced by a growing number of candles, lit one by one by two attendants sheltering the flames in their hands from the splashes of water and the sizzling of steam.

It was even harder to read the expression beneath those arched brows now. Ari could only clear her throat and press on. Crafting her words felt like forging a painting she’d never seen. ‘You killed him in the weapon storage building at the back of La Petite Mort. Just a bit of good old carbon monoxide poisoning. Then you worked with the other attendants to move it a few streets down…’ And tried to frame Claribel with the fake marriage certificate? ‘The… only question is: why didn’t you wear the plain glass eye you’re wearing today? That glistening one made Thos notice you. It’s what gave you away.’

‘Because the bright one that looks like a diamond on steroid and the dark one that looks like a glitter bomb over the shape of a flower were gifts from Madame Lucretia. She’s always said it’s a waste to pop a bland eye in a space that could hold a piece of art. This one,’ Mildred pointed at the one she wore today with a flourish that attempted to disguise the poor excuse that she was offering, ‘I picked up from a different glassmaker yesterday, in case I need to be inconspicuous enough to haul another body across the city tonight.’

‘So you admit it then…?’ If this was a victory, why did it feel like she was losing herself? Why did a closer glimpse at the solution feel like falling into an unfathomable dark? Claribel lurked in the background, ghostly pale, looking like a curse crystalised from all the lives she’d taken, when it should have been Ari who was the true curse upon Claribel. Everything was sideways, everything was topsy turvy, speeding along a Möbius strip.

‘I’ll admit that I know what the North Sea Scrolls are, but I don’t think you do.’

She nudged Claribel, who sniffed indignantly. ‘They are supposedly a transcript of a message from the Creator that rose out of the sea, but only the crew from a single ship bore witnessed to it. The ship sank on its next journey across the sea, taking the transcript with it. The claim has never been approved by the Holy Fang, and there is no other evidence that the scrolls exist at all. In fact, why would true words from the Creator rise out of the ocean when all other holy messages have been carved at the top of mountains?’

Mildred frowned at her. No surprise, really, now that Claribel had gone too far. ‘Just as I thought.’

‘Saying “just as I thought” doesn’t autocorrect everything you said before it. Anyway, those scrolls aren’t what’s important here. What’s important is you did it, and you’re going to tell the coroner you did it.’

‘So that he can throw me in the dungeons and draw a crowd for my hanging? I’m a private sort of person. I want to die alone.’

‘Who’s going to do the throwing? It’s not like there’s any police he could call on you. Not when the real ones who guard this city are the guards of La Petite Mort. Look, he’s desperate to solve the case and pin it on someone. If it’s not you, it’s going to be another innocent party. Isn’t sacrificing Thos enough?’

‘Enough? Oh is it ever.’ But an oh wasn’t a no. ‘You want me to march in there now and confess the whole truth, whatever that may be? Tell you what we’ll do. Why don’t we let Lady Luck decide? If it’s on our side this time, I’ll tell you my story and surrender myself to that coroner of yours.’

Mildred took back the glowing gem of an eye from Natty, and popped out her plain grey one, spinning both in her hand, weaving them between her fingers like a magician, until they spun faster than Ari’s eyes could track. Her fists closed over them as she offered Ari both knuckles, tightly clenched. ‘Where’s the eye that looks real?’

Ari tapped Mildred’s cheek, below the real one.

‘Not a fan of Lady Luck?’

‘More like she’s never been a fan of me. Why trust luck when it’s the only thing you can’t train?’

‘Because it’s the only thing that treats everyone the same.’

‘Or is it all an illusion?’

‘No more cheek from you. One last chance. Left or right?’

She’d stalled long enough. Claribel extracted her face back out of Mildred’s fists and tapped her left.

So she picked the left hand path.