It hadn’t even been a full month since the time I murdered several dozen high-ranking politicians. They’d had it coming, of course; as members of the Distinguished Gentlewoman’s Society for Philanthropists and Philosophers, all of them had been involved with a scheme to bribe the poor of New Alderburg into allowing themselves to be killed, butchered, and fed to stonewose, which the aristocratic and business-owning members of the Society would use as expendable muscle to suppress dissent. In a rage, I’d burned down their entire base of operations, with all of the members inside, damn the potential consequences. The only thing I might have done differently if given a second chance was to take better precautions against having my identity discovered.
Alonhall had been forced to leave New Alderburg not long after the fire, racing back to Grantval in order to beat the news and make absolutely certain that I didn’t come under any suspicion. Given that it was very possible Lady Halflance had known one or more of the dead personally, I hadn’t told her about any of it. As Alonhall mentioned the fire and her part in dealing with the aftermath thereof, my whole body tensed up. There was only one question on my thoughts: how much did Lady Halflance know? How much was Lady Halflance going to find out, if Alonhall was going to start telling the story?
“The first thing I did immediately after the end of all that nastiness, of course, was to go back to ground, re-establish connections and recenter myself in preparation for the next mission. You have to understand, for a spy such as myself, business and pleasure go hand in hand. Unfortunately I hadn’t even had a few hours of carousing to myself before something came to my attention, specifically in the form of an inconveniently-timed telegram from HQ.”
I could let out a breath. She wasn’t going to say anything about the Society fire at all.
“The telegram informed me that a Cassandran shipping vessel was being held offshore of Grantval due to suspicions that it was being used by the Cassandrans as part of their espionage program. I had no choice but to investigate. I gave that gorgeous actor a kiss on the forehead, slipped out of her bedchamber, quickly changed back into my guise as the Blackbird, requisitioned a rowboat from the Grantval docks, and made my appearance on the ship.
“I’m not going to waste your time by going over all the evidence that Bluerose Intelligence had had to gather to prove that this was a Cassandran operation, it took over a year and it was all excellent work by the grunts. Once I was inside the cargo hold, there was no doubt. I recognized most of the equipment immediately: specialized food supplies, raw metal, glass vessels and wire cages, bottles of chemicals. In other words, the same materials, down to the precise design, as what Tersine had used in the lab we saw in New Alderburg.
“But that wasn’t the entirety of what the ship was carrying. About a third of the cargo consisted of sacks and sacks of salt. And not just any salt, either, but specifically Diamond-brand salt, complete with the logo marked on the side of each and every bag. And that raised a question. Why would anyone need to import Diamond-brand salt into Grantval, when both the company headquarters and their mine are located in the city?”
Laura furrowed her brow. “Because it wasn’t actually salt? Lots of things look like a gritty white powder.”
“No, Laura, it very much was,” Alonhall said. “I tested it.”
Lady Halflance winced. “Just wait until she’s done with the story. It’s far from the worst thing she’ll admit to doing before it’s over.”
Alonhall rolled her eyes before continuing. “Clearly, there was some kind of connection between Cassandran Intelligence and the Diamond Salt Corporation. I indicated as such to HQ, and requested permission to investigate. That permission was granted, and within a handful of days I had been granted an entirely new identity with which to start looking into things, that of wealthy Miranian investor Emmeline Plouffe. It was a fantastic opportunity to do a fake accent for several hours, and a necessary way to separate my activities with Diamond from my general persona.
“I approached the Diamond Salt Company’s main office in Grantval, explaining that I wished to know more about their operations before I invested my wealth in them. Obviously, the promise of money made them quite willing to allow me inside and give me a tour. Unfortunately, wherever they keep the records of their illicit activities, it wasn’t inside that primary office; I found suggestions, but nothing more. But as you all know, darlings, it is not only stealth and subterfuge at which I am master. I’m also quite the charmer.”
“With the filament engine, maybe,” I said.
“How dare you! I only use that in the most extreme of situations, when it is absolutely necessary.”
“Right.”
“No, what I instead did was apply my vast reserves of personal charisma, until I had found a weak link in the form of a gorgeous young person by the name of… Well, I suppose I should keep her real name a secret. For propriety’s sake, let’s call her Penny. I applied my usual techniques to her, and before very long at all I had her wrapped around my finger. We spent a few days together, visiting the beach, exploring both the most beautiful sights Grantval had to offer as well as each other’s bodies. Bit by bit, she came to trust me with more and more of herself.
“One evening, she finally confessed to me that she knew her company was working with the Cassandrans, and that their mining operations were in reality concealing something horrible, though she didn’t know what. Before I could do much of anything about it, though, I was ambushed. As I was already naked at the time, I was entirely unarmed and without my filament engine, leaving me totally defenseless against the armed Cassandran agents who, in any other circumstance, I would have handily defeated. I was bound, blinded, and sedated.”
“This part definitely didn’t happen,” said Lady Halflance.
“You have no reason to believe it didn’t,” Alonhall replied sharply.
“Halflance, why the hell are we sitting down here and letting her tell the story if you think it’s bullshit?”
“She’ll get upset if I don’t,” Halflance replied.
“When next I regained consciousness,” Alonhall continued, “I was in a shack by the riverside, tied to a chair and up to my ankles in filthy, awful river-water. With me in that shack was a woman I’d met at Diamond Salt Corporation, a woman by the name of Beryl Coldsalt, and she had a revolver aimed at my face. I asked her what was going on, not that I didn’t already know, and when she replied, it was with a distinctly Cassandran accent.
“Something to the effect of, ‘You’ve been snooping around for long enough, but thanks to the lovely Miss Penny your days of snooping are over’. And I asked, ‘Well, what in the world is all this for, then? All I wanted was to find out what I was investing in!’ And she said ‘Well, regardless, you have dug too deep. It is a shame that Emmeline Plouffe will soon be drowning due to an unfortunate rupture in the retaining walls.’ It was about when she said that that I realized that the water level was rising rather quickly.”
Every single time Alonhall did a line from her opponent it was with the most awful, exaggerated, pseudo-Cassandran accent I had ever heard. It was bad. Very bad.
“To make a long story short, we bantered for a short while, but without my filament engine on-hand there was very little I could do to convince her to let me go. I ended up alone, in a room slowly filling with water, with steel cuffs attaching my arms and legs to a chair.”
“She just left you? You said she had a gun!”
“You can’t just shoot someone and expect to get away with it, Laura,” Alonhall said. “There would have been a whole investigation!”
“Then why not stay with you to make sure you actually drowned?” Laura asked.
“They needed to get away quickly enough that nobody would suspect any connection. If the Diamond Salt Corporation ended up under investigation, the entire plan would have been for nothing.”
Lady Halflance sighed. “This didn’t happen. Please just continue to tell the story.”
“I struggled for quite some time, putting all of my strength and cunning into breaking out of the trap. But alas, there was nothing I could do. I had none of my equipment, none of my allies, none of the things I could normally rely on to escape from a tight spot. As the water rose around my calves, I consigned myself to my fate. Then, suddenly, the door to the shack opened, and who else should burst in but my beloved Penny!
“She said something to the effect of ‘Oh, Emmeline, I’m so sorry that it came to this, but my employers would have had me killed had I refused to betray you to them. But I’m here now, and I have the key to get you out of those bindings!’ At once she unlocked my feet and hands, profusely apologizing all the while. I forgave her, of course, and promised her that she would be kept safe from any retribution.”
I groaned. “Joyce, I understand this story is important, but do you need to do the breathy voice? It’s really not necessary.”
Alonhall ignored me. “Just as I had freed myself, the door opened again, this time allowing one of the Diamond Corporation’s hired thugs into the room! I leapt out of the chair and dove into the water, barely avoiding the first few bullets and saving Penny’s life. I then swam rapidly across the shack, the water protecting me from harm, and tackled the assassin to the ground. Though I am, of course, a trained agent of Bluerose, it soon became clear that she held the upper hand in a contest of wrestling, no doubt due to the greater focus on unarmed combat in the training of Cassandran operatives.
“Once again, it was Penny who saved my life. I don’t know how she did it—she certainly didn’t have the look of someone with the strength to do such a thing, though God knows looks can be deceiving—but she wholly picked up the chair I’d been tied to, holding it in both hands, and slammed it into the Cassandran agent’s face. And then, once she was down, she did it two more times. A very bloody mess, that left. Thinking quickly, and with the water now up to around our waists, we stripped the Cassandran agent of her clothes and bound her to the chair, relying upon the fact that her face was too ruined to be identifiable to trick Diamond Salt Corporation into thinking their trap had been a success.
“I knew that I had to inform HQ about all that I had learned. But before that, I had to make sure that Penny would be safe from all forms of harm. I withdrew all the money I could from my personal account without it raising an alarm, then sold off a few trifles to make up the difference. I gave Penny all that money, and a train ticket to another city which shall remain unnamed. She kissed me mere minutes before the train departed, asking me, ‘Oh, Emmeline, when will we ever meet again? I shall hate to not see you.’ In the end, I could say nothing. For I knew that our lives could not intersect again.”
Alonhall shut her eyes and held a dramatic look of regret and sadness for several seconds. The rest of us all let out a group sigh that the story was actually over. “So, Lady Halflance, what actually happened?”
“The Blackbird contacted me some four days ago, and I was forced to spend the entirety of the intervening time making certain that the relevant parts of the story were true. The Diamond Salt Corporation does appear to be tied to Cassandran interests, there is enough unusual activity around their quarry to indicate it as a potential location for Tersine’s lab, and… there was a report of the drowning death of a woman named Emmeline Plouffe, who was a codename used by Bluerose Intelligence.”
Halflance shot Alonhall a glare, which was met by the most smug grin I had ever seen.
“I was telling the truth.”
“You were not.”
I knocked once, sharply, on the table. “We are not going to argue about this. Tersine is staying in a salt mine owned by a company that’s proven to be a Cassandran front. What are we actually going to do about it?”
“I have informed certain members of the government about Tersine’s presence, and the nature of her goals and capabilities. As we speak, a force is being assembled to storm that salt mine, a force strong enough to overcome whatever Tersine has waiting for us.”
“And Laura and I will be at the front of this?”
Halflance flicked her daughter the briefest of looks. “You will be, yes. Your immortality and previous experience makes you a crucial asset in the battle against Doctor Tersinêvka.”
Laura smoldered about the snub, but she must have been used to that sort of behavior, because she didn’t say anything. The fact that she was, implicitly, being allowed to participate at all was enough to satisfy her.
“Are you ready to leave at once?” Lady Halflance asked me.
“Yes. Both of us.”
And so we did. Not having to take the series of carriages up the coast was, in the end, quite a relief. I’d had enough experience with the Selenian equivalent of cars in the brief expedition into the Desolation to understand that in terms of comfort they really didn’t hold a candle to locomotive transport.
For as physically relaxing as the journey to Grantval was, mentally it was anything but. Part of it was the natural anxiety that always forms in the hours or days leading up to conflict. I’d actually started getting used to that, as horrifying as it sounds. The bigger problem for me was the nature of that conflict. Halflance had been very clear that this was, in the end, a Bluerose government operation. In other words, we were working with more than just friends or allies, we were working with cops.
We were only in this to defeat Tersine, I tried to remind myself. She was a monster, a murderer, incredibly dangerous not merely to Bluerose as a nation but to the people living in it. And she had the support of her government, after all, not to mention the small army of wolves at her disposal, the sort of raw force that rendered her more or less immune to any counterattack on the sort of scale that I or Laura could manage. Allying with Lady Halflance, and the government of which she was a part, was the only way.
Or was it?