Page 26 of Turncloak

“Of course not,” Auria lied.

Lighting the end of the joint with his wand tip, Jebat took a deep drag, cranked a window open—letting in a bitterly cold draft—and tapped the ash into a small jade dish on his desk. “I’d like to fill the gap Aspar left behind. Mentor you, if you’d let me.”

“I’d be honored.”

She meant it. Jebat was highly respected.

“So, tell me of your career goals.” A hand wave. “Yes, the Grand Arbitership, eventually—you’ve made no secret of that. But what does the path there look like?”

“Several years in silver, working high-profile cases, perhaps leading my own task force. Then moving into prosecution. I have my Knight’s Scroll in Law, and I think it’d lead nicely into higher office.”

“Interesting.” Another puff of the joint, two, three, the room now filling with the spiced smoke that always reminded Auria of Nissa Naszi. “You’ll need a squeaky-clean record, though I suspect you know that. Not just the big, obvious stuff—not being a corrupt piece of shit—but how you carry yourself day to day. How you talk to suspects, how you interview and interrogate witnesses. How honest you are when something goes wrong, how meticulous you are with your paperwork.”

Validation surged inside her—Karvas had made this modus operandi seem so juvenile, so naïve.

“Good thing I love paperwork.” Auria pulled out a parchment scroll and began making notes in loopy cursive. She could’ve enchanted the quill to do it for her, of course, but she liked giving her hand and her brain something to do. “The captain already doesn’t like me. How much of a problem is that going to be?”

“Karvas doesn’t like anyone, in the traditional sense. Respect, however—that can be earned. Stay in your lane. Follow every order to the letter. Work the cases you’re told to work, and no more.” Then, dropping his voice and eyeing the door to make sure it was closed, he added, “You may earn his respect, his trust—but that doesn’t mean you should necessarily trust him.”

Auria’s quill stilled on the parchment. “What do you mean?”

“Karvas and Grand Arbiter Dematus are close friends. Allies, even. And…well, Great Gods, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but Dematus is compromised.”

“Compromised how?”

“Nobody quite understands the extent of it, but it’s believed the Bloodmoons have some blackmail that keeps her in line. It’s why securing an arrest warrant for the scarlets has been near impossible.”

Auria felt a rocking of her foundations, a seismic shift in her worldview. Though she hadn’t always agreed with Dematus’s policies, she’d always admired her enormously.

“So the new captain is corrupt too?” She gripped the quill so tightly it almost snapped.

“I said no such thing.”

“You implied it.”

“Implication doesn’t get you very far in a court of law.”

Auria could barely comprehend the gravity of these revelations. With a compromised Grand Arbiter and the new captain loyal to her, bringing down the Bloodmoons was going to be…impossible.

It was no longer her job to care. She needed only to focus on the Whitewings, on fulfilling her duty and mourning the loss of her betrothed and somehow besting these damned migraines. Yet she did care. She cared all the time, about everything.

Mind reeling, she lowered her quill tip. “So: play fair, forget the Bloodmoons, avoid Dematus, don’t ruffle the captain’s feathers. Anything else?”

“The Whitewings are a great opportunity to prove your nous. Rising rapidly in profile and threat level, but sloppier than the Bloodmoons, with no clear chain of command. Not tied to one family, but rather a gang of ex-cons who met in Duncarzus and got organized on the outside. Began as ascenite bandits before moving into achullah—which isn’t illegal, but cutting it with darkseed to make it more addictive certainly is. A sinister operation, if not particularly sophisticated.

“For the full bust, we need evidence of organizational crime. Ascen laundering, widespread distribution of banned substances. We’re working on the darkseed angle, but we can’t get a handle on their distribution model. They don’t seem to operate from a centralized location like the Bloodmoons. They’re scattered, mobile, which means even an arrest warrant might not get us very far. Like trying to gather all the pollen floating away on a breeze. And a search warrant means nothing when there’s no premises to search in the first place.

“But there are plenty of loose threads to tug at. They’re very curse-happy when it comes to killing collateral.” He tapped a pointed thumbnail on the metallic lid of his tobacco tin. “Follow the dead bodies. Two this week we can confidently attribute to the Whites, and likely more by the time Laving rolls around.”

He pushed a manila folder over the desk to her, but she was too busy note-taking to reach for it.

“Files on the first two—patrons murdered in pleasurehouses, both tortured and killed in the exact same way. Find the patterns, tug at the threads. Build the case the way the Academy taught you. Even if you’re just taking down one rotten apple at a time, rather than the whole orchard…that’s how we save lives. One at a time.”

Auria’s hand cramped so severely she was tempted to switch to royal shorthand, but she considered such concession a failure. Jebat watched her furious scrawling with a faint tinge of amusement. She was famous for her never-ending note-making an all manner of subjects, including but not limited to: the types of soil native to Atherin (so that she might know when a perpetrator’s boot-prints hailed from elsewhere); the least congested routes on the portari gate network (so that she might always find the fastest way to a crime scene); and the most commonly frequented taverns of famous stage actor Dallo Tander (for personal reasons).

“You’re going to tear a hole in the parchment.”

“Yes, sir.”