I took one of the beef sandwiches. “Rozarya Ga needs her prescription refilled.”

“I thought so. What else?”

The bread was slightly damp, but the mustard was sharp and the pickles were crunchy. “Chensina said you wanted to talk to me.”

“I’m glad that got through, with everything else that happened yesterday.” She sighed. “We should actually hang out with all three of us. It’s been so long.”

“Chensina and I are going to link after the North Bank egg harbor tonight.”

Lenna sighed. “I wish I could go, but that’s about as likely as…” She shook her head.

I hadn’t expected her to be free. “No worries.”

“Thanks.” She sighed again. “So. Here’s the situation. There’s a company on the mainland that’s interested in doing business here in Halk, especially with the Syndicate. I can’t tell you who they are or where they’re based, unfortunately”

“No worries.”

“This company isn’t interested in doing business with the Port Authority.”

I took a bite of my sandwich. Half the bottom piece of bread fell off, but I caught it before it disappeared into the rug. “Not even BayaCorp?”

“Not even BayaCorp.”

“Genius.”

“Yeah, it probably won’t work. But the Syndicate isn’t going to be the reason why.”

“You think somebody else on the mainland might try the same thing?”

She shrugged. “Usually, a lot of people think of something before anyone tries it. But anyway: this company is sending a representative over to do research and observation. I’ve agreed to provide people to, first, escort him around the city, second, keep him out of trouble, third, make sure he stays incognito, and fourth, make sure no one thinks the Syndicate is involved. I’m not supposed to be telling you why I need you to do any of that, for the record.” She pointed at me and raised her eyebrows. “If anyone asks, you have no idea.”

I smiled. “Of course.”

“So, this representative. I’ve been told he knows more about Imsaren than anyone else in the company— more than almost anyone on the mainland, actually.”

“Has he been here before?”

She smiled, mostly. “No.”

“Okay.”

“He’s also the owner’s oldest son.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. His cover story is that he’s just a rich mainlander tourist who wants to go incognito while he’s here. You can imply whatever you want about why.”

I smiled. “Thank you.”

She laughed. “No worries. To be clear, I need your help because I don’t think it’s going to be easy to maintain that cover.”

“Aw.”

“But it’s not a full-time job, I know you’re busy. You’re going to be on rotation with a few other people I trust, and I’ll line up a few more over the next few days. But he’ll be coming by…” Lenna checked her watch. “He’ll be here in about twenty minutes— he needs to pick something up— so if you don’t want to do this, or you don’t have time this morning, you need to be gone by then or I won’t be able to justify not letting him leave.”

“How long do you need me for today?”

“All you need to do this morning is to walk him back to San Pettru’s. He’s renting their third floor. Leave him there, and I’ll send someone else over to pick him up later.”

“Yeah, I have time.”

“Sweet. Thank you. I’ll give you a pager before you leave.” Lenna stood. “Come with me.”

I followed her over to her workbench.

“Can I see Rozarya’s prescription?”

I unfolded it and handed it to her.

She looked at it for half a beat longer than she would have if it was only a prescription. Then she creased the paper backwards to flatten it and started pulling down jars of dried tunnel weeds from the shelves above the counter. “Nice play with the artifact yesterday.”

“How did you know?” I didn’t expect her to answer.

She surprised me. “Kalchidon told me when he got it from Chensina.” She set two matching beakers on either side of her balance scale, shook out a thin layer of yellowish seeds into one, and dropped a fingernail-sized weight into the other one.

“What does it do?”

Lenna smiled. “That’s a secret.” She pulled a few seeds out of the flask with a pair of tweezers. The scale balanced. She added another weight and opened a jar of crushed dark-purple leaves. “But Kalchidon doesn’t know, either. All he knows right now is that it’s not passively dangerous. He thinks it’s a talisman, but he hasn’t figured out how to activate it.”

“You think he will?”

“Probably.” ” She filled up a cone-shaped flask in the sink and set it on a stand over a red brick. “Anyway, it’s sixth-century pre-urbe condita, if you care.”

I sighed. “Shit.”

“Hm?”

“I thought it was Third City.”

“It’s a replica. It’s a faithful one, if that makes you feel better— the artist copied the actual silver-hammering technique from the Third City, not just the pattern.”

“That helps.” I popped the last strip of rye crust into my mouth.

“Of course, it might not be a talisman or an amulet at all— it could just be jewelry. Especially since that kid stole it from Ichelebra’s.”

“They sell a lot of ‘talismans with unknown activation sequences’?”

“Uh-huh.”

I went back to the coffee table. Outside, the sun had climbed past the cave ceiling. A train was rolling into the station tower on one of the upper tracks, probably from one of the Opals. It was a chain of black beads across a slice of painfully blue sky.

I took one of the pork sandwiches. The crust was wet. Some of it stuck to my thumbnail.

Bubbles clung to the bottom of the Lenna’s flask. She checked the temperature again and tipped the herbs into the water, then tapped the thermometer on the edge of the sink and set it down on the counter. “I heard Indri was with you and Chensina when the paper planes landed yesterday.”

“Uh-huh.” I took a bite of the sandwich. It was wet because a lukewarm slice of pineapple was glued to the inside of the bread.

“What does he think?”

It still tasted fine. I took another bite. “He has no idea.”

Lenna laughed. “I don’t believe you.”

I smiled. “He thinks an ‘independent magician’ could exist. He just can’t figure out if they actually do, or if one of them would do something like that.”

“Mm.”

“What did you think he was going to say?”

“I never know with him. That’s why I asked.”

I leaned on the counter. “If there really is an independent magician in Blue Canyon, and they really do need a personal assistant, why are they offering to teach them how to do magic?”

“Do they think people would take the risk, if they didn’t think they’d learn to protect themselves?”

“Still, why offer ‘the secret of magic’? Why not just say they’d teach you a few spells?”

“How much magic would you need to know to protect yourself from the entire Port Authority?”

“Magic Missile.”

She laughed. “So true.”

A bell trilled. Lenna tipped another beaker of herbs into the water and turned down the heat.

“Do you think it’s real?” I asked.

She squinted through her reflection in the window. A pillar of black smoke drifted out of the Hole. Swallows dived in and out of it like dolphins in the ocean. “Probably not.”

“Why?”

“The letter said ‘independent magician,’ singular. Even if they train another magician to fight, that’s only two against… how many magicians are in the Families? A thousand? Two?”

“Yeah, in Halk. BayaCorp would never let the rest of the Port Authority into Blue Canyon.”

Lenna tilted her head. “Can you think of a faster way to change that than the planes?”

“Did the BayaCorp employees in Blue Canyon get the letters?”

She frowned. “I assume so. I’ll tell you once I find out for sure.”

“If they did, then no, I can’t.” I smiled. “It’s bad enough for the Bayas that the rest of the Port Authority can all do magic. Imagine if their employees could do it, too.”

She laughed. “I’m not sure I can imagine that.”

“But.”

“Hm?”

“What do you think?” I asked. “If they had to choose, would they rather keep their employees from learning magic, or would they rather keep the Port Authority out of the old settlements?”

“Oh, keep the Port Authority out. Flat.”

“Why?”

“Spite. The Families should know better than to underestimate the Bayas by now, but…”

“Hard not to. However bad you think they are, they’re somehow always worse.”

“So they’re hard not to underestimate because everyone underestimates them?”

“They’re hard not to underestimate because they make sure everyone underestimates them.”

Lenna smiled. “See? Spite.”

“You forgot something, though.”

“What?”

“Why would the Families make up a magician, when most people won’t believe them? Why not just say there are monsters in the settlements, and that’s why the Bayas have to let the Port Authority in? No one would question that.”

She frowned indignantly. “There are no monsters in the settlements.”

“The Families could change that.”

“All the settlements have one way in and one way out. They are secure.”

“There’s always a way.”

“ ‘Always’ is a dangerous thing to say in Imsaren.”

“So is ‘secure.’ ”

Lenna laughed. “So true. But the Bayas and the Korsiyets are already cooperating in the Opals.”

“Sure.”

“Just the Korsiyets.” She raised her eyebrows.

I got it. “And none of the other Families get anything out of it. But if there was an ‘independent magician’ in one of the old settlements, that would threaten all the Families equally.”

She grinned. “Now you’re on the trolley.”

“But if that was true, why not say the magician was in one of the Opals? Then they could say the Korsiyets weren’t keeping it secure, so the rest of the Port Authority would need to come in and secure it for them.”

“Or maybe no one would believe there was an independent magician in a settlement that the Korsiyets co-own.”

“Then why not just let the Korsiyets co-own all of them?”

She laughed. “The Port Authority would love that. But anyway, you don’t need magicians to kill monsters. You’ve done it.”

“Yeah. It’s a massive pain in the ass.”

“The Bayas have plenty of cannon fodder.”

“True.”

“And they’re developing a new weapon.”

“How do you know that?”

She smiled. “Don’t you want to know what the weapon is?”

“How do I know you know?”

She turned on the full-power smile. “You can trust me.”

I laughed.

Lenna turned off the heat under the flask. “It’s supposed to shoot spears like an atlatl, but anyone can use it with a couple days of training, it has a farther range, and the spears are heavier. And faster.”

“I could have told you that. Why would anybody develop anything else?”

“And the Bayas are building a new testing range, so they’ve actually figured out how to do it. Or they’re close.”

“Huge if true.” I took another beef sandwich. The train was gone.

Lenna was straining green oil into a small bottle. Volume markings climbed up the side. “If they can get it working, they’ll never build a settlement with the Korsiyets again.”

“If they want to build it by hand.”

“I told you. Spite.” She shook the last few drops of oil off the bottom of the strainer and capped the bottle.

“So it’s a move by the Korsiyets. They want to make it look like the Bayas need them to protect the settlements, no matter how many monsters they can kill, even without magic.”

She shrugged, smiling. “Maybe.”

“But that’ll force them to let the other Families into the settlements.”

“Imagine.” Lenna leaned on the counter next to me. “The Korsiyets keep their co-ownership of the Opals, and the whole Port Authority takes over the other settlements.” She raised her eyebrows like this was the first time she’d had this idea. Maybe it was. “Imagine, for the next settlement the Bayas build, the Korsiyets make the Bayas an offer: if the Bayas let the Korsiyets be the only Family in the settlement, they’ll only charge half as much money as the Port Authority would have. The Bayas get fifty percent off, and the Korsiyets get— what, seven times as much income?” She shrugged. “Assuming all the Families would have split the Port Authority’s revenue equally, obviously.”

“You think the Port Authority would let that happen?”

“They would have stopped the Korsiyets from co-owning the Opals if they could— and none of the other Families have co-founded settlements. I think they just don’t have the funds to compete.”

“Even the Ahlk Kas?”

“The funds, or the will to leave the house. So.” She smiled brilliantly. “What do you think of my theory?”

“It’s a convoluted plan.”

“All the best ones are.”

“It has a few flaws.”

“Name one.”

“It’s not good for anybody in the Port Authority if people start thinking there are real magicians outside the families.”

“Real magicians?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I’ll show you a real magician.”

I grinned. “I said I was sorry.”

She pointed at me. “Be careful with your sandwich the next time you come here.”

“I’ll switch our plates.”

“I’ll take an antidote before you get here and then spice both plates.”

“You’ll just give me the antidote anyway.”

“I would. After I let you sweat for a little bit.”

“Thanks.”

She laughed and wrapped the bottle in paper. “Here. Same dose, tell her to let me know right away if she has a flare-up. I already told her this, obviously, but she can’t just take more if it gets worse.” She poured a stack of white powder onto a square of wax paper and tied it up with a rubber band. “And tell her to take a pinch of that in water if she gets nauseous. A pinch.”

I laid it in the bottom of my bag. “If the Korsiyets wanted to spread that rumor, why mail it to the whole island? Why not just leak it to the rest of the Port Authority?”

“Maybe they already tried leaking it and it didn’t work. Maybe they needed more than just a rumor.”

“Do you know that?”

Lenna wiped down the counter, smiling. She dropped the wet dish towel in the sink with an echoing slap.

A huge red star-shaped flower opened in a pot next to the door.

“He’s here.” She turned the red brick on to max and held Rozarya’ prescription against the side. The corner started to smoke. “Hold this.”

I pinched the edge of the paper where she was holding it. Her skin was dry. Her nails were gracefully filed to coffin shapes and polished with Syndicate black, but auroras of blue glitter flashed across them when she took her hand away.

While the prescription slip burned, Lenna ducked behind her desk and opened a drawer. She set a box wrapped in brown paper on her desk.

The slip had burned down to a feather-thin crescent between my fingernails. I dropped it in the sink and turned on the tap. The water nudged it under the dish towel. I left it there.

Lenna was next to me, holding a pager. It looked like the one I’d given Indri, a small, smooth bamboo box with two divots in the front. One was marked with a circle and one was marked with a cross.

“If it dings once, go to San Pettru’s. Twice, come here. It’ll keep doing that until you hit one of these two buttons— circle for yes, you’re coming, cross for no, you’re not.”

“Thanks.” I clipped the pager to the inside of my bag and buckled it closed.

“No worries.” Lenna looked at the flower again. “He’s almost here.” She sat down at her desk, swiveled her chair to face the door, and steepled her fingers.

I finished my sandwich.