Chapter 7 · free to read
He had asked me what I actually wanted. Before I answered him, I wanted to know what his question cost.
One secret, small enough to spend: the Minister of Works kept a second household in the west lanes. True, checkable, and worth precisely nothing to us.
Bo said nothing at all about it. Bo simply began a second ledger — one that recorded a single man's movements, hour by hour, against the night he might need unpicking.
It surfaced in four days, in the mouth he had named, at the price he had named. Not once did it pass through the Dowager's hands on the way.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.