"Lukai, does that sound good?" He was still looking at the police file. "Lukai?"

"Huh?" He looked at Myra. "What's that?"

"We decided we're going to Ealichburgh to see Carmack Massiel's house," Myra explained.

"Oh, yeah. That's fine." He tried to hand back the police file, but his hand didn't seem to go to any person in particular. Iz used her initiative and took it from him.

"Anything jump out at you?" Myra asked. He had been looking at the file for a long time, but never said anything.

"Not really. Shall we get going?" He smiled, though there was something in it that seemed forced. He had barely even commented on Myra's speculation about the prints. She felt foolish.

Iz frowned, but she agreed. "I'm going to get some supplies from the locksmith downtown. Myra, go pull Nathan out of his room, and let's meet at the station in an hour."

◆

Myra was sick of travelling already—she'd been to Unkmire and she'd been to Jewel City twice, and now she was going north yet again. It should have been lively, with their group now totalling five, but half the group was up in their own heads. Shera and Lukai spoke cheerfully about architecture and other interests, but Nathan was quiet, and Iz watched the other two speaking without interjecting herself.

They arrived late in the afternoon in Ealichburgh—the quiet town was asleep, and their group would have surely stuck out like a sore thumb if anybody had been outside to notice them. It wasn't a long walk to the house.

"Tell me about the door again," Iz said.

"There's a bomb set to blow if the door isn't opened the right way," Myra explained. "But I'm not sure what that 'right way' is, or how to detect it."

Iz nodded along absentmindedly. Myra was skeptical that she really needed the rehash.

"The detector uses some elemental composition I'm unfamiliar with," she continued. "It mixes the void element with the information element. Also, the pins in the keyhole seem to require a key with a flat edge."

"Like this," Iz said. True to her word, she had purchased a bundle from a locksmith in Ralkenon. She pulled one out to show the group. Just like a normal key, but with a completely flat edge. This was a key blank, which you would ordinarily cut into to tailor it to a specific lock.

"Yes, like that."

They arrived at the house, where Myra hoped they would be able to talk about the system a bit more concretely. Iz, though, didn't even bother sensing around, or at least, she didn't make a show of it.

"So," Iz said. "I've noticed a bit of a theme."

"A theme?"

"What, exactly, do you think these two elements make when you put them together?"

"Void… information… void of information? Like… a lack of information? The idea of not knowing something."

"Okay," Iz said. "What's a name for a void that can be filled with information?"

"Like a… like an empty space?"

"An empty space," she repeated flatly.

"Where you write an answer. Or like…" Myra looked at the keyhole. "Or like, this key, right. You're supposed to take one of these and put the bitting in it so it'll go with a certain lock where it lines up with all the pins. But this lock apparently wants a key where that bitting is absent."

"Right," Iz said.

"And there's the weird shit with Carmack's DNA. DNA usually has a lot of information in it, instructions that encode proteins. But according to the police report. Carmack's DNA is missing."

"I'm so lost," Nathan said. "What's the theme? How do you open the door?"

"The theme," Iz said, "is the absence of identifying information. That's what the detector on the inside of the door is looking for. To open the door, you need to do it in a way that avoids supplying any of the information that would normally be associated with that action. Instead of inserting a normal key, you insert a key without any bitting. Well, that's my theory, anyway."

"That's got to be the actual stupidest security idea I've ever heard," Myra said. "You're saying the house only lets you in if you act like you're breaking and entering. Most smart criminals are going to be acting like that!"

"Well—" Iz frowned. "Okay, yeah, that's kind of an odd decision."

"Maybe he th-thinks your average criminal isn't good enough at it. Carmack doesn't have DNA. Most criminals do have DNA—"

"Most people aren't going to leave their DNA on the doorknob anyway," Iz muttered. "Okay, you know what, I'm going to try something. Everyone, back away."

"I'll stay to block the bomb if it goes off," Lukai said.

Iz blinked. "You can… you can do that?"

Lukai shrugged. "Probably."

Iz scratched her head and looked at her key with a look of annoyance. "Okay, I'm still gonna try to get through this door without activating the bomb. Everyone, except Lukai, back away."

Iz put the key blank into the hole and gave it a twist. So far, so good. She put her gloved hand on the knob, then stopped. "Nope. No good. I sense something moving around in the detector. It's going to blow if I open the door… Is it detecting my hand through my glove, somehow?"

"There are a few ways it could be doing that," Lukai said. "Thermal radiation is the most likely, I think. That's becoming common in imperial security in the last few years."

"What, you mean it can detect my prints off my thermal radiation or something?"

"Maybe. If your hypothesis is correct, then I expect the bomb to trigger if there's any signal in the noise."

"C-can we f-find something to put in her gloves that will block the heat?" Shera asked.

"No," Iz said. "There's no need for that. Hold on." She dashed off towards the bike shed at the side of the property. After rummaging around inside, she returned holding a pair of pliers.

"Here we go." She grabbed the knob with the pliers. Grimacing, she turned the pliers slowly, very slowly.

"Do you want me to do it?" Lukai asked.

"No. We're good. I haven't sensed any activation."

She opened the door, and a sound roared.

Iz screamed, teleported away, and finished screaming.

Nothing happened.

Or, at least, the bomb had not gone off, but there was still an excruciating alarm noise. The sound was high-pitched and painful to her ears, overlaid with a slower, steady gong that she could feel reverberating through her chest.

"Oww… oww, god…" Myra clutched her forehead. She felt like a ram was battering against her skull.

Once Iz got herself together and realized what the threat was, she was able to act quickly, setting up a sound barrier to protect their ears. "That was probably the loudest thing to happen in this village all year…" she muttered. She looked nervously towards the neighbors. "Why did the alarm go off without the bomb?"

"Actually…" Myra said. "I don't think you caused the alarm to go off. When I was here before with Shera—many loops ago—we heard this alarm. We couldn't work out what it was, but we could hear it very faintly through the walls." Which are apparently very nearly soundproof.

Myra stomped into the house. She ignored the stupid contraption on the door, the specifics of its thermal signal processing or whatever now far from the front of her mind. She made a beeline for the apparent source of the sound, somewhere upstairs, and it didn't take her long to locate the source: at the far end of the upstairs hallway, where anyone else might have a decorative stand of some sort, there was a massive bell, large enough to fit her head and most of her shoulders, ringing incessantly. There seemed to be something etched on the outside, though while the bell was in motion, Myra had no way to read it. It was a blur.

(That wasn't quite true, there were options as far as sensing went.)

"It's definitely some kind of alarm," she called out as the others arrived behind her.

"Alarm for w-what?"

"I don't know, but whatever it is, he really didn't want to fucking miss it. Sucks for him, I guess." If Myra was being snippy, it was because she was still recovering from the abuse on her eardrums.

"Can you turn it off, so I can inspect it and take this spell down?" Iz said.

"Um…" Myra started.

"What?"

"Look."

The bell did have a switch, a hefty lever in the back, but it was locked into the 'on' position by multiple means: both chained in place with a bike lock, and also literally welded into position in its casing.

"Ookay…" Iz said. "He really, really didn't want to miss this fucking alarm. Hold on—"

She took a minute, but after thinking about it for a while, she made some incantation and the bell stopped.

"Okay," she said. "There was literally no way to turn this off without completely shattering the physical ringer mechanism, so that's what I did."

Myra scratched her head. "Wait—actually—did he miss the alarm? Like—"

"We c-can't deduce anything from the fact that he d-didn't turn it off," Shera said. "Since it wasn't made to be turned off to b-begin with."

"Well, what is so important that he went through so much trouble to make sure he couldn't even turn it off by accident?" Iz asked. "What's the alarm for?"

"Hm…" With the bell now motionless, Myra could finally get a better look at the runes etched into the outside. One thing was for sure—it wasn't a security alarm. The condition for the alarm seemed to have no reference to the physical space they were in. Rather, it was a very advanced bit of runic logokinesis. Most of the runes were using a very formal logical script to describe something that, as best as Myra could tell, had to do with the theories of infinite sets.

"Iz, you should probably be the one to take a look at this."

"Sure." She bent down to the floor to get a better look. "What the…" She spoke softly.

"What?"

"I don't—give me a minute. Look around the rest of the house."

◆

Myra and the others poked around his bedroom. There was nothing much out of place. The bed was unmade, and there were nightclothes on the floor near the dresser. It was hard to draw any hard conclusions, but it was consistent with the idea that he had gotten out of bed, gotten dressed quickly, and left.

The room as a whole was a kind of double-room, half of it being the bedroom, half being an office area that was separated by a half wall. Nathan got there first, and when he did, he whistled. "Hoo boy, you all need to check this out."

The desk was covered in documents—mostly cut-out newspaper articles. It didn't take long to work out the system and purpose. In a nutshell, he was spying on people.

Specifically, he seemed to be spying on four people in particular: the princess Malazhonerra Raine; her father, Humperton Raine; his father, the emperor; and finally, the retired sage, Emmett Massiel.

For the prince, he had a very detailed accounting of his movements, going back about around a year, including an itinerary projected until roughly halfway through the loop, ending with his arrival in Ralkenon. As far as Myra knew, it was entirely correct. For the princess, he had a similar accounting, though the princess's movements were of a more frivolous nature, socializing and touring (nearly all of which was with Violet Penrilla), again going back around a year. The most recent entry was a map around Ralkenon with a particular hiking route highlighted, and the details of a reservation at the Hotel Caldera.

"Who the fuck is this guy?" Myra whispered. "How's he have all this?" There was, unfortunately, no citation or bibliography pointing to his source for the princess's latest whereabouts, though at the very least, the hotel was of course correct, and she had no reason to doubt the hiking route.

For the emperor, there was an article about a public appearance from around three months ago, then nothing after that.

"Okay, Massiel's the odd one out here," Nathan said. "He's not in the imperial family."

"And he hasn't moved around for a long time," Myra said. "Guy retired years ago—and, oh my god." Folded up next to the article on Massiel's retirement, there was a highly detailed, annotated and seemingly-to-scale floor plan of Massiel's manor. It wasn't labelled, but Myra recognized the property anyway, and it would be hard not to, not with the scraggly red lines in the walls that almost certainly symbolized the vine.

What Myra didn't recognize was the border he had drawn in a blue, alternating straight lines and perfect circular arcs, loosely but not quite aligned with the border of Massiel's property (indicated by a green box). It didn't take long to figure out what that was, though. According to one label, the blue border traced out the exact region within exactly 23.28 meters of any point of the house.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Or—as Shera quickly pointed out—the area within 23.28 meters of the red vines. Very likely, it was the region that was in range of the security system (which happened to be just exactly large enough to fit the entire property).

(Did he choose the range so that would work out? Shera was intrigued.)

"There's not necessarily an insidious explanation for this," Nathan said, as he prepared to state a theoretical possibility. "Maybe Carmack helped design the security system in the first place."

But there was one detail that seemed to contradict this mundane explanation. On the bottommost page was the floor plan of the basement, where exactly one object of interest was indicated: a watch, in exactly the place Myra knew it ought to be, indicated by a simplistic, quirky symbol drawn in red. Stylistically, it clashed oddly with the rest of the floor plan, where everything was clearly labelled in precision handwriting.

"This w-watch," Shera said. "Th-there are four of them."

"Huh?"

"L-look." She pulled out some of the articles with photographs. "They always wear it. The princess, the prince, and th-the emperor." It was true. Myra couldn't find a single photo with any of the three not wearing a watch like the one the princess always wore. "And the sage has one in his basement, which is marked here—"

"You think the watch is the common thread here?"

Shera shrugged.

Nathan, meanwhile, was looking through a filing cabinet over in the corner. "He's got a ton more shit here," he said. "Less recent stuff…"

"How long's it go back?"

"Only 3 or 4 years, as best as I can tell."

After looking around a bit more, they started packing up the files to dig through later, then set out for a once-through of the remainder of the house.

◆

Iz had to shoo them away a couple of times, repeatedly saying she needed more time to inspect the bell. The third time, when it seemed she had made her conclusions, and she was sitting sideways against the wall, it was hard to get her to speak at all.

"It's the axioms of the Common Library," she finally said.

"Huh?" That genuinely didn't sound particularly interesting or disquieting. People used the axioms all the time. That was how you got anything done in the Common Library. "What's it mean that they're written on the bell?"

"Forget about the bell! It's the axioms of the Common Library. These should be locked in a vault guarded by a dragon in a cavern a hundred kilometers under Jewel City! Not etched in bronze in some random logician grunt's house! If the Raines knew this was here, they would wipe the fucking city off the map!"

"Ahh… I'm sorry, I don't—are those secret or something? I thought the axioms were, like, on the back page of my Intro to Logokinesis textbook." Myra glanced at the bell again. "Uh, they didn't look anything like that, though."

Iz turned to look at Myra, brushing a hair out of her eye. "Myra, those weren't the axioms. I mean, those were for kids. I mean, they aren't even axioms. Kurtwell Raine proved them from the real axioms and put them out where anyone could use them. Anyone in the imperial boundaries, I mean."

Oh.

Huh.

"You're saying—" Myra looked at the bell again. "Nobody even knows what the real axioms are? The foundations of the Common Library—"

"Of course we don't," Iz said. "This is how he gained control of it. If you knew what axioms he used, you could just go find them in Abstract Space. You'd probably find whatever mad trick he used to lock the thing geographically. You'd probably be able to undo it. Besides that trick itself, the specification of the Common Library axioms just might be the most important secret in Raine's pocket!"

"I actually don't understand," Lukai said, which made Myra genuinely feel a bit better. "Can't anyone just go look at the axioms—the ones everyone knows about, I mean, the foundation that was given to the public—and look at how they're proved? You'd find the real axioms real quick."

Iz shook her head. "Not the way he's set it up. See—okay, you all know about the incompleteness theorems."

Myra nodded her head, but in, like, a noncommittal way that could be interpreted as just natural head oscillation from breathing. Lukai and Shera nodded their heads normally, and Nathan looked blank.

"Okay… Look, let me start like this. Suppose you're building the Common Library. You come up with some axioms that seem like a good foundation. You can build lots of useful abstract objects with them and make lots of good spells. But then you do want to do something meta. You want to add functionality that will let the Common Library manipulate itself. To do that, the axioms need to be able to reason about themselves. Yeah?"

"But that's impossible," Myra half-remembered half-concluded.

"Yes," Iz said. "The axioms would need to demonstrate their own consistency. By the incompleteness theorem, that's impossible. So what do you do? You just staple on another axiom that says the axioms are consistent. So now your axioms are: your original axioms, plus one more axiom that says your original axioms are consistent. Let's say your original set of axioms is Axioms0, and the new set of axioms, with the one extra axiom, are Axioms1. With me so far?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, this is pretty useful. Now you can do a bunch of neat things you couldn't do before with this more powerful axiom set. But you still have a problem, which is that your new axiom set, Axioms1, still isn't powerful enough to reason about itself. It only shows that the original Axioms0 is consistent. But obviously, you can keep going. Write down the axiom that says 'Axioms1 is consistent' and add that one, now you have Axioms2, and so on."

She took a deep breath. "And of course, this is what they did, thousands of years ago, when they first started the Common Library on the Lost Island of Caporna. The monks toiled away, trying to add as many axioms as they could, making a robust foundation for their work. Axioms100, Axioms1000, Axioms100000000. Once they got the process down, it was also a matter of just figuring out how to name a really big number. Axioms999999!, Axioms4↑↑↑↑4. You get the idea."

"But then someone got a bright idea. Why not just add an axiom, 'for every integer n, Axiomsn is consistent'? So they did this, and for some time, they thought they could go no further."

"But why not? Call this new axiom set Axiomsω, after ω, the smallest infinite ordinal number. And then you can keep going! Infinite plus 1. Infinite plus 2. Axiomsω + 1, Axiomsω + 2. Infinite times 2. Axioms2ω. Rather than completing their task, the monks had only moved to a new scale. Instead of large numbers, they needed to name large infinities. Axiomsω2, Axiomsωω, Axiomsℵ1."

"As the Common Library came to be used all around the world, their quest continued, always someone carrying the torch to build a bigger infinity. The Trechoins, the Tribe of Honakondor, then the Lifalians, the first Siren settlers of the Ilmanian… and then finally Kurtwell Raine. He found an infinite number so large, no one else could find it. And instead of showing the world what he'd found, he used his newfound secrecy to steal the whole Library."

She pointed at the bell. "And that number is written on Carmack Sermanol's bell."

"What, it's just—written there? That's what all that logical notation is? A description of a massive infinite number?" Myra had known that Raine had somehow pulled one over the world by taking control of the Library, but she'd never known that a single number could potentially undo him. "Can we… can we find this number in Abstract Space?" Myra asked. "Can we find it, find all the axioms, and figure out just what it is Raine did to them?"

"I could try, but I already know what I'll find," Iz said.

"Why?"

"Look at the conditions for this alarm bell." She pointed to the rim of the bell, where the last command runes were written. "Eight times a second, this bell finds this number in Abstract Space and checks if the Common Library is rooted there. It rings if it's gone."

◆

"… Gone?"

"B-but it's still h-here," Shera said. "I can feel it."

"Well, it moved or something," Iz said. "Obviously, all the parts that we're familiar with are still here."

"So did it move to a larger infinity, or a smaller infinity?" Myra asked. "Or like… are there incomparable infinites?"

"No, there aren't," Iz said. "They're totally ordered. One's always bigger than the other—anyway, I don't know. More relevantly, we should try to figure out why Carmack Sermanol has a bell in his house to detect this state of affairs."

"And why, upon hearing the bell, he ran out of bed, tried to call Emmett Massiel, and then got hit by a crater."

"Yes, well, first things first," she said. "Why did he set up the bell?"

Iz paced down the hall.

"Two possibilities I see," she went on. She held up two fingers. "One. We know Carmack Sermanol was a logician who worked for the late sage with the laser in his skull. It's not unreasonable to think this guy helped out with something related to the Common Library. He built this bell to monitor the stability of the Library's core axiomatic infrastructure. On the morning of November 6, the loop began, and this fucked with the Common Library in such a way that the alarm went off. Worried the Common Library was likely to fail, Carmack ran out to the nearest phone booth to call Emmett Massiel. Massiel didn't answer due to the hole in his head, so Carmack dashed off to find the princess."

"That sounds… eh…" Myra waffled. "I mean, it kinda makes sense… but… it doesn't all add up?"

"You see it, too," Iz continued. "Why all the subterfuge? This thing—" She jerked her thumb at the bell. "—isn't officially sanctioned by any means. If it was just some useful safeguard, they'd keep it locked up in a government building somewhere. Not to mention, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Carmack Sermanol wasn't supposed to be collecting intel on what hotel room the princess was staying in."

"So why'd he build it?" Myra asked.

"Possibility Two," Iz said. "I think he knew exactly what he was detecting," Iz said. "He was waiting for the time loop to start."

"You're saying the time loop caused the Common Library to move without anybody noticing?"

"It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable. We already know that the Common Library disappears at the minus-thirty-minutes mark, and you already said why you think that's tied to the time loop. So yeah, I think it's reasonable that it moves when the time loop starts, for whatever reason. And of course, nobody would notice because they don't know where the foundation is in the first place. I mean, our assassin here did notice, but you know what I mean. The real question is what exactly he knows about this whole thing."

"…"

"What?"

"What do you mean, assassin?"

"Oh," Iz said. "I mean, yeah. He's the Blank Cloak."

She looked around for confirmation that everybody had been thinking the same thing, which was basically not true. She looked at Lukai for a long time, who seemed not to notice.

Shera made a very light 'oh!' sound.

"What, are you not convinced? Did you not think of it already?"

"I mean, I see where you're coming from," Myra said. "All that spy shit in the bedroom. And I mean—" Wait.

Oh waitttt.

"You're not saying that just because the front door operates on some novel blankness element? That's the theme you were getting at? Blankness?"

Iz only tilted her head.

"I mean, that's not proof of anything. Blank Cloaks is just a name."

"Myra, what did you say he specialized in, again?"

"He specialized in… difficult infiltrations in international black ops." No, not difficult. "'Impossible' infiltrations."

"Impossible," Iz repeated. "And international."

"Yeah."

"He specializes in breaking and entering." She ticked the points off her fingers. "He's a logician, specializing in the study of truth and falsehood, of possibility and impossibility. His house is built to blow, his walls are soundproof, and he's collected intel on every major figure in the empire. His door operates on the concept of, yes, blankness. He's a family friend of the Feraras. He has magical body modifications nobody's ever heard of that would be remarkably useful for any criminal who wants to go undetected. And he—" She jammed one last finger towards Lukai. "—has been acting weird ever since he saw that damn file."

"What?" Lukai asked.

She pulled it out of her bag and flipped it open to the reconstructed sketch of Carmack's face. "This," she said. She stuffed the page practically in his face. "You've been weird ever since you saw this. You recognize him, don't you?"

"I—no."

"Don't play games with me," she snapped.

"Iz—" Myra started.

"This guy, he's the mysterious visitor, isn't he?"

"What mysterious visitor?"

"He burned your village down!"

"I don't know what you're talking about. What village?"

"Oh my god." She threw up her arms and spun around.

"H-hey! Y-you don't have to be like that!" Shera chastised her indignantly. She had walked over to Lukai, holding out a hand against his shoulder. "Lukai, it's okay, just take your time and remember, like before—"

"No!" Iz spun back around. "I gave him the whole train ride up here to come to terms with it."

Nathan tried to intervene, too, stepping towards the center of the group. "Come on, just have a bit of sympathy, here—"

"How long is this going to go on? All month? I don't want him sabotaging Myra because he's so committed to this ridiculous mind game he's playing on himself that he doesn't say anything before the end of the fucking loop! So yeah, we're getting this out now—"

There was a crash, and bits of splinters and sawdust were in the air. Shera had taken a step back in shock. Lukai's prosthetic fist has smashed against the panelled wooden wall. His face was beet red, and he was starting to shake. He looked like a lot he had back in Unkmire, every time he was ready to jump off into the darkness.

"Lukai—" Shera said. "Breathe—"

"It doesn't matter," he said through his ragged breath. "It doesn't matter, does it? He's dead. Gone and buried. He's dead every loop before you wake up. It doesn't matter if he has the same hairline, the same folds under his eyes that I have nightmares about, does it? He's dead, and he'll always be dead, he'll never answer for what he did. IF all that's true, why wouldn't I just forget it? What good's that do for us now?"

He slammed the wall again, though he didn't break anything this time.

"Lukai—"

"Sorry." He stood up straight. "I kinda zoned out for a second. What were we talking about?"

◆

Though Lukai had retreated, he had all but confirmed Iz's assertions first, and at this point, she seemed content to let it lie. Nonetheless, if Myra had thought the ride up to Ealichburgh was awkward, she was hardly prepared for the ride back. Shera trying to pick back up the conversation on architecture that they'd had on the way there, Lukai explaining things like a textbook. Iz just automatically sitting a couple of seats away.

Towards the end of the ride, just a few stops from Ralkenon, Myra went to get something to drink and ended up running into her there, a coincidence of timing in perfect mathematical precision.

"He made a deal, and part of that was that we'd help him figure out who ruined his life," Iz said. "We figured it out. He can hardly complain."

"He's not complaining," Myra said. "It's—it's more complicated than that."

"He's wrong that it doesn't matter," she insisted. "If the assassin is connected to the time loop, his village could be connected to the time loop."

"I agree with you, but we still need to treat the subject with care."

"No, what we need is information."

"Look—" she started, but she didn't know what to say. They sat back down, Myra subtly forcing Iz back with the rest of the group. Now it was too difficult to continue the conversation. She took a deep breath like she was preparing to say something anyway.

"Th-thanks everyone for—coming out here and helping with the investigation," she said.

"The train's been stopped for too long," Lukai said.

"What?" Myra mentally shifted several tracks over. "What?"

"We've been at this station for a while," he said.

"Does this train always get delayed?" Nathan asked Myra.

"I haven't memorized the schedule of every train in the empire!"

"I don't like this," Lukai said, tapping his fingers on the table. "We should—"

A high-pitched chime rang throughout the train car, and a voice came through the speakers. "Passengers, this is your conductor speaking. I apologize for the delay. We have been ordered to halt for the time being. I expect we will be on our way shortly. In compensation, we would like to offer all passengers a complimentary beverage which may be claimed in any dining car. Thank you."

"I'm not liking this either," Iz said. "I think we should get off. They might be searching the train—"

"If they stopped the train just to find us, they'd have found us already." Nonetheless, she was eyeing the door at the end of the car.

"I don't know—"

Every single one of them jolted as a screeching roar as a metallic beast of a machine screamed past at 400 kilometers per hour out the right side window, a monstrous, dark blur. Iz screamed, Shera gasped with her hands to her mouth, and Nathan spilled his coffee all over Myra. In less than a second, the passing train was gone, unheard, not even a faint rattle in the distance.

"What was that?!" Iz cried. Her face was white, and she was already standing back up.

"That was a military train," Lukai said, quickly but still calmer than anybody else. "Of the empire."

The chime heralding an announcement from the conductor rang once again through the car. "Passengers, we appreciate your patience. It does seem that we were waiting for that freight train to pass us by. I expect we will be cleared to proceed momentarily. Again, your complimentary beverages may be claimed in any dining car. Thank you."

Then there was quiet.

"So… are we good?" Myra asked.

True to the conductor's word, the train suddenly began moving. Iz, who was still halfway between sitting and standing, slowly sat down.

"Why was a military train heading north?" Iz asked. "That's not normal."

"That… might happen every loop?" Myra said. "I mean, I wouldn't know."

"I still don't like it," Lukai said. "This kind of thing doesn't happen in normal operation. There's an emergency to the north. How far until Ralkenon?"

"Two stops."

On the next stop, two old men in suits got on together. They were talking in hushed tones and seemed agitated. They looked grumpy when Iz tried to talk to them.

(Old businessmen can be cranky all the time. Why is this so unnerving?)

As they approached the next stop, there was a yelp from a distant car. No one wanted to sit around, so they went to investigate. A small party of young people was making a ruckus. The conductor was escorting them off. He shooed Myra's group away.

"Don't pay attention to any rumors," he told them.

"What?"

"If anything happened, it'll be in the news."

"What's that mean?!"

The next stop was Ralkenon.

The platform was lively—people were buzzing. What were they buzzing about? No, it was evening. Of course, people were buzzing.

There were fireworks coming from campus.

"That never happens. There shouldn't be fireworks."

"No respect," a woman snarled. Elderly, in a business suit.

"No respect for what?"

"Damn kids think they're funny. No idea what they owe him."

"Owe who?"

"Who? Did you not see the bulletin?"

"We just got off the train—"

"I'm talking about the emperor. Go see the bulletin, kids." She started to walk off. "He's dead."

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