I fidgeted with the robot in my hands as I stared at Ockham’s feet. “Nepos Martin is as fastidious about Latin as you are about Spanish,” I began, “and … I do have some functional knowledge of poly-Hive criminal law.”
Ockham gave a snort that verged on laughter. “True enough. And will you have Mycroft working on my case? An unreasonable investigator for an unreasonable crime.”
The Mason smiled, “I’d be eager to have Mycroft, if you’re comfortable with it.”
“If I trust a person with my dirty underwear, I’ll trust them with my irritating interruption.”
Martin blinked. “You commission Mycroft Canner to do your laundry?”
Ockham paused a moment, weighing, I think, whether this Mason would be easier or harder to get rid of if he told the truth. (Or rather what he believed.) “Mycroft is my sibling Thisbe’s lover. They manufacture odd jobs as excuses.” He nodded at the robot in my hands.
I feigned appropriate embarrassment.
Martin’s lenses flickered with fresh files. “Thisbe Saneer?”
Ockham nodded. “I know there are many ways it could be unhealthy, but I watch the psych profiles of my bash’ as strictly as any other aspect of security. A Servicer has nothing to gain by exploitation, unlike most people one of us could date.”
“Very true,” Martin acknowledged. “Mycroft is most trustworthy, and dangerous to no one. I’m glad they’ve found another bash’ that sees that.”
Ockham cocked an eyebrow. “Now you’ve got me imagining Mycroft wolfing down leftovers in the Guildbreaker kitchen.”
“There is not no truth in such speculation,” Martin answered, with that awkward precision which infects his speech sometimes, and makes more sense when you remember he’s thinking in Latin.
The two men looked me over now, and the surreality of it swept over me like headache, the wrong sides of the Earth together, as in some dream when a long-dead friend and some recent celebrity stand impossibly side by side. But this was no dream. “If I may add something, Members?” I waited for approving nods. “I think it would help, Nepos Martin, if you told Member Ockham that your team isn’t Masonic, it’s—I mean, when you do this work it’s for Romanova directly, yes? It wasn’t the Emperor who sent you.”
“Correct,” Martin confirmed. “In fact, I believe Caesar is not aware of this particular errand. I’m here as a personal favor for President Ganymede.”
Ockham’s face brightened instantly. “The President sent you?”
“Yes and no,” ever-honest Martin answered. “Your President is not aware that I’m doing this particular favor at this particular time, but they know me very well, and they’ve used me often in cases like this. My team and I are not police detectives. Romanova sends us when polylegal tangles require an investigation but the place is sensitive, high-level, a Senator’s personal bash’house or the Sensayers’ Conclave, situations where all seven Hives need to be satisfied but the affected Hives’ privacy must remain inviolate, or the investigation itself might cause more harm than the original problem. We solve things while leaving as many feathers unruffled as we can. When your name came up in the Black Sakura tracker log, Commissioner General Papadelias had the warrant sent to me immediately, to make sure your doorbell wasn’t rung by someone your President trusts less.”
As the Mason finished it was my face, not his, that Ockham studied, and I nodded eager confirmation. Ockham’s curious expression made me bold. “If … if a little of my own opinion wouldn’t be unwelcome?” I waited for him to nod permission. “Now that the hand of law is moving, Member Ockham, I think you’re not going to get a gentler touch than Nepos Martin’s. I’ve seen their work before; they really do focus on delicate situations like this, turning only the stones that must be turned. You’re seeing it already: they have a warrant, they don’t have to be this accommodating. You can trust Martin. They’re a good person, genuinely good. If you can trust anyone Romanova might ever send, you can trust them. May I show them the paper?”
Ockham paused, and we all heard the scraaaa-thump of failed bed-moving upstairs. “Fine. Through there.” He gestured to a side door. “And I do appreciate your courtesy, Mason. But I’ll feel better when I’ve spoken with my President myself.”
I led the way from the Mukta hall to a warmer room with practical chairs, neglected dishes, and an unfinished game of mahjong. As we left the front rooms’ No-Doodling Zone, spirals and zigzags like those on Ockham’s clothes flowed over the cushions, the wooden chair backs, even up one wall, like lichen starting to convert a bare island to soil. I think Martin did notice napping Eureka Weeksbooth, visible only as feet protruding from disordered cushions in the corner, but he made no comment, and moved only in Ockham’s wake. “Your bash’ has nine members, yes?” he asked. “Yourself, your spouse Lesley, Thisbe Saneer, Cato and Eureka Weeksbooth, Sidney Koons, Kat and Robin Typer, and Ojiro Sniper.”
“Nine-and-a-half counting Mycroft.”
Martin smiled. “Any other frequent guests?”
“Our regular guards and maintenance people, plus Kat or Robin bring a revolving array of dates home, Thisbe sometimes too. I’ll send you a list of recents.”
We reached the fatal spot. “Here it is, Nepos. Untouched, just as ordered.” I showed Martin the trash bin beneath a corner cabinet, where the paper marked with kanji protruded like a flag between an ancient manikin hand and most of a plastic horse.
Martin moved carefully around the bin to let his tracker image every angle, then pulled out a pocket scanner to search for fingerprints and DNA. “Is this a household trash bin?”
“The trash mine delivery bin,” Ockham answered. “There’s ten million tons of dump under the city. Aluminum and plastics mostly, nothing older than turn of the millennium. A lot was hollowed out to make space for the computers, but the city’s still mining the rest, and every bash’house has a right to rent a bot to look for particular types of items if we want. Thisbe has a thing for ancient toys.”
Martin leaned close. “It’s certainly the right kind of paper.”
Ockham glared at the crumpled sheet as if it were a spider he would squish if not for poison. “Do they really write their articles in pen on real paper? That must take forever.”
“Actually, Members,” I ventured, “as I understand, they just do it for the notes for the most important article each week.” It felt warm, being among men who knew me well enough that I could safely share my newspaper geekery.
“What for?”
“It’s Black Sakura’s titular tradition,” I answered. “The folklore is that the sakura cherry tree blooms pink because its roots drink the blood of the dead, so the premise is that a dedicated reporter is so steeped in ink their veins would stain the blossoms black.”
Ockham gave an approving nod.
Martin did not, and I caught his eyes straying from the alien characters on the envelope to me. Martin does not acknowledge Machiavelli. When a wrong action will yield a good result, even so small a wrong as breaking the taboo on translating another Hive’s language, he halts like a parent unwilling to admit to a child that its favorite toy is lost. It is not that he fears dirtying his hands, nor even that the wrong itself deters him. Rather, I think he hates admitting that this world contains such shades of gray.
Ockham doesn’t mind gray. “Earn your supper, Mycroft. What’s it say?”
Reconciled to the practicality, Martin scanned the paper’s internal contents and brought the Japanese before my eyes. “Don’t translate everything, just enough to verify that it is a Seven-Ten list.” He hesitated. “And tell me the last three names. The motive may lie in them.”