“Paladin GioAvanti,” Cragin said, making no attempt to conceal his distaste. “I hope your appearance here means that my complaints about the conditions in this place have been heard.”

“I’m afraid not, Royle,” she said. “Besides, you know Paladins aren’t in charge of the jails.”

“That’s because they don’t want to be,” Cragin said. “The Paladins have the authority to be active in any area of The Republic in which they take an interest. Should they truly desire to fix our prison system, they could. They just feel more comfortable overlooking the tremendous inequities and dehumanization that occur regularly in prisons, so they pretend they have no oversight. Convenient for you, isn’t it?”

Heather sighed, hoping Cragin noticed. Setting him off on a political diatribe was about as difficult as rolling a ball down a hill. You just had to let it go.

“Well, Royle, if you’d like me to I could make some sort of promise to look into your complaints when I leave, but we both know I’d only be saying that to shut you up, so why should I bother?”

“Then we have nothing to talk about. Guards!” Cragin yelled. The door behind him, though, remained stubbornly closed.

In other circumstances Heather might have attempted charm, if only to annoy her opponent, but she knew it would have no effect on Cragin. His loathing for her was too deep for him to even notice.

“It’s my interview, Royle,” she said. “I’ll decide when it’s over.”

“Fine. I can sit here silently for as long as you please.”

“You’d actually shut up? What a novel phenomenon that would be.”

Cragin, true to his word, did not respond.

“How much longer do you have in here, Royle?”

Silence.

“Okay, that was rhetorical. Two years, four months. Now, here’s another thing I’m not going to do. I’m not going to dangle the possibility of getting your sentence reduced. Frankly, I don’t know that I could do it if I wanted to, and I certainly don’t want to. If it were up to me, you’d have a decade, maybe two, to go. But as it stands, you have two years, four months.”

Cragin did nothing to acknowledge her summary.

“You’ll still have a lot of living left when you get out. You won’t even be fifty. That gives you plenty of time to put your syndicate back together, do some more damage in The Republic. Sure, you’ll be under surveillance the minute you get out, but you know how to deal with that, right? I don’t think it’ll slow you down too much.”

As Heather well knew, it was impossible for Cragin to remain silent for any length of time. “You’ve got me all wrong, Paladin GioAvanti,” he said, using the country-boy tones that had almost swayed the jury to acquittal. “I’m a changed man. Prison’s reformed me. I’m on the straight and narrow from now on.”

“Then it seems our rehabilitation system is working fine. I’ll tell the proper authorities to disregard your complaints.”

Cragin glared.

“Anyway, Royle, you should be a little nicer to me, because I’m here to help you. I’m here to give you a warning.”

Cragin had decided to give silence another try.

“You’re not going to have anything when you get out. Your network, your people, your operatives, they’re not going to be there for you.”

Cragin shrugged. “It’s a big Republic, Heather.” He’d remembered how much it annoyed her when he’d called her that once, and he did it whenever he could. “There’s a lot of people.”

“But from the minute you get out, you’re going to be second best. Or worse. Why would people deal with you when there’s a better organized, better funded man with a more effective organization already in place? You’ll be finished before you get started.”

“You think I can’t handle competition?”

Heather surprised herself by taking the question seriously. “I don’t know, Royle. Maybe you can. But it’ll take time. You’ll have to wage a war between insurgent groups before you get to your real targets. Who knows how long that will take? Who knows how much older you’ll get, fighting just to get back into power? You have time, Royle, but I don’t know if you have that much time. Your competition’s going to be pretty stiff and, with the surveillance, you’ll be fighting with one hand tied behind your back.”

“Mmmm hmmm. And who is this competition I’m supposed to be worried about?”

“Henrik Morten. I’m sure you know who he is.”

“Never heard of him.”

Heather faltered briefly, and immediately hoped Cragin didn’t see it. Her instincts had told her this was absolutely the right thing to do, that Cragin would know something. When he was out, Cragin had been perhaps the best-connected radical in The Republic, his fingers somehow monitoring a thousand heartbeats at once. If there was anyone gaining influence, whether they were a potential ally or potential enemy, Cragin knew about them. If he didn’t know Morten, that meant the diplomat was really a little fish trying to stretch out a little. It meant Morten hadn’t made as much of a name for himself as she and Jonah had guessed.

But then why did someone entrust Morten with an assignment like doing away with Victor? He couldn’t just be a no one. She decided to press forward.

“Oh, okay, you’ve never heard of him. And you’ve probably never heard of the Kittery Renaissance.”

“Them, I know.”

“Impressive group, aren’t they?”

Cragin shrugged.

“I don’t know how much news gets in here, but about a year ago they poisoned the entire staff of a representative from Clan Jade Falcon that was in town. Didn’t kill any of them, just made them all stay very close to their bathrooms for a couple of days. They were just showing off, telling us what they could do if they wanted to. I don’t know if even you could have pulled off something like that in your prime.”

“I heard about that one. And yes, I could.”

“Well, it looks like Henrik Morten might have a connection to these folks. That could make an interesting allegiance, I’d think—only you wouldn’t know, since you’ve never heard of Morten.”

No response.

“All right. If you don’t know him, you don’t know him. I’m sure you’ll find out about him in two years.” She stood up.

“Won’t you have caught him by then?” Cragin said in mocking tones. “Isn’t that one of your actual responsibilities?”

“Yeah,” Heather said casually. “Maybe I’ll have him by then. But maybe I won’t. Might be fun to see the two of you duke it out for a while—if I’m lucky, you could get each other out of the way for me. Anyway, see you around.” She walked toward the door.

Cragin waited until her hand was on the doorknob. “I know what you’re doing,” he said.

She turned and arched an eyebrow. “Really?”

“You’re fishing. You want this Morten guy out of the way, and you’re hoping to get me mad enough that I’ll help you out.”

Heather rolled her eyes. “Of course! I’m not trying to be subtle here, Royle. I want him out of the way, and I want you to give me the info that’ll help. I know you’re not going to do anything to help me, but I figured you were still smart enough to help yourself.” She stayed by the door, but didn’t move. She knew what was coming.

“Kittery Renaissance, huh?” Cragin finally said.

“That’s right.”

“This is the guy from Mallory’s World.”

Heather took a step back toward her chair. “That’s the one.”

Cragin’s face twisted into a snarl then puckered, like he had bitten on a pickle while drinking unsweetened lemonade. Heather watched his fingers flex involuntarily, and knew he was imagining how they would feel around her neck. She stood firm and expressionless.

“I’ve heard of the guy,” he finally said.