At the top of the stairs, Mirremay paused, looked over her shoulder, and Sentalen handed up an old‑fashioned iron key. Rathe shook his head. Whoever had broken into the playwright’s room had broken the locks already–kicked it in, he guessed, from the way the frame had splintered. Mirremay worked the lock, her shoulders bunching with the effort, and the door fell open under her touch. It had been the lock itself that had been holding it, and only barely, the iron striker wedged awkwardly back into place. Mirremay caught the door as it swung on twisted hinges, then stepped back to let Rathe join her on the landing.

The runner’s description hadn’t done it justice. Aconin’s single well‑lit room had been a pleasant enough place, but it would take days of effort just to make it habitable again. Clothes lay strewn across the floor, linings ripped out muddy, sleeves torn away, the press itself kicked in, so that the painted panel hung in splinters, and there were footprints visible on some of the better fabrics, as though whoever had done this had deliberately wiped his boots on the best the playwright owned. Both windows had been broken, the glass punched out into the street below, and the mirror–a large one, in an expensive frame–had been smashed against the bedpost, so that the torn bedclothes were strewn with broken glass. Paint pots and perfume bottles, a good dozen of them, had been emptied onto the bed as well, the containers trampled into the floorboards, and the room smelled of musk and sweetgrass. A larger paint pot, or maybe an inkwell, had been thrown to smash against the far wall, leaving a fan of black across the whitewash. One chair had been overturned and broken; the other stood forlorn beside the table, where a spray of flowers stood in an untouched vase, wilting a little, as though the destruction had shocked them. Beyond the table, the door of the stove lay open, a drift of half‑burned paper scattered across the hearth, and Rathe crossed to that, knelt to examine what was left of the writing. Some of it looked familiar, scenes from the Alphabet, and he glanced over his shoulder, to see Aconin framed in the doorway.

“Was it like this when you found it, or did you pull it out?”

“I pulled it out,” Aconin said. Beneath the remnants of his paint, he looked very pale. “They’d overfilled it, the damper shut down, so it was just smoldering.”

“Lucky,” Mirremay murmured. She had come a little farther into the room, careful not to step on spilled paint or torn clothing, stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the damage with a disapproving air. She wore her skirts short, well above her ankle, and her stockings were expensively clocked.

Rathe nodded, turning the papers over. Aconin used the crabbed university script, all abbreviations, harder to follow even than Mirremay’s scrawl, but from the crossed‑out lines and words, and the notes scribbled in the margins, these had to be rough drafts of Aconin’s work. “This was personal,” he said, and set the papers carefully back where he’d found them.

“I’d’ve said business,” Mirremay said.

Rathe glanced at her as he pushed himself to his feet, brushing the ash off his fingers, and the head point met the look guilelessly. “Burning these papers, Aconin’s work, surely that’s a personal thing.”

“I told you,” Aconin said wearily. “None of my enemies would do something like this.”

“I thought better of your enemies,” Rathe said, and to his surprise, Aconin managed a short laugh.

“So did I.”

Rathe took a deep breath, willing himself to remember that this was a point, that he had a job to do no matter how he felt about Aconin. “Aconin. Less than a week ago, someone took a shot at you– did you think Philip wouldn’t tell me, when he was there? And now this. Who have you offended this time?”

“I wish I knew.” Aconin spread his painted hands, a gesture that should have dripped sincerity. “As far as I know, this was theft, at least an attempt at it. I won’t know that until you let me see what’s missing.”

“Not that much,” Mirremay said. She reached out with one pointed shoe, lifted the torn collar of a lavender coat. An enameled medallion tumbled free, not expensive, but certainly salable; she kicked the coat a little harder, exposing a scattering of gilt embroidery at the skirt. “Now, I grant you, that wasn’t worth much, and it might have taken too much time to cut that gold thread free, but those buttons would fetch a few demmings, and that’s just one stroke of the knife. And there’s not a thief in this city who’d smash a pretty clock like that one, not with the fences paying two or three pillars for a piece like that.”

She nodded to her right, where the attacker–Rathe was more than ever inclined to agree that this was no thief–had swept a single shelf clear of all its ornaments. Dishes lay broken beneath it, spoons and a dinner knife scattered, but someone had taken the time to stamp on the carriage‑clock that had stood with them. Its case lay broken, the mechanism crushed, and in spite of himself, Rathe winced at the sight.

“Damn it, Aconin, this is personal. Whoever did this, whoever had it done, that’s someone who wants you harmed, or worse.”

“I can’t think who,” Aconin said flatly. He had moved into the room, was staring now at the untouched vase of flowers, and out of the corner of his eye, Rathe saw Mirremay nod thoughtfully.

“Or it’s a warning, maybe. There’s the altar, too.”

Rathe turned to look where she’d pointed. Aconin had kept his altar in a scholar’s cabinet, with a double‑doored shrine at the top and a drawer for supplies above a set of shelves. Books had been emptied from the shelves, leaves torn out and crumpled; one lay forlorn, facedown, the binding snapped and scarred as though someone had stamped on it. The drawer had been pulled out and tossed aside, its contents scattered, and each of the little figures had been roughly beheaded. The candle that served as Hearth had been cut into two pieces–one more bit of proof, Rathe thought, if we’d needed it, that this wasn’t an ordinary thieving–and the incense burner had been flattened. Cheap metal, Rathe thought, irrelevantly, not like the clock, and stepped closer to examine the shrine itself. There was no sign of blood, on the altar or on the floor around it, and he looked back at Mirremay.

“I think we should have a necromancer in, just in case.” The surest way to curse a person was to kill something in their household space or, worse still, on the altar itself, and at this level of destruction, he wanted to be sure that more ethereal means weren’t being employed against the playwright.

“Oh, for Sofia’s sake,” Aconin said. He pulled a flower from the vase, tossed it accurately through the broken window. “To what end?”

Mirremay nodded as though the playwright hadn’t spoken. “Sentalen. Send a runner to the university.”

“There’s no blood,” Aconin said. “Nothing’s been killed.”

“You’re very sure of that,” Rathe said.

Aconin paused, another flower dangling broken‑stemmed between his fingers. It was out of season, Rathe saw, forced to bloom in some expensive glasshouse: the posy was no ordinary gift, and he wondered briefly if that was why it had been spared.

“There’s no blood,” Aconin said again, and dropped this flower after the other.

“Dead doesn’t need blood,” Mirremay said.

“Chief Point–” Aconin began, and the woman shook her head.

“Whatever troubles you’ve brought on yourself, Aconin, I’m not having this loose in my district. Send for a necromancer, Sentalen.”

“Ask for Istre b’Estorr,” Rathe interjected, and looked at Mirremay. “He’s one of the best.”

“Which we want,” Mirremay agreed, and nodded to the pointsman still hovering in the doorway. He backed away, and Rathe looked down at the broken figures that had stood on Aconin’s altar. One had been hooded Sofia, no surprise there, and another the Starsmith, but the other two were less obvious, the Winter‑Son, god of wine, ecstasy, and suffering, and Jaan, the northern god of doorways and borders. Not that odd a choice, when you consider he comes from Esling, but still. He frowned then, a memory teasing him. Something Eslingen had said, some story about his days with Coindarel–about partisan raids along the borders, breaking into the leaders’ houses to smash the altars. It had meant something very specific, a deliberate message, but he couldn’t remember what. He shook his head then, seeing Aconin drop a third flower, and then a fourth, through the broken glass. He would ask Eslingen, of course, but he doubted it meant anything. It wasn’t likely that Astreianter bravos would know a Leaguer code.