I quickly and noiselessly retraced my steps to where Thursday5 was waiting for me, and within a few minutes we had returned to the Piano Squad’s headquarters.

As we reentered, the squad room was in chaos. Warning lights were flashing, klaxons were going off, and the control console was a mass of flickering indicator lights. I was relieved to see-if such a word could be used in such uproar-that Roger and Charles had both returned and were trying to bring some sort of semblance of order back to the piano-distribution network.

“I need the Thürmer back from Agnes Grey!” yelled Roger. “And I’ll swap it for a nonworking Streicher-”

“What the hell’s going on, Thursday?”

It was Commander Bradshaw, and he didn’t look very happy.

“I don’t know. When I left everything was fine.”

“You left?” he echoed incredulously. “You left the piano room unattended?”

“I left-”

But I stopped myself. I was responsible for any cadet’s actions or inactions, irrespective of what they were and where they happened. I’d made a mistake. I should have called Bradshaw to cover for me or to get someone to go into Mirrors.

I took a deep breath. “No excuses, sir-I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” repeated Bradshaw, “That’s it? You’re sorry? I’ve got a dead Holmes on my hands, one of the Outland’s most favorite series is about to unravel, and I really don’t need one of your idiot cadets suddenly thinking that she’s god of all the pianos.”

“What did she do?”

“If you’d been supervising properly, you’d know!”

“Okay, okay,” I retorted, seriously beginning to get pissed off, “this one’s down to me, and I’ll face the music, but I’d like to know what she’s done before I wipe the smirk off her face for good.”

“She decided,” he said slowly and with great restraint, “to do her own thing with piano supply in your absence. Every single piano reference has been deleted from Melville, Scott and Defoe.”

“What?” I said, looking around the room and finally catching sight of Thursday1-4 on the other side of the room, where she was standing arms folded and apparently without a care in the world.

“As I said. And we don’t have the time or the pianos to replace them. But that’s not the worst bit.”

“It gets worse?”

“Certainly. For some reason known only to herself, she dropped an upright Broadwood straight into Miss Bates’s drawing room inside Austen’s Emma.”

“Have they noticed?”

“Pianos aren’t generally the sort of thing one can miss. As soon as it arrived, speculation began on where it might have come from. Miss Bates agrees with Mrs. Cole that it’s from Colonel Campbell, but Emma thinks it’s from Mrs. Dixon. Mrs. Weston is more inclined to think it was from Mr. Knightley, but Mr. Knightley believes it’s from Frank Churchill. Quite a mess, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Can we get it out?”

“It’s embedded itself now. I’m going to get Churchill to take the rap, and it shouldn’t inflict too much damage. But this is down to you, Thursday, and I’ve got no choice but to suspend you from Jurisfiction duties pending a disciplinary inquiry.”

“Let’s keep a sense of perspective on this, Bradshaw. I know I’m responsible, but it’s not my fault-besides, you told me to do this, and I said I couldn’t.”

“It’s my fault, is it?”

“Partly.”

“Humph,” replied Bradshaw, bristling his mustache in anger. “I’ll take it under advisement-but you’re still suspended.”

I jerked a thumb in the direction of Thursday1-4. “What about her?”

“She’s your cadet, Thursday. you deal with it.”

He took a deep breath, shook his head, softened for a moment to tell me to look after myself and departed. I told Thursday5 to meet me up at the CofG and beckoned Thursday1-4 into the corridor.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Oh, c’mon,” she said, “don’t be such a hard-ass. There’s no seriously lasting damage. So I dropped a piano into Emma-it’s not like it landed on anyone.”

I stared at her for a moment. Even allowing for Thursday1-4’s supreme arrogance, it still didn’t make any sense.

“You’re not stupid. You knew it would get you fired once and for all, so why do it?”

She stared at me with a look of cold hatred. “You were going to fire me anyway. There wasn’t a ghost’s chance I’d have made it.”

“The chance was slim,” I admitted, “but it was there.”

“I don’t agree. You hate me. Always have. From the moment I was first published. We could have been friends, but you never even visited. Not once in four entire books. Not a postcard, a footnote, nothing. I’m closer to you than family, Thursday, and you treated me like crap.”

And then I understood.

“You put the piano into Emma to stitch me up, didn’t you?”

“After what you’ve done to me, you deserve far worse. You had it in for me the moment I arrived at Jurisfiction. You all did.”

I shook my head sadly. She was consumed by hate. But instead of trying to deal with it, she just projected it onto everyone around her. I sighed.

“You did this for revenge over some perceived slight?”

“That wasn’t revenge,” said Thursday1-4 in a quiet voice. “You’ll know revenge when you see it.”

“Give me your badge.”

She dug it from her pocket and then tossed it onto the floor rather than hand it over.

“I quit,” she spat. “I wouldn’t join Jurisfiction now if you begged me.”

It was all I could do not to laugh at her preposterous line of reasoning. She couldn’t help herself. She was written this way.

“Go on,” I said in an even tone, “go home.”

She seemed surprised that I was no longer angry.

“Aren’t you going to yell at me or hit me or try to kill me or something? Face it: This isn’t much of a resolution.”

“It’s all you’re going to get. You really don’t understand me at all, do you?”

She glared at me for a moment, then bookjumped out.

I stood in the corridor for a few minutes, wondering if there was anything else I might have done. Aside from not trusting her an inch, not really. I shrugged, tried and failed to get TransGenre Taxis to even answer the footnoterphone and then, checking the time so I wouldn’t be late for the policy-directive meeting, made my way slowly toward the elevators.

I didn’t go straight to either Jurisfiction or the Council of Genres but instead went for a quiet walk in Wainwright’s Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells. I often go there when in a thoughtful or pensive mood, and although the line drawings that I climbed were not as beautiful nor as colorful as the real thing, they were peaceful and friendly, imbued as they were with a love of the fells that is seldom equaled or surpassed. I sat on the warm sketched grass atop Haystacks, threw a pebble into the tarn and watched the drawn ripples radiate outward. I returned much refreshed an hour later.

I found Thursday5 still waiting for me in the seating area near the picture window with the view of the other towers. She stood up when I approached.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why?” I responded. “It wasn’t your fault.”