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“I’ll figure it out,” she said with a sigh. Harmony’s Bands… she hoped Wayne hadn’t stolen something truly valuable.

“I’ll leave that to you then.” Reddi rapped the folder with his knuckles. “The governor has been breathing down my neck asking for evidence the Outer Cities were siphoning off weapons, and you provided it. Thank you, Marasi. Really.”

“I hope to deliver even more, sir,” she said. “I have a notebook from their leader, and it has some interesting shipping manifest information.” She pulled the book out, then held it open to show him. “We’ll want to make copies, get it through research and code cracking in case I’ve missed something, but I’ve already read some curious things.”

She tapped a list near the front. “This,” she said, “is a series of tests the Cycle was overseeing to determine what can be shipped into Elendel without being stopped by customs or raising red flags with inspection agents.”

“Wait,” Reddi said. “IntoElendel?”

“Exactly,” Marasi said.

“It’s not illegal to ship things into Elendel,” he said. “This group was breaking the law by smuggling thingsout.”

“Which is why this is so intriguing,” she said. “The shipping list is all very mundane, too. Foodstuffs, lumber… but they’ve noted which ones were inspected, which package sizes were suspicious, all of that.”

“I find this… vaguely unnerving,” he said. “I don’t have any idea what it means, and that’s even worse.”

“I’m going to dig into it,” Marasi promised. “For now, I’ll get some of these other pages copied by the scribes. They’ll give you hard evidence that the explosives and weapons we found today were going to be smuggled to Bilming. That shipmentwasleaving the city, as have many others.” She hesitated. “I’ve had an idea.”

“Go on…”

“I’ll need authorization to work outside the city for a while… and if possible, we need to keep this news from the press for a few days. That means quieting the other constables. I know it will be hard, but it will help me chase down the people these men were going to supply.”

“What are you planning?”

“According to this book, someone in Bilming is expecting a shipment soon. Weapons, explosives, and… food.”

“That matches what we found in the cavern,” Reddi said, looking at the initial reports. “Lots of food.”

That was curious. Why would they be smuggling dried foods to the Outer Cities? Were these soldier or sailor rations?

“Regardless,” Marasi said, “the Set tends to run silent in times like this. I didn’t see any radio equipment down there—they were deep enough that a signal couldn’t get out anyway. So our enemies probably don’t know their team has fallen. Which means…”

“…Wecould send in the shipment,” Reddi said. “And perhaps capture the people who are behind all of this.”

“Or at least move one step farther up the chain.”

“They’dbe expecting to meet with one of their own,” Reddi said, rubbing his chin. “We couldn’t maintain the subterfuge for long.”

“Well, sir,” Marasi said, “wedohave the Cycle’s corpse.”

“There are a lot of people who don’t believe in this shadowy organization you’re chasing, Colms,” he said. “You know that, right?”

“What do you believe, sir?”

“All those people we interviewed six years ago were certainly up to something,” he said. “I’m still not a hundred percent sure it wasn’t merely an Outer Cities plot—and the idea of some kind of evil god doesn’t sit well with me. But honestly, I’ve learned not to bet against you.”

“You do have to admit,” Marasi said, “at the very least, that Waxillium’s uncle was involved in some kind of paramilitary group.”

“Yes,” Reddi said, “andsomeoneassassinated him in prison—along with the others who followed him. If you say that was the Set, I believe you. But I need you to be aware—the governor and his people want our official focus to be on the Outer Cities and the threat they present to Elendel supremacy, not on some secret society that might be pulling their strings.”

“Understood, sir,” she said. “But I think this could accomplish both goals. Most of the people we caught were common street thugs—not actual Set members. I’ll bet the only one down there who had any real contact with the Set was the man who had this book. It mandates radio silence from inside the city, to not be overheard, in the days leading up to a drop-off—so no one in Bilming is expecting to hear from him. I believe we can surprise them. Particularly since we have that corpse.”

“Wait,” Reddi said, “how does a corpse help us?”

“I figured I’dask Harmony to lend us a kandra to imitate the dead man for the operation. Wayne could be a generic lackey, speaking with a Bilming accent, to help shore up the subterfuge.”

“Oh. Um. Right.” Reddi got uncomfortable when she implied she was close with Harmony—and doing so was a little cheeky on her part, sinceshe’dnever met him herself. She knew Death far better than she knew God.