Sophia Frawley in “The Case of the Im//Mortal Man” Part 1

By LN Lupa

Content Note: Death, body horror, bears, blood, smoking

Sophia Frawley in “The Case of the Im//Mortal Man” © 2025 by LN Lupa is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Editor’s Note: Today we are proud to present part one of our newest series: The Investigator of Barrowsdown. Tune in again next week for part 2 of “The Case of the Im//Mortal Man”!

Once upon a time, a great armada came from over the sea and ran aground in the most hidden place imaginable, deep beneath what you consider to be the world. The people on the ships, some there by choice and some by chance, made a home in this new place, which they called “Barrowsdown”. In the span of four lifetimes for you or I, Barrowsdown became a sprawling place, inhabited not only by The People who founded it and those they brought with them, but also those who found their way beneath//between on their own.

If you fell into Barrowsdown, which you might any day, you would tumble a long time before you saw anything but clouds and birds and a tower or two. Once you dropped past the clouds, however, you might see the city stretched out before//beneath you (what you could see depends, of course, on how you fell and how well you hold up in unsettling conditions). Look east and see all the twisting streets of the old town, where the Dustbound live. Turn west, past the snake-twist of the Coil River, and see where The People live in their splendor. Eventually, you’d find yourself terribly close to the ground. I am told that most people experience a cessation of velocity at this point, coming softly, if inelegantly, to a stop on the sidewalk or in the street.

Sometimes on rooftops.

If you fell toward the east side of the city (far from the Coil but not all the way into the old world sea) and you were still conscious, you might find yourself coming down beside a brick building, three stories, no stranger than any building you know from the Dustbound world. If you looked in the window as you passed the top floor, you might see me there, at my work, interviewing a client.

You think some person falling out of the sky would be an unusual sight to me? I’ve seen ten or twelve people arrive that way on this street alone. Two of them didn’t make it to the end of the block, though: there’s a…thing that lives under the sewer grate. No one could have reached them in time.

And in truth, having the dead right there was terribly convenient. I solved the case in record time.

My name is Sophia Frawley and I’m an investigator, a finder, at times a lodestone. I live in the great city of Barrowsdown that stands beneath//between the plain world above and the Deep World below. I am most often but not always employed by The People who rule here. You would know them as Faeries.

I am only a sad little Dustbound human, which is my particular talent.

When I received the case about which you have asked to hear today, it did not seem like a dangerous one, though the messenger was not particularly likable. His name is NINEEYES (say it like that, all the letters large: NINEEYES) and he has as many legs as eyes as trilling mouths running along his abdomen. His legs end in the softest hands you can imagine. Small as a baby’s, and gentler.

NINEEYES came to my office in the morning. Barrowsdown days do not always behave like the days on Earth above, but they run from bright to dark to bright again, and NINEEYES appeared at bright. The hot orange light sliced through the slatted blinds, burning a striped pattern into the white walls of my office. I keep the office very neat and very plain: the rest of Barrowsdown has all the color I need.

When a dark shape manifested itself across the stripes of light on the wall, I twisted around to seek the source. Something about the size of a small man crawled along the exterior of the window, making sticky sounds whenever it lifted a limb. I left my desk and pulled up the blinds. NINEEYES clung to the glass with his tiny hands, hair billowing in a cool autumn breeze. I went to the next window and opened it, allowing him to crawl into my office. He scuttled across the floor, carapace clicking as he went. I had met him once before, while discharging a duty for my mother, and I marveled anew at how uncannily he fused the least pleasant qualities of The People, the spiders, and we humans.

We sat across from each other. His head poked over the edge of my desk, his first three eyes blinking sleepily. “Sophia Frawley, it is very rude to have so much iron run through your front door. Some would call it illegal. Your business is lucky I am equipped to scale heights.”

“My apologies, Child of Exile, but you might have also looked for my bell. The entire mechanism is copper only.” That title—Child of Exile—may sound rude or strange to you, but to The People it is very polite. Many prefer it to the mention of their name; The People are proud of how they’ve thrived so far from home. “What brings you into my office at this early hour?”

NINEYES slid his hands along the edge of my desk, pinching its lip between his tiny soft fingers. One of his mouths, somewhere near the back of his bloated abdomen, hummed. “As you may know, I am an officer of the civil service.”

“The greatest honor to which a child of the Moon Court can aspire.”

“So it is. I am charged with guarding the handbook of the royal offices, which sets out the duties and the responsibilities of every civil service role. But the handbook was stolen.” He whispered his last few words, all the pride of his position slipping away.

I reached for my notepad. “When was it stolen? What time of day? Were there any witnesses?”

“And it was returned.”

The tip of my pencil snapped. I took a pen from my cup to replace it. “What do you mean, ‘returned’?”

All his visible eyes fluttered shut. “It disappeared last Wodensday. We searched and guarded without pause, yet found nothing. And on Satyrsday, we found the book back in its place, with nothing amiss.”

“Then what do you need me for?”

“There must be some aspect of perversion. I have no doubts in my mind that a crime was done, my charge perverted. But for all my eyes, I cannot see it. If a change was made to this book, it was done in an iron way.”

The People fear and hate the touch, the sight, of iron. To do something “in an iron way” is to do it in a way that goes beyond, beneath, or between the capabilities of The People. They hate that even more than real iron.

“You want me to read the entire handbook of the royal offices and tell you if something is off about the text.”

“Or the binding. Or the illustrations. If the methods of winding the clocks are perverted-”

“Time will stop all over Barrowsdown. I know.”

“That’s what they tell you mortals to scare you. The truth is worse.” His eyes shimmered and his baby’s hands plucked at each other. What was I to say? No?

“Then I’ll come over to the hall of civil service tomorrow morning at first light. Do you have any resources I can use to determine what may have changed? A second copy, for example?”

All NINEEYES’ mouths whistled. “In a manner of speaking, yes.” His demeanor, more invertebrate than ever, told me he was concealing something. It wasn’t worth following up on right then.

“We’ll start work tomorrow. What’ll you pay?”

“Bottled unicorn spit and an endless skein of mermaids’ hair. Feathers from an angel’s wing and lenses made from a frozen rainbow.”

“What’s the cash exchange rate on those?”

“I could also offer seven hundred and fifty Oaks.”

“Those I’ll take.” I showed NINEEYES out, then rewrote my notes into a clean, legible summary. I keep up my handwriting. Devices more complex than a fountain pen or a typewriter don’t tend to stay functional long in Barrowsdown. Something corrosive about the air.

I left my office, locking up behind me (as NINEEYES suspected, my iron lock and key are contraband, though the royal guard knows and looks the other way for me, so long as the Oaks flow freely), and headed down Willowmarsh Way, the busiest thoroughfare in the Dustbound side of town. The banners flew high, snapping against the gold-toned sky. The breeze smelled of fresh fruit and sweet kisses. It was the same as any other day. The door of a tavern hung open and I stepped through into the hazy half-light. It was as good as night inside, creatures of all stripes huddled around dirty tables, throwing dice and dirty looks. I didn’t need any of the front room patrons. Tipping my hat to the barkeep, I went behind the bar and into a storeroom. At the back of that storeroom was a staircase. At the bottom of the staircase was Vortigern’s lair.

Vortigern is a seven-foot-tall talking bear, but don’t let that fool you: he’s all smiles, if you know what a smile looks like on a bear. He runs his tavern like he runs his table games: flashy, fun, and always in the best of spirits. He knows everything about everything the regent and the sheriff don’t.

I sat down across from him at his favorite table, the top lined with red felt. He was shuffling cards, his claws delicately sliding king upon queen upon ace upon two. He did it so artfully it was almost comical. “Sophia Frawley, what brings you to my establishment this fine morn?”

Vortigern sounds exactly like you think a bear would.

“Old pal, I need to pick your brain. A new case walked in today, and left me with a real mystery. Can you think of any reason someone would want to steal the handbook of the royal offices?”

“Not unless they wanted to know whether to dust the king clockwise or counterclockwise.”

“And can you think of a reason they’d return it a few days later, seemingly unharmed?”

“Now you’re making it interesting. It could be a gang dare. They tell me the Steel Pixies are getting bolder by the day. They run all the games past Goldboy’s Rush. The civil service offices aren’t far over that line.”

“This doesn’t seem like Steel Pixies to me. They’d do something flashier, leave a calling card. They want to tweak the regent’s ears almost as much as you do. This smells like someone with real intent, a real need, and--unlikely as it sounds in Barrowsdown--a real humility. You know anyone like that?”

“Sure, but you won’t like the answer.”

“Try me.”

“Only person I know who’s got humility, cleverness, and schemes so dense I can’t see into them is Greywinterwings.”

“You’re right: I don’t like that answer at all. But at least she’s easy to find.”

I said goodbye to Vortigern soon after that and headed back onto the streets. I knew where I needed to go next, but I really didn’t want to. You see, Greywinterwings is my mother.

Not my human mother. Among The People, she is my custodian. She raised me from pet to girl to investigator. There’s more of her in me than I can say. More than what shows in the mirror. More than there is of my human mother.

I couldn’t wander forever. I crossed the Coil River at the fork called Goldboy’s Rush and entered the glorious west of Barrowsdown, where The People make their homes. Here the buildings space themselves more generously (sometimes getting up on feet to do so) and a passerby can always taste honey on the air. I held my office key hidden in my fist. The guards here sometimes hassle a lone human, and the Steel Pixies hassle anyone they think looks funny. But no one bothered me on the long meandering walk from the river to the Cloudhouse.

I grew up in the Cloudhouse, but to this day I could tell you very little about its dimensions or its contents. I was made to keep to the first two levels only and went beyond the third staircase but once or twice. The upper reaches of the Cloudhouse touch the underside of the surface world, scraping the sky where it becomes your Earth. I do not believe the Cloudhouse continues beneath our ground. Greywinterwings is afraid of those who now inhabit The Deep World. Once Barrowsdown was their home, though they had another name for it in those days.

I’m not allowed to know it, anymore than I am allowed to know what will happen if the clocks run down.

The facade of the Cloudhouse is beautifully done in the style humans know as Queen Anne. Dormers and balconies bulge out of it at awkward, enrapturing angles. Stand upon them, and you fear nothing. Stand below them, and you find yourself frozen for fear the contents will pour down upon your head. Greywinterwings does the house up in a new color almost every other mortal year, and because she changes her mind so often, the painters rarely finish the whole house before they have to start again. The tower which pokes up from the middle of the structure and goes on and on, seemingly forever, has taken on a candy-striped quality. In certain seasons it turns, and reminds me of a barbershop’s pole.

I passed beneath one of the vertiginous balconies and into the house, putting my key back in my pocket. Greywinterwings tolerates the sight of iron only a little better than the rest of her kind.

Caruspel, the butler, greeted me in the entry hall as if they’d known I was coming. “Sophia, how very good to see you. May I take your coat?” I shucked my jacket into their white-gloved, waiting hands, tossed my hat onto a hook, and went to the drawing room. There was no need to ask where she was at this time of day.

The drawing room was a terrible pun of the type which amuses Greywinterwings to no end. It was papered, floor to walls to ceiling, in drawings. Pencil sketches mainly, but some charcoal. I prefer the charcoal to the pencil, but she prefers the pencil. Of course we cannot agree even on something so small and so utterly without stakes. Stepping into the drawing room provokes a rustling as rich and musical as forging through a dense, overgrown field. Dry curls of parchment and onionskin whispered around my feet.

In the center of the room sat Greywinterwings, high and straight behind her ornate desk, one hand spread, palm down, upon the table’s warm-toned top. Greywinterwings looks not unlike a human. She is a child of the Winter Court, most gentle and merciless of the old country’s lineages. Her features are aquiline and her hair is always twisted into ornate buns run through with sparkling strands of diamonds. What betrays her as one of The People is her red mouth, stained permanently at the regent’s order. It marks her crime. The red splashes up across her right cheek and down her jawline. It is not like a simple port wine stain or any Dustbound mark. It drips every twenty minutes or so, like condensation on the inside of a greenhouse.

Though it is not usually blood hazing the air of greenhouses. I say usually because--no, that’s a different case entirely.

Greywinterwings bleeds, but it is a small thing, made smaller by the grace and breadth of her manner. When she saw me in the drawing room that day, she smiled, lights dancing in her eyes. “My sweet Sophia, you have come home. You must have a new and difficult client to need your mother’s help.”

“Child of Exile, I begin my cases where they seem most likely to end: did you arrange for the theft and return of the handbook of the royal offices? NINEEYES seeks an explanation for its unexpected temporary disappearance.”

Greywinterwings laughed, the sound carrying to every corner of the room, louder and more terrible than a cabinet full of crystal goblets collapsing in on itself. “Oh, how clever, how strange! I wish I had thought of that. NINEEYES must be so disgruntled. I can just imagine all his blinks, one after the next.” Her face fell into seriousness, her expression hardening. “I did not take the handbook, and it wounds me to be accused. Since the day my sentence was read, I have never once broken the regent’s conditions.”

“It is my responsibility to explore every avenue, starting with the obvious. You have never broken the regent’s conditions, yet I know as well as you how many problems you have created for him without violating a single rule.” I kept my tone rigidly under control, but I was, at heart, relieved. What could I do if my mother were the culprit of this case? At most, skitter back to NINEEYES, where we could both lament our impotence in the face of the most clever and ancient lady left in Barrowsdown.

“The regent doesn’t know how to appreciate my interventions. He’s like you that way. Won’t you play a game with me, Sophia? Like we did when you were young.”

“I already played with Vortigern today. Will you rob my pockets clean?”

“I’m your mother. You would have nothing without me.”

I sat down across from her and opened my hands to receive the cards. She dropped three into my waiting hand and dealt another three to herself. As we traded tokens back and forth, she watched me from beneath her hooded eyes, icy blue peering out of bruised pits. “Have you been sleeping well, Mother?” I asked her as she completed a trick, scoring ten points. She kept score on a yellowed pad of paper with the words Frawley Construction & Excavation printed along the top.

She hummed as she marked her latest windfall, ignoring my question. I took the answer to be a no.

After our game—which she won, because she always wins—Greywinterwings asked me to stay the night, join her for dinner. When I said yes she beamed and called for Caruspel to set an extra place. Caruspel reported having already done so, soon after I arrived. The duties of host complete, Greywinterwings turned on me so she could attend to the duties of a mother. I found myself bundled off to my childhood bedroom so I could be kitted in a clean dinner suit, as she could not stand to see my tatty two-piece any longer.

Back in the room where I’d wiled away so many hours I’d tried to forget, I began to feel quite sick. The silver oval mirror I’d always hated hung across the bed, immovable and unchangeable. When I looked into it, there was Diana waiting for me, black sprays of hair framing her narrow face. “Oh, Sophia!” she cried. “Why won’t you ever let me come out and play?” She pouted and I could feel my own face respond, the corners of my mouth drop. Diana’s grip on my matter remains. Our spirits fight each other for control. She sits inside me, waiting for a mirror or a placid puddle to allow her to call on me.

“I have my own life, Diana. I’m not a vehicle for you to operate as you please, when you please.”

“No, you never let me have a body when I please. You never let me do anything I please. It’s very cruel when I’m the one who suffered and died. I’m the shadow and you’re the light and all you want is for it to be noon all day long. If you keep me trapped too long, you know what will happen, Sophia.”

“I’ll let you have a day when I’m done with this case.”

“You said that last case! And the case before. You just don’t like when I’m in charge.”

“That’s true.” I dressed and left the room, but as I left I saw Diana press her hands to the skin of the mirror. It bowed out into the world dangerously.

You may think I am cruel to Diana, but you must see it my way. I cannot bear to have my body made a toy. Not by her, of all people.

I arrived at dinner a few minutes behind the guest of honor. He sat at the foot of the table while Greywinterwings sat at the head, I in the middle as a wayward child. “Dear Mr. Grant,” said Greywinterwings. “Do you know my child, Sophia Frawley? I wonder if you might have run across each other in your various mortal dealings.”

We had not. Tamerlane Grant was a person of some consequence in the Dustbound community of Barrowsdown, the richest person not of The People in the whole city. He owned clock shops and art galleries and a large pencil factory, among other things that likely made more money and less sense. He had a big pale face and corn-colored hair, and a strange creeping flush at his collar, which at first I thought was a rash. However, it fluctuated in size and intensity throughout the meal. His conversation strained for cleverness and settled at torturous. I could not imagine why Greywinterwings would invite him to dine with her.

After a particularly dull turn in the conversation related to the profit margins of glimmerdust refinement, Greywinterwings invited Grant and I to accompany her to the third floor, a journey I’d rarely been allowed to make. We settled in her receiving room as she unrolled a map before us which showed all of Barrowsdown, a broad and irregular shape hemmed in on two sides by ocean, cut down the middle by the Coil River.

“As you may have noticed, my current ward is not at home right now,” she said, smoothing the browned corners of the parchment with a firm hand. Guiltily, I realized I hadn’t noticed at all: my younger siblings have never been my first concern. “Thankfully, sweet Sophia agreed to stay the night. Mr. Grant, you approached me with a very interesting proposal recently. Would you care to reiterate it here for the benefit of Sophia and for my memory?”

“Of course, Child of Exile. We met at the Countess Pareidolia’s scavenger hunt some weeks ago, and there I mentioned I sought a set of bones belonging to an ancestor of mine, Horatio Alphonse Legmaine Grant, but that I am also hesitant to travel to the surface world myself. You offered to secure those bones from their resting place in the surface world in exchange for the deeds to three properties I own in Barrowsdown.”

Greywinterwings set an inkpot and a quill beside the map. She dipped the quill with a practiced delicacy and handed it to Tamerlane Grant. “Mark the places so we can all see.”

Grant circled three locations: a small storefront sharing a wall with one of his clock shops; a crumbling shack on an empty stretch of ground near the water treatment facility; and a defunct hotel called “The King’s Arms,” which had closed for want of guests. Rising superstition about anything named for our unlucky king had changed the fortune of many venues in the last thirty mortal years.

When he returned the quill to Greywinterwings, she set it beside the pot, a piece of blotter paper beneath its nib. Then she reached beneath the table and produced a burlap sack which clacked and clattered. She set it on her lap, outside of Grant’s reach if he wanted to remain within the scope of propriety.

“Sophia, do you see those properties?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“And do you understand what has passed between me and Mr. Grant?”

“Once you give him that bag of bones, the two of you will have completed a lawful exchange of valuables, wherein you receive three lots in Barrowsdown and he receives those bones. All that remains is for a witness to seal the contract and make its obligations binding.”

Greywinterwings extended one of her elegant, six-fingered hands. She held a pin between her thumb and forefinger. “Give me your hand, sweet Sophia.” She drove the needle into the tip of the first finger on my left hand. It hurt like always. Blood welled up immediately. Greywinterwings smeared a streak of my blood across her palm and a second streak across Grant’s. Then they shook, a curl of steam rising up from their clasped hands.

The blood of a changeling child is the best for a witness. It is what makes Faerie bargains unbreakable, except by the very clever or very lucky. I did not take Tamerlane Grant as someone possessed of exceptional cleverness, though he might be lucky. He looked thrilled to hold the sack of musty bones and rushed off not long after taking it, coming up with some silly excuse I can’t recall.

Greywinterwings and I sat alone in her receiving room, drinking sour tea, until I asked her how old Tamerlane Grant was. He seemed afraid to return to the surface, a fear most common in those who expected age to catch up with them hard when they returned to the Dustbound world.

“He is only seventy or eighty by surface reckoning,” she replied. Her hands played idly with a corner of the map, bending and twisting the paper until it grew feathery soft. “But some Dustbound are very vain about these things, you know. You may become one of them. Your looks have stayed fresh and youthful, but you are more than thirty in surface years. If you visit the world above, you may age.”

I ignored this comment. Vanity is not one of my vices. “Why do you want Grant’s properties? They’re none of them worth more than thirty thousand Oaks, if that.”

“Oh, I grow bored of this house!” She rolled up the map and stowed it in a vase full of them. “I want to try some new residences, reinvent my living space. Everything here is dreary with death and mistakes. My youngest wards complain of the place and refuse to behave. I must give them somewhere more enjoyable to live.”

“Like a cursed hotel?”

“Children love that sort of thing, you’ll see.”

We spent a few minutes more in idle conversation, but I soon departed for my bedroom. NINEEYES expected me early at the office of the civil service and failing him would create fresh irritations of many kinds.

I passed the night unhappily. However I lay in my childhood bed, I could feel the mirror catching my shape and allowing Diana to take it. I could hear her pressed against the glass, waiting for her moment. I could not resist her much longer.

I left before Greywinterwings awoke. Caruspel was awake, of course, and pressed a cream-filled bun on me. When they left, I slipped into Greywinterwings’ humidor--yes, an entire room--and purloined six sticks of blakktobakk, placing them into my jacket’s inner pocket. She’s my mother: she owes me.

And I had a premonition this case would leave me needing a smoke.

The office of the civil service sat oddly quiet for a Thirstsday. I should have seen officers passing in and out, making themselves seen and known while they fished for promotion and esteem from the favormakers surrounding the regent. That day no one strolled up and down the steps or stopped to smoke or did any of the louche and irritating things royal officers usually did there. I went inside and made myself known to the officer of the reception, who transmitted my arrival to the officer of guest services, who shuffled me through hall after labyrinthine hall and down a spiraling gilded staircase, to arrive at the vault doors where stood NINEEYES in his dress uniform, epaulettes drooping, fringe dangling in one of his eyes.

“Sophia Frawley, you are as timely as they say. I have the handbook waiting inside the vault.”

“And its copy?”

“And its copy, for the pleasure of your comparison. Follow me.”

I watched NINEEYES open the vault, holding my notepad at the ready. The sequence was complex, making use of six of his arms. No typical human could do the same, most other Dustbound creatures had no more limbs than a human, and a team would have to be well-synchronized. I wrote “Who else has six or more arms?” and added three longshot names to the list. None of them had a motive, just the proper limbs.

NINEEYES scuttled back so the vault door could swing open, revealing a high-ceilinged chamber more like a miniature concert hall than a secure facility. Baroque detailing in gold and silver flared along the edges of six niches in the walls. At the center of the room stood a table, a chair, and beside them a young man dressed in a spotless white robe. I saw in his half-shadowed, handsome face the telltale buried despair of a Dustbound made indentured servant. I waited to enter the vault until NINEEYES went before me.

When NINEEYES had entered and turned to usher me in, I crossed the threshold, watchful for any sort of clever contract inscribed and made manifest by my entry. The People are very devious about the placement of these things. They love to entrap humans with unknowing agreements. They are fascinated by and fearful of our ability to lie reflexively, and prefer to prevent us from doing so where possible.

I myself rarely care to lie, which is something The People like about me.

A klaxon sounded as I took my second step into the vault. NINEEYES’ guards swept in behind me, silver pikes at the ready. NINEEYES looked me over suspiciously. “You set off more than one of my detectors, Sophia Frawley.”

“The reasons are innocuous: As you know, I use an iron key and an iron lock on my home. I carry some blakktobakk to smoke, nothing more than that. I’m bound for the dust someday, and I have my vices to cope.”

“And which of your vices set off my register for stolen souls?”

“Oh. I share my body with my sister, Diana. She lost herself very tragically.” Somewhere deep in my brain, Diana howled Tell him the truth, Sophia! Say what you did to make me this way. But I preferred not to.

“I shall have a clerk confirm that with the Office of Multiplicity & //.”

“You’ll find my records in good order.”

NINEYES called for a clerk and instructed them to look into my history and documentation. When that thistle-headed gnome had gone off to verify my story, NINEEYES ushered me forward to the table where the handbook rested.

It is a beautiful object, an object it would be shameful to destroy, this handbook. The cover glimmers, gossamer threads run through a type of clear enamel which makes two hard plates. Two broad Cs of copper pierce these plates and all the pages between them. The paper rests heavily on your hands, conveying an eternal solidity which is absent from so much writing. Looking at the handbook you could almost forget that all words are bound for the dust one day or the next. I have loved many books, but never admired one as much as the handbook of the royal offices.

Then I looked on the mortal man beside it. He too was beautiful, with green cat’s-eyes winged by dark liner, heavy brows above them. His face shone with well-oiled good health and his plain white robe hung from flesh shaped as if by artists. The light cut through it sheerly and I saw the implication of his nipples and of his sex.

Inside me, Diana shivered and, unable to resist, I shivered too.

The man had no reaction. I could have looked on him as long as I wanted; his real self was closed up and hidden away, like a room not clean enough for guests to see.

“Here is the handbook, exactly where it was left by the thief.”

“And this is where it usually sits?” I surveyed the table. It had no unusual qualities at all: plain wood, four legs. It was the plainest thing in the entire vault.

“Brought from the old country, never broken, never changed. Humans made it for us as a gift. It is immutable.”

I ran my hand along the underside of the table and discovered nothing. Smooth, clean wood, worked to a perfect flat surface unmarked by age or new hands. “I’d like to start reviewing the text. I’m going to touch the handbook.”

“I must remain and observe everything you do. But I will also provide you a chair.” NINEEYES snapped one set of his tiny fingers and an attendant brought me a chair: ornate, silver-painted wood with a black velvet cushion. I touched the cushion, thinking of someone I knew. In my head, Diana hissed and booed. He couldn’t save me, he won’t do you any good. Let me out and I’ll find us someone worth loving. And if not worth loving, then at least tasty.

I sat down hard, focused on the book before me. “Where’s the comparison copy?”

“Perignosis, recite each page as Sophia Frawley requests. Make no mistakes and do not hesitate.” NINEEYES spoke to the beautiful man as if he were a machine, an automaton. But no machines can last in Barrowsdown. He was flesh. It was his spirit which had been made unnatural to itself.

I opened the handbook, leaning it against a silver bookstand, and asked Perignosis to speak. Perignosis began to chant the words inscribed on the opening page: “The Handbook of the Royal Offices of Barrowsdown, the City Beneath//Between; Whereas The People have resolved to make for themselves a new home across the sea; Whereas The People have determined that they will govern fairly for Dustbound and Ageless alike; Whereas The People have agreed to submit to the rule of King Lascaleon and Queen Shallyadorer; Whereas The People have agreed to establish certain positions to which the children of each Court shall be appointed; Whereas…” And so on.

I read for hours, and beside me Perignosis recited. He did stop once, to call for a glass of water, and in that moment I saw his face become something human and fallible, spirit and matter one and the same. But after he drank, he sent himself away again, spirit departing to leave matter alone with me. And NINEEYES, who hovered with a crop in hand, as if he would beat me into submission if I harmed the handbook.

We went through so many chapters, each duller than the last. There were no deviations. The instructions for managing the streets, the buildings, the palace, the water purifier, the gates: these were all identical to Perignosis’ recitation. At NINEEYES’ urging, I fondled the binding and the entire dimension of each page I studied. They were unaltered.

We came to the last section of the handbook: the rolls. Here were the names of every royal attendant ever appointed, living and dead. Though The People age slowly, they are not immortal. Only Ageless. Death finds them on his own time, while the Dustbound call him all day long.

Dutifully, I read through every name, and then I came upon something strange at last. Between the entries “Flower of the Endless Seas, Royal Upholsterer” and “Sorry Lights Much Greater, Royal Wallpaperer” was printed the name “Tamerlane Grant, Royal Entourage”. Perignosis went straight from Flower to Lights, and I asked him to stop. “I’ve found the perversion. A human name is written here.”

“No, no.” NINEEYES shook his head. “It cannot be. A Dustbound cannot hold royal offices. The appointments are eternal except under conditions of catastrophe.”

“You called me here to identify perversions of the text, and now I have found one. Accept it so we can move on.” I gestured to the mark. “Touch the words, NINEEYES, so I may know if the writing was done by iron means.” Two of NINEEYES’ mouths frowned. He hesitated. “Do you have no loyalty to the king and the regent? Touch the book so I can do my job.”

He extended one of his long shiny-black arms, its infant hand quivering as it neared the matte grey ink of Grant’s name. When he touched it, he screamed from all nine mouths and recoiled.

I studied the raised pink burn on NINEEYES’ fingers: the sign of iron. “Written in ink infused with iron filings. So none of The People can remove it.”

“Yet no Dustbound, no human, is permitted to interfere with the text.” NINEEYES clutched his wrist, glaring at the book as if it had willfully betrayed him.

“One already has.”

“That does not make the interloper worthy. That does not make the crime right, or permissable.” NINEEYES dismissed Perignosis and the other attendants. “Why would a human do this?”

“You’re asking the wrong question.” I was adding to my notepad as I spoke, a line from the list of the multi-armed to a new set of criteria, starting with connections to Tamerlane Grant. “We should wonder why this particular human did this.” I already had my suspicions. “How are you compensated, NINEEYES? When you came to my office yesterday, you hardly recalled the existence of Oaks.”

“I am compensated by the good favor of my lord regent, and the knowledge that I will be rewarded by the king and queen when they are restored to good health. And a hundred Oaks a week.”

“And when you fall ill? When you grow thin of spirit or rotten of matter? The lord regent will allow you to bathe in the Coil’s headwaters, and be restored. That is the rumor I have heard.”

NINEEYES frowned with half his mouths and grinned with the others. “That is no mere rumor. It is the truth. I am merely of the Moon Court, and I would wither almost as quickly as you if not for the restoration of the Coil.”

“Have you ever seen a Dustbound bathe there? Are they restored as well?”

He wouldn’t speak. He slapped his crop into one of his palms over and over. “NINEEYES, I cannot answer your questions if you do not answer mine. I cannot adequately pursue our suspect if I don’t know his motivations.”

“Yes…A Dustbound could live almost as long as I would, if they bathed regularly in the Coil. But they dilute it! They poison it! Less for The People each time they partake. The last Dustbound who bathed there was the human who fathered Black Velvet Drawn. A blight upon us.”

“I know Black Velvet Drawn. He’s not related to this incident.” Not true, not true, whispered Diana. If what you guess about Grant is correct, Black Velvet is right at the heart of this. “You’ve told me what I need to hear. I would like an advance on my pay, and then I will solve your case.” I put my hand before NINEEYES, palm up. He grumbled as he rummaged through the pockets of his uniform, withdrawing a handful of Oaks. He smashed the gilded leaves into my hand, and I disappeared them into the pocket inside my jacket. Then our time in the vault was over, and I departed.

Walking the streets, I considered the next place I ought to go. The sky was turning from a hot red-gold wall to a cool purple deep, and the nighttime creatures had begun to emerge. I hurried back across the Skystone Bridge. Better to be the prey of other Dustbound than of the ones who walk The People’s nights.

Glowworms twisted around the tops of lampposts, shimmering down rays of light, all of it filmy green as if we were walking the bottom of the Coil. I went to Vortigern’s, finding him behind the bar this time, making barley bowls and mixed drinks. We ate together while I told him what I had discovered. Stroking his fuzzy snout, he rumbled thoughtfully. “I have heard a few things about Tamerlane Grant. Nothing damning. He conducts himself as well as any businessperson might. He has fewer enemies than friends, which is rare. His clocks are well-made and do not run down for weeks at a time.” Vortigern tapped his claw on the bar sharply. “I know one other thing: Grant is having a party tonight. A real to-do, hundreds of fine folks there. You might get in.”

“I might, at that. Thanks, Vortigern.” I got up, but he caught my sleeve.

“You don’t happen to have any Oaks on you? Your tab is running high.”

“You didn’t apply what I lost to you in cards yesterday?”

“That’s personal. Goes straight into my pocket, not the business.” I tossed him a few Oaks from what NINEEYES had given me, begrudgingly.

Back at my office, I examined myself in the mirror. I did not have any qualities to recommend me as a partygoer. I only owned one other suit besides the one I already wore. My hair, always stuffed beneath a hat, did not benefit from long-term imprisonment any more than a person would. And Grant already knew me from dinner with Greywinterwings. Unless I claimed to be representing her, I would seem suspicious. I did not want to portray myself as her representative for a myriad of reasons, one of them being that lying about the motives of Greywinterwings is a mistake I have seen others make too many times.

Diana slipped into view. “Let me go! You know I can win my way inside. We’ll both benefit: I’ll do the parts that are hard for you, and you’ll finally allow me to have a good time.” She gazed out at me with such a beautiful pleading look that I loved her: my sister.

“Will you be good, Diana? Not abuse or misuse our body? Return it to me when you’ve found what I’m looking for?”

“Of course! Of course. I swear it.” But Diana too is human, not Fae: she can lie. Still, I gave myself up to her. I was tired and I did not want to face all the desires and the needs of Grant’s partygoers. Their inevitable expectation of my happy participation seemed a weight greater than my need for NINEEYES’ cash.