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When Maria first met Detective Genshin Asogi, she was no taller than the ring on his hand. It glinted at her eye level in the weak basement light, and, spellbound, she reached for it.
“Maria!”
Mortified, Courtney grabbed her little arm. But Asogi didn’t seem to mind. “It’s alright,” he said, extending his hand and flexing his fingers. “Miss Maria’s only looking.”
Courtney let go. Still cringing, she watched her daughter pull the ring straight off Asogi’s hand and hold it up to the corridor lamp.
“Careful,” he said, amused. “It’s quite sharp.”
“Hmm.”
Then, carefully—Maria pressed her thumb to the point of one silver claw until it drew a fat drop of blood.
Today, Courtney cannot help but remember that afternoon. Dr. Wilson doesn’t look dissimilar as he holds that same ring before them in a bloody hand.
She knows better than to question Wilson. Mikotoba, who has rather more pull than she does, is sharply silenced when he tries. It chills her. Courtney isn't sure she’s ever heard Dr. Wilson raise his voice. Adamancy doesn’t befit a doctor, he would say, in that wise, soft-spoken manner of his. There's no closing one’s mind in science.
Courtney and Mikotoba meet eyes over Van Zieks’s open corpse. They will have to look elsewhere for answers.
The Professor case is tightly controlled. Only a handful know the suspect’s name, fewer can access the files. And while Mikotoba has friends among the London judiciary, Courtney has none. She’s never been involved in the judicial sphere. She’s never cared what her work is used to argue for or against, only that it’s interpreted correctly. Debate is beyond her purview.
She does, however, know of Lord Mael Stronghart. He’s a rare advocate for scientific progress, and she’s heard that his recent promotion bodes well for women in her field. It’s a stroke of luck that he’s been given Asogi’s case. If anyone might listen to her, it will be the only man who might have respected her opinion in the first place.
Nonetheless, he looks annoyed when she accosts him in the Bailey atrium.
“And you are...?”
“Dr. Stevens, my lord.”
“Dr. Stevens, I’m very busy.”
“It’s regarding the Professor case.”
He snorts. Courtney knows she’s not the first to ask him this.
She hurries at his heel across the hall. “I assisted in Lord van Zieks’s autopsy, and I have questions that our findings alone cannot answer. I’d like to look further.”
At this, Stronghart pauses.
“...As would every soul in London,” he replies. “Which is precisely why the trial has been closed. Rest assured that the courts have the Professor well in hand—”
“Surely you understand,” Courtney hisses as he tries to step around her, “how easily one could turn a courtroom of noblemen against a man like Genshin Asogi.”
She’s never liked to hear emotion in her voice. It’s obvious from the waver of her words how strongly she feels, how desperately. She locks her jaw, lifts her chin—but fears it may make her look even more hysterical.
“Considering our evidence,” she says, “I find it more likely that Scotland Yard is creating a scapegoat than that Detective Asogi killed five men. I’d like to see the case, my lord. So that it might put my mind at ease.”
Stronghart looks at her. He’s been in this business much longer than she has; it’s much more difficult to read his feelings. Someday, Courtney swears, she will develop that skill.
“Asogi is a friend of yours?”
“A friendly acquaintance, perhaps.”
The look he gives her now is even more discomforting.
“Very well,” he says. “See me in my office at ten o’clock this evening.”
The hour suggests something clandestine. Courtney forces herself to stay rigid against the shiver down her spine. “Thank you.”
Stronghart meets her eyes. “I may well need your assistance, Dr. Stevens.”
“Mine, my lord?” She knits her brow.
“Yes,” he says, the word heavy on his tongue. “Yours.”
This office, recently another man’s, is partway through remodel. Lord Stronghart sits by low light amid the scaffolding. Courtney had never visited here under the previous occupant. She had never expected to be consequential enough to sit in these chairs.
Stronghart meets her eyes across the desk. His pale gaze stabs into her.
“The first thing you must know,” he says, “is that I must win this trial. Regardless of Asogi’s guilt, I must win, or all of this will be for naught.”
Courtney’s throat tightens. “Regardless?”
“Yes. I’m well aware the man is not the Professor.”
Corruption had crossed her mind, but she’d have expected to uncover it. Instead, Stronghart graciously offers her his confession. She listens in dumb shock as he lays out his plot, until she can no longer keep herself from interrupting.
“Absurd,” she snaps. False execution!? “If he’s not guilty, then there will be evidence to prove it—"
“Evidence that has not been found, in an increasingly volatile moment.” Stronghart remains firm. “You said yourself, Dr. Stevens, how easily one could turn the judiciary against Asogi. London is hungry for someone to blame. Were he to go to trial with the case as it stood—"
“But what of the true Professor!” Courtney insists, clenching her fists. “If Asogi bears their guilt, then they will remain free to—"
“No.” He speaks over her. “The Professor is already dead.”
The story lasts hours. By the time Stronghart has detailed Van Zieks’s last duel, she’s slumped in her chair, overwhelmed.
“If this is true,” she says slowly, “then Detective Asogi is a hero. The Crown should be thanking him, not branding him with unearned blame.” She snorts. “What keeps you from telling this story at trial?”
“Must I remind you again of your own words?” Stronghart replies. “To defame Lord van Zieks in the same breath as admitting to his murder? It would be a miracle if Asogi made it as far as the gallows.”
Had he said this to Asogi? Had Asogi learnt enough of Scotland Yard to know that this was true?
Courtney draws in a deep breath. “…And if I report you—"
“Then Genshin Asogi will be tried and hanged properly.”
She might have admired Stronghart’s frankness before he told her this story, but now that he has, she hears nothing less than sociopathy. He goes on.
“And that is to assume, Dr. Stevens, that your story is believed. You’ve no evidence. I think it more likely that you’ll be out of a job yourself, should you dare make accusations.”
Silent, Courtney clenches her jaw. Had he told her this simply because she has no power to challenge it?
Stronghart leans forward, lowering his voice. “So few Londoners are like you, Doctor,” he says. “So few of them value reason, even should they claim to.”
She stares numbly back at him.
“We must use their bias to our advantage.” He meets her weary eyes, his own still icy sharp. “Everyone will get what they need. Detective Asogi will return home. London will sleep soundly again. And you, Dr. Stevens, will have proven yourself trustworthy to the Lord Chief Justice, who will have a direct hand in your career.”
It's a generous threat. There’s nothing she can do but take it.
Courtney is still barred from attending the Professor trial. Dr. Wilson, kindly, reports the spectacle back to her. Barok van Zieks, pursuing Stronghart’s case with the blind rage of a wild beast. Seishiro Jigoku, grinding the court to recess to remove the splintered wood.
And toward all of them, she wonders—how much do you know? Only enough, in each case, to play their part? To guide their fury toward the necessary target?
Her own fury is more contained, as it always must be. With each thrust of her needle she feels it. Fury toward the courts, the Crown, the judiciary, all too close-minded to hear the truth. Fury toward Klint van Zieks, who had every advantage in the world, and left Genshin Asogi to reap what he’d sown.
Asogi, says Wilson, has not spoken once. They’ve put him in an iron mask, muzzled him in the absence of the hound. The first time she visited the prison to take measurements, the sight nearly made her sick.
Courtney sews the leather straps of his gallows-harness with suture thread, over and over to make sure they’re solid. The both of them will lose everything if he falls.
Like the trial, she does not attend the Professor’s execution. She will sedate him afterwards. Stronghart has a hangman, but not a gravedigger—it’s too risky to keep Asogi awake for the burial. No one is careful with the dead.
“I’ve prepared a chloral hydrate solution,” she tells him as she tilts his head back in the coffin. “At this dose, you should awaken shortly before you’re to be retrieved.”
“Mmh.” He swallows the drops with a good-natured grimace. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Despite his easy affect, he’s sweaty and sallow. Execution doesn’t agree with him.
She picks up his unlocked mask. “Is there risk of your breath being obstructed while you’re unconscious?”
“I sleep in that nightly already.” Asogi chuckles weakly. “Though I hope I’ll sleep peacefully tonight. I’m afraid we’ll be found out if I snore.”
Courtney cannot bring herself to laugh. He casually rests his arms over either side of the coffin, and he sighs.
“I suppose this is farewell, Dr. Stevens.”
Her heart twinges. “I suppose it is.”
“I’m very grateful.”
“No. Thank you.” Solemnly, she nods. “For doing what no one else could do. I’m sorry that you had to be the one to do it.”
He smiles tightly, and she can see the first signs of the sedation in his face. “As am I.”
If she can see the sleep starting to overtake him, he can feel it. Courtney takes a step closer as his eyes slide shut, smoothes his mussed hair back to replace his mask for burial. Perhaps it’s only because the man’s alive, but this feels more final than any other execution she’s overseen.
“Would you prefer I wait until you’re fully unconscious?” she asks.
“Doesn’t matter.” He shakes his head and opens his heavy eyes, just to look at her one last time. “I trust you.”
Courtney takes the following day off.
Maria isn’t used to her staying in bed so late. She slithers under the covers and curls up against Courtney’s back. The pleasure is rare enough that they stay there for hours.
At the peak of the summer afternoon, she rises. She dresses, she dresses her daughter, she prepares them a meal. And then, finally—she retrieves the evening newspaper.
Lord Stronghart isn’t in when she storms his office. Her fury simmers as she waits, and, in truth, she’s grateful. She cannot appear any less than logical, no matter how little she feels it.
It’s dark by the time he arrives. Stronghart looks uncommonly weary. If he were there, Courtney supposes he hasn’t slept since. The half-finished clock face flickers with candlelight as he silently lights each one. He leaves it up to her to explain her presence. He knows exactly why she’s here.
"Had you planned to inform me that Detective Asogi was killed?”
Stronghart doesn’t look up. “Why should I have?” he replies. “It’s in every paper.”
The indifference knocks the wind out of Courtney, along with any pretense of poise. She leans heavily over the desk. “What happened?”
He sits down beneath the scaffold, unruffled. “Your part went smoothly,” he says. “Asogi was buried without incident. However, before we could exhume him, there was an unforeseen complication.”
“Complication!?”
“Asogi was seen.” Stronghart’s voice sharpens. “If the Professor were not dead in his grave when that man returned with others—"
“A gunshot was your solution!?”
“It didn’t matter.” He sighs. “Ideally the press would never—"
“We promised him!” Courtney snarls. “He trusted—”
“Asogi knew the risks when he ran Lord van Zieks through.” Stronghart’s deep voice cuts through hers. “Righteous or not, he killed a man rather than bring him to justice. We did everything we could. No one is at fault.”
She stares, seething.
“You realize, of course, that in taking care of Asogi I have saved your own career?” He meets her burning gaze. “You’re welcome to sacrifice it now, but—once again, Dr. Stevens, your own position is not unlike Detective Asogi's.”
To defame the Lord Chief Justice in the same breath as admitting she had falsified the Professor’s execution? Her chest constricts.
“At worst you would take all the blame yourself. And I’m sure you understand how much that would affect your daughter, to say nothing of future female applicants to Scotland Yard.” He tilts his head, daring her to disagree. “Think rationally, Dr. Stevens.”
Courtney has spent a lifetime containing her fury. She’s always thought little of men who could not. What weakness, from those with no reason not to show it. Never before has she longed for that weakness so viciously.
Hot tears sting her eyes. She has the reputation of every woman who will follow her in her hands. The reputation of her own daughter, for whom she’d longed to make the path easier. Stronghart is right—he’s right because he’s the one enforcing rightness. A lifetime of striving, and all Courtney had ever been able to do was play games with the men who write the rules.
She doesn’t cry—she won’t give him the satisfaction. She pushes away and strides out of the office.
