Tristan sat alone in the darkest corner of the tavern. He poured his dose of absinthe from bottle to glass, and then set a pierced spoon across it, resting it on the rim. He placed a sugar cube atop the spoon.

With an eloquent form acquired only with practice, he held the carafe of ice water high above the glass, and tipped it. The water dripped out as if from a leaky faucet, drop by drop, onto the sugar cube, which slowly melted into the glass below, causing the emerald liquor to louche into an opalescent light green, gradually releasing the individual aroma of each essential oil.

The absinthe bottle was empty, and the ashtray was full of clove cigarette butts by the time Silver sat down across from him.

She had been away, a day’s travel by airship for two weeks, summoned by the Queen herself to detail the investigation to the secret police. She was thoroughly pissed that Tristan had failed to meet her at the Port as promised. She was all fired up to give him a tongue lashing and utterly unprepared for the desolation written across his pitiful mug. She said, “My God, what’s wrong?”

He said, “It’s Maemi. They sent her to the gallows, despite her age. I testified on her behalf. I tried to make the jury understand, but they didn’t listen to me. They didn’t care. They just wanted to see someone die in The Lakeshire Stranger’s place. I saw her die, hanging there in her frilly white dress, like a doll swaying in the breeze. Poor Kiyoshi! His twin sister is dead because of me as surely as if I had killed her with my own hands. What justice is this?”

“Tristan, it’s not your job to determine punishment. Your job is to uncover the truth, and that’s all you did. That little doll was blown away by a tornado of her own making! If Kiyoshi had just told us the truth –”

“His parents were slaughtered by military police! Would you trust the authorities after that? How can you blame him?”

“Oh Tris, don’t do this to yourself again. Are you going to mourn the death of every criminal we catch? The captain said to solve it, so we did. Don’t you dare blame yourself. She was just one more soul devoured by Ed Brimley. She is his bad karma, and you dare not carry that burden for him.”

“Kiyoshi was there, at the execution. I saw him, and I didn’t know what to say, so I told him I was sorry. He looked at me, and he said, “I fucking hate you!” I will never forget the look in his eyes. It was beyond anger, beyond rage, it was pure hate, the entirety of his suffering, focused into pure hatred for me. I can’t forgive myself for this, Silver. I can’t. I don’t know how I can live with myself. It’s too much. It’s too much.”

Thus Detective Rue, thick in his flagellations, lost in the limbo of time between tragedies when he was utterly useless, felt the weight of his badge sinking his heart, pulling him down to hell, the taste of duty as bitter as the anise upon his lips, knowing full well the smile of truth was nothing more than a darling’s rictus.