Shadows of Regret, the DVD extras.

I am continuing The New Thing, as people seem to be continuing to enjoy it.  But because this is time-consuming, I only know people are enjoying it if they comment and let me know.  Say something, probably get more, say nothing, get some crickets..  Just saying.

So!  Welcome to the “DVD extras” for episode three of the Murders at Karlov Manor story, “Shadows of Regret.”  This story is copyright Wizards of the Coast, although it was written by me, and can be found in its entirety here: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/episode-3-shadows-of-regret

Please click the link, even if the story isn’t relevant to you.  Click-throughs are how Wizards knows that Story matters.

So what is this?  This is little excerpts of the story, with my thoughts on them, because, IDK, I thought it was funny.  I’ve also tried to include context for people new to Magic Story, to help you understand what the hell is going on.  If people continue to like it, I will probably continue.  If you don’t care about Magic Story, skip on over, although I’d still like it if you clicked.

And here we go!

As always, from this point on, plain text is bits from the story, italic text is my commentary on the same.

The party was pretty much over after that.

Gosh, you think?

Etrata’s removal from the grounds of Karlov Manor took no time at all in the grand scheme of things. Long enough for everyone to see what was happening; long enough for several members of the Selesnya Conclave to approach Teysa, nearly frantic with the need to make it clear that Etrata wasn’t with them, they hadn’t smuggled her into the party, this was not their doing, they had been betrayed as much as anyone else! Not, perhaps, as much as Zegana, who would never be betrayed by anyone ever again, but as much as Teysa, as much as the Agency, as much as anyone else who was innocent of all wrongdoing.

I basically see this as the Conclave’s “hey let’s not be in the path of financial ruination” moment, since Teysa is likely to have a lot of pissed-off energy and some big feelings to throw around after what just happened to her cloakroom.

Teysa’s wards should have kept anyone from leaving: Karlov Manor wasn’t the seat of Orzhov power, but it was the seat of her power, and here, her word was absolute law. But when the Azorius mages who had grabbed Etrata marched her to the gate and pulled her out, nothing stopped them; no other members of House Dimir appeared to demand the release of one of their own.

Teysa isn’t going to argue with the law at this moment in time.  She has other things on her mind.

And into that ridiculous magic of Proft’s! Only a few members of the Agency had seen it in action before, and while they were quietly smug about how elegantly he’d applied it to the task at hand, the remaining Azorius looked more annoyed than anything else.

Kaya supposed that wasn’t much of a surprise. Proft had been their asset before he chose to go off and ply his talents with the Agency, and if there was one thing she knew about the guilds, it was that they didn’t like losing resources. Especially these days, with everyone running close to the bone as it was.

I think this is our first confirmation that Proft used to be a member of the Senate.  No wonder he gets under Lavinia’s skin just by breathing.  That also explains some of her dislike of the Agency, if they started out by poaching her people.

Kaya resisted the urge to glance at Teysa as she stepped up on Kaya’s right, leaning heavily on her stick. The evening had taken a lot out of her.

Teysa is probably in an intense amount of pain for this whole scene.  That doesn’t change anything, but it’s something to keep in mind.

“You let them leave,” said Kaya.

“Following our colleagues at the Agency into the investigative arts?” asked Teysa.

Pain can make you a little catty with the people you care about.

“You can’t hold me here without my consent.”

“No. I suppose I never could, could I? Out of all of us, you remain the one who can just … walk away, any time you want to.” Teysa’s expression sobered.

Teysa was genuinely hurt when Kaya didn’t come back to help during the Invasion.  She understands that Kaya was helping elsewhere, but the Orzhov were hers to protect, and she didn’t come back.  That sort of thing isn’t easy.

Kaya managed not to flinch. Somehow, without coming anywhere close to mentioning them by name, Teysa had managed to invoke the shades of Jace and Vraska, the other two people who’d walked away from Ravnica. The two who hadn’t come back.

The two who never would.

We’ve touched on Jace and Vraska a bit in these notes, but let’s expound.  Jace Beleren was a blue-aligned mind-mage, originally from Vryn, who, like Kaya, wound up on Ravnica for quite some time.  He did a tour as a the living Guildpact, the single entity who could control the guilds, and was a member of the strike team that went to New Phyrexia.  He was infected with glistening oil and became a Phyrexian, turned against the people he had cared about.

Or most of them, anyway.  Jace was infected by Vraska, his closest friend and dearest love, the gorgon leader of the Golgari swarm.  She had been infected by Phyrexia before he could find her, and slipped entirely away while he was holding her.  They are both currently considered lost, although no one’s seen the bodies.

“Shaken, but recovering,” said Teysa. “She’s moving past grief and into outrage. I wouldn’t want to be the person who did this. They’re likely to find the entire weight of the Simic crashing down upon them, and there’s no one in a position to leaven Vannifar’s wrath. She and Zegana fought over the future of the Simic Combine, but they were sisters, in their way. There were deep bonds of loyalty and affection there. Vannifar won’t allow this to go unanswered.”

Beware the wrath of the elf-ooze, for it shall be acidic and unending.

“No, I can’t imagine that she would. What did you want to talk to me about before?”

Let’s not forget this little plot thread, shall we?

Kaya found herself wondering, somewhat uselessly, what the Agency intended to do about the coats that had been left under Zegana’s body.

It’s a fair question.  Some of these people probably only have the one coat, given how much damage the Invasion did, and others will just want their coats back.

“Before, on the balcony, there was something you wanted to say to me,” said Kaya. “Or tell me. Can you tell me now?”

Teysa sighed. “Stay long enough for the news to break, and to see that the ripples don’t wash us all away, and I’ll call for you,” she said. “I do want to tell you, it’s just … this isn’t the time.”

Kaya looked at her carefully. She seemed sincere. Teysa was a born politician, but even politicians can have their moments of vulnerability.

“Three days,” she said, finally. “Then, if you haven’t called me, I come looking.”

“Deal,” said Teysa.

Well, at least now we know why Kaya is sticking around after the party.  It’s a reasonable request on Teysa’s part, and a reasonable time limit on Kaya’s.

Three days slipped steadily by. Kaya returned to her rented room, refusing Teysa’s offer of a guest chamber at the manor, and Teysa, perhaps understanding that pressing the matter would be a good way to make Kaya leave the plane, hadn’t pushed the issue. During the day, she wandered the streets, enjoying the familiar tastes of Ravnican street food and strong coffee laced with cream and lavender honey, and listened to the people who didn’t know her well enough to bite their tongues.

Coffee is one of the things Ravnica is rightly famous for.  They’re probably the first plane to have developed coffeeshop culture.  Too much caffeine is the reason all the guildies are so tense all the time.  (Not really, but it’s funny to me.)  Given the variance in coffee styles on Earth alone, I like to ponder how different planes take their coffee, and what sort of fads and traditions are at play in the brewing.

Rumors swirled in the streets, bitter, writhing things with teeth that snap and bite. There had been a theft at the Orzhov party, they said; some guild member had lost a precious heirloom and was going to be furious until it could be reclaimed. There had been a betrayal. An affair had been uncovered. All manner of crimes had apparently happened on the grounds of Karlov Manor, and because both the Agency and the Azorius had been present, both groups were being spoken of with uncommon disdain.

Rumors, they do spread.  I tried to list as many things the reader would know weren’t true as I possibly could, just to make it clear that the waters have been very muddied.  The death of a guild leader is a big deal!

Because they didn’t just talk about the party, although that was the most recent glorious scandal, and somewhat less raw than the wounds of war. They talked about the Phyrexian invasion and how the Planeswalkers had failed them all. After spending years safe in the knowledge that the average person didn’t know what a Planeswalker was and thus couldn’t have opinions on them, Kaya was now faced with a reality where everyone knew, and almost everyone disapproved.

It hurts to be the center of attention when you’re not used to it.  Kaya has been a hero and an assassin, she’s been a wanderer and a Planeswalker, but she’s never been socially accepted as “the bad guy.”  This is a pretty big adjustment for her.

It was uncomfortable enough that she was almost relieved when, on the morning of the third day, a messenger from the Agency came looking for her.

Third day, that’s her deadline.  But it’s the Agency, not Teysa.  Huh.

“Ma’am?” said the messenger, stopping a few feet away, virtually vibrating as he waited to be acknowledged.

Kaya took one last, lingering sip of her coffee before turning to face him, blinking when she saw his face. “Agent … Kellan? Why did they send you?”

Good golden retriever boy, just getting into everything.

“No, actually,” said Kellan. “He isn’t much on sharing his thoughts with other people when he doesn’t have to. No, it’s the chief who’d like to speak to you.”

So Ezrim wants to talk to Kaya.  We don’t know how he feels about Planeswalkers: that gives us a little bit of tension here, which is a nice thing to have.

“I’ve read your file. You’re not from here.” He waved a hand, indicating the city around them. “Ravnica, I mean. You came from someplace much farther away.”

“You’re allowed to say ‘Planeswalker,’ you know. It’s not a bad word,” said Kaya.

Kaya is starting to get a little frustrated with the way people are behaving about Planeswalkers.

Kellan looked briefly abashed. “Sorry. Yes. You’re a Planeswalker.”

“So is my father. I hoped you might … I wondered if you might know where he is.”

This is, pretty obviously, a formatting error.  Kellan is the speaker on both lines, and I’m not sure what happened.  Please read without the hard line break in the middle.

“Your father is—who’s your father?” Please don’t let him say a name I know, she added silently. Please, if there’s any mercy left in the Blind Eternities, he won’t name one of the dead.

“His name’s Oko,” he said. “He’s one of the fae.”

A stranger, then. “Sorry. Don’t know him.”

She could see the disappointment in his eyes even as the relief flowed through her.

Kaya would love to be able to help, but even more than that, she doesn’t want to help by saying “yeah, I watched him fall to biomechanical horrors beyond comprehension, his skin turning to metal and flowing away.  Sorry your dad’s a corpse, dude.”  And since she’s never met Oko, she isn’t flinching from the name for other reasons.  (Kellan’s father, Oko, is a fae troublemaker first seen on Eldraine, and kind of an asshole.  Most people who know him don’t like him.)

“You’re the second Planeswalker I’ve talked to who’s said that. I thought—well, the Agency has all sorts of information. I thought they might know something, if he’s ever passed through here.”

“And no luck?”

Kellan only shook his head. “The filing system is … complicated.”

That explains why Kellan’s working with the Agency.

The floating, angular shape of the Agency headquarters loomed in front of them. Streams of water cascaded from the base, falling into channels that had been designed to catch them before they could flood the streets. Agency mounts stood at the ready, ferrying agents up and down.

Fantasy architecture lets you get away with a lot of awesome things.

Kaya took a deep breath and stepped through the door, not bothering to open it first.

Kaya solves a lot of problems by charging straight through them.  It works out pretty well for her.

Ezrim’s office had been designed with his ever-present companion in mind. In addition to a massive desk and several traditional chairs for visitors, the back third or so of the space had been turned into something close to a stable, with straw on the floor under a heap of pillows that formed a sort of lounging chair. Not that Ezrim was currently lounging; the great archon was sitting on the back of his steed, twisted to face the desk, sorting a pile of papers. Kaya realized with a small start that she didn’t know whether Ravnican archons were a single conjoined being or a pair of individuals who simply chose to never be apart for any reason. She had never seen Ezrim dismounted nor any other archon of Ravnica knocked from their partners in combat. If they were one creature, this office was a symbol of practical necessity, not one of consideration.

Archons are found all across the multiverse, and their biology varies from plane to plane.  They don’t usually discuss their biology with outsiders, so Kaya’s confusion is entirely understandable.

“But you’re a well-known problem-solver. The Orzhov have always spoken highly of your problem-solving abilities.”

Somehow, she doubted the “always” in that sentence. Kaya smiled thinly and said, “Thank you, sir.”

Understand that in this context “problem-solver” means “source of horrible violence.”

“Because of your position as a former guild leader, the guilds will view you as largely neutral in this situation. You had no known grudges against either the Simic Combine or House Dimir.”

“No, sir. I get on reasonably well with both guilds.”

Kaya won’t be considered as neutral in matters regarding the Orzhov, but it’s uncertain which way she’d be assumed to lean—overly favorable, or overly harsh.  Politics on Ravnica are serious business.  Not seeming to give one guild an advantage over another is practically a full-time job.

“I would like you to assume leadership of this investigation. You would have access to any resources you need, including my staff, and I believe you would need some sort of lever to remove Detective Proft from the case. He doesn’t let go of a puzzle once his interest has been aroused. While the assassin Etrata has been detained, we still don’t know who ordered the killing, or why, and she continues to insist that she has no memory of the deed.”

Picture Proft hissing and clinging to a filing cabinet while someone tries to remove him with a crowbar.  You’re welcome.

“Your neutrality is assumed. Your involvement could only help to redeem public opinion of the Planeswalkers who couldn’t save us when we needed them most.”

So there’s the carrot.  It’s a pity that he doesn’t really have a stick.

“No. It’s a complete sentence, and you know what it means. No, I won’t help you with this. I’ve done more than enough already. Thank you for your concern about my reputation.”

Kaya is very much at the end of her fucks reserve, and is not being given the time to build up more.  This isn’t the first time we’ve seen her talk back to something bigger than she is, but it’s probably one of the bluntest.

The sooner she was out of Ravnica, the better.

So Kaya is planning to split as soon as Teysa misses her deadline.

The Agency had been established to investigate crimes without the bias of guild affiliation tainting their discoveries. Criminals, whether proven or strongly suspected, were remanded to Azorius custody to be held in appropriate conditions.

This is a very solid justification for the Agency, especially with the guilds weakened and out of sorts after the Invasion.  If you’re Gruul, you don’t want the Boros to have any authority over you.  Ditto if you’re Izzet and it’s the Azorius.  Doing things this way lets them at least pretend neutrality.

“Everything seems to be in order,” said the lawmage finally. Three layers of security had looked over Proft’s paperwork, none of them finding any issues. At least this one was too new to the guild to have overlapped his tenure. People who remembered him dressed in their own colors tended to be even more insufferable when confronted with what they saw as him begging them for access. “You can go in.”

I am wildly curious about Proft’s time with the guild.  What did he do, how did they handle his endless need to understand things, why did he leave?  Given that he seems to have departed after the Invasion, who did he lose?

Etrata’s cell was the only one occupied in this block, leaving her entirely isolated, save for her guards, none of whom were likely to indulge her in conversation. She looked up at Proft’s approach, abandoning what looked like the rapt contemplation of a spider that was making its way across the wall.

Sufficient boredom can make anything seem fascinating, including a spider just going about its business.

“I suppose. Come to gloat, have you? The victor reveling in his conquest?”

“I want to,” he admitted. “It has brought me pleasure in the past, the gloating. Gloating is the glass of bumbat the soul consumes when it succeeds. But this time … there are too many things I still can’t explain. Too many little inconsistencies, too many unanswered questions. I know your reputation.”

The gloat is a major part of any heist, and many, many mysteries.  For Proft to want to gloat makes sense, even as a relatively pleasant fellow.

“My point would be, the people who know about you speak very highly of your skills. You’re supposedly one of the best that House Dimir has to offer, the cream of their crop, as it were. Please, for the sake of my unsettled thoughts, will you tell me why you chose to kill such a prominent target in such a public way? Not to mention the theatrics surrounding the body. You had plenty of time to commit the murder and make your escape, but you remained on the grounds even before the wards were raised to prevent your exit. That isn’t the work of a professional. Why commit such a grievous crime in such a manner and not make your escape while you could?”

Proft asks the questions the rest of us can’t.

Proft was unfazed. “How were you able to trick the verity circles during your interview? If they’ve been defeated, the guilds need to know.”

And then he asks the questions the rest of us should.  Verity circles are supposed to be unimpeachable.  But Etrata’s guilt is still in question.  So how is she doing that?

Kaya walked back to her rented room with her head down and her shoulders tight, hating the feeling of eyes on her skin, hating the feeling of isolation from a city that should have been hers, that had been hers for so long. Gods and monsters; she was ready to go. This place wasn’t her home anymore. Maybe it had never been her home in the first place.

“Gods and monsters” is an exclamation Kaya’s been heard to use before, and presumably sources back to her home plane.

“Master Planeswalker,” he said, once he was close enough to address her without shouting.

Much like “Syr” on Eldraine, or “Guildmaster” here on Ravnica, this is an ungendered use of the word.  Assume it’s a translation issue if you must, but he’s not insulting her.

Even as she inwardly winced at the address, Kaya supposed it made sense. She wasn’t a guildmaster anymore, and the normal honorifics for a former Orzhov guild leader didn’t apply to her, since she wasn’t dead, either. Addressing her without respect could have been taken as a grave insult, and in the absence of any other role on Ravnica, he had defaulted to the one he knew. It was the safest choice. She didn’t have to like it.

Kaya is a known assassin, a former guild leader, and a Planeswalker.  She needs to be spoken to with respect, but how to do that is a little squishy.

“Guildmaster Karlov requests your presence at the manor.”

Teysa squeaking in under the wire.

“She was right about that.” Another method of avoiding insulting her. She was so tired of Ravnican manners. When she was done here, maybe she could go to Kaldheim for a while, where no one was worried about insulting anyone else, unless it was with a fist to the face. Or Innistrad. Far less etiquette and propriety involved. “Well, thank you for finding me so quickly.”

Kaldheim is Tyvar’s home plane, and very Norse-mythology-inspired.  Feasting halls and endless brawls, giant beasts to fight and Valkyries to tell you how brave you were afterward.  Innistrad, on the other hand, is a Vincent Price film without the censors, and with a modern special effects budget.  Manners aren’t a big focus when there’s a vampire trying to chew your ass.  It says something about Kaya’s mental state that these are the places she’s thinking of as relaxing.

She produced a coin from her pocket and passed it to the courier, who surreptitiously checked the value before he made it disappear.

Orzhov.  He would have been direly insulted if she didn’t pay him, even if she only gave him the Ravnican equivalent of a penny, and for all that she’s thinking about heading somewhere that manners don’t matter as much, she’s still following the rules.

No one stopped her as she hurried through the streets to Karlov Manor, and she found the gates already unlocked for her, the wards having been adjusted to allow her passage. The walk up the driveway seemed like the most intolerable part of her journey, needlessly long, designed only to impress and intimidate. As if the manor weren’t impressive enough entirely on its own merits. The topiary alone would send most thieves running, and the building seemed to loom, watching every step she took.

We gave the walk up to the manor a full paragraph to invoke those 1970s murder mysteries where the house loomed horribly over the landscape and it took forever for the detectives to get inside.  Atmosphere matters!

Kaya continued onward into the house, which had been left unlocked for her arrival. She looked around, half expecting Teysa to be waiting for her, but saw no sign of the other woman, or of her staff. The manor was eerily quiet, with no one in attendance or rushing to announce her.

Okay, now this is lousy opsec, and Kaya is going to have words with Teysa when she finds her.

The door to Teysa’s private parlor stood slightly ajar. Kaya moved toward it, hesitating for an instant when she caught the scent of blood in the air. That hesitation was more than balanced by the speed with which she threw herself at the door and into the room beyond, where she stopped, clapping a hand over her mouth to contain the scream she could feel building in her chest, and simply stared.

Kaya has fought in multiple battles, and one multiplanar war.  She’s known something was wrong since she entered the building, and the smell of blood just confirmed everything she didn’t want to suspect.  This is a horrible cruelty toward a woman who’s already reeling.

Teysa was there, sprawled on the floor next to the desk where she received visitors. She had been waiting for Kaya: that much was clear. Her eyes were still open, staring blankly at the ceiling, and the shattered shaft of her walking stick protruded from her chest, slick with blood. More of that same blood stained her hands, where she had tried to pull the makeshift spear out before she bled to death.

There’s no blood in the card image that accompanies this moment, and I have to assume that’s because cards need to be acceptable for ages thirteen and up—meaning the parents of ages thirteen and up, who might well frown on that much blood on a Magic card.  If you really miss it, find me at a MagicCon, and I’ll take a red Sharpie to your cardboard.

Oh, and Teysa is dead, and that sucks.

Teysa was gone. Knees threatening to buckle and drop her to the floor, Kaya staggered into the room, heading for the body of her friend. Death wasn’t the end, not for the Orzhov, but Teysa, for all her entanglements with the dead, had always been one of the most vitally alive people Kaya knew. And all that was over now. Another friend gone. Another body to bury.

Kaya has lost too many people in very short order.  She’s hanging on by a thread, and probably only doing as well as she is because Teysa is Orzhov, and thus virtually guaranteed to come back.  I wanted to stress, though, that being a ghost is not the same as being alive; something has been lost, even if Teysa appears tomorrow.  At least Kaya will still be able to smack her for her shitty opsec.

Something crunched under Kaya’s foot, stopping her. She looked down. One of the elegant maiden statues Teysa kept on display in the parlor had been knocked over in whatever altercation happened here and lay in pieces. That felt like a desecration of Teysa’s space to accompany the desecration of her body, and looking at it seemed easier than looking at her friend’s body. Kaya knelt, beginning to collect the ceramic shards.

I needed an excuse to get Kaya to interact with the statue.  Seeing it as an insult to Teysa’s memory fit the bill.

A piece of paper was buried among the mess. Kaya frowned, setting what she’d gathered aside as she picked it up carefully then froze again, her chest tightening as the world narrowed to a single point. She could hear her heart hammering in her ears, the rushing of her blood like the sound of a distant sea, and if it hadn’t been for Teysa’s wards, she would have dropped straight through the floor, losing control of her phasing in the face of her panic.

Kaya, who is very much dealing with PTSD all through this story, is having a panic attack.  I love the image of Teysa’s wards holding her up as much as they were shutting her out.  Teysa is still supporting her, even now.

The writing was clearly Teysa’s. Kaya knew the little smear at the bottom of each line. The script, however …

The script was Phyrexian.

It all comes back to the Invasion, in the end.

Kaya breathed harder and harder, hand closing convulsively around the note and wrinkling it. She couldn’t leave. Teysa was dead, Teysa might have been working with Phyrexia, and she couldn’t leave. She had to go back to Ezrim. She had to tell him she was in this after all.

She always had been.

Kaya was foolish to think she could ever run away from Ravnica.  She has too many entanglements there.  And if Teysa was compromised, she needs to stay and take back her guild.

“I didn’t,” said Etrata.

Proft frowned. “But when you were questioned within the verity circle, you said you didn’t kill her.”

Hopping back to our other conversation already in progress.  The question: “how did you trick the verity circles?”  The answer is…complicated.

“Because I didn’t.” Etrata tilted her head back until it hit the wall. “I snuck into the party because House Dimir needed someone to be our eyes, and it seemed like an amusing evening. I had no targets. I had no assignments. I had a plate of those meat-filled pastries with the cheese on top. They were lovely.”

Teysa really did put together an incredible spread.

“Didn’t you get to try them? I’m sorry.” Etrata seemed to decide to stop toying with him then. She sighed and said, “If I killed her, I don’t remember it. I didn’t come there to kill anyone, and I don’t assassinate for free.”

“You didn’t …” Proft paused, mind whirling.

Etrata is a professional.  She doesn’t kill people without a contract in hand and money in her pockets.  For her to have killed Zegana for free would be an insult to her profession, and would also have interfered with getting more of those little pastries she liked so much.

Ravnican law was very clear: if mind control or magic had been used to force Etrata’s actions, she was no more culpable than a knife. She might be the weapon, but she wasn’t the killer. The case remained open. The puzzle remained unsolved.

One nice thing about Ravnica: we’ve been there enough that there is actually established Ravnican law, and this is one of those fun twists that makes sense for a place with mind-control magic.  You can’t take a knife to trial.  Looks like you can’t take Etrata, either.

“Will you help me clear your name?”

Etrata looked at him. “The guilds need their pound of flesh. There is no clearing my name.”

A very realistic approach.

“Swear you’ll help me,” said Proft insistently.

“You can’t fix this.”

“I am Alquist Proft, and I will risk my name to clear yours. Now swear.”

Etrata blinked, then frowned. “As much as I can, you have my word.”

I think this is the moment where it becomes truly clear that Proft cares more about solving the mystery than doing whatever the guilds say is “the right thing,” and may explain why he left the Senate in the first place.  He wants answers and solutions, not politics and strict legalities.

“Then come, we have work to do.” He made a few simple motions, twisting his fingers through the air, and the lock on her cell sprang open with a click. “Pff. Only a quadroanarchic theory-lock? They’re getting sloppy.” He straightened his cufflinks. “You’re a trained assassin. You can get out of here without being seen.”

…but he’s still a smug jerk sometimes, who thinks way too highly of his own skills.

Slowly, her frown became a smile. “And where am I going?”

“My home,” he said and gave her the address. “I’ll see you there.”

Etrata nodded before stepping out of the cell and melting into the shadows.

Yes, Proft, invite the Dimir assassin home for coffee, that never ends poorly, and your opsec isn’t even worse than Teysa’s.

Proft turned to go, fixing a look of irritation on his face. “I was promised a prisoner,” he said loudly, striding toward the door. “Not an empty cell.”

The chaos that followed would allow them both to make their exits.

One thing Proft knows how to do: set the fox among the chickens.  He’s creating enough chaos that Etrata will be able to get away, and while he might get verity circle-d, she’ll be free and he’ll be able to invoke the “can’t blame the knife” law.  So either he gets out clean to begin his investigation, or he assures her freedom.  Either way, a good day’s work.

Catch you for episode four!