Athelas’ nostrils flared slightly in distaste. “It strikes me that it would be very much better to betake myself to the halls as you did while I was engaged in dealing with your merman. You might have some time to yourself with him.”

  “I don’t want time to myself with him,” YeoWoo said, her head jerking back a little.

  Still, it wouldn’t be a bad idea, after all, to spend some time talking with Marazul tomorrow during the time set aside for coming to agreements. He undoubtedly had a lot of inside knowledge of the café, and even if he couldn’t directly help, he might be persuaded to indirectly help. She wouldn’t take him into her confidence, but she might try to press him for information.

  She couldn’t help saying, “I don’t see how you’re going to freely wander around the halls. They’ll think it very odd if you do it a couple of days after I’ve been doing it.”

  “I see no reason why I shouldn’t wear a glamour while I do so.”

  “You want to pretend to be me?” said YeoWoo, grasping the idea at once.

  “It occurred to me that it might be a good idea. They appear to have accepted the notion of you pushing the boundaries, being what and who you are.”

  “You can’t,” she said flatly. “Because if you did that, you’d have to be glamouring me to look like you, and you wouldn’t be able to keep up the glamour on me as soon as you got a few too many steps away from the room.”

  “That,” he said gently, “is only a problem if someone enters the room while you are working. And it will not be a problem for me.”

  YeoWoo gave a short laugh. “I don’t know what else I expected,” she said.

  “Such a hurtful thing,” Athelas said meditatively, “when people think the worst of one. Do you not agree?”

  “It’s only hurtful when it isn’t true,” she retorted, nettled.

  “I beg to differ, my dear. I would have said that it stings particularly when there is some truth to it.”

  “What am I supposed to do about the negotiations while you’re away?” YeoWoo demanded, ignoring that particular gambit. “It’s all very well for you to be off looking for your own leads, but you agreed to do the work negotiating this contract between me and Marazul. You had better not be trying to get out of it.”

  “Not at all, my dear,” he said. “If you find yourself too much concerned, I will of course venture to set down some notes, and I’ll be sure to check the agreements when I get back.”

  “The contract isn’t my real work,” YeoWoo said coldly. “It’s the ruse. Don’t forget that we have an agreement, even if we are working together on the same job. I won’t.”

  Despite what Athelas had said, YeoWoo had no real idea either of going to see Marazul, or of encouraging him to make himself useful in any untoward way. It was something of a surprise, then, to find herself in the subway when she separated from Athelas, and riding line 2 toward the Dongdaemun History and Culture Park stop. She could have remined on the line for long enough to change to line 5 and go directly home, but YeoWoo also found herself stepping off the train; she had made it all the way to the contract café before it seemed as though she ought to stop and think about what she was doing.

  YeoWoo didn’t like stopping and thinking about things, so she simply swept down the stairs, through the café itself, and didn’t stop for the receptionist. He came trotting after her anyway, waving his arms and puffing and desperately trying not to pant as he kept up with her while requesting to know what he could help her with.

  She had expected as much, and said shortly, “I want to see the merman. I have exactly half an hour to spare and I don’t choose to waste it.”

  “This way, my lady!” gasped the receptionist, and led her through the hallways.

  He didn’t have to take her very far; there was an open doorway through which YeoWoo could smell food and sweat even with her human nose, and through which a babble of sound proceeded. It was the café’s staff mess hall, no doubt.

  YeoWoo approached the door, then made a shooing motion at the receptionist. He didn’t seem to like that, but he obeyed without question and left, and YeoWoo glided majestically into the midst of the mess hall, throwing a glance around.

  There were perhaps twenty staff members eating, despite the late hour. They saw her; they ignored her. Nobody would bother her until she approached them—and they would all assiduously avoid eye contact until then. No doubt they were each hoping she wouldn’t speak to them.

  Marazul was in sight but separated from the others by a waist-height wall that had been turned into a long trough in which a line of trees grew. He didn’t see her, and she saw him just early enough to draw back to the cover of the trees. He was engaged in something with one of his little tablet computers, and although he threw a glance at the mess hall from time to time, he seemed engrossed in his work.

  YeoWoo, always willing to take someone by surprise, softly stole around the trees and approached him from the side. So engrossed was he in his tablet that he didn’t see or sense her looking curiously over his shoulder as a video played across the screen in shades of blue and red. It took YeoWoo a little while to realise that he was watching a recording that had been sent to him via some sort of messenger. The label said simply, Interrogation Room 5, and showed a contract in what was no doubt an enforcer’s interrogation room. A second person sat with them, but as the contract on the screen spoke silently, she saw them curl in on themselves, as if with pain. The second occupant of the room, whose mouth had been moving the entire time—a contract breaker, YeoWoo was rather sure, working hard to ensure the safety of the contract as well as a long enough life to get the information the enforcers required—leaned forward and seemed to speak faster, as if they supposed their effort was lacking.

  It did no good: as YeoWoo watched, her nose involuntarily wrinkling, an unseen force pushed itself out of the contract’s chest and peeled outward, flaying the skin from flesh, and then the flesh from bone, in ever expanding curls of meat and skin. Within half a minute, the contract who had been sitting in the middle of the room had been reduced to a mass of blood and bone, the contract breaker beside them shell-shocked and painted red.

  This, thought YeoWoo grimly, was a warning.

  “That’s not the sort of thing you should be watching at dinner time,” she said, and Marazul jumped compulsively, the tablet dropping from his fingers.

  When he saw it was her, he seemed flustered, and just a little darker about the cheeks than usual. “You’re alone today,” he said.

  “I’m often alone,” she said, and sat down across the table from the merman. “Who is sending you videos like that? The den mother? Does she warn people randomly, or does she particularly suspect you of something?”

  Marazul cleared his throat and seemed to lean forward just a little on his arms, which were perched, not on the table, but half on the pile of tablets, papers, and miscellanea, and half on the table. He wasn’t looking at them—was rather desperately not looking at them, in fact, thought YeoWoo, narrowing her eyes at him—and his chest rose and fell too quickly. He was not still affected by the scenes in the video he had been watching, she was sure; there was something else that was causing him stress.

  “Some of the workers think it’s funny to make us watch things like that,” he said. “They’ve probably been watching and laughing at me.”

  “Nobody I saw was laughing,” YeoWoo said.

  Marazul’s heightened colour and fast breathing had nothing to do with her, either—or at least, not in a romantic sense. She had caught him in the middle of something that he didn’t want her to know about.

  She leaned back in her chair, grinning a sharp, unamused grin at Marazul. Her first priority had switched from being the sea nymph under discipline to the human girl whose mother had sold her, and although YeoWoo would still speak with the nymph if at all possible, there were other ways to get what she and Peregrine wanted. If she had caught Marazul doing something untoward, questioning him would be less of a dangerous risk, and more of a calculated act of blackmail that was unlikely to come back to haunt her. It would be considerably riskier for Marazul himself, however.

  And she had certainly caught Marazul doing something untoward. If YeoWoo was not very much mistaken, the thin, almost unnoticeable white cord that tried to hide itself against the wall into which it was plugged, and that ran across the floor to vanish behind the table at which they sat, was also plugged into something that Marazul was currently concealing with his folded arms.

  YeoWoo stood, swiftly and silently, and moved around the table to pinch the white cord between her fingers. Marazul’s hands moved quickly to unplug the cord from whichever device it was joined to, but she caught his hands between hers, pinching hard and fast so that the small tablet he had plugged into the wall of the café shook free from the cord and clattered down into the middle of the table, screen up.

  On that screen, YeoWoo could see a familiar kind of spreadsheet that formed what she would have called an account book if it had been in physical form. Those columns were money in and out, with little red tags that showed receipts, and the one that was highlighted was a transfer done just minutes ago, into an account that simply proclaimed itself Insurance.

  YeoWoo stared at it, and then at him. Marazul’s face was far too still, his eyes fixed on the wall opposite as if he was trying desperately to think of a way—any way—to explain the position in which he had been caught.

  “What are you doing with the system in here?” she asked. She felt as though she was finally beginning to enjoy this investigation.

  Marazul’s chin firmed, and he snatched up the tablet and shoved it into his top pocket. “It’s just routine maintenance.”

  YeoWoo, with a tickle of interest, found that she knew exactly what that meant.

  Whatever else might be the disadvantages attached to giving away too much to Marazul, she wouldn’t have to worry about him spilling anything to the den mother or anyone else. It was also unlikely that she would have to blackmail him—Marazul was undoubtedly setting himself up to profit from the café by the time he was free, but there was a deeply rebellious, mulish streak to him that she wouldn’t have guessed could be there based on their past interactions. She had thought him careful, slightly bashful, and likely to be flighty; she hadn’t expected that he might have the ability—not to mention the stomach—to try to double-cross a contract business for his own gain.

  “I’m not going to tell the den mother,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “Why should I? I don’t care what you’re planning on stealing from this place. I’ll only care if you try to steal from me.”

  Almost bitterly, he said, “I’m not the one stealing in this place. Even if I was, it wouldn’t ever touch the way lives are stolen here every day.”

  “Ah,” said YeoWoo, nodding, “I had heard that some of the contracts here aren’t as…voluntary as they’re supposed to be.”

  Marazul’s eyes rose to meet hers, startled. “That’s not something I can…talk about,” he said. His eyes flicked over to the other occupants of the room. “You just saw why. Even if they can’t hear what we’re saying, the bond always knows.”

  “Your contract, for instance,” she said, ignoring him. “I suppose it’s a normal sort of contract?”

  He opened and closed his mouth, then said, “I can’t talk about that, either.”

  “Yes, I saw that,” she said. “This café is very…close-mouthed about its contracts—especially after they leave.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, and it seemed to YeoWoo that he was more disconsolate about the fact than she was.

  “You’re a contract already,” she said. “What sort of agreement do you have with the café? Copy that down for…contract purposes, and I’ll have a look at it to see if it can be worked on for us.”

  Marazul looked up as though the words had shocked him, then opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, and looked down again to scribble furiously.

  YeoWoo watched him curiously, wondering if he had been about to answer her question and had found he couldn’t do that either, or if he had simply thought better of doing so. When he finished scribbling and shoved the paper across the table at her, she was rather certain that it had been the first.

  In legal terms, it said simply that he as her contract would not be permitted to discuss his contract with anyone, that he was not permitted to either speak to, or write down and send any information associated with her and her work, to anyone directly unaffiliated with her, for the purposes of satisfying any curiosity, question, or interrogation.

  “Would this be suitable?” he asked, his eyes fixed on her.

  “We’ll see,” said YeoWoo. “So if we sign this contract, you would not be able to tell anyone what your agreement with me was, or discuss any information whatsoever about how I run my business, useful or otherwise, with anyone. You also couldn’t write it down and give it to someone to read to explain your situation. This would be on pain of death.”

  “You have a very useful way with words,” he said, his eyes on her with an expectant look in them. “You’ve got it exactly right. I have…I have a very useful way with words, too. Using computers helps me look at things in different ways.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping for,” said YeoWoo, enjoying being absolutely honest. She didn’t forget that a single slip was all it would take to reduce Marazul to the same kind of mess she had seen in the video on his tablet, but she still felt lighter, despite that. “I want to ask some difficult questions here and elsewhere in the café, and being useful with words makes things much easier.”

  “You can’t trust anyone in this place,” he said, shrugging one shoulder as if disappointed by her reply. “I can’t, either. I want to, but I can’t.”

  “You shouldn’t trust anyone,” YeoWoo said, with a sniff of laughter. “Especially in a place like this. Why would you want to?”

  His eyes met hers and dropped. “It’s not everyone,” he said. “Just…every now and then there’s someone I’d like to be able to trust. Or maybe I wish that in the past I’d been someone who could be trusted.”

  “You can’t do anything about the past,” said YeoWoo, rather roughly. So that was where the mulish streak came from—somewhere in Marazul’s past, there was a person he had been too flighty for. “You can only do something about what you’re going to do today.”

  “I get the feeling,” said Marazul slowly, “that you want me to do something specific today.”

  “I want you to answer some questions,” she said again. “That’s all.”

  “I won’t be able to answer most of them,” he said. “If they’re the sort of thing I’m thinking of. And even the ones I am able to answer probably won’t be safe for me to answer.”

  “Humans,” YeoWoo said, watching his face. “I want to know if you’ve seen a lot of them lately.”

  He gazed at her in silence for some moments, and YeoWoo was aware regretfully that it wasn’t the silence of a contract who was Compelled not to speak. She dropped her gaze to the papers that were before him, pinned under his folded arms, and nipped them out from under the others.

  “This is the proposal you’ve prepared for tomorrow?” she asked, brandishing it at him. “For terms and conditions of employment during the contract period?”

  Marazul, confusion on his face, nodded slowly, as if he was afraid to be tricked into the wrong answer.

  YeoWoo sliced her finger slightly on a tooth, pressed the finger to the contract without so much as looking at it, and shoved it back across the table, leaving Marazul staring at her with his mouth open.

  “There,” she said. “All your terms are accepted. You’re my contract now, with all jobs to be completed under your terms. Any leverage you built into them is all yours. I just want you to answer a few questions now and then.”

  For once, YeoWoo felt that she had been thinking several steps ahead, not unlike Athelas, and the thought troubled her. She wasn’t planning on taking advantage of the merman in any real way, but she certainly wasn’t planning on fulfilling the bargain she had made, either: a successful raid on the contract café would invalidate any contract made under its aegis.

  “You can’t do that!” he said.

  She shrugged. She had already done the thing, and it was ridiculous to say that she couldn’t do it when she had done it.

  Marazul stared down at the paper with its swiftly drying bloody print, and then said with a quiet exultation that startled her, “I knew it! You’re not here to make a bargain with me—you’re here to try to do something about this place, aren’t you? Ever since you said you had other work to do and disappeared into the halls, I knew you were here to make trouble.”

  “No you didn’t,” YeoWoo said flatly. “You saw I was working with Athelas, so you can’t have.”

  The merman hesitated, then said, “I don’t think a lot of the Steward, but the funny thing about him is that he seems to travel and work with people who really are good.”

  “I’m not good,” she reminded him. “I’m here to do a job and get some information I was promised. I am going to bring down the entire café, though.”

  Marazul didn’t contradict her, but he did look mulish once again. He asked, “Why pick me?”

  “You looked like a useful person,” she said truthfully.

  “You know I can’t help you.”

  “I know you probably can’t help me directly,” she said. “But I’m not going to ask you about how the café runs the business. I can find that out from contracts who haven’t yet signed a personal bond.”

  “None of them will talk,” Marazul said, and as she watched, a cloud came over his face. “Not while the den mother is still around. You shouldn’t be—you shouldn’t have told me any of this.”

  “Why?” asked YeoWoo. “You don’t have to tell the den mother anything—not unless you want to—and I don’t think you want to. I’m not asking you to do anything against them; I’m the one who’s going to be doing something.”