“Murder is quite in vogue at the moment. But then I suppose it’s never really left the mainstream, has it? True crime always tops the charts.” Chit Barnes began dealing a set of cards around the table. He gave my brother a very meaningful look as he spoke, with eyes of a pale and wholly unnatural green. They were also extremely bloodshot, tears lingering at the corners. He wiped his sleeve against his face again. “Everyone wants to solve one. Everyone wants to get away with one. But we all know a perfect murder is harder than it looks, especially with enterprising gentlemen such as yourselves around to investigate.”

“I don’t think those contact lenses are doing you any good, man. You should really see an optometrist.” I said, peering at my cards and setting them aside. It seemed like a decent hand, but you can never be sure until you pass the opening of the game.

“No one asked for your opinion, Dylan.” Chit replied. His hand went towards his jacket, fingers no doubt itching to press the record button on his phone. “I, on the other hand, am actively requesting one. Surely a few of the Neville detective agency’s most unsolvable, inexplicable cases could be brought into the light for the benefit of an adoring public?”

My brother didn’t even look up from the chess pieces he was arranging. Pretty much all of the other players seemed equally exasperated. Even Onomi, and that took real skill to induce in her. She was a woman of laughing eyes and round cheeks and an endless supply of apple crumble and hot chocolate she could summon to hand for anyone she met. Provided they weren’t on the opposite side on one of her court cases, naturally.

“Chit, come on.” She snapped. “We’re not here to talk about work. And even if we were, why single him out like this?”

The journalist then tried to bluster out one of his standard answers for these situations. (Hint: it involved a lot of uses of the word ‘outreach’). The woman beside Onomi smiled and shuffled her hand of cards over and over. I’d always had a hunch Felice made herself look older than she was. She had faint worry lines etched out on her face. Her white hair was cut close to her scalp, with it standing out sharp against her dark skin. And yet there was a kind of nobility set in those high cheekbones, the kind that has nothing to do with family and everything to do with you.

“Chit didn’t have to single out Ryan, you know.” Felice pointed out, setting her cards down and picking up her chess pieces. “Detectives are hardly the only ones who deal with killings, after all. I myself would have a thing or two to say about unsolvable crimes, and Onomi, well…” The two of them smiled at each other, opposites in the same way as perfectly fitting puzzle pieces, “…she’s probably forgotten more about it than you’ve ever learned.”

Chit seemed chastened by this answer. Or at least unsettled enough by it to keep his mouth shut for the next few minutes. The game was starting anyway, and Republic of Rue always demands concentration in the opening moves. What can I say about it that isn’t immediately obvious to a spectator? It can turn from a toddler’s stratagems to a grandmaster’s in the space of seconds. It’s a frenetic mishmash of a hundred different games and a thousand different rulesets. In fact, that’s kind of the point.

Take this stage, for instance. We were playing it with a plastic chessboard and a floppy deck of cards. You might think this kind of flexibility would lend itself to a breezy, easygoing player base. And you wouldn’t be too wrong in that. So long as you overlook the occasional knifing.

This match turned out to be more subdued than most. Ryan played slowly and more cautiously than usual, no doubt because he’d gotten a terrible hand of cards. Felice and Onomi on the other hand spurned their usual alliance, huddling in their strongholds and slowing the game all the way down to a crawl. All that strategizing had given me time to think about our opening conversation. Something about it kept bothering me.

I pushed two pieces forward in an ambassador’s play. “You know, aren’t a lot of murders perfect to begin with?”

Everyone’s heads snapped towards me, concentration instantly broken. They didn’t look too happy about it. “What?” Chit asked. Had he already forgotten his own question? I forged ahead anyway. “I mean, think about it. If a perfect murder is one where the killer gets off scot-free, and you compare that with the national conviction rates…”

Onomi frowned, pushing her rook onto the central board. “That’s not really a good yardstick to use in this, dear. Why, the countries with the highest conviction rates tend to be the ones that pick and choose only the most open-and-shut cases to take to court. Not the best way to run a legal system.” She sighed, with a rather personal gleam of bitterness in her eyes.

“Oh come on, that just proves my point. And this isn’t even taking into account all the cases that never go to trial. Every person who just disappears off the map and is just never seen again…”

Chit rubbed at his face with a napkin, his scowl deepening further. “You know that’s not what I meant. I meant cleverness, ingenuity, flawlessly executed plans!” He leaned forward to wag an admonishing finger a few inches from my nose. “And don’t you go and lecture me on how I’m ‘trivializing crime’, and all that nonsense. I deal with enough hypocrites on my day job to have any patience for them here.”

That last bit cut deeply. A lot more so than I liked. I was trying to muster up a response when Ryan spoke for the first time. He’d spent his turn laying out all of his chess pieces and half of his cards. Knowing him he was either implementing a suicide manuever or preparing for utter and glorious victory.

“There’s nothing wrong with finding crime interesting, Mr. Barnes.” My brother said, cool grey eyes meeting drippy green ones. “Wouldn’t I know that better than anyone? But I find it interesting in the same way people find lichen interesting, or sandstone formations. It’s a part of nature, even if just human nature, and it doesn’t do to paint it as any more than what it is. And the truth is that human violence it still mostly a quite straightforward affair. The people who mess it up are the ones who overcomplicate it.”

“All right then, say you want to kill me – ”

“I’d hire someone else to do it,” Ryan said immediately. “The fact I’m a professional detective does not make me a professional murderer. It’s not like I don’t have access to those channels, or am unable to cover up my trail. You’d probably end up shot in the head in the back of a ditch. They’d wear gloves, use bullets that can’t be traced. Most importantly of all, that person would have almost nothing to do with you. And that gives most detectives very little data from which to start an investigation.”

Felice snorted, shaking her head with amusement. The sound made Ryan glance over at her with one of his ever-watchful stares, almost completely expressionless. " ‘I would hire a contractor’ is an answer you could provide to almost any problem you could name, Mr. Neville. And like all contractors, there’s countless problems that can happen when you don’t hire people in-house.”

I can’t read people the same way he can, so it’s hard to say for sure, but I thought the answer he wanted to give her was: You’d know that, wouldn’t you? Felice slapped down all her cards, signaling her surrender, and the game continued.

Chit echoed her statement a few minutes later, and added some more mutterings under his breath about cheating the question. Ryan frowned at him.

“You asked a question, and I answered honestly. But fine. Like I said, getting away with murder isn’t overly complicated.” With the hand still holding his cards, he pointed his thumb at me. “Say I wanted to kill him, for instance.”

I raised my glass in acknowledgement. “Aw, so you do care.”

He smirked. “Well, I can’t say the plan deserves the compliment. I’d probably pick somewhere a bit rural. A vacation house, maybe, out of the purview of most satellites. Out of reach of most people, too, though in the right circumstances a bystander can be quite useful.”

“What, for like alibis?”

“Too finicky.” He said, wrinkling his nose. “I was thinking in more indirect terms. My point is, picking the right accident to kill someone with is easier than it seems. It could be as simple as climbing up a hill on a windy day and shoving you off the ledge. Who’s to say the wind didn’t do it?”

Chit kept his arms crossed in a sulk, only moving them for his turn at the board. “Everyone would know you did it, then.”

“Oh, certainly. That would probably be something to consider, even if I hired a contract killer to do it for me. I’d be suspected for life, and quite rightly, just on the virtue of being a family member. But if you can’t prove it, well.” He shrugged.

I stared down at the table. Felice leaving the game had changed matters considerably. It meant Ryan no longer had a buffer from which he could continue his plotting, and my own fortifications were now under attack. I sighed and placed my double King out in the open. It was an obvious trap, and easily passed over, but maybe it was so obvious everyone else would suspect further machinations and not come near at all. Some hope.

“So long as you don’t have an obvious motive, I’m sure you could get away with almost any 'accident,'" I said. “But of course that’s not possible.”

Onomi yawned. She still looked rather annoyed at the whole turn of conversation, which I suppose was understandable; she probably had the largest workload out of any of us. Listening to this couldn’t be the best way to relax.

“Anyone can have a motive for anything.” She told me savagely. “If you still think otherwise, then you haven’t seen the sheer depth of crazy this world still has to offer.”

“I suppose that’s another way to look at this.” Ryan said. “A perfect murder can’t be just one where no one can prove you did it. It has to be one where no one even suspects that you did.” He sighed, an almost scholarly note of admonishment in his voice. “Most people mess up the former in their attempts to ensure the latter, enough that it might actually be worth taking a deeper look into how and why. Perhaps if you’re not overly intrigued by the subject, Mr. Barnes, I might publish my own article.”

“Whatever. I can’t imagine by your definition— ”

“I can think of at least one case that might help clarify things .” Felice said. She was lying back in her chair, sipping delicately from her wine glass and overseeing the proceedings with an owl’s slow and steady eye. She sniffed at her glass and drank some more. “If any of you still aren’t sure about the work I do, I’m a diplomat.”

My brother raised an eyebrow. “Of the particularly diligent kind?”

Chit chuckled. “You can’t slap lipstick on a pig and call it a lady, Fell. Go on, tell us your spy story.”

“Very well, then. Your point, Ryan, is about how many people get away with their crimes because the letter of the law doesn’t have the evidence to convict them.” She glanced over at Onomi beside her. “Now I’m not saying there isn’t a reason such rules exist. I’m saying that you can’t always rely on their existence.

“Sometimes a man dies, and the suspects are faced with the presumption of guilt. Where innocence has to be proven, or it’s likely that powerful people will decide that it’s not worth the risk to keep them alive.” She drained her glass, a faint few drops of purple liquid remaining on the bottom, and set it down on the table. “Such cases are the ones that demand perfection. Not even a hint of suspicion coming down on the culprit. And there is one such incident, a long time ago, which seemed impossible to all who had accomplished it. The death of a… king, let’s say, or someone close enough to one.” She looked over at Ryan, her smile widening slightly. “But as you all pointed out so rightly, I am not a detective. Perhaps if I tell you the story, what was impossible to me would be clear as day to you.”

I rolled my eyes, grabbing a pair of dice off the side and rolling them to make my Hail Mary play. They clattered onto the center of the table, turning up two shiny little black dots. “Can’t say that sounds too interesting to me. Anyone can make up an unsolvable question. Hell, I could probably come up with something like that on the spot. It’s easy, so long as you don’t have to know the answer.”

Felice nodded. “Ah, but I do know the answer. It was found through a diary, discovered long after the perpetrator was dead. It would be fairly safe to say that he got away with it.”

“My brother does have a point, you know.” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair and studying his cards. “I can hardly tell you whether I or anyone else could have solved a problem or not without being able to collect evidence. I can hardly go there to look for clues now, can I? But – ” He paused, looking around the room, “I suppose there’s no harm in listening, is there?”

Felice pushed her chair back and stood, brushing off her sleeves, and stepped into a nearby room. “I don’t mind you taking this down, Chit.” She called as we heard pages turning, the creaking of bookshelves and more general signs of rummaging. “I’ll be changing most of the names, anyway. Of course,” She said rather ruefully, coming out with a book in hand, “people in the know will realize what you’re referencing the second they read it. It’s too distinctive, that’s the problem.”

Everyone glanced over at the book, though none of us stopped the game to do so. Most of my fellow players were near-constant multitaskers by necessity, and my game strategy was working better than expected. It would be a shame to let this opportunity slip, no matter how good the story was. The book was bound in plain black leather, with yellowed pages and a fine layer of dust over the surface. But some instinct grown from years spent in libraries told me it wasn’t old as it looked. Something about the leather, maybe.

I looked up at Felice. “You sure those important people won’t do something nasty to you for talking about this now?”

She waved away the warning with elegant, manicured fingers. “Like I said, most of the people involved have been dead for a while. If anything, I’m probably being a little too paranoid here.” She smiled in jest, although this time it didn’t reach her eyes.

“All of this went down in the early 2010s, though it’s best we don’t nail it down to a single year. Or even a single continent, for that matter. Because the circumstances here are far more common than they should be.

I called the murdered man a king, because he always wished to be proclaimed one, to be worshipped at the same shrine as the ancient rulers of his nation. But no matter how much power he built around himself, he never quite found the courage to give himself the title. He was overbearing and cruel to all those who lived under his shadow. But he was always polite to me. Always gracious. I can’t tell you how rare that is, especially in that part of the world. No matter how powerful the forces behind you may be, some people will always see you as just the messenger.

“Now our king was a man of habit, entrenched in his country’s culture to the point of obsession. He worshipped in temples all over the country. But it was one little place, one he prayed at just before he threw out the previous dictator and took power, that kept his fascination. It was perched on this tiny little cliff in the middle of nowhere. No way to get to it except through this isthmus – ”

“This what?” Chit said.

I tried to form the shape with my hands and failed. “It’s like a tiny, narrow strip of land running between two bigger ones.” It was the kind of geography that came up often in history books. Many a battle was decided by who had to cross one of them, and who was waiting on the other side.

Felice looked mildly impressed, like a teacher getting the right answer from the back of the class. “Very good, Dylan. And this was a narrower isthmus than most. You can see why this would make the place tricky to travel to. Now, this king was obsessed with the relic at the center of the temple. I don’t even remember what it was. Some kind of knucklebone? That’s what the place was named after. In any case, he was convinced its blessing was the secret to his success.”

Ryan rolled the dice and threw down another two cards, adding to his defenses. “So he wanted to keep it to himself.” He said it flatly, without even the hint of a question.

“He did. Threw out all the caretakers of the temple, to start with, and began a yearly tradition of spending a week out there alone. You wouldn’t look at the man and think he was much for meditation, but he never failed to show up there. As you can imagine, security there was of the highest concern. He kept a contingent of guards with him, but after one of them tried to turn on him he became even more paranoid. He got a security system built around the temple, completely automated and top-notch.”

“Any system man can craft can be uncrafted. Just because it would be difficult to overcome the system undetected does not make it impossible.” Onomi observed, her voice rather dry. She didn’t sound very invested in all this, but then perhaps she’d heard this story before.

“You’re not the first to point that out.” Felice said with a nod. “And believe me, it was brought up in a thousand ways. But I ask you all to keep the interruptions to a minimum. I don’t want to miss any pertinent details.” She turned a page of her notebook and continued. “Now, the king accused the contractor who built the system of being a thief and executed him. That was… quite an unexpected headache to deal with. He wasn’t usually that rash, especially when dealing with foreign nationals. That and a few other suspicious deaths made me presume the king was taking out anyone he thought knew too much about the system.

“Was it excessive for a place the man spent only a week in every year? Certainly. He never went to such lengths for his primary residence. But it was all tied up in how he viewed the place. Perhaps he thought being killed there would damn his soul for eternity. Perhaps the annual meditation retreats made him especially paranoid. For at least a few years, he always spent the week completely alone, cooking his meals, cleaning the floors, everything. And he never let anyone visit there when he was gone, either.

“But as rulers do as they age, the king soon began to think about his heirs. As these people do, he had many children. Only three sons, though. He couldn’t decide which one he wanted to have as a successor, always a surefire path to a civil war. So every year, he took one of them inside the temple with him for the week.”

Ryan nodded. “So I’m guessing those three were the only ones given security access?”

“Yep. They had to go through fingerprint, retinal scanners, the full package. But the king apparently thought that if his little sacred getaway was attacked, it was probably best that his chosen heir for the week could escape.”

“So you thought at the time only one of them could have taken him down.” I said. “Pretty standard fare. And speaking of family betrayals, Ryan, what the hell?” He had single-handedly demolished my fortifications. Unless I chose surrender, the rest of my turns would be mostly spent waiting for the end.

“Someone else would have done it anyway.” My brother replied, heartless as always. “No amount of strategy can compensate when your tell is so obvious. See, there you’re doing it again.” I jerked my hand away from my ring, scowling. How many times had I been twisting at it this evening? It couldn’t be that many. “We should probably let Felice finish her story, shouldn’t we?”

“You all certainly should.” She said primly, turning another page in her notebook. “Now, all three sons – let’s call them A, B and C – had gone to the temple with their father more than once. But some were taken more often than others. A, the eldest and at the time still the legal heir, had quarreled with the king and hadn’t gone across the isthmus in about five years at that point. B had gone the previous year and was actually residing in a nearby town at the time, under the protection and supervision of the king’s guard.

“C, a boy of seventeen, had just been recovering from a rather bad sickness, so there was some concern about leaving him alone for a week with only his elderly father as a companion. But C insisted. By all accounts, the two of them were quite close. Now all of the king’s security was situated across the isthmus, a fair distance away from the compound. Yet they did have surveillance on the building from all sides, including from the sea—although if you saw the cliff, you’d understand just how remote the chances were that someone could enter the building by that route. But it just so happened that on the evening after the king and C went in, a terrible storm swept across the shore. It disrupted most communications in the area. It was powerful enough that there were real warnings that the cliff and the entire compound would crumble into the sea. But the king insisted through the one radio call that went through that he would stay. That the storm was a test of his faith, nothing more.

“These were the last words his staff heard from him. When the storm cleared the next morning, C came out of the building alone. The boy had to use his cane to step out, for the weather had only worsened his condition. We were told that the king was dead.”

"'We,' huh?" Chit cut in. His voice was hoarse and trembling slightly, his eyes still red around the edges, but he’d finally decided to take off his contact lenses. The glare he gave her now was copper bright and filled with anger. “You weren’t just there as another diplomat, were you? You were probably right there, acting as one of his little watchdogs. Only difference is you had more money at your back.”

Felice looked around the table. “I suppose you all have a good idea of who this king was, then. Hmph. I thought I’d obscured most of the more obvious details, but a family crisis of succession isn’t as common as it used to be.” She drummed her fingers against the table. “But if you know the man he was, then don’t you also know what his kingdom turned into without him in the director’s chair? Can’t you admit that there are always far, far worse people to deal with?”

Like I said, Felice has always been nice to me. No matter how bad someone is, that counts for a lot. She’s never really lied about who or what she was either. Just didn’t bring up her work until now, like everyone else sitting down here. But there was something nauseating about how easily she’d molded herself around her excuse. Not even the hint of a crack in her demeanor.

“Speaking only for myself, of course," I told her. “I can believe there are worse people out there. I can also believe that telling yourself that might be the only way you can sleep at night.” Onomi winced at that, but didn’t say anything.

Ryan raised his hand to call for order. His hand went to Chit’s shoulder beside him, with the barest touch. His expression, when he looked at Felice across the table, was more wary than anything else. “Look, these events ended about fifteen years ago, and regardless of Felice’s involvement in anything, there’s not much we can do about it either way.” He looked over at Chit. “That doesn’t mean you have to approve of what she did. Or that you have to give her story press.”

The journalist wiped his eyes one more time, his gaze still steely. “Heh. You’re right to say that. Being a dictator’s lapdog is hardly news at this point, is it? And maybe I’m being overly judgmental, too. I mean, I sat down for an interview with the Gespring Cannibal. I can hardly afford to be hoity-toity about questioning anyone else.” He took a deep breath, his eyes still hard and angry, but now much clearer. “And I do want to hear this story. I mean, putting this forward as an unsolvable mystery, the truth of which was never revealed before… it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, that gets the people down on their seats and reading. Personal credit aside, that might do some good for that part of the world. Who knows?”

Chit hesitated, his hand going to the phone that was still recording. “But I’m going to publish this with names.” He told her. It was a voice that brooked no discussion. “Maybe you can give me access to that book you said you found all this from. I promise your name won’t come up in the discussion. But if you can’t, or won’t, that’s still fine by me. I’m perfectly capable of looking for evidence on my own.”

Felice inclined her head slightly. “Can’t say I’m overjoyed at the prospect. I know for a fact my bosses won’t be. But as I said, it’s been a while, and with that time has gone most of the real harm revealing this could do.”

She spoke like she was wording a peace treaty, and maybe that’s exactly what this was. Even Chit only nodded in acknowledgement, picking up his cards with a determined expression set upon as his face, as if winning the game would somehow spite Felice’s neocolonialist worldviews. Frankly, at this point I was surprised everyone else was still playing. But if there’s one thing we all held in common, it was an instinct for relentless competition.

“All right,” Felice said. “Now that everything’s laid out, as it were, it’s probably best for me to emphasize where I was at the time of the murder. I was sitting in town, having a discussion with B – ugh, should I keep using the letters for the names?”

“That’s probably for the best,” I said. “If I remember right, that family’s set of names is a pain in the ass to pronounce.”

“Fine. Now, B had a good relationship with the king, if not a very warm one, and was mostly favored by the generals and the diplomats for his father’s seat. And one thing I guarantee is that throughout most of that stormy night, he did not leave his house, nor did he send any particularly important messages. In fact, the man practically drank himself to sleep. It’s not really evidence of much, I’m aware, but it made me highly disinclined to suspect him. Surely he’d keep himself awake to see how the assassination played out.

“In any case, the point of the story in which I left you was when prince C stumbled out of the temple compound, calling out that his father had been murdered. Of course, the man was long gone by the time we got to him. Strangled with a wire from behind.”

Ryan nodded. “Any chance one of the doctors there gave you a window for time of death?”

“Nothing more useful than that the body had to be at least six hours old. C was trembling and near incoherent at this time, mumbling about voices in the walls, and a missing stone.”

“A stone.” I said.

“Oh yes. Everyone knew what he meant. There was a ring of large stones kept around the relic, about the size of my torso here and a couple pounds heavier. Some tried to say that the missing stone was evidence of holy intervention, and that C’s confused mutterings came from his meeting with divinity.

But personally I didn’t add much weight to that, or even the notion that he had gone insane. C was a clever boy, and well known for taking advantage of his illnesses to gain sympathy. I did not know him near well enough to tell if his current condition was genuine. Was he truly afraid at the time? Certainly he was, but that could easily be because he’d murdered the king than because the king had been murdered.

“A more serious argument was that C simply had not the strength to do the deed. His father was old, certainly. But he was a large man, and quite fit. Yet some argued that C’s access to the security meant that he could have let in a guardsman or some other assassin during the storm to do the assassination, using those six hours to clean out any traces of his accomplice. That same security access would have let him disable any cameras that would’ve shown evidence of his betrayal. It was a good enough explanation for them to execute him. Patricide, especially patricide committed on holy ground, was enough to justify it.”

She sighed. “And that brings us back to what I told you all earlier, doesn’t it? There was no rule of law present in that situation. Nobody there had a lick of proper evidence against C. Certainly, there were points that made it seem impossible that he did it. His physical condition, for one. But also the idea that he knew his way around the security systems well enough to let an outsider in during one of the worst storms in the country’s history, and then wipe any evidence of his crime off those systems. That might seem just barely plausible, but then just walking back up to us the next morning, like a lamb to the slaughter, hoping for the best? Even then I thought it made no sense, but there were no better explanations. What C needed to do was prove his innocence, and what he had to tell them couldn’t satisfy anyone. If he did find a way to somehow commit this perfect murder, it wasn’t perfect enough.

She looked around the table. “I don’t suppose any of you have suggestions?” This triggered an immediate round of theorizing.

“Bribery!” Chit declared. “If a story seems impossible, that just means someone is lying. One of the other princes just paid off one of the guards to kill him, and all the other guards to follow the cover story.”

“Perhaps C was mentally ill, Fell.” Onomi suggested, still pushing her pieces carefully around the table. “From what you told us, he wasn’t exactly coherent at the time. It’s perfectly possible he could be delusional enough to murder his father and still cover his tracks, especially if he had some education in technology. And the mentally ill do possess a surprising amount of strength; they lack the same inhibitions the rest of us do.”

Even I threw my hat in the ring. “Stealth helicopters.”

Ryan groaned. “I knew you’d bring that up.” He muttered. “You always bring it up. First you go with the stealth drones…”

“No, those would be way too small.” I said. “It needs to carry someone who can parachute onto the compound. So what if the weather was bad? People have done crazier stunts before and gotten away with it.”

“That’s not even – never mind.” Ryan said. “Okay then. This is how things currently stand, madam. Immediately, we obtain a whole collection of theories, some of which might even hold weight if proper evidence can be found. Unfortunately, this is where we start to meet the limitations of your story. I highly doubt I could question you enough to unearth new evidence an intelligent lady like you hadn’t considered already. I’m afraid that faced with your story alone there’s simply no way I can solve it. If I was there in the compound with you, even, there’s no way I can guarantee I could’ve pulled it off.”

Chit began to make a derisive snort, but I have more experience with the man, and the twinkle in his eye was just a little too bright to buy that he’d been beaten.

“Faced with your story,” Ryan repeated. “But that’s not all I’m faced with now, is it? I know something that you didn’t know in that compound. Something that I wouldn’t have known if I had been here with you. Now what could that be?” He grinned at all of us, waiting.

I got it, if only just barely. “Because you knew that she got the answer from somewhere.”

“Long after the relevant players in this affair were dead, of course. But that’s only half of it. She found the answer, and she came to us with the story.”

“Now, as we’ve all pointed out over the course of this most entertaining evening, most perfect crimes result from luck, or special knowledge, or the most technical of technicalities. We just don’t bring those up usually because there’s no story there. If a hacker somehow cracked that uncrackable system, or a helicopter somehow got through that storm without tearing itself apart, the story would be in the details of that miracle event, not in guessing whether the miracle happened or not. Knowing your occupation, madam, I don’t think you’d be particularly impressed by someone subverting a technicality like that. You wouldn’t consider it perfect, or worth bringing up at all. And that alone tells me a great deal. Are we all clear so far?”

Felice was nodding slowly, a small smile on her face. “We are.”

“Now, what this conclusion told me was to take most of these facts at face value, at least for now. That yes, that cliff had to be impregnable over the course of the storm. That no one did pay off all the guards. That the security system of the compound could only have been deactivated by the king or one of his three sons, instead of someone figuring out how to mimic their identities. Once we accept all that, where does it leave us?”

I squinted. “You’re saying one of them definitely did it themselves? Let’s see… the eldest son was said to be out of the country at the time. But I suppose that definitely shouldn’t be taken at face value.”

“A was attending a United Nations function at the time, quite literally half the world away.” Felice said softly. “And like I said, I can personally attest to what B was doing the whole night. I said this was impossible for a reason.”

“But let’s assume it was possible for them to be around the neighborhood at the time, with no one watching them specifically,” Ryan said slowly. “Assuming the storm hadn’t been raging at the time, how possible would it be for someone to get across the isthmus?”

“The storm itself makes sneaking away like that truly ludicrous. But without it?” Felice frowned. “I’m not saying the guards were incompetent, but there was a reason why the murdered man put so much money into a security system only he could access. But I don’t think A or B could have done it. If you see them in person, they’re not exactly athletic. It would’ve been a rather public affair, and you wouldn’t have seen an attempt at smoke and mirrors. The murderer would’ve paid off all the guards directly, and I’m certain people wouldn’t have kept the secret long. Like I said, patricide on holy ground is serious business, there and pretty much everywhere else. So why would you— ” She paused. “Oh. Oh.”

Ryan allowed himself a little smugness in his next smile before smoothing over his expression. “I do appreciate the confirmation, madam. I can say now with a more considered opinion that an accomplished investigator certainly would have found something in the compound. It’s possible they couldn’t have recognized the significance, but there would have been some evidence. But I can put the pieces together even without it. I just have to ask a few more questions.

He began to flip through his cards again, shuffling the pieces around his board in preparation for his next turn in the game. But everyone was listening spellbound, the game forgotten. He reveled in his own presence, allowed himself to soak in it like a cat in morning sunlight. “First, with everything we said before in mind, would it be possible to dive off the cliff next to the compound without being seen?”

“You wouldn’t even need to leave the building to make the jump.” Felice said. “But there would be no way you could swim through that ocean in that storm. And even if you could, no way to come out to shore without being caught.”

“Good thing I never said anything about swimming, then.” My brother laid down his first card. The Ace of Spades.

“I told you all before that just because I’m a good detective does not mean I’m a good murderer. If I ever had to go that far to serve my ends, I’d certainly hire a professional who knows what they are doing. But there’s a resource I don’t have access to, something that requires more than wealth. Loyalty. And in the travails of dictators and their ilk, loyalty is a currency that can shortchange all their wealth.

“To make this impossible plausible, all that would be required would be someone who cared enough about the heir to not only kill for them, but to die for them as well. Am I wrong to presume all three brothers had such supporters?”

Felice nodded without hesitation. For her, at least, it was barely even a question. But Chit was shaking his head. “Look, so the big bad dictator was killed by a suicidal assassin. I don’t see how that answers anything.”

“Oh, but it does.” Ryan said. He moved three black pawns to surround his queen, his fingers almost twitching with anticipation. “Because someone willing to die to preserve their prince’s honor would be willing to do nearly anything else for them. Like hide inside a temple compound for nearly one year.”

There was a pause that felt like it stretched out for minutes. “And the prince who went inside the compound with his father the year before was… B.” I said. “It does seem sort of obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it? Of course it was the guy most prepared for the coup, the one who wasn’t in a foreign country or right beside the man about to be assassinated. But is it even possible to pull something like this off?”

“Certainly. Remember, the murdered man did all the cleaning of the place himself every year, as part of it being his holy meditation retreat. I’m sure anyone hired for maintenance wasn’t allowed to stay for long, and no guards were being posted inside the building. It’s not hard to hide from one or two people in a small area, especially if you know the place inside out. And if B timed things properly, the assassin would only have to hide from them for one night, provided he let his assassin inside the night before his and his father’s weekly stay there ended.

“The fact the dictator was murdered on the very night of his arrival is a pretty strong indicator that not only had his killer a strong knowledge of the place, but that preparations for it had been going on for a long time. No one could have predicted that storm from a year ahead, sure. But there’s no indication the plan required the dictator to be killed at that point, either. It was simply a very lucky coincidence that made C look even more guilty. It also let the assassin permanently disappear without anyone noticing, tying that missing stone to their body and jumping off the cliff. No one could’ve heard that splash. So there was a little luck involved, sure, but most perfect crimes need a bit of that.”

He tipped over Chit’s king, knocking him out of the running. His grand design had grown to almost epic proportions, and it was becoming rapidly clear that this strategy was what he had planning since before we’d sat down for the game. Chit huffed and crossed his arms. “And I suppose you think if you’d been there you could have magically solved all this. Based on what? The missing rock?”

“Well, knowing to check underwater for something important would’ve been a good starting point.” Ryan said. “And I certainly would’ve checked the compound building over more thoroughly. Perhaps I would’ve seen evidence of the assassin’s living quarters? But at this point we’re drifting off to pure speculation.”

“So B got someone to kill his dad.” I said. “What did happen after that? I do remember reading a bit about some of the aftermath, but the details slip my mind.”

“There’s not much to say.” Felice said with a sigh. “B led a coup over his father’s government while A was still out of the country. A returned to the country and tried to trigger a civil war. His forces were defeated two weeks in and B took power, only to die two months later of HIV. It was in the course of trying to replace the leadership of the country that I found his journal.” She sighed. “Bit of an anticlimax, isn’t it? I was almost saddened he never got a chance to rule for all his efforts, even though I assure you the nation would’ve suffered dearly for it.

“Chance makes puppets out of us all.” Onomi remarked, revealing all four queens in her hand of cards and promptly winning the game.