Were it up to her, she’d convinced Imre to make their “not casual trip” involve the beach. At least then she had an excuse on why she could be doing anything other than paperwork. She knew they could use the distraction. To think earlier this year, they’d even mused the idea of everyone going to the beach…
And, with that thought, she gave another sigh of smoke. “Don’t suppose your year’s been as much of a shitshow as mine?”
“Compared to you, things have been amazing. The most I’ve had to deal with was kicking Nehi out of his office. That guy did not want to leave, but it sounds like he’d still been there too long. Either that or work was the only reason he lived this long.” Tyche shrugged. “I guess that magic troupe incident back in Oklathis should’ve been your first clue things were going to be bad for you.”
Samone stopped and looked up from her reports. “What magic troupe incident?”
A part of her knew she didn’t want to hear the answer. For all of a minute, she had held onto the hope that there was a good reason why she didn’t know. That, perhaps, it wasn’t quite as extreme as she immediately thought it was… or that it had happened in a northern territory, where such a thing wouldn’t have been so commonplace. Then there’d be a reason that she, as Jaden’s overseer, hadn’t heard of it—and how she, as a member of the court, might’ve skipped over the information.
But Tyche’s look practically proved her fears. “You haven’t heard? I figured you’d been on top of it. From the sounds of it, there were official reports and everything about it. The generic ‘don’t worry, we have it under control, and we’re finding the ones responsible now’ thing, along with the details.”
“Tyche, what happened?”
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“Some troupe—maybe a circus, I don’t remember—was doing a show in Jaden territory. And, presumably because they had magic, a group of people apparently set their tent on fire during the performance. The troupe leader was killed, his daughter went missing for a couple of weeks, but I assume everyone else was okay.” Tyche shrugged. “I heard his daughter and two of the troupe members, maybe a third, are continuing to travel. I still can’t tell if they’re dedicated to the arts or just stupid.”
Samone immediately went to shuffle through all the reports, and went to grab a couple others. Anything that might’ve even implied the incident happened. “Whose land was it in?”
“I don’t think they mentioned that part.”
“Of course they didn’t…”
“Is it really that important? Sure, you didn’t hear about it, but there’s a chance it just slipped through, right? Not like these things are unheard of. Maybe a little extreme for eastern Seothia, but probably on par with some of the stuff in the northern territories…”
“This isn’t just a matter of ‘it happened,’ or ‘something like that isn’t supposed to happen in eastern Seothia.’ Not only did it happen, but it was very likely a hate crime against the children of Fleyw Bresh, and one I’m only hearing about now, months later. And given what we’re trying to do, it’ll get worse if news spreads to Qizar. I should probably—” Samone cut herself off once she thought about what she was going to say. “I most definitely should not tell Imre…”
Casually, Tyche pointed out, “I don’t think he’d appreciate that.”
“Lydia’s dead. Tavin is a saint, with her spirit. Quite frankly, I can’t see Imre doing anything other than locking himself in his office when we come back. I’ll tell him eventually, just after everything’s calmed down… He doesn’t need more reasons to be stressed.” Samone looked over all the papers and sighed. “Seems like I’ll be bringing some work back with me. I need to figure out how someone managed to keep this from me for this long…”
