"I'll be back in half an hour, Fiona."

"Keep a tight schedule. Dinner will be ready when you get back."


In all his years as a spy, Twilight had come across few fronts as convincing or as effective as Franky's tobacco stand. The location was tastefully inconspicuous, the acoustics nice and covert, but the real magic was in the little things. It was the stains on the counter, the way the newspapers were always one day out of date, the foodstuffs that charged towards their expiration dates like teenagers playing chicken on a cliffside. The stand was completely beneath suspicion because it was a burning image of mediocrity, something that the owner clearly put barely enough time and effort into to survive. And it was a perfect disguise because that's exactly what it was. You couldn't teach someone to put that little effort into something. It was pure talent.

Twilight stepped into the alcove where the stand loafed, and grabbed a day-old copy of the Daily Ost while giving Franky a polite nod. He waited a moment to make sure the buzz of pedestrian traffic was muffling their conversation, and spoke in quiet, but casual tones.

"I need information on Donovan Desmond's security detail. Backgrounds. Addresses. Finances. Criminal records."

Franky whistled long and low. "That's some high-grade intel. It'll take me a lot of time and cost you a lot of money. What's the deadline here?"

"I don't know."

"Well, what are you looking for, then?"

"I don't know."

"It's the way you always know what to expect. That's what makes you the best, Twilight."

Twilight rubbed his face. It would be nice to be annoyed with Franky over this, but he was right, he didn't know enough. It was hard to build intel off a scenario like 'there is going to be an assassination attempt on Donovan Desmond, sometime, somewhere'. Even the basic motive behind all this was still a mystery. The best he could do was collect as much information as possible and see what stuck out.

"Just bring me whatever you can as soon as you can get it, Franky," he said.

"Sure, sure," Franky said, ringing up the newspaper on the register. "You know, I thought you were trying to interrogate Desmond, not kill him."

"I'm not. It's complicated." Trying to kill Desmond himself would have been about a thousand times simpler than Operation Strix, for one thing. "And officially, I haven't told you anything about my current mission."

"And unofficially, you talk way too much for somebody who's supposed to be a spy."

This remark earned Franky an actual glare, but Twilight's heart wasn't in it. He was, again, right. Franky knew lots of things that Twilight theoretically should have killed him for knowing. But that was the difference between theory and practice: many of the things that made Twilight's work possible were only possible because he had an informant who trusted him and gave him leeway. And at least it was only one person.

"So, how's the wife and kid?" Franky said cheerfully.

"Fine."

"Anya been asking after her favorite babysitter?"

"Not by name, but yes." Anya had actually compared the toilet brush to Franky's head just this morning.

"That other agent still nuts?"

"Nightfall isn't crazy. She's just... intense. And she's actually gotten better recently."

"Didn't you say you once saw her throw some goon into an oncoming train?"

"The guy was trying to kill her. And it was only a commuter service," Twilight said. Not like he hadn't done worse in the line of duty. If Nightfall was crazy, then he was too. And if Twilight was crazy, then... well, the important thing was that Nightfall wasn't crazy. "I'll be seeing you, Franky."

Franky coughed. "Incidentally, I do have one bit of intel on Desmond here you can have right away. I'll cut you a good deal."

"How much?"

"Fifty cents." Franky grabbed a magazine from the rack next to him and tossed it onto the counter. Donovan Desmond's face, with that trademark expression of paranoid, constipated intensity, stared up at Twilight from beneath the words Politics Today. "There's a feature on Desmond this month. Worth a look, maybe."

Twilight picked up the magazine and flipped through it. Well, it wasn't like he had a lot of better leads.

"I'll take it," he said, walking away.

"Hey, you've got to pay for that! I got margins to worry about!"

Twilight tucked the newspaper under his arm, and started flipping through the magazine.

The "feature" on Desmond was on page 10, though it was a bit bold to call it so much. Desmond was a notorious recluse, and so the magazine had little to offer in terms of interviews, analysis, or scandals. Even factoids were slim on the ground with Desmond. The most they could offer was a couple pages of vague policy analysis under the title "What's Next for the National Unity Party?", which seemed to answer its own question with a resounding "We don't know!"

Twilight noticed a blurb under one of the rare candid photographs of Desmond, snapped as he walked from his car to Eden Academy for an Imperial Scholar meeting. Of course they brought it up in the article. It was one of the few things anybody knew about Desmond.

Twilight thought about that. It was one of the few times and places you could reliably expect to find Donovan Desmond. And everyone knew that.

Twilight tucked the magazine under his arm with the newspaper, and let his suspicions begin to fester.

Well, there were still one or two things he thought he could do, but it was best not to make any decisive moves until WISE or Franky brought him back something useful. Until then, it was best to focus on making Anya an Imperial Scholar, or getting her into the good graces of Desmond's son. Exams were coming up soon, and Anya's grades were still inconsistent, but at least she was studying.

Though, the last time Twilight had discussed her studying habits, she had seemed more interested in the phase of the moon on the day of the exam. That had been strange.


The front door clicked shut as Twilight walked out to meet with his informant. Nightfall slid the pile of chopped peppers from the cutting board into the steaming pot. She gave it a quick stir, scooped up a small sample, and blew across the surface the standardized three times. She took a cautious sip from the ladle. It was fine, which was a relief. She had deviated from the expected onion diameter by almost .5 centimeters, but luckily that seemed within the margin of error.

It was a bit inefficient as far as recipes went- not enough protein, too much carbohydrates, and what the hell was a potato doing in there? But Nightfall had agreed to follow the recipe list set down by Twilight, and therefore she would rather starve herself than substitute pork for chicken just because it was on sale.

"Mama?" said a small, cautious voice from behind her.

Nightfall put the lid back on the pot and turned around. Anya had crept over from in front of the television and was looking up at her. The expression on her face said she had a question, but the way she had hunched her back and balled her fists said she'd fight to get an answer.

"Mama," Anya said. "You can do stuff. Can you move time?"

There was the usual brief pause as Nightfall error-checked a new sentence from Anya against all conventions of language.

"Can I move what?"

"Time."

"Can I move time? Is that what you're asking?"

"Yes!"

"No."

"Aw."

Anya stared off into space. Behind her eyes, Nightfall could see another long calculation beginning. Best to head this one off, or else she'd spend the next ten minutes explaining why she also couldn't move space, energy, or most forms of matter. As she had learned over the past few months, being a parent meant being part instructor, part domestic servant, and part oracle to a mad god.

"Do you want to change the time or day that we do something, Anya?" Nightfall asked, going with the most likely theory.

"Yes!" Anya said. She shifted from side to side, and her gaze abruptly dropped from Nightfall's face. "Well. I wanna do the exams on a different day. Because I wanna. And I think I'll do better on them. For no reason."

Ah, the exams. Anya was hiding something. Also, the sky was blue, water was wet, and Twilight was handsome.

Nightfall sighed. Twilight was out visiting Franky, and wouldn't be back for a while. She looked around the apartment, making sure all the windows were closed, then crouched down to look Anya in the eye.

"Anya," she said firmly. "This has something to do with cheating on the exams, doesn't it?"

Anya didn't say anything, but her sudden, intense interest in the specific cabinet to the right of Nightfall's head did.

"What have I told you about cheating, Anya?" Nightfall said.

"Don't get caught?"

"No!" Nightfall said sharply. "That's the attitude of failures and incompetents. People who think like that are the ones who get kicked out of school, Anya."

She reared back up to her full height and put her hands on her hips. Some lessons demanded a certain kind of posture. It was hard to speak with authority from three feet off the ground.

"No, like I've said, Anya. If you must, make it so you can't be caught," Nightfall said.

"What's the difference?" Anya said.

"Research and planning, Your plan must be absolutely foolproof, able to thwart all safeguards completely invisibly. You must make it seem to a stringent observer that the information just drops into your head from nowhere," said Nightfall.

Anya stared blankly back at her.

"I think I can do that, Mama," she said.

"Good," Nightfall said. "Don't tell me how. I have to maintain plausible deniability. And if you do get caught, Mama will help you, but no TV for an entire year."

"Deal!"

"And you have to keep studying," Nightfall said.

This, surprisingly, got a bigger reaction than the penalty for getting caught. Nightfall decided to head off the inevitable protest as Anya opened her mouth wide.

"No 'buts'. It's an old rule of spycraft: the best way to deceive someone is to make the deception as close to reality as possible. Thus, the best way to cheat is to know most of the answers," Nightfall said.

Anya balked for a moment, but eventually put on a brave face and nodded. She stuck out a stubby hand, and Nightfall bent over to shake it. The deal was struck.

"Remember what I taught you about identifying the best students," Nightfall said.

"They're the ones who keep complaining about their test scores."

"Right. I can probably move the exams back a week. Don't ask me how."

"We are dead men holding a conversation that never happened," Anya said, in a strange tone that hopefully meant she was borrowing the sentence from her cartoons. She walked out of the kitchen and headed towards her room, but suddenly turned around.

"Wait. What's the moon gonna look like on the new exam day?" Anya said.

"The week after the original day? It's going to be a waxing crescent," Nightfall said instantly. Nightfall had once read that the moon's phases could influence one's love life, which was stupid supernatural nonsense that she obviously didn't believe. "It's actually going to be the second waxing crescent in the month. It's a phenomenon that only occurs every-"

"Got it, thanks Mama!" Anya said, running off to her room to pursue whatever machinations she had in mind.


Twilight came back home just in time for dinner to finish cooking. He hung up his coat as Nightfall began ladling the stew into three bowls. They exchanged looks, and an invisible wavelength carried the message I have new information from either of them to the other.

"Welcome home, Loid," Nightfall said, setting a glass of milk at Anya's seat.

"Evening, Fiona," Twilight said. "Franky says hello."

"Does he really?"

"Well, no. But he did mention you," Twilight said, looking around to make sure Anya was in her room. "I talked to him about what we discussed last night. He'll get back to us in a few days, but I already have one idea."

"Good. I've done some thinking too," Nightfall said. She put the napkin holder on the dining table, for dramatic effect. "We need support on the Desmond situation, and I have some new targets regarding Strix. I think it's time we move forward with plan P."

Twilight thought for a second. "If you're ready, then I agree," he said. "It won't be easy, though."

"Nothing about this mission has been easy, Loid."


Nightfall walked into the bedroom, knelt down, and began unlocking the hidden safe they used to store mission-critical documents.

She let her mind wander as the tumblers rolled beneath her fingers. She had planned for projects before, many of them more dangerous, many of them more complex, but none quite so basically troublesome.

There were groups like it all over the world. Many people suspected that the world was run by organizations not under the control of any government, or beholden to any nation. They were right. But they were wrong in imagining these organizations as shadowy cabals working in secret, wearing black robes in empty halls or smoking cigars in high-rise board rooms. The sign of true power was that it didn't have to disguise itself. The true powers of the world worked right in the spotlight, where they could be seen and feared.

Nightfall opened the safe, pulled out a slip of paper, and held it up to the light. On the top, in dignified but colorful typeface, were the words "EDEN ACADEMY PTA MEETING SCHEDULE".

The financiers and parents of Imperial Scholars could drive the big-picture direction of Eden. But at any school, the true power behind the day-to-day operations always lay in the engine of hundreds of housewives with nothing but time on their hands. And with the right words at the right time, Nightfall could wield that power like a bludgeon.