According to the employees who arrested Selar, Opel had died right in its convalescent tank. The shine on their shoes suggested that they weren't from the lower Ward and the tone of their voices betrayed that they didn't care to answer questions about a broke hanar that sold religious trinkets on the docks.

And Selar's mouth was a grim line on his face while he held Meiko's keycard. He turned it, felt the grainy texture of the code strip through the fabric covering the tips of his fingers. He had his elbows on his knees and he was parked on a bench in one of the academy's basement prison cells.

He'd been booked on suspicion of murder.

As far as he knew, Beran was somewhere nearby booked on the same thing. There was a bruise on Selar's back that was spreading into the shape of a cabinet handle, but Beran was still his partner. Selar wasn't going to hold a grudge about it. He was more concerned about the possibility of Opel's brain being steam like T'elis'. He suspected it was.

But he didn't know why T'elis' death had been covered up, or if a meld had even killed her. He didn't know why C-Sec believed two of their own employees had killed Opel. What he did know was that T'Ven ran things cleanly when she could, discreetly when the budget ran dry, and that he had never seen his partner act like that before.

Beran was the sort of guy who could walk into hell without flinching.

Waves of red electricity flickered over the kinetic barrier of the cell's entrance, staining Selar and everything else inside the same color. He wasn't going anywhere for a while. He was a statistic for the moment, part of a long row of cells with more stacked above and below him like the morgue's cabinets full of stiffs. It started to wear on his patience.

And after twenty-nine galactic hours, when his patience was thinner than a klixen wing, a pencil pusher finally came for him, a real fresh recruit of a volus. Selar turned the keycard over one more time and then slipped it back into his pocket.

The recruit led him to the highest floor in the academy, where the echoes against the blue glass windows were hardly more than whispers drifting. It was where Middle Ward Commissioner Tesik oversaw operations for Tayseri's middle districts, and he worked in the closest equivalent to an ivory tower you could find at the academy.

Tesik was the sort of salarian an alien expected when they saw a pair of horns in a crowd, with his thoughts rattling around and his eyes blinking like someone had thrown sand in his face. Beran was convinced that he had been placed by the Salarian Union's Special Tasks Group to keep tabs on C-Sec.

A spook, Beran had said.

There were salarian C-Sec guards outside the door when the volus left Selar there. Inside, Tesik stood rigidly at a window. Potted Sur'Kesh jungle palms were lined up along the walls and a full spectrum lamp was holding a vigil at his desk, glowing like an island of sunshine in the dim light of the academy.

An asari assistant worked at a console nearby and her green dress matched the palms. The Commissioner was watching her reflection in the window while he listened to the glass whisper.

He pulled his gaze away when Selar approached, blinked back to reality. He recited, "Citadel Shalta Ward District One Resna Selar Velenn," like the name was a dead pyjack that someone had stuffed in his sock drawer. "A station man."

Blink blink blink

Selar ignored the tone of his voice, simply nodded. It was difficult to get along with salarians who had been raised on a planet, spook or not. When they found out you had never set foot on solid ground they never let it go. They were always marveling at how the lack of sunlight and the noise pollution of the station might be affecting you, in a way that made it clear they thought it was definitely affecting you.

And it made Selar's horns burn up.

"I assume you've been acquainted with the situation," Tesik said. He had a thin tan stripe running down the middle of his dusty purple face. "I've brought you here because I'm very interested in the murder that occurred in the hospital on Rigel street."

"That makes two of us," Selar said carefully, still wondering why he wasn't being questioned by an investigator or even Commissioner Rehokan who oversaw the lower districts where Selar's papers and the hospital both were.

"Indeed, the nature of the crime is unsettling," Tesik murmured. He stole a final glance at his assistant, then went to his desk with a gesture that made it clear Selar should follow him. "We're keeping it quiet for the moment to avoid the Illuminated Primacy. This is the kind of atrocity we don't like to see on the Council's station and they'll be publicly denouncing us for our involvement. I don't blame them."

Selar didn't move. He said, "I'm not clear on what you mean, Commissioner. No one will tell me what happened to Opel."

"Investigator Berantus Aventius murdered it," Tesik stated, sitting down. He obviously felt that he was repeating himself, gave Selar a sour drop of his eyelids. He added, "Possibly with your help."

Selar blinked once, set his eyelids firmly in place. "So that's how it is."

"Indeed. That's how it is."

The accusation was ridiculous, but it explained why the middle Ward was stepping in. Beran was on loan to the lower Ward, but the middle Ward still held his papers and paid his salary. And Tesik looked as if he believed the whole sham was true.

"That's a sham and you know it. Beran wouldn't murder anybody," Selar told him. "Opel was the only informant in his contraband case."

"Berantus is one of the middle Ward's most notorious investigators," Tesik pointed out. "There's a reason I jettisoned him to the lowest precinct for that exchange program two years ago. He's a crude alcoholic with a paranoid demeanor who, I will remind you, just assaulted you in a morgue. He might have killed you if C-Sec hadn't intervened."

Selar wasn't exactly going to thank anyone for arresting him. He said, "We were just working some things out."

"Incorrect. But you would certainly view it that way, wouldn't you?" Tesik scoffed faintly, leaned a knobby elbow on his chair. "I've heard about you. While you might have removed the clan tattoo, which I assume was quite painful, if you shine a proper light," and here Tesik pointed the full spectrum lamp into Selar's face, moved it down his neck, and pointed it away again, "the thinner tissue where it used to be reveals that you're from the salarian enclave in upper Shalta."

Selar gave Tezik a heavy stare, didn't say anything in response to that.

Tesik pressed on with a measure of satisfaction creeping into his voice. "The circles there pretend to have legitimate companies, but trouble is their only business. It tells me almost everything I need to know about you. Your file tells me the rest." Tesik pointed the lamp at himself, closed his eyes. "You're a brute, easily led into assisting a murder."

This was routine; you cuffed a suspect in a sore spot hoping he got angry and did something he shouldn't, or accidentally told you something you needed to know. It kept people off balance. Selar knew this, inwardly reminded himself that he knew this, and still felt the words itching under his skin.

Selar held back the insult he wanted to spit out. He said, "That's a nice trick, Commissioner, but it doesn't have anything to do with Opel."

"Doesn't it?" Tesik said, opening his eyes. "This hanar, it was killed with an alkaline hydrolysis accelerator placed in its convalescent tank."

Selar didn't move a muscle. He didn't blink, kept his lids steady. He tried not to picture what that would have looked like. And if he felt any relief that Opel hadn't died like T'elis, it was overpowered by the sick feeling in his stomach over what had actually happened.

Alkaline hydrolysis was a bad way to go.

"It's one of many methods used by the Citadel's clans when diplomacy breaks down," Tesik continued on, unabated by Selar's darkening expression. "It's also something you might have access to, considering your origins." He pointed the lamp in Selar's face again, held it there steadily. "So I want to know exactly where you were yesterday at eighteen galactic standard time when the murder occurred."

Selar said in the bright light, "I was buying tableware on the ring. I broke a teapot."

Tesik shook his horns. "Very incorrect," he said. He seemed to enjoy saying it. "I doubt you could afford a tea leaf on the ring, let alone a container to put it in. You were scheduled for an escort twice a day and each day you returned to the embassy outpost at the same time, except for yesterday when the hanar was murdered. You were quite late. So let's try the question again, shall we?"

Selar frowned. He approached the desk, pushed the light back into Tesik's face, and said, "I bought a teapot made of stainless inert iridium. It took a while. Look, doesn't the timing of this seem suspicious to you? Why would Beran kill someone who tried to help us? Why would either of us go back to the hospital afterward?"

"I have those same questions myself," Tesik replied, "but the facts say he did. They also say you had enough time to assist with the murder before returning to the outpost. You could supply the method. Berantus is crazy enough to use it. More importantly, I have a security vid of the hallway at the hospital. Several witnesses have positively identified him as the same turian observed in that vid."

Selar's brow dropped low. "What?"

Tesik smiled faintly. "I just told you. Do you need me to repeat it? They picked him out of a line-up."

At nineteen hundred T'Ven had been showing Lariad Meiko's OSD at the precinct. And Beran had stated that he was at the hospital when T'Ven asked him why he was late. But if Opel was murdered at eighteen hundred, he couldn't have been checking on it.

So where had Beran actually been?

Selar didn't know, but he wasn't going to say so. Commissioner Tesik seemed to believe that the security vid was an ace in the hole and that Beran had indeed been there dissolving Opel into goop while Selar provided the chemicals. And Tesik waited, presumably for Selar to spill his guts now that the evidence had been laid down on the table.

Selar asked, "Can you see his face on that vid?"

Tesik was amused by that. "So you admit you knew he was there."

Selar didn't let up. "No, I was on the ring buying a teapot like I said. Were there any chemical traces on him? What did he say about it when you asked?"

"Nothing polite. He lacks mental stability," Tesik said dismissively. He flicked the lamp off, pushed it aside. "Now, I'm the one asking the questions here. I want to get the details settled so we can compare your statements. It will help things move faster if Berantus decides to act smart for once and take a plea bargain. And if you provide information that is useful to me, I will do my best to make your life very easy." Tesik spread his hands, blinked twice. "Or, if you'd prefer to be stubborn, I can make your life very difficult. I can charge you as an accessory."

Selar said, "You want me to help put Beran away to save my own skin?"

"I simply want you to think carefully about your own prospects," Tesik replied. His mouth lifted into a smile, but the rest of his face was wooden. "I can help you, Constable. You should let me."

"I've never used an alkaline hydrolysis accelerator on anyone," Selar said, crossing his arms. "You'd need records that don't exist to charge me."

Tesik added, "I can also make your first circle's life very difficult by scrutinizing their activities in Shalta."

It wasn't much of a threat if it wasn't a bluff, but Selar wasn't going to let Tesik know that. He said, "There's nothing to scrutinize. They export cyanobacteria to the Verge for terraforming."

"Incorrect," Tesik said again. "But you already know that."

Selar pushed down the urge to cuff him for saying incorrect yet again, glanced at the asari. He'd thought she was a part of Tesik's preferred decor with the way he'd been soaking up her reflection but reconsidered. He said, "Are you here to throw me around if I get angry at him?"

The asari didn't look up from her console. "Yep. Be nice."

"You're talking to me," Tesik said. "Not her."

"You," Selar said, glancing back at him, "don't have a thing on me. If you did you wouldn't be trying to rile me up to hit you so you can keep me beyond the standard hold with an assault charge. Does she keep you safe while you needle your target?"

Tesik's eye membranes tightened. "I've simply dealt with enclave trash in the past. Call it useful caution."

Selar shook his head a little, didn't have anything polite to say. He was done with it.

He'd also heard enclave trash before. The clans from Sur'Kesh and its planetary colonies were always sneering at the clans living on the Citadel. It didn't matter what planet they came from, although it was worse when they were from the home-world and brought jungle flora with them. None of them could break into the credit accounts of the enclaves. They got sore about it.

Upper Shalta in particular was notoriously impenetrable, a glittering sprawl of old clans and circles that refused to prioritize business or even breeding contracts from Sur'Kesh. And it was the sort of place that would drown you and then send a bill for the water to your closest relative without a second thought.

Trouble was indeed the real business there. Tesik wasn't wrong.

But Tesik himself was notorious for cranking out plea bargains and confessions on an industrial scale, upping the middle Ward's processing numbers however he could. He wouldn't lose any sleep if Selar and Beran were two of those numbers. He would be far more worried about getting himself clocked out in time for a round or three at the sim tables and some quasar.

Selar's horns started to burn up over the whole thing.

Tesik tapped a haptic and conjured up an empty statement form on his holo-screen, looking pleased with himself as he began typing with fingers drenched in orange light. "Now then," he said, eyeing the screen. "I'm ready for your statement. Speak quickly."

Selar gestured to the tattoo on Tesik's face. "I want to see Commissioner Rehokan and my lawful contact-"

"We'll get to it. If you assist me."

"-and I think it's a shame you let a turian take a leak on your face like that."

Tesik's eyes snapped up from the screen. When the comment sank down past his general satisfaction with himself, his lips pulled back against his teeth. He lifted his fingers to the tip of his chin, where the mark ended with a splash of ink.

Tesik seethed. "That's completely inappro-"

Selar's horns were burning hotter than a sun. He said quietly, "Go to hell, Commissioner. Someone's trying to frame my partner and you're so pleased about it you're going to send them a thank-you present." He leaned over the desk until their eyes met. He knew what was going to happen next but didn't care when he added, "You think I'm going to cry like a hatchling and help you string him up just because you shoved me in the basement? You're a kepta and you can-"

With a blue flash, Selar was sent flying across the room. The asari assistant's biotic energy tingled painfully against his skin and he gritted his teeth when he crashed into one of the palms in the corner. He was taken back down to the basement after that, rubbing his shoulder and covered in green mossy dirt.

The assistant locked him up this time and she said, "I told you to be nice to him."

Selar didn't think that was possible. He asked her through the red barrier, "Is my partner all right?"

She hesitated, shook her head. "When the case landed on the Commissioner's desk he did a dance around the room. The Investigator doesn't have an alibi and he called the Commissioner every awful name in the book when he was questioned about it. He's not making any friends, like you."

Selar sighed a little, sat down on the bench again. He believed it. "Thanks."

But the asari didn't leave. "You know, you look like you could have really hurt the Commissioner if I wasn't there, if you wanted to," she said. She looked him over like she approved of it. "Are you bad news like he said?"

Selar glanced at her, had a feeling the right answer to that question was yes. The meaner the better, if the way she was smiling at him was any indication. He'd seen that vid before and he didn't like it much.

Selar asked her, "Are you going to help me make a call?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Then go on," he said, irritated by both her and her question. She flounced off.

He rubbed his hands over his forehead and his horns, let out a long exhale. Every time he tried to lean against the wall the bruise on his back reminded him that he should be leaning forward again. He pulled the keycard out of his pocket and resumed staring a hole into it.

And he felt like he was slowly sinking into deep water.

They weren't going to let him call anyone. Tesik was too pleased with the idea of ousting Beran to question a convenient case dropped into his lap like a party favor. It didn't matter that the whole thing was a frame-up, not when the guy stuck in the frame had a reputation and liked to call his district Commissioner a corrupt spook right to his face.

Another conspiracy theory, Selar thought. Maybe.

And T'Ven had told them not to come back until they had more information about the batarian embassy. She wouldn't be looking for him. Meiko might, but she wasn't a defense lawyer. She was an alibi for Selar that the Commissioner obviously didn't want.

More importantly, Meiko was where she belonged, safely ensconced in the never ending diplomatic crises of the Alliance on the ring. He wanted her to stay up there in the circular nature of human politics and dubious greenery. He didn't want her anywhere near the edge of the Ward, where it was easy to stumble onto the end of the world. You didn't even notice you were there until you started to fall right off the side.

And Selar thought about that for a long time, staring down at the little keycard.