The world outside Elliot's pinprick of a window was, to his limited and unique context, almost unbelievable. Grassy plains overlooked by a relentlessly blue sky, the sunlight making an oven of his four steel walls; it was a scene plucked straight from a page in his picture book of memories.

A Sidosian summer on the western plains, waiting alone in a metal coffin for the blares of sirens to rouse him to his feet. Peaceful in the moment, enjoying at a distance what some might consider a perfect day.

It was a memory he never wished to revisit, let alone replicate.

"This concludes our minute of silence. All personnel, please return to your posts."

Elliot rubbed his eyes, the skin underneath them tender from lack of sleep. Wafer-thin his mattress may have been, but his body was so far gone he'd struggle to distinguish it from a king-size.

The thousand-yard stare he sent out his pothole window travelled endlessly, brain unable to process anything but the worries responsible for his symptoms until his retinas screamed for mercy.

A knock came at his door. He turned, sending stars and imprints across his vision, obscuring his visitor's face as they entered, but not their uniform.

"You look a right mess," Marie muttered. "Should I call the infirmary?"

Elliot shook his head. "Same old, same old."

She grunted in the way a commanding officer should: disappointed, but not all too surprised either, and a treatment he only received when he argued with Evalyn for more than a day.

It was nostalgic, reminding him she still didn't approve of the way the married couple dealt with their arguments. One sulked away all his self-worth, while the other would bang her head against the wall until she'd concussed it all out of her system.

Like a zombie, he straightened his collar and saluted with the decisiveness of a dancer forgetting a step in their routine.

"There's no point doing it now," Marie said, pursing her lips. "We've got to get going."

"Where?"

"Care for a drink?"

The guts of the Steel Whale functioned as usual; gears and whirs, pulleys and elevators, magical or not, fired in tandem like a well-conducted orchestra, like one would expect from the outside.

But to Elliot, it was as though that one-minute silence had never ended. Straight faces shuffled back and forth in awkward encounters, foregoing greetings in the absence of any function higher than muscle memory and basic communication.

Everybody was in their own world that day, perhaps even as much as Elliot. Marie was no exception.

He'd watched her back cut through the flow of blank faces for the past ten minutes as neither uttered a word about anything. A familiar right turn later, and they were starting down a shoulder's-width gap; the rounding error that housed a speakeasy built on crates and leftover booze.

Elliot thought best to comment on her insensitive timing, but his mouth wasn't keeping up with his brain, and by the time he stepped through, it was clear there was more to the journey than a glass of whiskey.

"It's a shame about the speak-easy," Elliot said as he stepped into the hollowed-out air vent, now devoid of even the most basic of furnishings. The artery was free of its blood-clot, and the beast's blood vessels had no incentive to stick around, leaving Elliot one less place to relax.

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"I know, but any official rooms on the ship would come with a level of clearance. Crown's opinion that even the highest grade won't guarantee us much safety."

The welded lines across the wall ballooned and expanded, warping around the metal sheets and lathering them with plaster. The light, barely the coattails of what made it down the narrow alleyway, blossomed into a warm radiance, turning his weak shadow into six.

Oak beams sprouted floors of pine polished with citrus oil, and of course, books. Lots of them. Probably to remind him of home.

If his brain were working at half the capacity it usually did, he may have thought to bow his head sooner, but the face across the expansive bureau hadn't changed from the one that had teased him from behind an old workbench for the past decade and a half. Perhaps Al didn't blame him; he didn't seem to take offence when Marie had to nudge his elbow into lowering his head. In fact, his expression barely changed at all. Not unusual for Spirits, unusual for his friend, or what Elliot feared was left of him.

"Your Majesty," he said as he felt the temperature change set in, a relief for his sweat-drenched overalls.

"At ease," Al said. "Still the same ol' me for now."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Elliot said.

"Thank you," he nodded. "I thought it best I brief you in person. Can count the number of people who know who I really am on one wing. Best we all be on the same page."

"Yes, sir," Elliot said. The honorific seemed to rouse him slightly, and he regarded Elliot up and down with a sceptical look.

"We all got a rough patch," he said, as though Elliot were the one of the two who needed consoling. "Too bad. This can't wait."

Al fluttered his wings and hopped to the other side of the desk, a stack of papers already building. "Imma keep my identity under wraps as long as the country can bear."

"Well, you're begging for a constitutional crisis. We haven't even passed noon and the country's going haywire."

He read from the topmost document as he spoke, no doubt distilling the constant stream of information into a summary Elliot's handicapped mind could process.

"The Royal Forest is in tatters, and it's barely been half a day. There ain't a single person who could pull off killing that old hag so cleanly. Whoever's responsible has the resources to finish little ol' me off."

"We need them to overplay their hand," Marie sighed. "But we can't predict how much damage that'll do. Besides, the succession of her magic's been severed—there's nothing tangible for Al to inherit but the title of king."

"God," Elliot sighed, collapsing into a nearby armchair. Suddenly, the speak-easy's demise felt all too real.

"Any operation we undergo before Al's public announcement as king, you'll have to lead the Deity division," Marie muttered, as though the other half of her brain was still lost in the logistics of it all.

"And, well, the more heads, the better," Al added, although it was the weakest consolation anybody had ever given him.

"Who are our suspects?" Elliot asked. "Same as before?"

"We thought Treyatasian terrorists were acting before, but if that's the case…what a way to miss their mark."

"What about the Feds then?" Elliot said. "They're the ones that fed us that lead. Weren't exactly scrupulous about the investigation either."

Marie's face soured to match Al's. "It's a possibility I don't want to think about. New Modernists wouldn't go that far by doctrine; they aren't anti-monarchy."

"They're enough to breed extremists," Al said. "Our other guess is Bankson, purely by way of means."

"What about Vesmos—"

"Of course Vesmos is involved," they said, almost in unison, but only Marie followed. "It's just a matter of how, and if we can prove it. Because if we do, then…"

Elliot had no interest in hearing the three-letter word that came after. The threat of it was enough to coax action out of him.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Police barely recovered the Queen's remains. We still need to establish the cause of death and what exactly happened. For that, we've got to sift through that hellhole, and we'll need Deity division to support any ground teams going in."

Marie leaned against the back of Elliot's chair, rather put out herself as the fatigue grew on her too. "I'll get teams working on following up the Bankson apartment's owner. We've got a lot of leeway now that the country's in crisis. The Fed's red tape won't stop us anymore."

In other words, things were already moving, or at least the plans were drawn up. But that still left Al.

"What are you going to do?" Elliot asked as Al fluttered up off the top of the paperwork pile, and it grew under his talons.

"Re-establish power 'mongst the Spirits first. Some of 'em who gave her power before have since died, new ones have been born. Won't be the same; just hopin' it won't be a downgrade."

"No…sorry," Elliot said, shaking his head as though trying to clear a fog out of it. "About the library."

Al was taken aback for a second, but even that was but a fleeting ripple in the stillness, if only a little more sullen now.

"Of course," he said. "Iris'll miss it."

That was enough to answer his question.

Elliot chewed on his cheek and glanced around the room. "Right," he muttered before jumping out of the armchair. "Right!"

"What's gotten into you?" Marie asked.

"Nobody makes my daughter sad besides me," he said with more confidence than the proclamation was worth. "Let me at the bastard who did it."

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