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Draft Update 02/04/25
🕑 Added 2025-04-02 18:24:16 +0000 UTC(I feel like I've got back into the habit of apologizing too much on these again, but sorry for the missing week. I'm a bit overwhelmed with too many different types of work at the moment, and have needed to spend a lot of time with my mom for personal reasons. Hopefully you all enjoy the update.)
Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day
It was two figures, one of whom was in the process of being showed in, and a second who was seemingly doing what I'd been earlier - standing in the corner and watching. The former was a tall-faced brunette woman in a maroon dress with extraordinarily good hair, descending down her left shoulder in a wave so perfect it felt ahistorical, and a portly man in grey cloak who was definitely not Rhunbardic, his complexion several shades darker than even Summiri. His hands were stuck in his pockets.
I recognized the former but not the latter. This was Hildris Wulkasduttar, the final member of the fellows. She was supposed to be the one I knew the best aside from the deceased Rastag, coming to meet my deceased mother very often during my childhood and even taking a major role in the accounting of our family business. As a result, I'd been given a lot of information on not just her background but her personality; outgoing, sly, flirtatious, impassive. Of course, there were limits on what I could be told given the freedom given to the one playing the part.
As I approached her and the gangly boy she was presently having unpack her bags - he didn't look particularly pleased about it - she instantly turned towards me with a gregarious smile, opening up her arms. "Kasua, darling! How good to see you!"
I was already involved in a hug before I had a response to reach, her long arms encircling my torso. Was this how it felt to be short? I wasn't a fan. "...hello, auntie Hildris."
"Oh, still calling me auntie! You are just so precious." She pulled away, putting her hands over my cheeks. "And look at you! All dressed like a real working woman. Oh-- Forgive, I don't mean to be condescending. Of course you would be. How are you? How is the business?"
"It's... going well," I improvised. Just say whatever. Whoever this is probably doesn't know anything about how running a company would actually work either. "The managers are still mostly handling things day-to-day right now, but I've taken over most of the accounting and am learning the rest as I go." I reached up to scratch the side of my head, but Kasua's mannerisms translated it into more of a smoothing motion. Unsettling. "We still only have about seventy employees, so it's not too overwhelming."
"That's just wonderful to hear!" She cooed. "I could always tell you'd inherited your mother's head for these sorts of things, on top of having a way with figures. And I hear you're engaged?"
"Mm, that's right," I said, and then - since I didn't want to try and define an entire personhood for my 'beloved' (much less attempt to verbally elaborate on any of the intimate details of a relationship with a man, if I'm being honest) - added, "though we're in a bit of a rough spot right now."
She frowned. "Oh dear, is that so? Young love ever is so tumultuous." She tutted. "If I might be a dreadful snoop, whatever happened?"
It was already obvious what kind of characterization this person was going for, the sort of flamboyant socialite archetype, with mannerisms that were completely over the top. This wasn't really specific to the mystery genre either, but when this type of character did appear, they were usually bystanders who didn't have a major role in the plot, even as victims. Though of course you did see exceptions to that - they were a good basis for a bait and switch, and a pulpy series I'd read when I was young, Paleside Nights, had even had one as the detective.
It was a bit of a relief that so many here were playing relatively stock characters. It made me feel less self-conscious.
"I don't want to get too into it," I said. I didn't want to get too into it. "He's been having trouble finding employment since we left university, that's all."
A smirk appeared on her face. "Ahh, I see. Feeling a little bit of masculine inadequacy relying on his bride-to-be, is it?"
Sure, let's go with that, I thought. But actually elaborating further seemed out of character, so I just furrowed my brow.
"It's just dreadful how men are," Hildris said, putting a hand to her chest. "Even the good ones simply can't stand the sight of a woman succeeding on her terms! Your mother would always say the same thing, not that I haven't had my own share in my more humble station." Judging by the amount of expensive jewelry she was wearing, her station was not particularly humble. "She would be so proud to see you now, darling. So proud."
Right, in the time period this was set, it would have been rare for women to hold any sort of positions of power outside of Mekhi and parts of Inotia. The Hollow Years were the most socially conservative in post-collapse history, even if the modern era had been giving them something of a run for their money, and Rhunbard always had the most stringent gender roles outside of the Arcanocracy. (Assuming you weren't an arcanist, in the latter case.)
...thinking about that, actually, it seemed a little bit unusual to have so many empowered women in this scenario. There was my character, Hildris, and of course Summiri, whose gender was probably relevant to her rejection as the heir to Rastag's empire. Was that just to do with the values of the 'author' of this scenario? Or was there more to it?
"Oh, but I don't mean to be boorish, bringing up all that," she continued. "I'm sure this is all enough for you already. Listen, we simply must catch up properly, but you've caught me and-- What was your name, boy?"
"Wiliya, mam," he replied as he hauled a bronze lamp out of her luggage and affixed it on the desk. Who would take a lamp to something like this? This lady put Kamrusepa to shame.
"Right, yes," she said, with a snap of her finger. "You've caught me and Wiliya setting up camp, as it were. Why don't we reconvene this in the observation car anon? I've rode this train more times than I've had hot dinners, and the view once we get moving is simply to die for. You wouldn't expect a lot of flat land to have much in the way of aesthetics, but the lampsets out here have to be seen to be believed." She pursed her lips. "The wine selection wasn't half-bad either, last I checked."
"Right," I said, with a cautious nod. "I'll see you then."
"Ta-ta," she replied as she ducked into the room to quietly scold Wiliya about his lighting intuition.
As she left, I noticed the third man was looking straight at me, presumably having been watching our exchange. He raised an eyebrow as if to beckon me forward, leaning against the carriage wall.
"Afternoon," he spoke neutrally as I approached.
"...good afternoon," I began, my tone skeptical. "I don't recognize you. Are you one of the other beneficiaries?"
"That's right." He nodded. "Noah of Tell-Rayf, at your service."
Noah. So he was meant to be Ysaran. I guess that was probably what I would have guessed.
"And who might you be?"
"Kasua Inarsduttar," I told him.
"Inarsduttar," he echoed in contemplation. "Doesn't ring a bell."
"I'm not here because of myself or my father," I explained. "My mother, Mariya, was close to the deceased."
"Checks out," he said, with a small shrug.
"What about you? How did you know him?"
"That's a long story," the man said with a world-weary sigh, a mannerism that somehow made me want to burst out laughing knowing this was information he'd read on a sheet of parchment no more than a few days ago. "The short version is that I helped him with something a long time ago, and I guess he's considered himself indebted to me ever since."
I asked the obvious follow-up question. "What did you help him with?"
"It's personal," he rebuffed. "I'm a private detective. It's bad for business if I break client confidentiality, even beyond the grave."
Of course! I should have known; it was stupid that I didn't know, even based on inference and aesthetics alone. Now that I'd seen that none of the workers of the other guests (well, save for the one I still hadn't met, I suppose) fit the role, this could only be one person: The detective. The stupid cloak and mannerisms were just the icing on the cake.
If anything, it was a little too on the nose. Detectives that were just, well, detectives felt a little generic and disconnected from the story. But, well, they had said this was supposed to be a 'casual' scenario.
I was here to prove my interest and ability in making deductions, so obviously I'd need to get myself assigned to the detective role, which implicitly meant working with this guy. So naturally I'd want to get a rapport of some sort going, but at the same time I couldn't be too obvious about it without breaking the rules.
It probably wouldn't be too difficult to accomplish organically. I already had a goal oriented around investigation, after all.
"It must have been a very important case, at least, for him to put you in his will over it," I suggested.
"You could sure say that," he replied with a snort. "Honestly, though, I only half understand why I'd be invited to something like this. Well, not that it's even clear what 'this' is." He raised an eyebrow. "Don't suppose you can shed any light on that point?"
I narrowed my eyes. "All I've been told is that the only thing being distributed is the art collection, and that Bahram has been charged with the process."
"We're about on the same page, then. Don't suppose he's the loose-talking type?"
"No."
"Figured as much." He sighed. "I guess we'll have to see, then."
"Actually, he did say one thing earlier," I recalled. "When someone else was asking him about what the plan was going to be, he said that they'd 'have to wait until dinner'."
"Hmmm." The man furrowed his brow. "A while off, then. Not sure how I feel about that."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, it's a little concerning, ain't it?" He gestured towards the adjacent window. "Being dragged out to the middle of absolutely nowhere for some arbitrary reason just to be given some art. Makes you wonder if something is up."
I hesitated. Obviously this was true, but I'd felt that bringing it up would be falling afoul of the approaching-the-genre-in-bad-faith rule. I wasn't sure what the appropriate response was to him saying it so blatantly.
I opted for a neutral reply. "It was in his will, apparently."
"Yeah, well, I've seen people put a lot of weird requests into their wills over the years, but this one has to take the cake. Anything could happen out there."
"If you find it so strange, why come?"
"Money," he answered bluntly. "My line of work doesn't exactly make you rich. I've gotta take the breaks I get."
This guy kind of sucks, I thought. Like, the others are type characters to varying degrees, but it doesn't even feel like he's taking this completely seriously. Do the people running hand out the detective role to their friends, or something?
God, now that I think about it, he was seriously sitting in the corner waiting for somebody to talk to him before all this, too. What an amateur!
No, there was no point in getting annoyed. There was no rule that rendered the detective essential in any particular way beyond presumably having the role initially; if he turned out to be useless and a shitty participant generally, it only left more room to draw the spotlight to myself. Besides, considering my acting so far, it probably wasn't a good idea to be throwing stones.
"For your part, though, I've heard your family's quite wealthy," he continued. "So if I were in your shoes, I'd give real consideration to getting out before the train leaves in about..." He reached into his pocket, flipping out a pocket watch."...five minutes."
"I think you're being a little paranoid, mister Tell-Rayf," I told him, giving him a critical eye with a bit of meta implication. "Even if it's new, there are trains that use this line every day. It's not as if we're dropping off the face of the map."
"Hey, it's just a thought," he said, throwing up his hands. "You don't really strike me as the type of girl to be into art, is all."
That doesn't even--
"But hey, maybe you have your own reasons," he continued. "I'm gonna duck into my room and look into a few things. I'll see you around, I'm sure."
And then he left, his pace almost awkwardly quick.
Great, I thought. Now when the murder does happen, as he knows it will, my character will look stupid.
𒀭
Of course, through all of this, there wasn't just the mystery to think about.
Neferuaten had mentioned that was a 'good chance' one of the members of the Exemplary Acolyte's Class would be here. I couldn't guess as to how she'd be aware of this, and it seemed a little too good to be true. Frankly, my immediate thought was that she was going to secretly be here herself - though she'd denied this possibility when I raised it - and if it hadn't been for what the Lady had said, I might have assumed the entire thing was a pretext to that end. No, I was still prepared for the possibility this would all be a complete waste of time.
Still, in the back of my mind, I couldn't help speculate as to who it could, hypothetically, be. And who they could be playing.
It was a waste of time, obviously. As I've said many times at this point, I barely knew most of them even back then, and that was before-- Well, we went over all this just a little bit ago. The only person I felt I had any kind of deeper understanding of was Ran, and potentially Ptolema now that we'd been hanging out non-stop for a week straight, and those were the only two I knew it wasn't... well, barring Ptolema lying exhaustively for some reason.
Yet, I couldn't help but see traits of them in every other actor I encountered. Kamrusepa's melodramatic demeanor in Hildris, Ezekiel's shittiness in Tuthal, Lilith's stilted manner of speech in Summiri. Bahram, even though she'd said 'classmates' specifically, couldn't help bring Linos to mind; his affable manner and aversion to conflict, while knowing more about what was really going on than anyone else. I'd even saw notes of Bardiya in the conductor, though it would be kind of disappointing if it just turned out to be him again.
At a certain point, it started to feel like I was looking at the clouds. All human beings are impossibly different, incomprehensible at the deepest level to one another-- You know my stupid mantra. But simultaneously, all humans are kind of... the same, too. The same core traits, just expressed to different degrees in different ways. Stripping away aesthetics and social context, one found oneself in a valley of understanding. Unable to know the real truth, but bereft of the ability to make superficial estimations either.
So, where did one go from there? Obviously, throwing in the towel and wasting one's life on circular introspection had been the wrong answer. So was it better to accept the overwhelming majority of interactions with others as mere performance, and devote one's entire life to understanding and trusting a few other people, like an academic specializing into a smaller and smaller niche?
Or... was there something to be done about it, in the same way something had been done about death? A way to 'solve' human communication the way Dilmun had 'solved' death?
The train started 'moving' within five minutes of the end of the conversation, although obviously it couldn't have actually been moving in any meaningful way - at most, along a repeating length of track between two portals. Still, the illusion was convincing. The station fell away and, after a brief interlude where we could briefly see the podunk town it was based in, civilization with it.
On Earth, the steppes of Eurasia must have appeared eerily endless - a never ending ocean of grass - but here on this simulacrum of the Mimikos they merely served to offer an unobuscated view of a much busier horizon: The mountains of central Rhunbard stretching up with the curve of the landscape like an impossibly tall fortress, ultimately giving way to ocean and the Orphaned Continent far in the distance.
The novelty of the view lasted about a minute, at which I realized there was literally nothing left to do on the train but go find the other passengers again. Or, well. Be murdered. Which it suddenly occurred to me could happen at any point, now that we'd left the station. Just like the characters wouldn't per-se follow narrative convention, the structure might not either.
For entirely non-meta reasons, Kasua elected to take this moment to head back to the observation carriage to continue her investigation on a more interpersonal basis. Despite Hildris' invitation, she was evidently still busy with her belongings, as there were only four people in the room. Bahram and Tuthal were seated on a sofa around a table at the rear window along with a woman I didn't recognize, while another was behind the counter at the bar, currently in the process of slicing bread. The counter-lady looked young and might have been Inotian, with a bit of a brassy complexion and tied-back brown hair, while the other was blonde and middle aged, with a face that spoke to a hard-lived life.
Just by process of elimination, it was easy to work out who these two had to be. One was the last of the staff (caterer, presumably) while the other could be none other than Phaidime Mithraiosduttar, Rastag's sister. With that, all of the 10 people the guide had alluded to were accounted for. Though, again, there remained the possibility for a secret person.
Despite it being afternoon (both in the Crossroads and the story), it seemed they were already drinking, with beers in front of the two men and something stronger and ambiguously brown in front of the woman. Tuthal took notice of me immediately upon my arrival.
"Kasua, girl!" he called out, raising his glass. "Come sit with us! We're having a late lunch."
I frowned. What would Kasua think about this asshole acting this friendly, right after he'd almost called her a bitch scarcely a half-hour ago? I suppose she'd take a goal-oriented view on the situation, even if she wouldn't be happy about it.
We need to work on more of an inner monologue for this character.
I stepped over to the table. Bahram smiled at me; Phaidime appeared curious but otherwise indifferent.
"Not much of a lunch," I commented, with an incline of my head towards the drink.
"It's a work in progress," he replied sarcastically. "Eirene over there is whipping us up some sandwiches. Apparently the conductor hasn't got around to unlocking the kitchen yet, so we're stuck eating glorified snacks until he's confident this old thing isn't going to blow up on us. Can you believe that? Such a stickler for the rules he doesn't give the hired cook a key to the kitchen!"
Bahram rose a finger. "Now now, Tuth--"
"Kas, have you seen that nightmare of a setup for steering this thing? With all the different lenses and mirrors?"
"Mm, I saw it."
"Genuinely psychotic shit," Tuthal remarked. "Literally; the mark of a deeply sick mind. I'll tell you-- The last and only time I rode this deathtrap was fifteen years ago, when he first had it commissioned, and I felt certain beyond a shadow of a doubt he'd come to his senses the first time it almost got the thing derailed. Nope! Now the setup is even more complicated. They even have one on the roof now, like it's a fucking submarine."
On the roof? I must have missed that one.
Also, I was pretty sure submarine was an anachronism for this time period. I mean-- I guess they also had submersible ships in the old world, but it didn't really feel like something that'd be mentioned in casual conversation.
"Why did he design it that way?" I asked.
Tuthal rolled his eyes. "The same reason he did everything bizarre. Ask me again later when this bugger isn't around to take offense."
Bahram just sighed, taking a sip of his beer.
"But enough about that," he digressed. "Kasua, this is Phaidime, our dearly departed's sister. Phaidime, this is Kasua-- Her mother was one of our old friends."
The woman looked amused. "Isn't it a little early to be making introductions for me, when we only met ten minutes ago?"
"Look, I just told you, you've already proven yourself an island of sanity in this fucking situation, plus you actually seem to have a functioning set of humor." He drank from his glass. "As far as I'm concerned, we're practically comrades in fucking arms."
I furrowed my brow slightly. I'd only spent a half hour messing around, and already it felt like I'd missed out on half the plot.
Bahram, pointedly ignoring this exchange, turned to me with his usual warm expression. "Would you like something to drink, Kasua?"
"I'm fine," I said, glancing towards the bar. "I'll ask for some water whenever the sandwiches are ready."
"You sure about that?" Phaidime asked with a wry smile. "You're young, and it's going to be a long day. Might want to get started early."
"See? You're already trying to corrupt the little thing," Tuthal said, amused. "My type of woman."
I exhaled uncomfortably. "I don't want to get into any bad habits. I'm hoping to return to work at the end of the week."
He smirked. "That's aspirational, considering the state of the lines where we're going. I'm sure they'll manage without you, though."
I ignored this condescending remark, looking at Phaidime. "I didn't know Rastag had a sister."
This was not true on any level. In-universe, I was supposed to have heard about it from reading his obituary in a news sheet, and for my mother to have mentioned her uncomfortably in passing when I was much younger. But in-character, I decided it made sense to tell a white lie as a way to probe for more information.
"I know, right? It was easy for me to forget too," she remarked. "We've barely spoken since we were kids. Left me and our mum behind in our village and never looked back."
"God, it sure is vindicating to know that someone you already hate has always been a complete prick," Tuthal muttered as he sipped from his beer.
Bahram shook his head. "You don't hate him, Tuth. I know you don't mean that."
"I do hate him!" He roared, though more with joy than wroth. His mood had clearly turned radically since the previous conversation. "I do. You're just going to have to accept that, if we're to continue to be friends."
"If it were anyone else, you'd be saying that it's just natural for a man to put the fetters of his youth behind him and forge out on his own," the other man retorted, ignoring this ultimatum.
"I would not say that! Well, at least not in regard to behavior like this. There's nothing more important to me than family. Besides, it's one thing to want to get away from your parents, but your own sister? And not just a sister, but one you shared a womb with?" He shook his head. "Unforgivable. That sort of thing would never happen among people with pedigree-- Uh, no offense."
"Offense taken!" Phaidime declared cheerfully, taking a shot of whatever she was drinking.
"All I mean is, achieving that much success and still leaving your own people to squeeze out a living on their own is the mark of a man of low character," Tuthal corrected himself. "So, you know, it's good to have one other person here who has some experience with that, as opposed to sucking his cock."
"I'm not sucking his cock," I stated plainly.
"Well you didn't even know him, so it doesn't count," the man rebuffed me.
"I know that my mother had her share of issues with him by the end, even if not the specifics." This was extrapolating on the backstory details I'd been given just a tiny bit, but it was probably fine.
"Really? I always got the impression they were the best of friends." Tuthal's expression turned a little sour, his lip wrinkling. "Her and Hildris were always having little meetings with him together, especially later on in our little group. It was practically a clique-within-a-clique."
"He always was fixated on girls, even when we were kids," Phaidime commented off-handedly.
"Fixated, maybe, but not especially good at charming them. I've never seen a man rise so high in the world of business while failing to develop any degree of interpersonal magnetism. Never even found himself a wife." He laughed to himself. "Dying gods, it's no wonder he made that awkward waif his understudy."
"I never knew he'd fallen out with your mother, Kasua," Bahram said, his expression suddenly concerned. "He never spoke about it. Are you sure you didn't just get the wrong idea?"
"...maybe," I said, narrowing my eyes. "It seemed that way to me, at least. But this was after I'd already moved out, so I might have just interpreted one conversation out of context."
"Bahram, I hate to break it to you, but I do think you might be the only person on this train other than the servants without some reason to be pissed off at the arse," Tuthal said. "Even Hildris had some complaints about how he was asking the accounts to be managed, if I recall."
Bahram grunted unhappily, squinting as his eyes fell.
"Hey now, don't lump me in there," Phaidime said casually. "Just because he left us to rot doesn't mean I'm bitter about it. We survived, and at least he apparently felt guilty enough about it to invite me to this thing."
"You think that's why he did it?" Tuthal asked. "Guilt?"
"Can't think of another reason you'd leave anything to a sister you haven't shown an inkling of giving a shit about for the better of a lifetime," the woman remarked, looking down into her drink and swirling it idly. "Unless this whole thing is some prank."
"That's what I'm worried about-- Oh, finally," he cut himself off, as the caterer arrived with a tray full of neatly cut sandwiches.
"Ah, Kasua would like some water, please?" Bahram spoke before I had a chance to.
"Sure thing," the woman - Eirene, apparently - said.
He fetched me a glass and pitcher, and we ate. The sandwiches, which were made entirely with preserved ingredients, were mediocre at best even by Mimikos standards. After being spoiled on Dilmun food for a week, I could barely bring myself to take more than a few bites. My eyes kept drifting back to Phaidime, who didn't seem particularly interested either.
There are two plot elements in mysteries (probably a lot more than two, if we're being honest - mysteries not being a particularly creative genre - but two especially) that will immediately set off blaring alarms for anyone with even a modest familiarity of genre: Headless corpses and twins. I don't even really think I need to explain the reason for this, but both devices are noteworthy in how they enable the subversion of identity. A headless corpse is implicitly more difficult to identify correctly, so you can do a trick where you swap the clothes out and try to pass them as belonging to someone else based on the circumstance, creating a false impression that someone dead is alive and that someone alive is dead.
I think this came up earlier when we were talking about what happened to the inner circle, didn't it? Well, it's tangential, anyway.
Anyway, the inclusion of a twin in a story is even more blatant than that. If you have two people who look the same, one can easily replace the other. Again, I feel stupid even laying this out.
So from the moment I'd first seen Phaidime described, I'd immediately begun suspecting that her and Rastag might secretly be the same person. Sure, their gender didn't match, but twists that involved playing on the reader's expectations regarding that stuff were also very popular. Because of the nature of heterosexual attraction as a major influence on the average person's interpersonal perceptions - and everything that's trickled culturally downstream from that - most individuals will, without really thinking about it, 'lock' someone into a perceived sex the moment they meet or even just hear about them, and then adamantly refuse to remove that lock until overwhelming evidence appears otherwise.
That is to say, if you show someone who is aesthetically a pretty girl in a cute dress doing a murder, then it becomes impossible for someone to even consider the possibility that the culprit is male without also provoking uncomfortable thoughts about gender signifiers more broadly, or in the case of a heterosexual male reader, introspection regarding the nature of sexuality as a concept, and whether or not--
You know, actually, let's not do this.
My point is, since developing that hunch, one piece of evidence had further raised my suspicions. Rastag died suddenly in a manner that hadn't been elaborated on. Rastag's heir apparent had been a woman, despite this being inexpedient. Rastag had been closer to the women in the Fellows of Hinshelwood Hall than the men. Rastag had never married or seemed interested in pursuing women romantically. Rastag funneled almost his entire fortune into a non-profit rather than distributing it with the rest of the inheritance. We weren't given any pictures of him in the briefing.
Finally, Phaidime had no established history beyond being his estranged twin sister, with no listed relatives or even friends.
The conclusion was obvious: Rastag was not actually dead, and had instead simply faked his own demise in order to assume the identity of Phaidime. The motivation for this, and whether or not he'd 'originally' been a woman and Rastag an invented persona (to gain power despite the misogyny of the era? That seemed to be a theme) or if he had some personal or more functional reason to assume the identity of 'Phaidime', was ambiguous but ultimately irrelevant.
The reasons for everything all started coming together in my mind. As Tuthal had pointed out, barely anyone invited to this event had even been on great terms with Rastag when he'd died, so there was no reasonable emotive explanation for them all having been included in this bizarre will. The detective was the key to what we did have in common, which was dirt. Everyone here knew things - or at least, could have known things - about Rastag that were extremely personal and potentially dangerous. There was probably some big hidden conspiracy about the Fellows of Hinshelwood that'd be revealed at around the end of the second act, tying into whatever had caused Kasua's mothers death-- Maybe Tuthal's whole deal with him being screwed over financially would factor in, too. We were, the point is, a threat to her new identity.
Rastag/Phaidime was the mastermind. She'd built this train planning this all years in advance, and its strange design choices would ultimately turn out to be in service of whatever esoteric murders she was planning to commit. It would probably be centered around whatever happened at dinner, once we were well away from any vestige of civilization. The ambiguity around the number of carriages was probably to hide the fact that the art collection didn't even exist, and the mysterious missing door in the rest carriage probably indicated that one of the bedrooms had been converted into a secret passage; I was willing to bet the Phaidime's room would be on one side, and whoever was on the other would be the first one murdered. Probably Tuthal. Again, his type usually died first.
Boom. Solved. Easy-peasy.
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This was a good chapter and I'm now notably enjoying the current sidequest, despite initial reservations. Definitely unrelated to the main plot, no inferences to be drawn here! It's fractals all the way down...
