When the Circus Comes to Town

Three days later Ignatia became the Patrician legally. The circus stayed in town for a little longer than planned; it was best to capitalize on the regime change while it was fresh, and it would do well to be seen being friendly with the new Patrician. Very friendly, Ignatia noticed on closing night. The ticket takers nearly fell over themselves to usher her in, grinning and touching their hats and sweating. She strode through the milling gawkers and found a seat several rows away from the front. She watched the show from the audience for the second time in her life, a bouquet of red roses tucked under her arm.

Afterward she let the audience shuffle out, choosing to stand in one place and let them go around her, like a stone sitting in a riverbed. Mostly people didn’t recognize her; Chriek might have plastered a well-illuminated image of her on the front page of the times, but Patricians did not go to the circus, and so she must be a cheap lookalike. When she could move easily again she made her way to the back of the tent where performers liked to have a quick smoke out of the wind.

“Baby girl,” her mother chuckled when Ignatia stepped into view.

“Hi, Mama,” Ignatia said, and suddenly felt bashful. She looked down at the roses clutched in her hand.

The Astounding Florencia gave the cluster of clowns behind her a look. “Go be somewhere else, why don’t ya?” They shuffled away, almost out of earshot. Florencia smelled of kerosene and burnt hair—her buffoon of an assistant stood a bit too close at one point. She offered Ignatia her bag of chewing tobacco and her daughter shook her head, rueful.

“I think I found my place, Mama.”

“On the very top o’ the heap too,” Florencia grunted, with a nod of approval. “That’ll do my dear.”

“That’ll do?” She didn’t know what she expected, but this wasn’t it.

“Oh yes. But I must say, it were a fool thing to do. You’re in the city for five minutes and they make you their leader? Tsk, tsk, child mine. You know that just raises the bar. Now I’ll be expecting grander and grander things in the future. I sure hope you can deliver.”

“Mama, anyone ever tell you you’re so full o’ shit you squelch?”

Florencia gave a bark of laughter. “Watch that tongue, baby girl, or I’ll show you the back o’ my hand, don’t think I won’t.”

“Yes Mama.” Ignatia chewed the inside of her cheek, and Florencia waited patiently. A hubward wind kicked up, rattling some garbage in the gutter. Somewhere behind them the clowns told a joke that had them sniggering. “Mama?” There it was. “You know, you don’t have to stay with the circus. I’m not richer than Creosote or anything like that, but the Palace is lousy with rooms.”

“You must think you can make your title stick. You get that boldness from your father, you know.”

“I screwed my title to the sticking place, yes. Besides, the only suitable replacements would be a guild leader—and all the other leaders get very sensitive in case one of the others get too excited—or Sir Samuel.”

“And this Samuel?”

“He gets rather shouty when someone tries to pry him away from his hospital. He’s a workaholic—a family condition, I am given to understand. Would you like to, to leave? With me?”

“Child mine, all my life I knew I would only leave this thrice accursed circus in a pine box. And now you want me to leave in a carriage with golden wheels.”

“I peeled off as much of the gold foil as I could.”

“Don’t willfully misunderstand me. I’ll not leave the circus, child mine. Not yet. You have a place for you in the city. I’ll not lurk in the shadows like a hanger-on.”

Ignatia contemplated her bootlaces. “One year. Give me one year, and I’ll carve a place for you to stay. I only want you to be happy, Mama.”

“That’s because you’re my baby girl still. A son is a son until he takes a wife, but my daughter’s my daughter all of my life. Remember that.” She cradled Ignatia’s face between hard, rough palms, the smell of kerosene at once overwhelming and comforting. “Make this city work for you. There will be long days and late nights, but always make the city work for you and remember your little Ma.”

“Yes, Mama. I’ll see you again, and I’ll write you.” Her eyes drifted open, sparkling with mischief. “I’ll send my first correspondence with a man on a horse. And we’ll see if he can’t take this circus and put it on the metaphorical map.”

Two weeks after Ignatia took the tyranny, His Grace His Excellency Sir Samuel Vimes M.D. received a small parcel on his front step. A doctor of some years, he took only a cursory glance at the contents of the matchbox to determine that the ashes within belonged to a vampire. Dr. Vimes took a lancet to his fingertip and pinched the small puncture until a single, fat, red droplet of blood welled up and rolled into the ashes.

The following day the Sam Vimes-sometimes-Keel received a letter offering him the position of Commander of the Watch. He stared at the expensive stationary for a long time.

Vimes stood to attention and tersely declined Ignatia’s invitation to have a seat. The woman herself, a freshly appointed Patrician, prowled to the big picture window overlooking the city—her city. “Mr. Vimes, tell me what you see.”

He stared stonily out over the lopsided rooftops, the squares of yellow-lit windows, the fog that hung over the streets like a fine shroud. This, at least, he knew the answer to. “I see a well-oiled machine,” he told her, repeating from rote memorization. “All the little cogs and wheels moving to make Ankh-Morpork work.”

Ignatia exhaled sharply out her nose, unimpressed. “Whoever put that description in your head should be taken out and shot,” she replied. He blinked, taken aback.

“And what do you see, ma’am?”

“I see people. I see a city that wasn’t really made for the people in it, but the populous makes it work for them. They twist and tear down and build and rebuild, unwittingly causing problems for themselves a few years, a decade, a century down the road. But in the moment, despite their foolishness, their cunning, their short-sightedness, they make it work for them.

“The city is not a machine, Mr. Vimes. It is an organism, a wild animal. It will bite the hand that feeds it, but with the right knowledge, it can be made to heel. And it will be made to heal, one way or another.”

Vimes kept his eyes fixed on her unmoving back. “Do you love Ankh-Morpork, Lady Wrathine?”

In the glass, her reflection lifted a single eyebrow and for a moment Vimes was thirty years younger, brash and young and somehow less cynical than he should have been, standing in this very spot while someone older and wiser than Ignatia peered straight through his soul. She did not turn from her spot, but spoke to the window, to her city. “I do not love Ankh-Morpork,” she said slowly, each word picked with care before being delivered. “I have seen the Ramtop Mountains in the spring, with the creeks and rivers choked with ice. And I have seen the lights of Genua during Hogswatch. I have wandered the castle halls of Uberwald, and explored the salt flats of Muntab after a rainstorm. I have been lost in Djelibeybi and Howondaland, very nearly baptized in Omnia, escaped friendly fire in Istanzia and survived unfriendly fire in Borogravia.” She turned away from the window, eyebrow still raised. “I have travelled the Disc and seen its wonders, and I can say with certainty that there is no place like Ankh-Morpork. No, Mr. Vimes, I do not love this city, but it is my city.”

He felt the corner of his mouth threaten to quirk upward. “And what you have, you keep?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m inclined to believe that the city craves a caretaker, and so caretaker I will be.” A quick smile flashed across her features, there and then gone again, and she tapped a finger to her collarbone. “Ankh-Morpork has me, and it will keep me. For as long as needed.”

“Even though it isn’t your headache, you’re going to sit at his—at that desk and take over?” Vimes prodded.

“Ah, but this city is no more a headache than it is a machine. It is an animal to tame, a company to flip and make profitable again.”

“It’s not a game,” he said, sharply. “It’s not some kind of puzzle you can solve.”

“Solve it?” she echoed, as if tasting the words. Ignatia regained her seat and contemplated her desk blotter for a long moment, fingertips resting on her lower lip. “No, I wouldn’t wish to solve it even if it were a puzzle. I would prefer to transform it. How goes the Campbell murder case?”

Vimes floundered for a moment as he shifted gears. “It’s going cold,” he growled. “We don’t have any meaningful leads, and we don’t have enough manpower to investigate any more than what we have.”

She hummed and stared at a patch of wall a few inches above and to the left of Vimes’ ear. “A name comes to mind. See if you can find, what was it, a Rupert Taft?” She rifled through a stack of papers on her desk before pulling out a hastily written report and setting it on the top of the pile. “Yes, originally Taft but was changed to Kingston some years ago. He works for a candle maker, and my oh my, he has come into an alarming amount of money recently for a candle maker’s wages.” She glanced up at the clock on the wall. “If you hurry, you’ll be able to catch him before he goes home.” She returned to her stack of reports and files, bringing a new one to the top of the pile and selecting an ink pen. She scratched something in the margin and looked back up at Vimes, face coolly impassive. “Do not let me keep you,” she ordered, voice soft.

Vimes had to run to make it to the candle maker’s place in time. He huffed as he hurried, flagged down a man coming out of the shopfront. No sooner did he open his mouth to ask him if a Rupert Kingston was still on the clock than the man bolted. He ran, and Vimes gave chase in a dance as ancient as coppers. Something primal took over, and between one step and the next he went from some yards behind the perp to directly in front of him.

“Rupert Taft!” he grunted as he bowled him to the ground. They struggled briefly, and then Vimes had a pair of cuffs on him. “You are under arrest!”

Vimes noticed the way people acted around Ignatia Wrathine. They simpered for the most part, and every once and again someone would try to bully her. Bullies learned very quickly that it was safer to fawn than to bluster. She was not too shy to softly request a palace guard to show a belligerent visitor what the palatial basement looked like.

Rupert Taft did not bluster or simper. He cowered. Vimes had seen the face of true terror a handful of times, but nothing surpassed the rictus of horror that was Taft’s face when he stood in front of Ignatia’s desk.

“Rupert,” she sighed. “Why would you do such a thing?”

Unprompted, Taft spilled everything. He babbled at length about how Sonder contacted him a few months ago, how Sonder planned everything out and paid in advance. How Sonder told him that Ignatia held a grudge against him for leaving the circus, and how he would tell her where Rupert lived if he didn’t do the deed. He gabbled about the fateful night, about the spike of adrenaline, cutting into Campbell and the blood. Oh, the blood.

Sure enough, with all the gory details brought to light, Ginger produced the murder weapon, rusted and caked in dirt from where Taft hastily buried it. There was an outfit of Taft’s irredeemably spattered in hues of brown that made Vimes’ teeth ache and mood sour. Within the hour Sonder, flanked by Dorfl, joined Taft before Ignatia. He quivered with rage and pomp, making his chains jangle.

“I wanted you out!” he spat without preamble, as if setting eyes on Ignatia behind a desk set something inside of him alight. “And without that fat drunken idiot running the show, I could make the company great again.”

Ignatia raised an eyebrow and leaned forward slightly. “Great again?” she echoed, her voice like steel and something behind her eyes simmered, ready to boil.

Sonder’s lips lifted in a sneer and he jabbed an accusatory finger at her. “You let in goblins and dwarves and all sorts what we shouldn’t have any truck with. Disgusting vermin, the lot of them. That wasn’t how it used to be! And damn Campbell! Letting a witch call the shots, giving good honest work to some little girl! I’m not afraid of you.”

Ignatia exhaled slowly and sat back in her seat until her spine pressed rigidly against the back of her chair. She steepled her fingers, let the silence stretch. “I recall saying something very similar to you, Mr. Sonder. And if memory serves, you gave me a very tangible reason why I should have been afraid of you.” She watched the color drain out of his face. “In some respects, you are right. A little girl has no place running a circus. Lucky for you, I have never been a little girl. I have always, and only been, Ignatia.” She nodded at Quirke. “Take these men down to the basement cells, while I decide what to do with them.”

Quirke saluted and did what he was told without argument. For all his faults, Quirke’s lack of imagination and eagerness to please made him a damn good guard. Vimes followed Quirke and his two prisoners, not bothering to shut the door behind them. Watching Sonder and Taft escorted from the Oblong Office by a golem, a vampire and a Quirke might have been satisfying if Ginger didn’t approach Ignatia’s elbow and ask, “Oughtn’t we to alert the Assassin’s Guild? They usually dispense justice in…in situations like these.”

Ignatia watched her prized ticket boy and the terror of her childhood clink and rattle down the hallway. “No,” she decided. “This is a circus matter, and the circus takes care of their own.” Ignatia closed her eyes for a moment, mentally shaking herself from her reverie. “And I couldn’t say yet whether those two stupid bastards require justice or mercy.” Ignatia frowned up at Ginger. “That will be all, captain. Do not let me keep you.”

The following week Antony von Lipwig was hanged, much to the pleasure of the assembled masses. And the next day a haggard man in rich but simple clothing with a ring of rope burn around his throat rode into the circus’ encampment as if he were fleeing the Dungeon Dimensions in their entirety. “Manuel Spangler,” he told them was his name. It wasn’t the first time a man running from something joined the circus on the hoof. The Astounding Florencia walked him to the cart holding the big tent and its paraphernalia. A minute of shuffling and she produced a heavy pile of netting.

Spangler fingered it, face blank. “What do I do with this?”

“You mend that. It is the safety netting for the tightrope, and it needs reinforcing from time to time.”

“Mend it! I don’t know a thing about…” the words dried up in his throat under her raised eyebrow.

“Mr. Spangler, to do the hard jobs you need to learn to do the simple jobs. You talk a mile a minute and you ooze krisma, but that don’t mean a thing if you don’t have an eye for details. Now, you’re a smart man, smart enough, and I know you can figure out how to make that netting stronger. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a letter to write.”

He gulped and got to work.

There were meetings and meetings and meetings, some Ignatia set up, most others set for her. She spoke with the leader of the seamstresses’ guild, and that was oddly enjoyable. Especially when Ignatia pointedly asked about the costs of thread and spools. There was a meeting with Lord Downey, who assured her his members supported her rule one-hundred percent. There was a meeting with an assortment of lords and ladies; she had tea with Ladies Rust, Venturi and Salachii and only ground her molars a little when they insisted the four of them go out to buy dresses. They smiled and simpered and eyed Ignatia’s shabby black dress and shabby black boots. There was a meeting with Lord Vimes, who looked warily around the Oblong Office.

Ignatia kept the place mostly unchanged. She had the ceiling repaired, the floor thoroughly cleaned and the furniture turned right side up. She added a map of Ankh-Morpork to an empty expanse of wall and a candy dish to the desk. For some reason this last appeared to unnerve Sir Samuel. She steepled her fingers and touched them to her mouth, contemplating him for a long moment. “I have heard some quite good things about you, Sir Samuel.”

“Ma’am?”

“Your hospital takes in all kinds, I understand. Even trolls, though I’m not sure how you heal a troll without heavy machinery.”

“Diamond-tipped drills and hope, Miss—I mean, Ma’am.”

“Indeed. And how is Spelly, forgive me, Esmerelda?”

“She is well.”

“And how do you know? She is sturdy, but you placed her in charge of an entire ward by herself. Without letters after her name and, to my perplexity, for free…?”

“She is a student,” he objected, standing a bit straighter. “We pay her in experience.”

“And what an experience it is. Do you believe that people are basically good, or basically evil?”

He frowned as he did a mental U-turn. “I mean, people are people. Some of them are bad, some of them are good. Some of them aren’t one thing or the other.”

She watched him and something behind her eyes simmered. “An interesting point of view, and one we do not share. See, I believe people are neither bad nor good. People only act. And sometimes the things they do are good, and sometimes they are not. A man can enact boundless cruelty on his fellow man and unimaginable kindness, sometimes in the same breath. Were you pleased to see Lipwig hanged?”

“It needed to be done,” he answered, voice suddenly gruff.

“But were you pleased? Did it give you a warm fuzzy feeling in the cockles of your heart? Is it a memory you treasure and keep close on rainy days?”

Vimes glanced about, fervently wishing to be anywhere but here. “I don’t…no. Ma’am. I was not pleased.”

“A woman works herself to the bone in the Lawn Wing, without breaks, assistance, camaraderie or pay. Does that please you?” They watched one another. He opened his mouth and she held up a hand. “If the next words out of your mouth fall along the lines of ‘That’s just how it’s done,’ I will be forced to action. I don’t believe in good or bad people, Lord Vimes. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say I only believe in bad people who sometimes do good things. I do not care about how you got your letters after your name. I do not care about hard work building character. I do not care about the values of poverty, or tradition, or how you run your hospital. There is a woman I know of personally working ten hour days without breaks for free, and I want to know if that puts a nice little fuzzy feeling somewhat north of your navel.”

“No.”

“Excellent. I will be watching Spelly’s career with interest, and yours as well. Have a good day.”

Three weeks after she took the Patricianship, Ignatia sat to tea with the important witches of the Disc, who all seemed to be of the opinion that a witch couldn’t be a tyrant as well. The youngest in the room, Ignatia made the tea and served the biscuits. After a time it became apparent that she didn’t give a single figgin what they thought, unless they thought she cackled. In which case, they should probably do something, shouldn’t they.

And if, as they filed out, Mistress Aching paused in the doorway to look over her shoulder and give Ignatia a single, deliberate nod.

Well. That’ll do.

Four weeks, and Lady Wrathine hosted a party celebrating a successful month in office. She smiled patiently and sipped wine and nibbled canapes, but always she watched the door for a head of red hair and the gleam of armor. That invitation must have gotten lost in the mail; she should really talk to the post office about the hiccups in the system.

Six weeks and Ignatia slipped from determined into melancholy. Drumknott didn’t say anything—he was a professional, and there were standards—but even if no one else saw it, he could tell. “Captain Ironfoundersson is in the foyer, ma’am.”

She nodded. “Thank you. Send her in.”

Ginger walked in, shoulders stiff and head high. “Ma’am.”

“Officer,” Ignatia countered coldly. She lifted a document. “I know what they call you, captain.”

“That makes one of us.”

Ignatia took care to flop the file face-down, where the words ‘Wrathine’s Lap Dog’ would be left unseen. “I have no fewer than three missives demanding you cease and desist your inquiries. It seems that with the regime change the Watch is more invigorated than ever, and, you chiefly among them, are upsetting some very important people.” She straightened some of the paperwork on her blotter. “How do you feel about a raise?”

Ginger’s mouth dropped open, and then she stomped across the room, closing the distance between them to slam her palms on the desktop. “I don’t want a raise!” she snarled.

And then Ignatia’s face was very near her own, and her lips were peeling away from her teeth and she was furious. “What do you want, then?! I can’t promote you! I can’t give you a raise! I’d put you on a task force but you’re already where you need to be!”

“I…” but what was there to say? Ginger dropped her eyes and stepped away, but as she did so she saw something on her Patrician’s wrist. “What is that?”

Ignatia glanced down. “This? It’s a bit of leather.” She pulled her sleeve back down over it. “Do not change the subject.”

“It’s a bracelet made to look like my collar.”

“Don’t be presumptuous.”

Ginger stared at her, stung. “All this formality, and what’s it for, I wonder.”

This time Ignatia looked away. “Even as a stranger in a strange land, I know where to put boundaries and where to enforce them, too. This meeting was a mistake; suffice it to say that you’re doing well and I will watch your career with interest. You are dismissed.”

A year after Ignatia took the tyranny, the circus came to town. It is said that you cannot go home again, and Ignatia felt this truth more keenly than she thought possible. Because when the circus came to town it was, in fact, her circus. And it wasn’t her circus at all. Somewhere along the way the big tent roof had been replaced, the placards repainted, the petting zoo animals more scrupulously groomed than ever before. There were strange faces manning the booths, strange faces juggling clubs and telling tall tales.

For the third time in her life, Ignatia sat in the audience and watched the show. Nothing was left unchanged—even her mother’s routine had been rearranged. She stunned the crowd as always; Ignatia would not hear a negative word about her performance, least of all from herself. But it was different. You cannot step into the same river twice, and you cannot go home. Kerosene, bangin’ grains and cotton candy hung heavy in the air, tricking her mind into feeling at home, a poor facsimile. She thought of Sir Samuel The First, leaving Ankh-Morpork to travel the Disc for years and years, only to come back and take up his own mantle. Another poor facsimile, she reflected, but one she felt keenly. When he returned, did he find himself looking for familiar faces on the street, haunted by memories of comrades either aged or fallen? Did he ever stand on Dolly Sisters Lane, and close his eyes, and let the sound and smell of his city take him crashing back through time? If she closed her eyes, Ignatia could pretend for a moment that everything was simple. Not right by any means, but simple. By now, she would be washing the kerosene off her hands with a damp cloth while she sped by the ticket takers, collect the stubs, weigh them, check on the animal feed, peek in to make sure the clowns were doing alright. She let her eyes drift open, only to see the circus from the wrong side.

For some weeks, a small team of carpenters and cunning artificers refurbished a new office just down the hall from the Oblong Office. Last to be put in place was an engraved brass placard reading Grand Vizier.

Lady Wrathine paused in the hallway to admire it. She felt tired to her bones, as she often did after a soiree. As far as parties went, it wasn’t too bad. For some reason, high society looked forward to the occasional balls she threw. The wealthiest and nobbiest of Ankh-Morpork’s citizenry certainly enjoyed themselves, but Ignatia herself couldn’t seem to get the hang of parties. The canapes and little finger sandwiches were tasteless in her mouth, the lighting subdued despite its abundance, the wine bitter. She did manage to frighten the wits out of a physician who had the audacity to make her listen to nonsensical drivel with her own two ears.

“We’re finding that sentient beings only use about sixty percent of their brains,” he told her earnestly.

Everyone has a breaking point, and unfortunately this young doctor just tipped Ignatia over the brink. “Is that so?” she marveled, eyes round and glassy. “And am I correct in thinking you have a son?”

He blinked. “Well. Yes?”

“Marvelous.” With a flick of her wrist she summoned a dark clerk, who appeared at her elbow from the shadows. “Fetch Dr. Marmoud’s son directly to the surgical theater at the Lady Sybil Free Hospital.” She turned a blinding smile on the paling physician. “We’re going to test his hypothesis by scooping out forty percent of his gray matter and seeing if he misses it.”

“No! Please!”

She affected an air of bewilderment. “Whyever would you protest, good doctor? You seemed so certain when you told me one uses only sixty percent of one’s brain.” She dropped her voice and narrowed her eyes. “Is it possible you might have oversimplified your research for the sake of attention?”

In the present, in the hallway outside her office, Ignatia let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and rolled her shoulders. It had been a relief to bid her skeptical public a fair good night and retreat here. She padded into the welcome dark of her office.

“Vetinari never had a grand vizier.”

Ignatia did not fear assassination. The Assassin’s Guild as a whole was quite pleased with her. Still, she found it unnerving to run into someone in her office after hours. She ignited a lamp by the door and spotted the intruder sitting in her chair, facing away from the door, looking over the city. Her city.

“Vetinari isn’t here,” she said, feeling churlish and prickly and hard all over. The chair’s occupant turned slowly and with the utmost menace to face her. “Shoo.”

Commander Vimes got out of her chair and prowled along the perimeter of the office, restless. “Aren’t you curious how I got in here?”

She settled down behind her desk and lit another lamp. There were files in need of sorting, bills in need of signing, a whole sheaf of mail to systematically annihilate. “Either you got in through the door or you didn’t.”

He scowled. “Aren’t you concerned by the big fuck-you axe I have in my hands?”

She looked up and, indeed, he held a big fuck-you axe. “Well done,” she replied, dry as toast. “Dwarven make, is it? Here to give me that old speech, ‘Be good or I’ll impeach you permanently?’”

“Well, when you put it like that it doesn’t sound nearly as menacing.”

“Either make your peace or make yourself scarce, Vimes.”

“Grand vizier? Since when does a tyrant need a grand vizier?”

Ignatia steepled her fingers and pressed them to her lips, careful to keep a straight face. She could see why Havelock Vetinari-may-he-rest-forever favored Vimes; he got right to the point. “There is a precedent.”

“Yes, in folktales where the royal vizier goes power mad and makes a play for the throne, killing hundreds.” He patted his pockets and then forced his hands still. “And what kind of title is grand vizier, anyway? I’m pretty sure that’s just a title you made up for the look of the thing.”

Ah, and there was the classic Vimes of Vetinari’s time, the Vimes described in that blasted journal Ignatia spent a month deciphering. Vimes, so thorough and righteous and angry, but not exceptionally bright. Over thirty years, and only just now picking at the knot of his past. Any longer, and she would have to give him hints.

“Just making up titles?” she inquired, a delicate eyebrow raised. “Do you think a tyrant, now or previously, ever invented a title for the sake of keeping the peace?”

He shook his head. “Are we talking about the grand vizier thing, or…”

“Indeed. I think you will find that a grand vizier is not such a great change to get used to. In fact, it may be that a somewhat more sympathetic ear is practical for the running of a state. As for inventing titles, it is not uncommon for a tyrant to reinvent a title that had previously fallen out of favor, or even attribute a title to a position heretofore unseen.” She glanced pointedly at the clock on the wall. “I fear I have another appointment waiting, and I wouldn’t want to keep you from your duties, Commander.”

She could see the gears turning in his head, despite the stony resolution of his expression. “Ma’am,” he replied and stormed out of the Oblong Office. The door closed. At her desk she listened, and yes, Vimes punched the wall in the hall. Ignatia allowed herself a small, secret smile.

Some minutes later, her office door opened again, admitting her last appointment for the day. She was not a tall woman, but she bore herself regally with a natural grace and poise that would prickle the heart of the most elegant dancer with envy. Her hair was plaited down her back, a half mask of fine white porcelain fitted perfectly to her cheek and hiding half of her face. She still smelled of kerosene smoke, bangin’ grains, damp straw. Home.

“Child mine,” the grand vizier grinned.

Ignatia rose from her chair and greeted her mother, wrapping her arms around her. “Mama.”

“A fine kettle of fish this is. What is a grand vizier supposed to do?”

“Advise me in all things, Mama. You even got an office. I made you business cards.”

“Am I really to go by Florence McGillacuddy?” she demanded, patting her hip pocket where a dozen of the fine business cards rested.

“A wise woman once told me it’s important to have a last name, if only for publishing purposes.”

“Baby girl, you’ll be the absolute death of me.”

“And if anyone gets too uppity with you, you can send them to me and I’ll put them to rights.”

“We’re not in the circus anymore,” the once Astounding Florencia agreed, somber. “It’s a cut-throat world, this business with desks and memos and public civility.”

“It is, Mama. But it comes with a dental plan and three meals a day. And we still get to work side-by-side, the way it should be.”

“That fellow I passed on the way in,” Florence McGillacuddy said, with the kind of mental gear shift that Ignatia slipped into and that still occasionally floored Drumknott. “Striking fellow, wasn’t he?”

“No, Mama.”

“Dashing, I’d say. I’d even go so far as—“

“Noooo—“

“Rakishly handsome.”

“Argh.”

Florence grinned, unrepentant. She patted her daughter’s hand. “This is going to be so much fun."