"I like Thursdays. They make the weekend look like the worthy reward it is."
I said it to Megumi as the bus carried us toward work, my head resting lightly against the window.
The glass was cool against my temple.
Outside, the city was already moving.
People crossed the streets in dark coats and work uniforms, shopkeepers lifted shutters, and the morning traffic crawled along beneath the pale light of the silver sun.
Megumi looked away from the window.
"Hmm. Friday does it better, but yes, I see your point."
She paused.
Then her eyes returned to the sky.
"But why do you call it Thursday?"
I glanced at her.
"The silver sun is out."
She smiled.
"And the days don't properly translate."
She was looking at me now.
That grin told me she'd already decided she was going to enjoy whatever answer I gave.
I looked back through the window.
"Well, you know how it is as a teacher. I'm just not used to Argent, even—"
The bus stopped.
My sentence ended with the brakes.
Megumi caught herself against the seat in front of us, and I grabbed the overhead rail as the bus settled against the curb.
We looked at each other.
Neither of us mentioned the unfinished sentence.
There would be time later.
We got down with the rest of the passengers and crossed toward the museum.
The morning air was cooler than it had been inside the bus. My shoes clicked against the pavement as we approached the entrance, where one of the security personnel was already waiting.
"Good morning. How was your night?"
He held out a hand for our identification.
"Fine. And yours?"
We answered almost together.
He checked the cards, compared our faces, and handed them back.
"Have a good day."
"Thank you."
We continued inside.
Megumi glanced over her shoulder.
"People are so nice."
"Well, that's because they think we're twin sisters."
She looked at me.
"I can see why they would think that."
There was something in her smile.
I narrowed my eyes.
She only smiled wider.
Fortunately, we'd reached the backroom before she could say anything else.
Mary was already there.
She stood beside the table with a file folder in her hands, dressed in the same blue uniform as the other museum staff. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that she actually worked here.
There was something different about her this morning, though.
The ordinary professional manner was still there, but it had been tightened into something more deliberate.
Operational mode.
Subtle.
If I hadn't spent enough time around Concord personnel to recognize the shift, I might have missed it.
She opened the folder.
"Hǎi'àn."
The word landed differently from the casual greetings we'd exchanged outside.
"Four days. You leave Saturday morning."
Megumi looked at me.
I knew that look.
It was a cocktail of emotions, all mixed together so neatly that I could almost taste each one.
Surprise.
Curiosity.
A little apprehension.
And underneath all of it, that quiet excitement she tried not to show whenever something was new.
"Hǎi'àn."
I looked at the file.
"I haven't been to the Dog Province."
I paused.
"That's rather distant for work. I thought—"
"What's the situation?"
Mary turned the first page.
"Contact materials."
Her finger moved down the document.
"A certain collection of Martini-Henry and Webley material was identified. One of the Webleys was stolen."
She turned the page.
"The collection was traced to a man who purchased it from a Fair merchant six weeks ago. An agent referred the matter to us because of the material classification."
She placed a photograph on the table.
"We've now found our suspect."
I leaned forward.
The photograph showed a man in his fifties.
He had the particular look of someone who had recently started looking at familiar things as though they might have changed.
Mary continued.
"The person who has them is a collector."
She tapped the photograph lightly.
"Not a practitioner. Not intentionally connected to the ecosystem."
"So he doesn't know," Megumi said.
"Likely not."
Mary closed the folder halfway.
"He acquired the collection without knowing what it was or that it was stolen. He's had it for six weeks."
The number settled unpleasantly in my mind.
Six weeks.
I knew what six weeks looked like.
I'd been looking at what six weeks looked like every morning over breakfast.
Megumi stared at the photograph.
"The fairs are in other countries."
I sighed without looking at her.
That was the problem.
The Fair system was supposed to make this kind of thing less likely.
Mary had explained before that the Fair lamplighters had taken measures to prevent stolen or dangerous materials from being passed through their network.
Apparently, measures were not the same thing as perfection.
I looked at the photograph again.
"Are those dangerous?"
I already knew what a Webley was.
That wasn't the point.
An ordinary gun wouldn't have brought the Concord into this.
Mary nodded.
"Yes."
She paused.
"The guns are capable of firing ammunition at velocities sufficient to cause serious injury."
I looked back at the photograph.
The man didn't look dangerous.
That was probably the most important thing about him.
He looked like a collector.
Someone who had spent thirty years acquiring things because he liked their history, their craftsmanship, their age.
Not someone who knew he'd been sitting on something he shouldn't have had.
"The approach needs to account for the fact that he doesn't know what he has."
Mary looked at me.
"Correct."
"Which is why we're doing this rather than a standard recovery team."
"Yes."
She closed the folder.
"Because you know what it's like to not know."
I didn't answer immediately.
"Yes."
Megumi had been studying the photograph from across the table.
"How do we explain it to him?"
Mary's attention shifted toward her.
"Enough that he understands why the objects need to leave his possession."
She closed the folder completely.
"Not more than he can receive."
The room went quiet.
Megumi nodded slowly.
"We've calibrated that before."
"You've done it in the museum with visitors every day this past week."
I leaned back.
"That's history."
Mary looked at me.
"This is his actual life."
"Yes."
She said it without hesitation.
"It's harder."
A pause.
"That's why it's the mission and not the training."
She slid another document across the table.
The contact details were printed neatly across the top.
"Kim Jae-won. Concord regional network. Hǎi'àn office. He'll meet you at the train station and provide local orientation."
I read the name.
"He won't enter the field with you."
"No."
"The approach needs to look like two ordinary women visiting a collector."
I nodded.
"Questions?"
"Travel documents?"
"Sorted."
Mary pointed toward the door.
"Go to the account office. They'll provide your travel voucher and passports."
I opened my mouth.
"When did they—"
I stopped myself.
There were more useful questions.
"The collection. How many objects?"
"Just one."
Mary's answer was immediate.
"Standard size. You'll need an appropriate carrying case."
"Which Kim-san will provide?"
"Yes."
I nodded.
Megumi shifted in her chair.
"What if he doesn't want to give it up?"
Mary looked at me steadily.
"He's not a criminal."
The distinction mattered.
"He's a collector who bought something he didn't understand at a sale."
Her hands rested on the closed folder.
"Your job is to make sure he understands enough to make an informed choice."
A pause.
"He will make the right choice once he understands."
I studied her face.
"How do you know?"
Mary's expression didn't change.
"Because people generally do when someone explains things to them honestly and doesn't try to take things by force."
She stood.
"That's the whole point of sending people who know how to explain things."
The train to Hǎi'àn took approximately thirty-four hours.
Megumi spent the first hour looking out the window.
It was our first time outside the country, and she watched everything with the kind of attention that made even ordinary scenery seem worth recording.
Fields.
Villages.
Stations.
Long stretches of countryside.
The landscape changed gradually enough that I only noticed when something familiar had disappeared.
After a while, Megumi turned toward the briefing materials.
The second hour she spent looking out at the sea below.
The train passed along the coast for long stretches, and she leaned toward the window, watching the water spread beneath the tracks.
The third hour she slept.
She had learned to do that efficiently during the past seven weeks.
She'd concluded early that sleep was necessary and had treated its acquisition as a skill to develop.
I read.
Actually read, this time.
Not the book-as-option.
The book-as-engagement.
I'd bought a history of the Dog Province independence movement from the museum gift shop the previous day, on the theory that reading about the place you're going was better preparation than knowing nothing about it.
The pages became easier to turn as the hours passed.
At the border, our documents were checked.
The train slowed.
Officials moved through the carriage, checking passports and travel papers before continuing down the line.
I watched our documents disappear from sight.
A few minutes later, they returned.
We were waved through.
The country appeared gradually through the fog as we approached Hǎi'àn.
Mountains rose in the distance.
The city spread across the terrain instead of flattening it, buildings climbing and settling naturally around the landscape.
Farther out, the offshore volcanic islets were barely visible through the haze, a wide gray ribbon against the sea.
Megumi pressed closer to the window.
"It's bigger than I expected."
I looked outside.
"Cities usually are."
She smiled faintly.
"Ours surprised me too when we arrived."
The train began to slow.
Buildings drew closer.
The motion beneath us changed from the steady rhythm of travel to the softer, intermittent pull of brakes.
Megumi watched the approaching station.
"I wonder if I'll always find cities surprising."
"Probably."
I closed my book around one finger.
"The good ones keep changing."
She thought about that.
"Is that what makes them good?"
I looked out at Hǎi'àn.
"Partly."
The train slowed again.
"Partly, it's that they contain more people than any one person can know."
Megumi turned toward me.
"Which means?"
"There's always something you haven't encountered yet."
She smiled.
"More things to learn."
"More things to learn."
The train finally came to a stop.
Kim Jae-won met us at the arrivals gate.
He had the particular quality of someone who had met many people off many trains for many purposes and had developed an efficient warmth from the experience.
Mid-thirties.
Capable.
His handshake was firm but brief.
He gave us exactly the information we needed and trusted us to use it.
"The collection is in an apartment on the southern part of the capital ," he said as we walked through the terminal.
People streamed around us.
"Collector's name is Park Sung-min. He's retired."
He checked something on his phone.
"He's been collecting for thirty years. Antiques, art, decorative objects."
"Thirty years," Megumi repeated.
Kim nodded.
"The sale where he purchased the material was three months ago. He paid a significant amount for the collection."
"Meaning he won't want to give it up," Megumi said.
"Meaning he has ownership investment in it."
He said it without judgment.
Just a fact.
I looked through the terminal windows.
People moved beyond the glass, carrying bags, buying items, meeting relatives.
And suddenly, a thought occurred to me.
So criminals did use the Fair to sell things.
Mary had told us the lamplighters had taken measures to ensure it didn't happen again.
Yet this had happened anyway.
I swallowed.
There was a possibility that this could have been me.
Not the criminal part.
The other part.
Buying something without understanding what it really was.
"Sadako."
Megumi's whisper pulled me back.
I turned.
She was looking at me.
"You were lost in thought."
"I'm fine."
Kim glanced between us but said nothing.
I looked ahead.
"Meaning it needs to feel like a choice rather than a removal."
He nodded.
"Which is what your briefing said you were good at."
"We're working on it."
His expression suggested he found the answer both honest and slightly concerning.
Honesty sometimes had that effect.
We continued toward the exit.
"I'll be available by telephone," he said. "I won't come to the apartment unless you call."
He looked at both of us.
"The approach needs to look like—"
"Two ordinary women visiting a collector," I finished.
"Yes."
He handed me a card.
A number was printed on it.
"Call if anything requires escalation."
He paused.
"Try not to require escalation."
Megumi smiled.
"We'll try."
We stepped out into the Hǎi'àn air.
The city waited beyond the station.
And somewhere inside it was a retired collector who had spent six weeks living with something dangerous without knowing what it was.
Our job was not to frighten him.
Not to accuse him.
Not to take it.
Our job was to make him understand.
Then let him choose.
That, apparently, was what the Concord considered the field.