The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

As the stupidity of this argument and all the thoughts I'd been having over the course of the day roiled around in my skull, it began to occur to me that you could apply the dichotomy at play here just as well towards the two different approaches to solving a mystery. I've often talked about the whodunnit, howdunnit and whydunnit as if they're three equal puzzles to be solved separately, but it would probably be more accurate to say that the latter two are largely separate routes to reach the former, the whodunnit.

With the howdunnit, a mystery is approached rather like a math problem, where there is a spectrum of possibility that is narrowed down repeatedly through logical inferences until only one answer remains.

And with a whydunnit, a mystery is instead viewed on a largely vibes-oriented basis, following the plot, subtext, and emotional arc of the story to find the answer that simply makes the most narrative sense.

I'd read mysteries that did both of these great; tightly written clockwork masterpieces and sentimental epics that were closer to literary fiction than the genre works they ostensibly were. What I'd never seen, now that I thought about it, was a mystery that did both well. This probably came down to simple narrative economy; you could spill a lot of ink describing rooms and reaffirming what was and wasn't possible, or you could spill a lot of ink building up characters, their pasts, and defining their internality. But if you tried to do both, the story would become bloated. There was only so much you could drag things out, and only so much information that people could hold in their minds before they stopped making connections, rendering it impossible to reach any convincing answer. A howdunnit-type story needed every word to convey a sense of hard reality. A whydunnit-type story needed every word to convey how the characters, and critically the author themselves, saw the world on an emotional level.

Unfortunately, most mysteries - or at least most works that could reasonably be defined as 'mystery novel' in the classical sense - were of this third type. And perhaps that was the more fundamental reason the genre so rarely delivered on its own premise. Because it wasn't hard to understand why things were this way. Even though I'd enjoyed them, I wasn't sure the works I'd read which leaned super hard in one direction or the other could really be called mystery novels at all. You couldn't have a 'mystery' without carefully defined puzzles. And you couldn't have a 'novel' without themes, human drama, and catharsis.

Maybe it was that very contradiction that made the genre charming to me. Real life, after all, also consisted of being constantly bombarded by an overload of information one could never hope to understand. But in real life there was no answer. Following the howdunnit of life led you, like Summiri said, to an infinite trail of questions that grew more fundamental as one went but never fully resolved. And following the whydunnit led to creating narratives that inevitably fell apart if death didn't have the grace to bring them to an end.

Mystery provided a reprieve from that. In a sense it didn't even matter that the answer was unreachable. What mattered was the guarantee that there was one to begin with. A promise that your search for truth was going somewhere, that all your anxiety will be released in one grand finale on the final few pages.

Despite that power fantasy jibe I made ages ago, in a way mysteries were probably not as far from them in their appeal than fans of the genre would care to admit. Both were about agency, either within the story or for the reader. Both, basically, were a form of escape from the wasteland of reality.

However, there was also a fourth type of mystery. One afflicted with the curse of postmodernism, that did not seek an escape from reality and its inherent subjectivity, but instead deliberately sought to recreate it. It was my nemesis, a betrayal of the genre, the graveyard of some of my favorite author's careers. And with this speech, I was beginning to smell the stink of its presence here.

Anyway, now that I'd had a few moments to think, I felt I had a decent idea what she was going to say already. About 20 minutes ago (gods, thinking about that number made my head spin a little) when we'd been crossing into the rest carriage, Summiri had been answering my question about how much the events of the day had been her doing, listing off the elements that had gone contrary to her plans, when suddenly she'd cut herself off, saying 'again, let's wait a minute, there's something I want to confirm first'."

That made it sound like whatever her answer was going to be was connected to the previous time she'd deferred my questioning, ie: When we were talking about Kasua's mother's murderer. Which made it sound like she thought they were on the train. And when you combined that with her reaction to the 'reappearance' of the detective...

I touched on this before, but despite the genre's reputation, even closed-circle mysteries often do have 'secret characters' outside of the initially established cast who show up at some point in the narrative, either penetrating the closed circle or being revealed to have been hiding somewhere all along. While it's a bit cheap, generally this is considered okay - sporting if somewhat inelegant - so long as the character is established, either directly or indirectly, in advance. For instance, if a story was oriented around four siblings but mentioned their parents in some depth, they could be considered 'pieces at the back of the board' who could show up if it made sense in the plot. This was in contrast to the some unforeshadowed psycho killer turning up out of nowhere, which would be certain to get you bad reviews.

Now, despite all the engineered similarities, one way this mystery differed from the conclave (and, er, real life, I guess) was the character economy. Other than the people already definitively on the train, there had only been three characters mentioned: Rastag, obviously, plus the also deceased - though, never say never - Nikkala, and finally Leo.

Only one of those three were established to be alive, and gender twists aside, they also happened to be of the same sex as the detective imposter. And even though they were supposed to be an arcanist, it was transmundane effects that were banned, not people.

It wasn't deduction so much as a hunch, but at this point, I'd take what I could get.

"I hope hearing this brings you some small measure of catharsis, even if we may never know the full truth," Summiri began. "To start, we should revisit the story that Noah told you during dinner. About what happened that winter, during our youth."

I frowned. "You were listening?"

"Well, I was sitting across from the two of you and wasn't involved in the broader conversation at the table, so I couldn't help but pick up some things."

That didn't not make sense, but still somehow felt too convenient. Maybe it was because Summiri still didn't really make sense to me as a character. Like, if she really had Rastag's persona in her the whole time, why was she acting like that for the whole night up until the point? Was she purposefully holding back for some reason, or was it just set up that way for the sake of a shitty twist? Again, doubt from too many directions.

"Here's the truth," she said. "It was June of the year 573. Our little group, the Fellows of Hinshelwood Hall, had indeed taken a trip to a lodging owned by Tuthal's grandfather on the Ysaran border in pursuit of warmer weather. Tuthal and Hildris did get into a fight on one evening, with the former and Leo going out drinking together as a result, with your mother joining them for a time and then returning." Her gaze grew more serious. "But after they left, a tragedy occurred that I regret to say was partially my fault. Our group was not, despite what the others might claim nowadays to save face, an entirely social affair. We also dabbled in the occult."

"That was obvious," I told her.

She continued as if I hadn't said anything, almost cutting off my last word. "That night, with half our group having deserted us and bored as we were, we planned something of a ceremony. You see, as Noah recounted, I was not originally from the Empire-- My true birthplace was here, on the steppe, albeit in what is now a more developed region than where we are currently stopped. Thus, even in my youth, I had knowledge of folk ritual that was not commonly possessed in the 'civilized' world. That night, we employed one such technique in an attempt to summon a spirit, one which would grant us fortune as we approached the end of our young lives and our first steps in the working world. Nikkala was the one who volunteered to channel the entity, with some enthusiasm even."

Okay, kinda schlockly, but reasonably foreshadowed, I guess. (Wait a minute, was the 'Mimic of Zythia' actually in reference to Rastag/Summiri, not the monster? That's actually pretty clever.)

"Unfortunately, at the time, my understanding of such endeavors was rather immature compared to now. We'd already imbibed a number of substances earlier in the night, and the psychoactives used as part of the ritual added to an already chaotic atmosphere. The spirit that ended up possessing Nikkala was more violent than intended..." She sighed. "Mariya returned at the worst possible time, with no understanding of the situation. There was a scuffle, and then a terrible accident."

"My mother... killed her?"

"Yes, though not intentionally. She shoved her down the stairwell in an attempt to stop the assault." She looked down pensively. "Though I would like to say all of us in the Fellowship were equal, the truth was that, in those days especially, we were starkly divided in status. Tuthal and Nikkala were both members of the gentry, Leo and Hildris were middle class, and your mother and of course myself were from thoroughly modest backgrounds. If the truth came out about what happened, Mariya would surely have faced asymmetrical justice. As a result, when the others returned, we conspired to conceal the truth. Nikkala's body would go missing, and the story would be that she'd gone looking for Leo and Tuthal in town and never returned."

"Why would they go along with something like that?" I asked. "You, or rather Rastag, I could understand. You could be seen and complicit in her death. But Tuthal, Hildris and Leo would have alibis and completely clean hands, and at that point you'd only known one another for a few years. Not exactly worth a conspiracy."

"What, you don't believe fast and true friendships can be forged in youth?"

I scoffed, then hesitated, then frowned to myself. "...Tuthal at least doesn't strike me as the type to put himself in danger purely for the sake of others."

"Well, you're right about that much," she admitted. "But Hildris was very close to Mariya and I, and at the time Tuth was smitten with her. And of course, once he was brought around to our point of view, it wasn't as if he could simply change his mind. He'd become complicit." She squinted thoughtfully. "But Leo... well, that gets to the heart of the matter."

I started nodding slightly. Knew it. Knew it.

"At the time, Leo and Nikkala were... well, not exactly in a full-fledged relationship, but things were certainly trending in that direction. It was obvious right away that he wouldn't go along with our plans once he learned of her death. Fortunately, he had trouble controlling his drinking, and came back to the lodge that night blackout drunk. By the time he was sensible again, the lie was already in place, and though he had his suspicions, there was nothing he could do to definitively prove anything."

"But he still distanced himself from all of you," I inferred. "That's why he isn't part of your group now."

"Correct," she said with a nod. "The event bound the rest of us together in shared liability, uniting our fortunes with a permanency that might never have otherwise formed. We prospered together, supported one another's ventures, and Mariya and I were especially driven to repay the great debt we owed to them. I wonder now if that spirit in fact heard our wish and did grant it, if at a terrible price. But of course that closeness, of which he could never be a part, only served to alienate him further." She bobbed her remaining pistol up and down idly. "That was the last we heard of him for a very long time, but about fifteen years ago Mariya and I began receiving veiled threats by mail, making allusions to not just Nikkala's death, but various 'sins' we had committed in the years since, real and imagined. Mariya distanced herself from myself and the Lifeblood Foundation in the interests of safety - under my advice, I'll add - but this did nothing to quell the threats."

"That's why she distanced herself from you."

"Again, correct." She gave a small nod. "This all culminated in a final threat which made explicit that our enemy had incriminating evidence - letters we'd believed destroyed, testimony from a maid working at Tuthal's lodge that week, and even what was left of poor Nikkala's corpse. They gave an ultimatum, for Mariya to meet with them at a location of their choosing, alone. The rest is probably obvious to you."

"It was Leo," I said. I tried to make my words sound grave rather than impatient, since obviously this was Kasua's whole reason for being there.

"Your mother knew there was a possibility that she would be killed," she told me. "She went prepared - armed, of course - but didn't know what the blackmailer planned to bring to bear. So, we had the camera set up, so that at least if the worst happened, their identity would be revealed."

"So why didn't you do something, if you had evidence? It's been 10 years."

"I can't say unambiguously. My memories as Rastag only extend a few years beyond that point. At the beginning, at least, I was still worried about him exposing me during a period where my career was already suffering due to Tuthal and the board's stupidity. Despite Mariya's death, Leo was clearly unsated in his desire for revenge, and I continued to receive threats myself. The message was clear: Even if I went to the police, he would take me down with him." She frowned slightly. "I won't lie-- There was an element of cowardice there. But I also believed that I could engineer the situation to take my own revenge, use his own malice to trap him."

The obvious occurred to me. "Do you think he killed you?"

"I couldn't say. Perhaps he did. Or perhaps my former self realized that the walls were closing in regardless, and that the only way to ensure his legacy was some manner of sacrifice, though patently something went amiss. In either case, most of what I'd say further I would class as informed speculation." She leveled her gaze. "Here is what I believe happened. After separating from our group, Leo was unable to accept Nikkala's death. His search for the truth eventually drove him, in full or in part, to become an arcanist due to the obvious ways this would facilitate his labors. After graduating, at some point he made contact with Noah Tell-Rayf, another figure from my past. How he brought him to his side I could not say - arda, I would guess, considering the man's precarious circumstances - but combining their talents, they were eventually able to reach the truth, as well as dig up a tremendous amount of unrelated dirt."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"At first, their plan was going well," she continued. "But after both Mariya and my original self were dead, for some reason, Leo was still not satisfied. Perhaps he learned about my existence and did not believe his revenge wholly complete. Perhaps he was not responsible for the death of my former self, and found the circumstances suspicious enough to suspect he might still be alive and working against him. Or perhaps he wanted to extend his revenge even further, to the others who had been part of our little conspiracy." She inclined the pistol towards me, a slight smile on her face. "Or perhaps, Kasua, he feared you as a loose end, and that you might be drawn to investigate the death of your mother in a way that would eventually lead you back to him."

That made sense too. It would even explain what the detective said when he tried to kill me, if everything said had been some attempt to deter me from going any further... until taking the Last Winter made my intentions obvious. (Wait, no, how could he have even known about that? Wouldn't he have had to make the decision sooner? This felt off.)

"Regardless, one other thing he no doubt noticed when meeting Noah is that the two happen to bear a passing resemblance to one another, both being foreigners from the east, roughly the same height, and a little squat and short of face. Leo likely believed he could use this to take advantage of Noah's invitation to also sneak aboard the train. It's likely he bribed the tribe we encountered earlier to occupy the track, then used the chaos when we were forced to stop at that point to do so. But then..." She made a stabbing motion. "You miraculously survived the detective's assault on you and even killed him, leaving Leo isolated. This left him with no choice but to conceal the evidence, explaining his sudden appearance before us in the rest carriage. But then, of course, you discovered him, leading him to flee and Tuthal and Eirene to pursue him. He likely shot Tuthal and Eirene, and then you opened the door and shot him."

This sudden accusation jarred me. "I didn't shoot anyone!" I protested.

Summiri looked at patiently. "I'm not judging you, Kasua. He was a murderer. You made the right choice in a life or death situation. And you don't need to fear me reporting you to the authorities; I shot him too, after all, having drawn these conclusions and wanting to ensure his death."

"I didn't shoot him," I insisted. "I don't know how it could have happened."

"Okay," she said shrugging. "Then Tuthal or Eirene shot him at the same time as he shot them."

"That's not possible. There were three distinct gunshots."

Summiri considered this. "Then maybe he's still alive," she speculated. "The body we saw in there could have actually belonged to Noah. It could have been moved somehow, and he could have employed it to make his escape."

"But there was no way to escape," I said. "The window was closed, and the bathroom was empty."

"Maybe he was hiding under the bathtub."

"There's no way he would fit there," I retorted, but as I said the words it suddenly occurred to me that even if a man like him obviously couldn't, maybe a woman like Hildris could. Could it have been that simple? (No, there was no way she'd have fit. (Or could she?))

"Even if that was the case, though, he was likely killed by the flames after the fact, or devoured by the Uqartul. So you see, Kasua, my decision was actually rooted both in symbolic and a logical understanding of reality. You'd be surprised how often the two go in tandem. We humans are also part and parcel of the magic of this world." Her lips perked up again. "In any event, you should be pleased. Even if you didn't know entirely what was going on at the time, you succeeded in attaining vengeance against your mother's murderer. It's far from what I had in mind, but at least one small good came of this nightmare."

"Why would you, or rather Rastag--"

"You don't have to say that every time, you know."

"--have invited the detective to this event to begin with?" I looked at her with a scrutinizing gaze.

"I don't know. As I told you, I had a vision for all this in mind, but the circumstances here differ from that. Noah's presence is one such element." She considered. "I suppose it's not impossible my other self invited him sincerely, since the story you heard over the dinner table was largely true, but I doubt it; if he did invite him, it was probably to manipulate him into exposing himself somehow, which I suppose did happen. But I believe the most likely explanation lies another link down the chain, so to speak. One of the people I placed in charge of organizing the event must have been bought or brought to their side as well. I wouldn't have imagined it from him, but currently my best guess would be Bahram. He must have developed some kind of complex about me. You heard him before, demanding I tell him what he did for your mother and I 150 years ago."

"Wait." I furrowed my brow. "Bahram was part of this? You didn't mention him even being there that weekend. Come to think of it, the detective didn't, either."

She blinked twice. "Well, he wasn't there at first. But I contacted him. He helped us deal with the authorities."

I stared at her. Summiri's story mostly made sense. It answered almost all of the fundamental questions of the situation; what had truly happened with the Fellows of Hinshelwood Hall and why a university club had evolved into a life-long business relationship, who Leo and Nikkala were and their purpose in the narrative, why Kasua's mother had been killed. A lot of loose threads I'd even kind of forgotten about, like Leo being an arcanist who studied in the Locked Tower and Rastag's backstory. If felt elegant; the part of my brain that liked narratives enjoyed it. It was a perfectly serviceable 'whydunnit'.

But that was the problem. Narratives, without grounding in reality, were just connections made arbitrarily between events to imbue them with significance. It was like how the Covenant of the Mourning Realms, a document written 1600 years ago and never changed, had been interpreted to justify everything from libertine Paritism to Iconism. If you made an effort, you could spin anything into any story you wanted.

And one very significant element was missing from this explanation, which is to say the actual fucking murder mystery!

"...no," I said. "No, this doesn't explain anything!"

Summiri quirked an eyebrow questioningly, but said nothing.

"For one thing, how did the rooms in the rest carriage move, if that was what was going on? And if it wasn't, how did the body disappear? And how did Phaidime get inside the corpse of that horse on the roof?"

She looked at me flatly. "I told you, that was the work of the Uqartuls. What we found on the roof was one of their corpses, and later they infiltrated the rest carriage as well. Perhaps this was my original self's plan from the beginning."

"Don't give me that shit!" I protested. "You just said that often the symbolic is unified with logical!"

"Not exactly what I meant," she said, then shrugged. "But if you insist on only accepting aesthetically mundane explanations--"

'Aesthetically mundane explanations'! Fuck off. Fuuuuuuuck offffff.

"--then those could both easily also have been the work of a conspiracy, since they would have had access to do as they wished with the Xerxes beforehand. The scene with the horse wouldn't have even been that difficult, I suppose. It could have been placed on top of the train before our journey even started, and the body simply planted there."

"And the moving rooms?"

"That could have also been set up in advance. In fact, I'll tell you one thing right now. You said you stabbed the detective with a sword?"

"Yes."

"Well, as it happens, I brought a sword myself. Fencing is a hobby of mine, and I planned to attend a contest in the Saoic Kingdom after this was over. Is it possible you were in fact in my room from the beginning? That when you first entered, the rooms had already changed, and you mistook my sword for your own after the luggage spilled? Leo could have moved the room through some mechanism while the Noah moved to assassinate you. Then, afterwards, he returned it back, intending to frame me for your death. Two birds, one stone."

My eyes widened. Even though it was stupid, that wasn't a possibility that had explicitly occured to me. And no-- It actually made perfect sense! Summiri's cat had been out in the hall. The detective would have had to have opened the door to get inside and lie in wait, and it could have escaped!

But no, wait. That still left their positions impossible. Even if all the rooms had moved to the right, leaving Summiri's room empty - which would be why the door wouldn't open, I suppose - Tuthal's room still should have had the bodies. But still, that felt correct! Even if it didn't explain everything. There had to be another part of the trick I still wasn't seeing.

Summiri was smiling. "You're satisfied? Everything cleared up for you now?"

"I-- No! Obviously not." I took a breath. "Say you're right. Leo was the mastermind, and Bahram and Noah were his accomplices. If that were the case, why would he have killed Phaidime? Or, no; that's not even the right question. Who even was Phaidime? You said she wasn't your sister, right? Why would she have been invited?"

"Maybe she was simply posing as my real sister," she offered. "She wouldn't have thought I'd be here to make such an assessment, after all."

"No, that's not it," I retorted with a shake of my head. "You said you'd never invite your sister to this event. It was meant as a test for people you thought of as having betrayed you. You said that!"

"Maybe my other self changed his mind," she guessed aloofly. "Or she was deliberately written into the will to fill some role in his plans, and was murdered for it. Who can say?"

"And no one would notice that you didn't resemble one another?"

"It's not difficult to find two people who look alike."

I peered at her skeptically, falling silent for a moment. "...no, this is getting looser and looser. There's no evidence."

"I mean, this is all just a hypothetical," she stated. "I told you. It was the Uqartul."

"What would we have heard, hitting the roof? If the horse was there all along."

"The culprit could have just jumped on it after placing the body. You saw how fragile it is-- Come, Kasua, that must have occurred to you."

"And the flash of light?"

"A flare to sell the illusion?" She chuckled. "Is that what you want to hear?"

"And going back to the detective," I digressed, "what about the item that was there for him in the front carriage? The Amulet of Sathar?"

"What do you mean, for 'him'?" She raised an eyebrow. "It's simply a real piece of jewelry. 'Sathar' is the Ysaran rendering for the Inotian 'Satyr'. He probably just saw a chance to make a little extra money by actually taking something, although he'd have been disappointed. Most of the works on this train are forgeries; I inherited the originals myself, and planned to distribute them later based on what happened."

I ignored this uninteresting revelation. "If Noah was the one I was encountering most of the evening - who sat with us, who was at dinner - and the one I killed in my room, then why didn't the others recognize Leo when he appeared having replaced him? Unlike earlier in the night, he wasn't even trying to hide his face. They should have recognized him from their youth."

"People age, Kasua."

I shook my head. "No, that explanation doesn't satisfy me. Maybe if it was one person, or at a distance-- But four of you? One of you would have noticed."

She considered this, then nodded slowly. "Maybe it was the reverse, then. Perhaps Leo was the man at dinner with us, that you killed. And Noah was the one who appeared later."

"You can't just change your entire story like that!" I protested angrily. "You've been saying this whole time that the first one was the detective! You explicitly said that even earlier, when you denied the guy who showed up was him!"

"I was making a play to expose him."

"No you weren't! You're just changing your story arbitrarily! Making things up, just like the supernatural bullshit you were saying earlier!" I glared at her, then looked down as I realized the implications. "And if the man at dinner wasn't the detective, that raises far more fundamental questions. My only source about what happened at the lodge that summer comes from him in the first place. That's the only source to substantiate any of what you've been saying. But if he were the mastermind, he could have just made it all up too! You could be working with him!"

She flattened her lips, looking at me with mild displeasure. "You don't like this answer. You don't feel catharsis."

"It's not a matter of whether I 'like' it or not, it's obvious bullshit," I shot back.

Summiri was silent for a few moments, pursing her lips. The glow from the window had been getting brighter and brighter. The fire had to be raging by now.

"Okay," she eventually said, in that particular tone of voice where it's kind of ambiguous whether someone is ambivalent or extremely pissed off at you; hostile indifference. "Then I'll give you a different one."

"Wh-- You can't do that! That throws everything you just said out the window!"

"You're skeptical that the event at the lodge even happened. Understandable. In fact, you're right, it never happened at all. In fact, Nikkala isn't even dead."

"Don't act like I'm a fucking idiot!" I yelled. "At least that much I didn't only hear from the detective. Tuthal told me it, too!" I wanted to grind my teeth, but Kasua's body interpreted this as more of a clenching-unclenching motion.

"No, what Tuthal said to you was that she was 'no longer with us'. That doesn't per-se imply death. We just fell out of touch. Leo, too - his real name is Leonides of Tiekapolis, incidentally - just ended up at a different school when he decided to be an arcanist."

"Wait a minute, how do you even know about that?" I asked. "You weren't in the room. You couldn't have heard that conversation."

She ignored me. "You said that your theory was that Phaidime was actually me, right? I do see your logic. I'm a woman, after all. High-minded ideas of being beyond gender aside, it would be rather peculiar that my former self would accept a candidate for his experiment of the opposite sex. So perhaps he was a woman. But you're not taking that theory far enough." She narrowed her eyes. "What if it wasn't just Rastag and Phaidime who were the same individual, but Rastag and Nikkala? Say that's the great secret of what happened all those years ago; that, seeing the limitations imposed by her on society, she elected to dispose of her identity in order to pursue higher goals. But the others - especially Mariya - would have to keep that secret. But your mother, who I'm sure you've heard was my close confidant, grew disturbed by my work with the Lifeblood Foundation. Eventually, as I seemed in her eyes to be growing more and more unhinged and letting my business empire crumble around me, she demanded I stop, or else she would be forced to reveal the truth. Backed into a corner, I killed her, and then arranged this event to dispose of anyone left or something."

"Shut up, shut up!" I yelled, shaking my head. "That doesn't make any sense! Phaidime was the one who died!"

"No, no, you're right. Of course I'm not actually dead. I simply had Bahram pretend as much when you all . That's why he's furious at me; my real self is still alive."

"No, that doesn't fit with the things he said at all! And you were clearly dead! I saw the body!"

She shrugged. "It was a fake. Wax."

"This is fake! There were no wax sculptures on the train!"

"How do you know? You couldn't have checked everyone's room."

I exhaled painfully. This was poison. Anthema. Weaponized ambiguity, a shitriver slurry of established 'possibilities' that were absurd but weren't completely outside the realm of possibility, that could never be wholly confirmed or denied. Holy water cast on the very concept of a mystery novel, the very idea that you could ever narrow life down enough to condense it into a solvable puzzle.

No, it wasn't the fault of the genre. It was the fault of reality! Somewhere, there had to exist a platonic world of perfectly square rooms, filled with a small-enough-to-be-memorizeable number of discretely defined and immutable objects, with their possible interactions with one another tyrannically defined. Was there a Domain for that? God, I hoped there was. Maybe there I could die in peace, murdered so solvably my life would have retroactively meant something.

"You don't like this tale either? Alright then, let's say both Nikkala and Leo had nothing to do with it at all. Instead, the murder was oriented around money. Phaidime was my sister - I was lying about that - and I actually invited her to act as the true overseer of this event, along with myself. That was why her name wasn't in the bottle, why she made her entry out to Tuthal. It was a test for him. Once he saw the blackmail in the front carriage and realized he wouldn't be able to take an item the first time, would he keep to his word? Of course he wouldn't. Having failed, the plan was to then kill him and stuff him in the horse, which was kept in the freezer; you'll remember its size. But Tuthal has a low cunning to him. He turned the tables and struck first, hijacked the entire setpiece. He hauled the horse up and placed her within its womb as I'd planned for him."

"No! Nonsense! No one could lift a horse up a ladder singlehandedly!"

"He has super strength. You see, a ritual--"

"Fuck you! Fuck all of you."

It was exactly as I'd feared. I knew where this was going now. I wasn't in the paradise of mystery; this wasn't leading to a sublime moment of understanding. This was a world of chaos. Where there were a million ways someone could have been killed, not by mistake, but by design! An abomination against the genre; an anti-mystery!

"Or maybe it was you, Kasua. You're an anomaly here, aren't you? You're just a child. The rest of us barely know your face. Maybe you're Nikkala, preserved in time through Leo's chronomancy. Maybe your mother isn't dead, and you're her in disguise-- You do have a striking resemblance. Maybe I'm the real Kasua and you're an imposter; we're around the same age. Why do you designate yourself the absolute authority on what is true, the only one permitted to continue further and further questioning?"

"My mother is dead! I want the truth!" Somehow, in this moment, I felt like I had actually become a good actress.

"And you were offered it in terms of hard evidence. Photographs. I put them there for you. And yet you were so confident you had it already you turned them down for what you saw as a material advantage." She shook her head. "You don't want truth, Kasua. You want revenge. A hanging."

"I want justice!"

"Are you prepared to die for it?" She raised the pistol. "Almost everything I told you about Leo is the truth, I swear it. He did kill your mother. He and the detective did come aboard this train. And he did, one way or the other, die by your hands. Is that not enough? Can you not accept that there are some things in this world that cannot be simply condensed into a tidy answer, a resolved state, without destroying them altogether? Can you not--"

At this moment there was a loud clang - Summiri turned her head sharply - and we were interrupted as a monster crawled out of the engine.