The clock chimed six o’clock, and work slowly ground to a halt. Martin and his team were almost finished with their ship, so they continued on for another twenty or so minutes to get the last few crates unloaded. They weren’t paid more for their efforts, but if they left with cargo still onboard, they’d never hear the end of it from Harrow. By the time they finished and made their way to the locker rooms, they expected most of their coworkers to have left for home. However, they found everyone waiting outside the locker room.

  “Whadya suppose they’re giving away in there?” Sly asked.

  “I’m not sure, but I’m sure it’s nothing good,” Martin replied. He and Sly exchanged a meaningful look. For them to be kept from entering the locker rooms could only mean trouble.

  “Think someone died,” Dillion asked, standing on his tiptoes to try and see over the other dockers.

  “No police,” Sly pointed out. “Even Crane doesn’t have enough pull to avoid contacting the police if there’s a death.”

  The Facless Man had learned the truth of that on his first day at the docks, when the crate of chemicals had fallen on a docker. Although it had resulted in an injury rather than a death, police were still called to investigate. The investigation had been little more than a couple of questions and some paperwork, but the procedure still needed to be given a cursory level of respect.

  “Must be something missing from a shipment then,” Boudica said, joining Martin and Dillion in looking at Sly. Sly glanced away from the crowd to notice his team was looking at him.

  “What are you looking at me for?” He said, “It wasn’t me.”

  Sly’s reputation was notorious around the dockyard. So much so, he was the first one thought of whenever anything went missing. However, he had never been caught stealing, and Sly protested his reputation every time it came up.

  The crowd quieted down, and Harrow’s voice could be heard shouting from the entrance to the locker room.

  “Right, as you lot have probably figured out, part of a shipment of books has gone missing. We’ve just done a search of the locker room and the surrounding area. Now, we’re going to let you in a few at a time to get your belongings and head home. You will be watched as you enter the locker room, and you will be searched on the way out.”

  Hearing the growing unrest coming from the dockers, Harrow raised his voice. “This is not a discussion. Now, if you want to get home, shut your mouths and get in line. The more you cooperate, the sooner we get you home.”

  Still grumbling, but quieter than before, the crowd slowly formed a line. Martin and his team joined the end of the line. They made some small chit chat, but no one was too willing to speak out of turn as Harrow’s dockyard enforcers had congregated at the locker room. Half went to supervise dockers entering the locker room, and half went to the entrance to search dockers’ bags. All of the enforcers were carrying their canes, thick wooden things with a metal top, forged with the symbol of Crane’s landing—a bird perched on a dockyard crane. Cane’s were typically the symbol of a gentleman, but everyone present knew what these were for, bashing in the heads of anyone who caused trouble for their master, Victor Crane.

  The line moved mercifully quickly, and Martin was escorted into the locker room by one of the enforcers. Under his watchful eye, Martin grabbed his lunchbox and jacket and made his way out. At the entrance, he handed his jacket and lunchbox to an enforcer who felt around thoroughly for any hidden compartments. The enforcer then quickly ran his hands over Martin before waving him through. Sly was searched just after him, once by an enforcer and then again by Harrow himself, who wandered over just in time to see their prime suspect about to be waved through. Sly whined a bit about the indignity, but after a good look from Harrow, he bit his tongue and let the overseer make a thorough search of his person.

  When all that was done, Sly hurried over to catch up to Martin.

  “Come on, Martin, after a hassle like that, a man needs a drink.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t, Sly. I’ve got something I need to take care of.”

  “You’ve become a busy man.” Sly said, somewhat suspiciously, “Ah, well. Here comes Dillion, he’s about as busy as a lamplighter at midday.”

  Martin bid Sly farewell and made his way toward the newer part of the city. With Rafe still hanging over his head, he had temporarily suspended his shooting lessons in the Military quarter. With that stalled and things at the dockyard not improving much either, he needed to find a new path forward. His recent reading lessons with Will and the growing rumors about the Northern Village had given him an idea. He knew that he had been unnamed by the church, but even a frog can’t disappear without leaving any ripples. For him and his family to have been removed, there must have been some signs remaining, and the best place to check for them would be in the newspapers.

  Newspapers were intended to be read only once, and so they were commonly printed on the cheapest pulp the printers could get their hands on. However, there was one place where newspapers were saved, the public library. The Imperial Public Library was founded a few dozen years ago under the reign of the current Queen’s father, the late King Charles. Libraries had existed in private form for considerably longer, but their collections were reserved for the wealthy who could afford the monthly fees or those who could gain access through dispensation from the Holy Church or one of the great universities. It was the late King who proposed that all men should have access to knowledge. He was rather fond of education and had spent much money promoting education for the lower and middle classes, much to the disdain of many of the nobles, who whispered when he wasn’t around that his budgetary choices were ruining the country. The current queen seemed not to share her father’s passion for education, but she was a skilled politician and knew better than to openly turn her back on a policy that had earned her father much goodwill from the common man. The library stayed open and, with a few imperial donations, had slowly increased in size in the years since the king’s death.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The branch Martin was going to was where they kept newspapers. Since this particular collection was opened near the end of the old king’s life, they had gathered a nearly complete collection of every newspaper published in the capital for the last fifty years. In addition, the collection housed newspapers from across the empire as well as foreign papers brought back from the various nations on the continent. If someone had taken the time to comment on the sudden disappearance of a family like the Faceless Man’s, the record of it would be found in these walls.

  The real Martin was not much of a reader, so he never had much cause for stopping by the library, nor had he ever saved up the funds to pay for a membership. Since taking over for the real Martin, the Faceless Man had severely curtailed his drinking. With those savings along with a few lucky rolls of the dice, he walked into the library with the three crowns needed for a year’s membership. The price was out of reach for the poor, and a slight stretch for many lower income families, but not out of reach for those motivated to learn, and for that price, they gained admittance to many but not all of the Imperial Library’s branches and the ability to check out one book at a time for up to a period of one month.

  The branch with the newspaper collection was one that the common man could gain admittance to. It was housed in a former madhouse that went bankrupt and ended up being sold to the crown for an incredibly cheap price. The bars had been removed from most of the windows, but the eerie sense of its past clung to the building like a thick fog.

  Martin pulled open the heavy doors to the branch and entered a wide, silent foyer. A woman sat at a desk at the far end of the hall, and only a few vacant benches took up the space in between the two of them. A librarian's job had a reputation as being quite demanding for women, leading a few more traditional thinkers to remark that it was proof women were not cut out for the same level of intellectual rigor as men. Despite their views, the profession remained a popular one for women, and the librarian who helped Martin sign up for a membership and receive a slip of paper with his name and the date of the membership was about as professional as he could have asked for.

  When told he was looking for local newspapers from around three months ago, he was politely handed off to one of the staff working inside the collection. This librarian was an older woman who, while lacking in enthusiasm, was in no way lacking in knowledge of the library and its collection. She gave Martin a quick and efficient tour of the building.

  “The local newspapers are all in this section. Publishers roll over too quickly to make any long-term sorting by publisher efficient, so they’re just sorted by date. The oldest newspapers are on the top floor, and they work down towards the first floor. With our current collection, the most recent newspapers are kept on the second floor.”

  “What happens when you reach the end of the first floor?” Martin asked.

  “That depends on our budget and the queen, I suppose,” came the response. “You said three months ago, right? Those will be in the right-hand corner of the second floor. There are reading tables scattered about each floor. You can bring any newspapers you’d like to read to the tables, but they cannot leave the floor. Come get me if you’re not sure where to return one of the papers. If you put it back in the wrong place and I find it, I will have you issued a warning. Don’t think I’ll forget you or your name. Where the collection’s concerned, I don't forget.”

  Martin had little reason to doubt her. He thanked her for her explanations and gave his assurances to treat the collection with the utmost respect. She seemed satisfied by his sincerity and left him to browse the collection at his leisure.

  He had been living in Martin’s skin for nearly three months now. It took him about two weeks to choose his target and plan his attack, which put the date he pulled himself from the river at three months and some change ago. It seemed likely that Martin hadn’t been in the river that long, but just in case, he decided to start his search from four months ago, using papers published in the capital itself and working his way forward. If he was unable to find anything, he planned to expand his search to papers published along the river, slowly getting farther from the capital.

  Following the librarian’s directions, he quickly found what he was looking for. He pulled a couple of newspapers from the first of the month, and making sure he carefully noted the aisle and shelf he had taken them from, and carried them to one of the tables. A clock was hung on the wall. The ironwrought hands indicated it was just after seven. The library closed at nine, so he had less than two hours for tonight’s search. Other than himself, Martin hadn’t seen anyone but the two librarians. However, as he settled in to read, he felt he could faintly hear the sound of footsteps wandering the aisles. Pushing that aside for now, he opened up the first newspaper. Thoughts of the ghosts of the former patients disappeared from his head as he immersed himself in looking for clues about his past. The size of the collection was truly overwhelming, but to him it felt like the first real step he had taken in investigating the truth about his family. Martin soon got lost in his reading, getting up just once to replace the first set of papers and grab a second set, stopping finally when the elder librarian came to tell him the branch was closing. She followed him back to the shelves to double-check he had put everything back correctly, and with a slight nod of approval, escorted Martin to the front.

  The librarian at the front desk waved him a friendly farewell. Even though he had found nothing useful, he still equaled her enthusiasm in wishing a goodnight and walked out into the night in good spirits. He had, after all, just explored a small fragment of the collection. It was surely too much to expect to find an answer within the first two hours of his search. He headed back home, looking forward to a hot dinner.

  Martin knew the church wasn’t careless, but even the slightest clue was better than nothing. Until he could resume his shooting lessons and make some progress at the dockyard, he planned to return here to seek more information. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice a fat man with a pipe lingering by the stairs. As he passed, the man exhaled a puff of smoke. A smile came to his lips.