Alistair found his way into the council records through a lonely man, which was how most doors opened if you had the patience to wait at them.
His name was Hessel. He was a clerk of the second register, middle-aged, ink-stained to the second knuckle, and he had spent thirty years being the least interesting man in every room he sat in.
That was the kind of man who talked, given the right ear. Alistair had learned long ago that the lonely ones always did.
So Tobian Marrow sat down across from him and stayed.
It took three evenings of cheap wine in the back room the clerks favored.
Alistair gave Hessel the one thing nobody had given the man in years, which was attention, the real kind, the leaning-in kind that makes a person feel like the center of something for once.
Hessel bloomed under it like a plant carried to a window.
