Maren called before the sun was fully up, her voice carrying a controlled urgency that pulled all of us out of whatever fitful rest we'd managed after Garrick's news, and by the time we reached the small side entrance where she was waiting, I understood, from her face alone, that Voss's death had left behind more than an empty council seat.
"I need you to see this before the official investigators arrive and clean it away as evidence," she said, leading us through a service gate Garrick had apparently arranged access to overnight, some quiet arrangement with the regional watch that let us view the scene before it became formally sealed. "I got here an hour ago. I almost missed it — it's positioned to be missed."
Voss's home was modest, unremarkable, the particular quiet ordinariness of a
