The satisfaction Catherine felt upon reading the confirmation of Baron de Courville's fall was a cold, pure thing.
It was the joy of an engineer before a complex machine working to perfection. Every gear, every lever Valerius's vanity, Thorne's avarice, the Church's fanaticism had turned exactly as she had predicted.
The trail leading to her was now covered by the ashes of another man's pyre. A trace erased. A problem solved.
But satisfaction was a fleeting luxury. Her gaze left Madame Lin's note and fell upon the other piece of information, the most vital one: Jun-Ho Park, holed up in his house in the Rook's Nest, an old man haunted by the ghosts of his crimes.
The direct approach had failed. Stealth was compromised by Soren's surveillance. She needed a new key to open this old, paranoid lock. And fear, she knew, was an illness. And illnesses called for doctors.
Her plan crystallized, bold and twisted. She would not force the door. She would get herself invited. Or rather, she would send someone to get invited in her place.
Once again, young Leo was summoned. The kitchen boy had, much to his chagrin, become an essential cog in the conspiracy.
Catherine looked at him, seeing the fear in his eyes, but also a growing fascination.
She wondered for a moment what it felt like to be such an insignificant pawn, moved by invisible forces.
Then she dismissed the thought. Empathy was a dead weight.
She entrusted him with a heavy purse and a new note for Doctor Aris Thorne. This time, the message was not a request, but a contract, precise and professional.
"Doctor,
A new service is required. Your initial payment is in this purse. The rest, far more substantial, will follow upon completion of the task.
The target is a man named Jun-Ho Park, at 17 Spinners' Alley. He is a wealthy, reclusive old man, suffering from extreme paranoia. He is under the protection of an elite bodyguard.
Your mission: present yourself at his door as a physician specializing in ailments of the mind, recommended by an anonymous benefactor concerned for his health. Your goal is to gain his trust and become his attending physician. You are to enter the house, examine him, and give me a full report on his mental state, his physical condition, the layout of the house, and above all, on the nature of his bodyguard.
Do not harm him. For now, he is more valuable alive. Soothe him. Become his only glimmer of hope in the darkness of his madness.
The success of this infiltration will determine the nature of our future collaboration. Do not disappoint me."
She sealed the note and gave it to Leo. As she gave him his instructions, she took care to add a detail.
"If Doctor Thorne asks you questions about me, simply tell him that your master is a powerful man who appreciates discretion. Nothing more." She was protecting her identity, even from her allies of circumstance.
Thorne's reply arrived a few hours later.
One word, again: "Intriguing."
The game was afoot.
Catherine, from her library, could only wait.
This was the hardest part. She had placed her trust, and the fate of her vengeance, in the hands of an adept of the Pathway of Desecration, a man she knew only by the threads of his avarice and his unhealthy power.
She risked a brief psychic connection, just a thread as fine as a hair, to observe the scene. She saw Doctor Thorne arrive in Spinners' Alley.
He did not look like a back-alley physician. He wore a dark, high-quality traveling suit, his fine leather doctor's bag in hand.
He looked like a professional called for a private consultation of the utmost importance.
He knocked on the door.
The same scene as Mathieu's encounter repeated itself, but the main actor was different. Milo, the massive guard, opened the door, his face a wall of mistrust.
"What do you want?" he growled.
Thorne's voice was calm, polite, but carried a cold authority that Mathieu had lacked.
"I am Doctor Aris Thorne. I am here to see Mister Park. I was summoned."
"He's not expecting anyone," Milo retorted, his body blocking the way.
"That is possible. My sponsor is a man who cares for Mister Park's health and who prefers to act with discretion." Thorne looked Milo straight in the eye, without a trace of fear. "I am told your charge is suffering from great anguish, that he is haunted by shadows.
That is my specialty.
Unless your orders are to let him sink into madness until death follows, I suggest you announce me."
Catherine felt the tension between the two men.
Milo's steel-blue thread vibrated with contained aggression. Thorne's sickly green thread was calm, curious, almost amused. It was a duel of wills. Milo was the force, raw loyalty.
Thorne was the intellect, the cunning.
Milo hesitated. His orders were clear: let no one approach Park.
But Thorne's proposal was clever. To refuse entry to a doctor could be interpreted as negligence, a failure in his mission to keep his prisoner alive.
And Thorne had an aura of professionalism and confidence that was hard to ignore.
Finally, after a long silence, Milo took a step back. "Wait here."
He closed the door, leaving Thorne on the threshold.
A few minutes later, the door opened again.
"Enter," Milo said, his tone gruff.
"The master consents to see you."
Thorne adjusted his spectacles and entered the house, the door closing heavily behind him.
Catherine immediately severed her vision, her heart pounding.
The first obstacle was cleared. Thorne was inside. It was an immense victory.
But it was also a total loss of control.
She was now blind, dependent on the report of a man she could not control, a man who was now alone with her first clue and his deadly keeper.
She had placed a large part of her future on this amoral physician.
She looked at the map of the city, the point representing 17 Spinners' Alley seeming to mock her.
The game was no longer in her hands. It was in his.