There was a subplot in the Dealmaker’s Gambit that had to be cut because I just couldn’t get it to gel the way I wanted it to.
The TL;DR was that Irora had Zag make a number of talismans into peppercorns and plant them in high-end restaurants, resulting in a number of wealthy civilians (and one seagull) getting arrested as dealmakers. It was a bit of chaos and comedy, and a glimpse into the way that laws are unequally enforced among classes.
Below are the outtakes of what I had written of the saga.
“Those pebbles of yours– the ones that change the way people look. Do you have to be there when they eat them to make them work?”
Zag leaned in, intrigued. “No, I don’t.”
“Do they have to be pebbles? Or could they be something else?”
“I’d have to go back to my island and make something new,” it said. “But I can do that in a few hours. What have you got in mind?”
She scooped up the tiny black sphere floating in her noodle bowl. “I’m thinking a peppercorn.”
While they worked their shift, three dozen talismans made from peppercorns were stashed among the ingredients of a dozen high-end restaurants across the city.
Some of them were grated into nothing.
Some of them were left uneaten at the bottom of the bowl and thrown out with the garbage.
But fourteen of them were swallowed down.
By midnight, the strike team had captured fourteen confused, frightened people, and one seagull, all wearing the likeness of Irora Yureu.
By the time the real Irora Yureu arrived for her morning shift, the gendarmerie was overcrowded with people she’d never seen before, but who were wearing some of the finest clothes she’d seen outside of a parade: the mayor and several high-powered magistrates, their secretaries and attendants, and more lawyers than Irora had ever seen before. The shouting could be heard from down the hall.
“We don’t have any evidence that this wasn’t intentional–” the Commander said, her icy voice raised to a gale.
“Are you entirely serious right now?” that one, Irora had learned, was the mayor. “Are you going to sit here and tell me that fourteen–”
“Fourteen!” someone else screeched.
“–fourteen unrelated people, most of whom have unimpeachable records, some of whom are from very prominent families–”
“Damn right our family’s prominent. I’ll have you know we have pull with Ymrir’s minister of law–”
“Many of whom haven’t even met each other before today, have all decided to join in a criminal conspiracy with a twenty-year-old girl– who only even arrived in the city in the last two weeks, mind you– who might not even be in the city anymore–”
“She is,” Busherabu said. “I know she is. My task force has every exit to the city covered–”
“Oh, I’m aware,” said another voice. “Which is why our roads are congested to the point of standstill, and the harbor–”
“I’m sorry, would this be the same task force that has labeled fourteen innocent victims as some kind of new cult syndicate?”
“–and now we’ve got food rotting in the cargo holds of the ships you’ve stopped– do you have any idea what this is doing to our economy?”
Rinvu caught Irora on the way to the gendarmerie the next day, just outside it.
“Listen,” Rinvu said. Her shoulders curled around her chest, her eyes lowered. “Could you do me a favor? A really big favor?”
“What kind of favor are we talking about?” Irora asked.
Rinvu took a tightly folded scrap of paper and pressed it into Irora’s hand. “I need you to give this to one of the defense lawyers that keeps running in and out of the office. Don’t tell them who you got it from. Just… make sure they get it.”
Irora flicked her gaze at her briefly, then unfolded the paper and looked it over. Begura’s name and general information, as well as a rough outline of his accused crimes and the circumstances around them.
Carefully she folded it again. “The Commander’s not going to be thrilled about them getting their hands on this.”
Rinvu looked away. “No, she’s not.”
“If she finds out I gave it to them, it’s going to go badly for me.”
“I know.” Her voice sounded leaden. “I swear I’m not trying to put you at any risk. I would do it myself, but I’m being watched all the time. If I got anywhere near those lawyers it would–” She bit her lip.
“What makes you think I’m not just going to turn this over to the Commander as soon as this conversation is over?”
“I don’t,” Rinvu said. “But I don’t think you will.”
Handing off the paper was easy enough. Irora picked out her favorite among the pack of teeth-gnashing lawyers and walked behind her for a few moments, then bent down and pretended to pick something up off the floor.
“Ma’am,” she called, jogging to catch up to the lawyer. “Ma’am, one moment. You dropped this.”
The other woman turned and blinked, staying still just long enough for Irora to press the folded paper into her hands. “Wouldn’t want you to lose that.”
And before the woman could react, she slipped away.
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