The city was a beehive that had been kicked.
The days following the launch of Valerius's investigation into the Eastern Sail Trading Company were a calculated chaos, and Catherine, from her library, was its invisible conductor.
Reports from Madame Lin's network flowed in, hidden in tea sachets or bundles of herbs that young Leo brought to her.
Every note was one more thread in the complex tapestry she was weaving. The world of commerce was in a panic.
Fortunes built on decades of stability were threatened.
Of course, to say that Catherine had caused all this wasn't entirely true. This world was not constant; she had taken advantage of the flaws and had forced things to her advantage.
The partners of the Eastern Sail, fearing they would be spattered, kept their distance, isolating the company.
Valerius, for his part, was a changed man. Drunk on the power Catherine had given him a taste of, he had become a ruthless crusader.
Every evening, he came to see her, no longer as a lover seeking comfort, but as a general reporting to his war oracle. He detailed the seized ledgers, the interrogations conducted.
"Their account books are a labyrinth of lies," he told her one evening, his eyes shining with a quasi-religious fervor.
"Shell companies, phantom cargoes… It's an empire of corruption, just as you saw, my Oracle. I had their chief accountant arrested. He attempted suicide in his cell tonight."
Catherine listened with feigned attention. She knew this was only small fry that the cat was playing with. She played her role, guiding him with opportune visions.
"Focus on the transactions with the river barge guilds, Magistrate," she whispered to him.
"I sense a particular darkness in those waters." In reality, she was directing him toward the operations most likely to be directly linked to The Rook's personal finances, seeking to tighten the vise.
She rewarded him for his diligence. Their intimacy had become a weapon of positive reinforcement.
She took him with a fierce and calculated passion, making him feel like the god of justice he claimed to be.
Being the man he is and with his needs, their meetings often ended in this way.
Every orgasm she tore from him was one more chain on his leash, every feigned sigh, one more nail in the coffin of his own will. She possessed him body and soul, and he thanked her for his servitude.
But a beast as old and as powerful as The Rook does not remain passive when its nest is attacked. The counter-attack was not long in coming, but it was, as Catherine had suspected, subtle and cruel.
A report from Madame Lin informed her that a key witness whom Valerius's men were to interrogate a former port clerk who had worked for the Eastern Sail thirty years prior had been found dead.
Officially, a heart attack in the arms of one of the Silk Pillow's girls. But the girl in question, Jin, had whispered in her madam's ear that just before dying, the man had received a silent visit from a debt collector with an impassive face.
A few days later, a small merchant ship belonging to one of Valerius's closest political allies sank in the port following a sudden and inexplicable hull failure. The ally, financially weakened, withdrew his support for Valerius's aggression against the Eastern Sail.
Catherine analyzed these moves with a glacial detachment. The Rook was not responding to the attack head-on.
He was not targeting Valerius himself, which would have been too direct, too visible. He was cutting off the limbs, isolating his target, letting chaos and fear do their work. He was playing a long game. It was a lesson.
She recorded the tactic.
She knew her initial plan had succeeded in sowing disorder, but she was still just as far from her true target, Jun-Ho Park, who had disappeared into thin air.
She needed a new lead. And her network provided it.
The report arrived one evening, an innocuous note hidden with a delivery of saffron.
It came from a different source, a stable boy who frequented a prostitute he had a crush on. The boy had overheard a conversation.
A man, a small-time gang leader known as Corbeau Chen, was bragging about having landed a new, well-paying contract.
An easy job, he said. Just keeping an eye on a crazy old man in a secure house in the tanners' district. Chen had boasted of receiving his orders directly from a lady in black, a legendary figure in The Rook's organization. A woman so fast, he said, that she seemed to walk between the raindrops.
Isabelle.
Catherine's heart leaped, not with fear, but with a purely predatory excitement.
This was it.
The lead.
The Rook had moved Park and, to avoid using his own elite men who might be known, he had subcontracted the surveillance to local gangs. A mistake.
A small crack in his armor of paranoia. Isabelle had served as the intermediary, but the daily guard was handled by less reliable, more talkative men.
Chen "The Crow."
He was her man.
But what to do? Send Valerius's guards to arrest him? Impossible, there were no official charges. Try to make him talk through one of her girls? Too risky, Chen was a suspicious brute. She needed him, his knowledge.
Alive.
And cooperative.
She realized she had only one tool in her arsenal capable of such an operation.
A tool that demanded payment in knowledge, but whose competence was undeniable. A man who knew how to make people talk, through science or through pain. She went to her desk, took up a quill and a new parchment.
The candlelight danced in her eyes, giving them a cold and determined glint. She drafted a new contract for her doctor of the shadows.
She called for Leo and entrusted him with the sealed note and another, heavier purse of gold.
"For Doctor Thorne," she said simply.
"Tell him the patient is ready for a new consultation. A house call."
The message Thorne would receive was short and left no room for ambiguity.
"Doctor, I have a new patient for you. He does not yet know that he is sick. Here is his description and the tavern he frequents. Bring him to me. Alive."
After writing, she plunged into deep thought.
It's bait.
This information came out too easily.
As meticulous as he is, and as powerful, he would not be short of men.
Someone else is handling this affair.
One of The Rook's subordinates is devising these strategies.
Is he aware of what's happening in the smallest details? she wondered.
I must assume that I will have nothing to gain during this operation.
At worst, he will be dead; at worst, we will fall into a trap.
If it's a trap, it will be the ideal occasion to test Thorne, his intentions, and to find a way to get rid of him during this incident.
"Ah," she sighed.
"Everything is accelerating."