"I would very much like to know the same thing," said Corvina, glaring at her agent. "I thought I told you to stick to asking around the commoners. What were you doing in the Tulin's library?"

"I'm so sorry, my lady," said the agent, bowing. "But every line of inquiry I followed led to a dead-end! My contact at the church found nothing of use. Everyone I talked to either didn't remember anything of note happening around that time, or they remembered too many things. A series of shops being burgled, an especially bad flu that season, a mysterious house fire—"

Most people, when they listened to someone talk, would look at the person who was talking. Corvina had long since learned that sometimes it was more useful to pay attention to the other listeners instead.

That's how she was able to notice that, when the agent mentioned a house fire, Justine's brow briefly furrowed. A sign of recognition.

"—I really couldn't think of what else to look into," continued the agent. "And I just thought... Well, as the family in charge of the region, maybe the Tulins would have records stored in their library that didn't exist anywhere else."

"I see," said Corvina. "And did you find anything useful?"

"No, my lady," said the agent, looking down in shame.

"I interrupted her before she could find much of anything," said Justine. "Because, and this might surprise you, I'm not particularly fond of strangers snooping around my library without permission."

"I'm terribly sorry for the trespass, Lady Justine," said Corvina, with a low curtsy. "I will take full responsibility for my agent's actions. Whatever restitution you see fit, I will see that you receive it."

Justine sighed. "You don't... have to act like that. Just explain to me what it is you're so desperately looking into. I've lived in this area my whole life, and I've seen it from both sides—poor and rich. Perhaps I can help."

Corvina looked at Justine. Justine had defensive tendencies, especially when it came to her family and her home. But that was perfectly understandable, given that, according to the laws of the empire, technically neither her home nor her family legally belonged to her. It made sense for someone living like that to see their position as precarious—It was precarious.

But still, despite all that, Justine was a genuinely kind person. Corvina could see where Belle got her personality from. She smiled a little at the thought.

Then Corvina glanced at Anne. Anne had been watching these proceedings with an air of confused interest. She was still in her nightshirt, with her hair unkempt from sleep. She looked unbearably cute. Corvina desperately wanted to reach out and ruffle that hair.

Corvina turned away. This whole mess really wasn't what she had wanted to talk to Anne about today. But she couldn't avoid the topic any longer.

"Alright," said Corvina. "I'll explain, but I think we should allow Anne to get dressed first."

Corvina sent her agent away, and then she and Justine waited together in a nearby drawing room while Anne got dressed. Helen brought them tea, which they sipped slowly while making polite small talk about Justine's gardens and the management of the region. It was a bit tense, but Corvina and Justine were both well-practiced in ignoring tension for the sake of being polite.

Finally, Anne came back in, wearing a blue suit Corvina had seen before, but without the stole to mark her status as a religious figure. "Sorry that took me a while," said Anne, looking sheepish. "Honestly, Eva usually helps me with the buttons and I forgot how tricky they can be..."

Corvina patted the space on the settee next to her and Anne obediently sat down.

"I'm sorry for not telling you this earlier," said Corvina, to Anne. "I couldn't predict how you would react, or how Eva would react to your reaction, and I don't deal well with things I can't predict. Perhaps I've been overly cautious and paranoid about the whole thing anyway, but..."

Corvina looked over at Justine and took a deep breath before continuing. "For a while now, I've had certain suspicions about Anne's friend, the cleric Sister Eva. You met her before. She was here at the estate when the incident with the assassin took place."

"Eva?" said Anne. Corvina searched her face carefully for any reaction, shock or anger, maybe. But to Corvina's surprise she didn't seem to have much of a reaction at all. She just looked serious. Thoughtful, maybe. "What are your suspicions, what do you think Eva's done?"

"I don't know for certain, exactly," said Corvina. "I instructed my agent to find out anything she could about Eva's background before she entered the church. She was about eight years-old when she was given away, which is unusually old. I'm certain something must have happened. That has to be the missing piece to the puzzle. If I just knew that, I'm certain I could fully explain everything with confidence."

"Sister Eva... hmmm..." Justine sat back in her chair, looking thoughtful. Then her eyes widened. If Justine's previous microexpression had communicated something like 'that seems oddly familiar' then this one was jumping up and down and screaming 'eureka!'

"What is it?" asked Corvina, eagerly leaning forward in her seat. If Justine genuinely knew something, this could finally be the proof that she needed to prove her theories.

"I could be wrong, but..." Justine stood up and gestured for the other two to follow her. She led them through several corridors until they ended up in the library.

A lot of imperial aristocrats kept libraries as a sign of status. After all, books were expensive. A room of shelves lined with books placed neatly in a row, so that everyone could see the fine gold leaf on the outer spines, was as ostentatious as a glass case full of jewels—with the added bonus that it was considered more polite to show off your books than your jewels.

This, however, was clearly not a library that was meant for show. It was large, stuffed with more books than Corvina had ever seen in one place before, and it was at least as cluttered and eclectic as the rest of the Tulin estate was. Books were piled haphazardly on every surface, partially because there were too many of them to fit on the shelves, but since many of them were left open to specific pages, it's possible they were left out because someone actually wanted to reference them again. Corvina was pretty sure she saw at least one book with another, smaller book closed inside it like a bookmark.

No wonder her agent hadn't been able to find anything. This was not a library that was designed with clear cataloging in mind. This was a library that saw heavy use from specific people that knew their way around and didn't particularly care if anyone else could find anything or not.

"It's possible your agent was right to check here after all," said Justine. "And you may have been wrong to tell her to focus on talking to commoners. Wait here."

Justine squeezed between two shelves that had been placed very close together. She reappeared a moment later carrying a heavy tome, bound in green-leather with a golden insignia emblazoned on the front.

Corvina read the title aloud. "The Peerage of the Marches, from Longren to Glanyrafon."

"I assume your agent was mostly looking into municipal birth records, which only record peasant births," said Justine. "To know about aristocratic births, you have to turn to a different sort of genealogy."

Justine set the book down heavily on a nearby table and began flipping through it. Each page was an illustration of a family tree, with the family name and title written in fancy script at the top of the page, and then the members of the family counted down from their ancestors to the current generation, with little branching lines between them to show their relations.

"Ah-ha," said Justine, finding the page she was looking for.

The top of the page read 'The Grace Barony.'

"Look at the most recent generation," said Justine, pointing.

Corvina and Anne both leaned in to see better.

The final three people listed on the page were Baron Octavius Grace, Baroness Tiffany Everton Grace, and their daughter—Lady Evalynn Grace.

Corvina checked the dates and did some mental math. It added up.

"I remember little Evalynn," said Justine. "She used to come around to all the shops in the market district. She rarely bought anything, she'd just get under your feet and ask all sorts of little curious questions, like what things were or how things worked. A bit of a nuisance, really, but she was a Baron's daughter, so people just let her do what she wanted. Not that you would know it from looking at her, she was so thin and ragged looking. And not that anyone respected the Baron much by that point, but still... It didn't do to purposefully antagonize an aristocratic family, no matter how far they'd fallen. Not without good reason."

Justine shook her head. "Sister Eva, with that bright red hair... I can't believe I didn't recognize her before. But that was so long ago, and..."

"And what?" asked Anne. She had been uncharacteristically quiet through all of this. Her expression was still serious, intense even, and her attention was fully on Justine at that moment.

Justine shrugged. "I just didn't think it was possible. I thought Evalynn Grace had died almost two decades ago. In a house fire."

Author's Note: The Bastards' Clubs stickers finally arrived! I'm really excited to start sending these out to people. If you want one of these bad boys, you can either subscribe to my Patreon over at patreon.com/TeddyAsplund or go to my shop at teddyasplundbooks.bigcartel.com