The Murder Between Bells

A drowned man. A crowded hearing. An alibi everyone can swear to. In Temrath, water clocks govern the working day. When calibration specialist Arvek Noll is found drowned in a service basin, the bell seems to offer his most troubling visitor an unbreakable alibi: witnesses place the suspect at a public hearing in another district. Civic examiner Istren Anket has no reason to dismiss those witnesses. She has even less reason to abandon the dead man. With infrastructure engineer Odran Tessik, she follows appointments, deliveries and disputed service records through a city where an official signature can protect a livelihood or conceal a dangerous bargain. Ashglass may preserve what water has done, but it cannot name a murderer. Reading it costs Istren more than professional effort, and the pressure to obtain certainty threatens the life she is trying to build beyond her work. Odran can help her test the city's machinery. Trusting one another will demand something different. To make an accusation that will withstand challenge, they must find what the witnesses' honest accounts leave unexplained, without letting the people who certify the evidence decide which questions may be asked.